Adventure Gamers - Forums

This is something I have been thinking about for a while and now with the release of Unavowed and looking at the list of upcoming releases, Life is Strange 2, State of Mind, Asylum, Beautiful Desolation, Gibbous, Lamplight City, I realized that by far the majority of games are supernatural/horror/sci-fi/post-apocalypse/steampunk stories and settings.

This is not a complaint, because I enjoy these games too, I am just genuinely curious why developers feel the need to resort to fantasy to add excitement to their games. Because I also feel that realism and realistic settings are underutilized and especially with the growth of VR should be playing a greater role as our genre grows and develops.

There have actually been some really realistic good titles lately but they fall mostly in the “walking sim” category, so I wonder does it have something to do with the gameplay being easier to do? Obviously having superpowers gives a player more to do than just an ordinary human. Or is it more to do with the necessary role of animation in creating games, and with animation always having been associated with more fantastical stories and themes than in film, which uses filmed actors and scenery? And yet even with FMV and actors games like Phantasmagoria, Life Is Strange or Tex Murphy are well within the realms of fantasy. Or is it just because gaming is and always will be seen as an escapist medium? That would seem to be contradicted by other game genres which are filled with realistic war shooters and bus driving simulators.

However I don’t believe non-supernatural settings are less popular with audiences - there have been critical successes like Heavy Rain and L.A. Noire and the Sherlock Holmes games as well. But these are by far the exception.

It’s the puzzles.

Adventure-style puzzles have no place in the real world. The obstacles themselves feel horribly contrived, and the solutions are completely nonsensical. On the other hand, some sort of fantasy world with “magic” (in the broadest possible sense) and arbitrary rules makes it possible to justify adventure-style puzzles. That really struck me when I recently replayed The Longest Journey: magic allows for some fun puzzles that somehow make sense in context; without it, all you’re left with is absurd stuff like the rubber ducky.

There are a few exceptions, most of which you pointed out in the original post:

1) Games without puzzles (walking sims)

2) Detective stories with investigative gameplay rather than inventory puzzles (LA Noire, Sherlock Holmes, etc.)

3) Over-the-top comedies that make it clear that they don’t really take place in the real world, and sometimes lampshade the absurdity of the puzzles for comedic effect (Leisure Suit Larry…)

4) MacGyver-style stories (like the second act of Lost in Time)—but that’s very narrow

Luhr28 - 13 August 2018 08:41 AM

Or is it just because gaming is and always will be seen as an escapist medium? That would seem to be contradicted by other game genres which are filled with realistic war shooters and bus driving simulators.

I’ll allow you the bus driving simulators. But war shooters, even present-day ones, aren’t really what I’d call realistic - it’s just another genre (war/action) which doesn’t lend itself so well to the pace of an adventure game. And detective games like Heavy Rain or Sherlock Holmes may be more realistic in their component parts but they still follow genre conventions.

I think it’s more that games (particularly higher-profile releases) tend to lean towards genre fiction for their sources. It may be at least partly that games is a young medium and tends to absorb the less subtle flavours of other media. But if you look at, say,  this week’s UK movie chart:

1. Ant-Man And The Wasp
2. Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again!
3. Mission: Impossible Fallout
4. Incredibles 2
5. Hotel Transylvania 3: A Monster Vacation
6. Teen Titans Go! To The Movies
7. The First Purge
8. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
9. Skyscraper
10. Ocean’s 8

Superhero, musical romantic comedy, spy thriller, animated superhero, animated monster comedy, animated superhero, dystopian horror, monster movie, action thriller, heist movie.

All recognizably genre stuff. And yes, that’s more pronounced because it’s the summer. But if you look at another time of year you’re unlikely to see anything that different - the highest-profile releases are most likely to be high-concept genre pieces. It’s the case for commercial fiction media in general - genre conventions make for more economical storytelling - and somewhat more so for games (the romantic comedy genre has never really taken off in games, and anything non-genre is even more niche than it would be in a film. Could it be time for a Dogme movement for games?).

As to which genres work well, Doom may have a point about the puzzles. Anything in a real-world setting that looks sufficiently like a puzzle pushes us towards a genre - maybe detective, maybe conspiracy thriller, maybe MacGyver - but it still pushes us out of the real world. Unless, I suppose, you set your real-world adventure at a crossword championship…

Luhr28 - 13 August 2018 08:41 AM

I realized that by far the majority of games are supernatural/horror/sci-fi/post-apocalypse/steampunk stories and settings.

This is not a complaint, because I enjoy these games too, I am just genuinely curious why developers feel the need to resort to fantasy to add excitement to their games.

You do realise that horror/sci-fi/post-apocalypse/steampunk have nothing to do with fantasy, unless we are talking about some crossover thing? As for supernatural, that might be the one thing that actually is related to fantasy.

This might seem like nitpicking on genre definitions, but then again, there is a difference between those. You can have psychological horror which doesn’t have anything to do with supernatural, even less with elements that are normal within fantasy, such as talking animals.

So there are a lot of games which don’t have any fantasy elements, but which don’t qualify as real-life-like.

But let’s ask the real question here then: why there are so few real-life adventure games in comparison with the rest of the genre?
It comes down to two things: story-telling and puzzles. Real-life is not very interesting unless you spice it up, and it would make very lame puzzles.

You could design a game that concentrates on you getting up in the morning, but not finding car keys, and then trying to beat the time limit to be in the office just in time for the important meeting with a client. I don’t think too many players would be attracted to the concept, although there have been some experimental games which try something like that.
Even the so-called realistic detective games are not that realistic. For instance, most homicide cases in real life do not involve detailed murder plans, or mafia connections, most are something like a drunk guy killing another guy by accident.

