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2010’s as an adventure decade

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Now that the year has changed everywhere and we are in early 2020’s, looking back to 2010’s, how was it like, as an adventure decade? Is there anything that defines that era of adventures?

1970’s: the real beginning of the whole video game industry and people were just trying to figure out what it’s all about, in general and with adventures too. Early attempts were still good enough to give to whole genre its name.

1980’s: the real coming of graphical adventures, still mostly used with parser input. Adventures were becoming one of the best-selling genres of video gaming.

1990’s: (almost) undeniably the golden age of adventures, the era of point’n'clicks, which also coincided with the coming of multimedia. Later part of the decade also saw the coming of true 3D graphics, which also meant that (publisher) interest in adventures started to decline.

2000’s: no longer the top genre, there were some new innovations, some of which are controversial, like (mostly Telltale’s) episodic format games. Also, Adventure Game Studio and Wintermute were new popular tools to create adventures with very small teams.

2010’s? Does anything stand out? The rise and fall of Telltale games? The initial excitement and later disappointment over crowdfunding? Something else?

If someone in the future is going to create an adventure game with “2010’s vibe”, how is the game going to be like?

Any thoughts? How was your 2010’s, from adventure perspective?  Laughing

     
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I try to give my opinion! I’m not a big player of adventure games in general, but my favorite games are still those of the 90’s (Syberia, Grim Fandango, Riven, etc). However, it’s mostly out of nostalgia. For me the years 2010 are characterized by the independent scene more than ever. We saw the rise of small studios and individual creators, bringing a lot of new games, in such a way that specialized magazines don’t know where to look anymore, because there’s so much news and projects to watch and talk about. That’s why I think we’ve had a lot of fun this decade if we like the genre, because we’ve seen all sorts of things. Of course the quality is not necessarily as high as in the golden age (if you look back in the context of the 90s), but still we are lucky to see this genre still exists and above all prospers. There have been classic point and click games, Myst like in 2d and 3d, narrative games, adventure/action games, new game mechanics, detailed HD graphics, pixel art, great music atmospheres, and even AAA adventures with studios such as Quantic Dreams for example. On the other hand, it is true that most of the games created in 2010s have been made by very small teams, sometimes amateurs, and this is noticeable. Very often the games do not seem as polished and finished, so we have to spend a lot more time looking for the rare hidden gems. These gems are not often known by the public, who is more and more reluctant to spend time on difficult games and is increasingly demanding immediacy and ease (or walkthroughs). I’m happy to have been among the first independent devs to get into adventure games making in the 2010s, with the development of ASA at a time where Myst-like games no longer existed that much. For the above reasons, the years 2010 will always be for me a “silver age” (a baby of the golden age), so to speak, because we were given quantity, and to a certain extent quality. In my opinion, it was a rewriting of the adventure games of the 1990s by a generation of enthusiasts, ex-players who experienced the golden era, and who aged by wanting to create in their turn, sometimes a little frustrated that this genre they love so much is no longer recognized at its true value. My only regret is that in general I find the stories not very developed, to the benefit of other ideas fortunately (gameplay, puzzles, graphics, etc), but I liked to immerse myself in exciting and long stories in the past. I’m more worried about the years to come though, seeing that the video game market is saturated, that the press doesn’t emphasize point and click anymore, that the big publishers don’t make adventure games anymore, and I even wonder if the new generations are interested in them? (I hope, but I don’t know). It seems to me that puzzles and reflection are no longer valued in games at all, except for a few basic puzzles to open a door before the next assault against evil forces, and that adrenaline and 4K graphics are the main criteria for a game’s success nowadays (in general). Especially since new technologies such as game streaming seem to be moving in the direction of fast content consumption (a bit like binge-watching on Netflix), which won’t really allow the players to quietly get involved in a puzzle like in the past, take notes, pause the game to think, etc. We’ll see in the 2020s! And you, what do you think about it?

     
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The age of comebacks, nostalgia, experiments and undelivered promises, definitely an interesting time.

     

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The proliferation of crowdsourcing and indie developers made the 2010s the best decade for adventure games since the ‘90s.

     
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What is also interesting about this time period is the return of FMV adventure games. And they are good ones as well. I would have never guessed this would happen.

We also saw 2D adventure games like Broken Sword 5 make a come back too. That was surprising to me.

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I enjoy playing adventure games on my Alienware M17 r4 and my Nintendo Switch OLED.

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@Mikekelly if you had 1 FMV adventure game to recommend, which one would it be?
I seem to remember of a good one on PS3 or PS4 but the name doesn’t come back (Tokyo something maybe?)

     
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I can’t place the Tokyo game. Of the many FMV games,  I would start with Contradiction, it is very good.

The nice part of playing adventure games today is the variety - you could be playing an FMV, 2D, 3D rendered, all recently released.

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I enjoy playing adventure games on my Alienware M17 r4 and my Nintendo Switch OLED.

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Very true about FMVs making a comeback but it makes a lot of sense. I think QTEs have aged better as a game mechanic than many puzzle designs even though it is the antithesis of what we’d generally consider fun. Who wants to do another sliding tile or push a collection of buttons in the right sequence puzzle though?

Simon_ASA - 04 January 2020 09:48 AM

@Mikekelly if you had 1 FMV adventure game to recommend, which one would it be?
I seem to remember of a good one on PS3 or PS4 but the name doesn’t come back (Tokyo something maybe?)


