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Do we need a new name for our genre? 

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Total Posts: 71

Joined 2003-09-16

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Jackal - 09 July 2012 04:40 PM

So how about Stuzzlations?  Expuzzories? Tongue

Both excellent! Also, smart move taking the term ‘game’ out of the equation. (It causes at least as many definitory problems as ‘adventure’.)  Smile

     
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Total Posts: 40

Joined 2009-04-25

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Matan - 09 July 2012 03:29 PM

The difference, in my opinion, is while warcraft 3 tells a story, it is not exactly story driven. As a player, you are too involved in the actual game mechanic (building up your base, watching it for intruders, fighting enemy units) to really be involved in the story, and the story is still mostly dropped on top of the gameplay (as if the designers tried to think “which story can we wrap around this gameplay mechanic”, instead of the other way around).

Same goes for Uncharted, which TimovieMan mentioned. I think it almost made it into my bin of “story-driven games”, but in the end you are still too much involved in repetitive hiding and gunfighting to really be driven by the story. Also, like in warcraft 3, it feels more like the designers tried to build a plot they could wrap around their gameplay mechanic - which story would enable the character to run, jump, shoot and hide a lot, rather than writing the story and then fitting the gameplay mechanic to fit that story.

But that observation would apply equally to many games in the “adventure” genre, wouldn’t it? Plenty of games in our genre place far more emphasis on puzzles or mechanics or world-building than on the narrative.

I mean, take Rhem, for example - would you really argue that it has more of a story than those examples? You can play Rhem for hours upon hours with nary a hint of plot and no need for a plot; I’d hardly call it story-driven. The story (such as it is) is clearly an excuse to have puzzles. While Rhem is a fairly extreme example, there are many other adventure games that put puzzles first to some extent.

Or how about Amerzone? The story is paper thin and has very little to do with the player. It’s the visuals and the exploration that almost exclusively drive that game.

How about Uru/Myst Online? It has a plot (and puzzles,) but has at least equal focus on the social aspects of the experience.

I guess you could start kicking things out of the genre. You could say Rhem is really more of a puzzle game, and Uru is an MMO, and create a new genre for Amerzone called “exploration games” or something… but at that point, what exactly are you accomplishing by the redefinition? If you have to narrow the genre significantly and arbitrarily to make the label apply, then in my opinion the label never really fit in the first place.

Now mind you, I agree that “Adventure Games” is a poorly descriptive and often not fully applicable name for the genre. The thing is, none of the alternatives I’ve heard proposed would be any better. Unless we come up with something that actually clarifies the issue significantly - well, at least with the old name a lot of people have gotten used to it.

     
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Total Posts: 259

Joined 2004-03-09

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I agree the term has been bastardized and no longer represents the “spirit” of the genre (when it comes to mainstream gaming, that is). Plus, ‘adventure’ has never been accurate in the first place.

I’ve always preferred “Quest Game” which was mostly used in Europe (and still is in some countries), but it also gives a wrong impression. “Story Game” or “Interactive Story” if you want to leave the ‘game’ term out of the way would be just fine in my opinion.

But I 100% agree that reclaiming or merging the genre with the “Interactive Fiction” term, as suggested on the first page, would be ideal. THAT is what ‘adventures’ are all about: an interactive medium where a fictional story takes the spotlight. No other gaming genre depends so much on its story.

     

Senscape // Founder // Designer | Working on: Asylum | Twitter: @AgustinCordes

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Joined 2006-09-24

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Asylum Quest...I like it!

I remember during the mid-90s when FMVs were coming out, the term used frequently was “interactive movie”. But since FMV games generally didn’t do as well as expected (with numerous exceptions like GK2 or Tex Murphy), I think the industry wanted to move away from the word “interactive” so people don’t have a negative Pavlovian response to their games. But now it’s obviously been a long enough time that it shouldn’t matter.

     

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