There is a good reason why Police Quest games, for instance, have nowhere near the same cult following that other Sierra quests have.

In each case, there are games that would fit your criteria for a good(?) game that is totally based on reality. I don’t think any titles come to my mind at the moment, but if you keep on searching, I’m sure you will find something eventually.

GateKeeper - 15 August 2018 12:28 PM

Luhr28 - 13 August 2018 08:41 AM

I realized that by far the majority of games are supernatural/horror/sci-fi/post-apocalypse/steampunk stories and settings.

This is not a complaint, because I enjoy these games too, I am just genuinely curious why developers feel the need to resort to fantasy to add excitement to their games.

You do realise that horror/sci-fi/post-apocalypse/steampunk have nothing to do with fantasy, unless we are talking about some crossover thing? As for supernatural, that might be the one thing that actually is related to fantasy.

This might seem like nitpicking on genre definitions, but then again, there is a difference between those. You can have psychological horror which doesn’t have anything to do with supernatural, even less with elements that are normal within fantasy, such as talking animals.

Well, to be honest I think this is nitpicking. Going by the exoteric meaning of fantasy, “the faculty or activity of imagining impossible or improbable things.” I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that scary monsters and killer humanoid robots are highly imaginary plot devices.

But let’s ask the real question here then: why there are so few real-life adventure games in comparison with the rest of the genre?
It comes down to two things: story-telling and puzzles. Real-life is not very interesting unless you spice it up, and it would make very lame puzzles.

You could design a game that concentrates on you getting up in the morning, but not finding car keys, and then trying to beat the time limit to be in the office just in time for the important meeting with a client. I don’t think too many players would be attracted to the concept, although there have been some experimental games which try something like that.
Even the so-called realistic detective games are not that realistic. For instance, most homicide cases in real life do not involve detailed murder plans, or mafia connections, most are something like a drunk guy killing another guy by accident.

There is a good reason why Police Quest games, for instance, have nowhere near the same cult following that other Sierra quests have.

In each case, there are games that would fit your criteria for a good(?) game that is totally based on reality. I don’t think any titles come to my mind at the moment, but if you keep on searching, I’m sure you will find something eventually.

I think it’s unfair to equate ‘realistic’ with ‘boring’. Realism doesn’t have to mean that nothing interesting happens, you only have to look to literature to find great works based on ordinary, realistic events. In my opinion, it’s all about subtlety and bringing a level of richness to the inner, subjective world of the characters rather than centering a game around action or events. In this way even an event like writing a dissertation can be dramatic and highly entertaining - see the text adventure Violet for example.

Luhr28 - 15 August 2018 02:51 PM

Well, to be honest I think this is nitpicking. Going by the exoteric meaning of fantasy, “the faculty or activity of imagining impossible or improbable things.” I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that scary monsters and killer humanoid robots are highly imaginary plot devices.

Yes, but fantasy is so widely used as a genre definition that using the term “fantasy” to refer to things that really aren’t, is very confusing. It’s the same thing with the word “adventure”. You can of course say that games like Unreal are adventures, because in broader context that cannot be disputed, but in terms of “game talk” (almost) everyone agrees that Unreal is not an adventure game.

To quote Wikipedia, that source of endless wisdom, about “fantasy (genre)”:
“Fantasy is a subgenre of speculative fiction and is distinguished from the genres of science fiction and horror by the absence of scientific or macabre themes respectively, though these genres overlap.”

So going by that sentence alone, humanoid robots are not fantasy.

Luhr28 - 15 August 2018 02:51 PM

I think it’s unfair to equate ‘realistic’ with ‘boring’. Realism doesn’t have to mean that nothing interesting happens, you only have to look to literature to find great works based on ordinary, realistic events. In my opinion, it’s all about subtlety and bringing a level of richness to the inner, subjective world of the characters rather than centering a game around action or events.

Well, it all depends.
When one day the first man lands on Mars, it’s real life and not one bit boring! But then again, those previous 180 days inside a cramped space capsule reading computer screens 16 hours a day and using the same exercise bike for two hours every day is probably not that exciting after the first couple of weeks.

You could create a fantastic science fiction (not fantasy!) story about that guy losing his sanity bit by bit, day after day, but even that would be stepping into a very fictional space (pun?  ) and not staying within reality.

We come again to genre definitions here. How much “adventure” does an adventure game need to be an adventure? You could create an educational adventure game about archeological studies or something, where you use tools to dig into sand and find buried objects, and then study those objects to learn about an ancient culture. But if that’s all where it goes, if there’s no Nazis to fight over the possession of buried artifacts or whatever, is there really enough incentive for a player to be playing? Maybe, maybe not.

Also if you want to rely on literature here, certain conventions in literature require a certain kind of progression. For instance, let’s look at Freytag’s pyramid.

http://www.dlandsborough.com/blog/2017/7/11/freytags-pyramid-and-the-three-act-plot-structure

It would be very hard in a computer game to create that progression without some “fantastical” elements. For instance, the plot in Broken Sword completely fits in there: a guy is in Paris, gets in trouble, solves the issue, things come back to normal. If you leave out clowns who blow up cafeterias and neo-Templars, what do you have? A guy in Paris.

I love fantasy elements like Game Master said ” if it were too close to real life it will be incredibly boring.” <—this is so true.

Not that fantasy games always do it but fantasy genre creates both opportunities for fantasy puzzles like using magic or fantasy goals like getting magic items or potion ingredients.