Her Story.

The Japanese game is 428: Shibuya Scramble.

     
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428: Shibuya Scramble

I actually have this game. I thought it was just OK. It’s mainly still pictures. I did keep it because the plot is pretty strange and the characters interesting.

The game mechanics can be confusing and this is where the game was a let down for me.

The game is highly reviewed however - but for the price there are way better games out there.

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I would mark 2010’s of the era of experimental and narrative adventure games. We’ve gotten gems like the Return of Obra Dinn and What Remains of Edith Finch. As a whole, the adventure genre has gotten new staying power in the last decade thanks to 1st person horror adventures and games like Life is Strange that aren’t afraid to mix things up a bit in terms of gameplay.

     

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tea_tree - 02 January 2020 05:39 PM

The proliferation of crowdsourcing and indie developers made the 2010s the best decade for adventure games since the ‘90s.

Looking back, it does seem like the 2000s marked the transition between the large/medium companies almost single-handedly dominating the genre, to now where by far the majority are made by independent solo developers or small teams. Quite a remarkable transition when you think about it, and it’s no wonder the 00s were so dull that many thought it was the death of advgaming. There was no longer any faith in the top-down funded company model that had worked in the 80s/90s and not yet enough consumer faith in the bottom-up kickstarter model. I think we can say that has well and truly changed.

     
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It’s not the game. The most dominant factor, to me, as it relates to games in the 2010’s was Kickstarter. There were, in my opinion, more downs than ups. But it certainly produced it’s fair share of discussion, even though the number of funded games that were never delivered seemed to increase daily/monthly/yearly.

Edit: I’m going to take a cue from crabapple’s post, which follows. Casual games became a genre. It developed a thread of it’s own on August, 2012, and is still going. It also had a day of it’s own in the later stages of AGSotD. I’m proud that I was able to bring Casual Games into the AG discussion in the 2010’s.

     

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A lot of what was noteworthy about the 2010’s was a continuation of the late 2000’s.

Daedalic continued to produce high quality adventure games from the late 2000’s into the 2010’s. Unfortunately they don’t seem to be able to make a go of it anymore.

GOG started in the 2000’s as “Good Old Games”, selling older games pre-configured to work on new systems. They began selling new and recent games DRM-free in March 2012 (according to Wikipedia).

Even Kickstarter started in 2009, though I think everything I contributed to was in the 2010’s.

Then there was the rise of casual adventures. Starting in the late 2000’s they grew out of pure hidden object games that started adding puzzles and environments and better integrating the story with the game (as opposed to having information dumps between hidden object scenes). I’ve played some casual adventures that took 5 or 6 hours to complete—longer than some recent games that are considered “real” adventure games. I think casual adventures in general peaked between 2009 and 2013, depending on the series. After that they started adding gimmicks and dumbing down the puzzles. (There are some exceptions to this general rule, like Fright, which I believe was released in 2014).

The type of gameplay TellTale is known for does seem to be a purely 2010’s thing. I never enjoyed it, but I thought other people did, which is why I was so surprised when they went out of business. Maybe that was more due to mismanagement than lack of demand though. We’ll see what happens to the company that bought their IP’s and have announced The Wolf 2.

     
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The type of gameplay TellTale is known for does seem to be a purely 2010’s thing. I never enjoyed it, but I thought other people did, which is why I was so surprised when they went out of business. Maybe that was more due to mismanagement than lack of demand though. We’ll see what happens to the company that bought their IP’s and have announced The Wolf 2.

I have heard that poor game sales did them under. After the huge success of The Walking Dead First Season, they rest of their releases sold poorly.

And yea, the QTE in Telltale games I didn’t enjoy too much also.

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I enjoy playing adventure games on my Alienware M17 r4 and my Nintendo Switch OLED.

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Mikekelly - 11 January 2020 05:14 AM

The type of gameplay TellTale is known for does seem to be a purely 2010’s thing. I never enjoyed it, but I thought other people did, which is why I was so surprised when they went out of business. Maybe that was more due to mismanagement than lack of demand though. We’ll see what happens to the company that bought their IP’s and have announced The Wolf 2.

I have heard that poor game sales did them under. After the huge success of The Walking Dead First Season, they rest of their releases sold poorly.

And yea, the QTE in Telltale games I didn’t enjoy too much also.

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Management had a lot to do with as well. Telltale hugely overspent on several expensive IP’s, like Game of Thrones, which didn’t sell enough to turn a profit. They had several, unannounced IP’s in the works, based on expensive properties, during the time they finally kicked the bucket.

They also grew too fast. After The Walking Dead was a huge success, they hired a lot of new people to do those new IP’s they acquired all at once. On hindsight, they should had been more cautious in what brands to jump on, but I guess they thought TWD model was their method for printing money.

     
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rtrooney - 08 January 2020 06:50 PM

The most dominant factor, to me, as it relates to games in the 2010’s was Kickstarter. There were, in my opinion, more downs than ups.


Is that really true? Because even with the development hell some of these games experienced, we did get some incredible work out of this platform that may have never existed otherwise like Thimbleweed Park, Broken Age, Hypnospace Outlaw, Lily Looking Through, Resonance and Kentucky Route Zero.

     

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