Adventure Gamers - Forums

Those developers haven’t delivered anything in the realm of “proper” adventure gaming in years and yet the last couple of years have been the best years in a decade or more.

Lots of little indies are more than filling the gap.  That’s actually more sustainable than many games being produced by a few large developers. 

This appears to be true for a variety of adventure gamer-tastes so I’m interested to see other perspectives in this thread.

At least in my case, long may it continue!

dumbeur - 06 October 2018 11:04 AM

Those developers haven’t delivered anything in the realm of “proper” adventure gaming in years and yet the last couple of years have been the best years in a decade or more.

Deponia Doomsday??

dumbeur - 06 October 2018 11:04 AM

Lots of little indies are more than filling the gap.  That’s actually more sustainable than many games being produced by a few large developers. 

This appears to be true for a variety of adventure gamer-tastes so I’m interested to see other perspectives in this thread.

Indeed, there’s probably a new AGS game available every week.

But it is also true that Telltale and Daedalic have been iconic companies for this era for a while, some others like Pendulo too, although to a lesser extent.
If those companies are no longer producing games, the entire picture of the next adventure decade will look very different.

Maybe it’s all indies and one-man companies. Not a bad future necessarily.
But in case we want to see anything more than that, something bigger scale, things are looking kind of bad right now. 

Regarding Germany and all that, I’m sure there will be lots of things coming exactly from Germany. Whether it’s good or bad, it’s from Germany where the new Leisure Suit Larry game is coming from, and almost without warning so it took most of adventure community by surprise. They have also some wonderfully looking new kind of games coming, like Trüberbrook, and also more traditional stuff like A Little Less Desperation.

I am also sure that Revolution Software will produce something some time in the future. Whether it’s Broken Sword 6, Beneath a Steel Sky 2, or something completely new remains to be seen.

Still, I would like to see some bigger studio around, dedicated to adventure games, and producing new games at least one title every 1-2 years.

If all else fails, there’s so much games that we haven’t played from the past decades, that even if there’s no new games being made, there’s new gaming experiences to be had still. Seriously, how many of you have played each and every adventure game that Sierra ever did? I sure haven’t… 

GateKeeper - 06 October 2018 12:34 PM

Deponia Doomsday??

Good point though I don’t think one game really changes the argument I was making.

As you said, the landscape is changing (as it always does) but big studios are also no longer needed to produce big games.  Better middleware (some singer in her day) has allowed smaller studios to produce greater games and as Ahenobarbus has pointed out there are still plenty of bigger studios out there.

My concern would be when the generations that grew up on classic point and click games are no longer of development age in the indie sector.  But we’ve a few years to go before that happens.

I think if you look at the genre at this point in time and you don’t see a problem, then you must be in denial.

Ahenobarbus, you mentioned Campo Santo. That company was bought by Valve and we have no idea what the future holds for their next project, which they announced before the purchase. King Art is building a strategy game now. Doublefine nowhere said they were doing another adventure. Silence of Daedalic didn’t light the world on fire in terms of sales, and I don’t know how well State of Mind is selling, but it rarely got a mention in general media. Tacoma according to the developer did not perform as well as Gone Home. The kickstarter craze has died down. Is the genre completely dead? No there will always be some person out there who makes an adventure game. But it is definitely in a much worse shape then a few years back.

If there’s a problem with the adventure game genre right now, it’s that the market is SATURATED. There are more adventure game developers than there are adventure game players.

There were three HUGE adventure game releases this year alone (Unforeseen Incidents, Unavowed, Lamplight City) and many many smaller ones. There are tons of people still making great adventure games: Infamous Quests, CaptainD, Wadjet Eye, Grundislav Games, Charlotte Gore, Phil Fortier, SilverSpook, and many many others.

I released two adventure games this year myself and am struggling for sales because the market just isn’t there. There are too many people making adventure games, and too few people buying them.

hightreason - 08 October 2018 01:14 AM

There were three HUGE adventure game releases this year alone (Unforeseen Incidents, Unavowed, Lamplight City)

Strange choice for “huge” when we had Chuchel, Life is Strange, Pillars of the Earth, The Council… although Unavowed belongs there for sure.

hightreason - 08 October 2018 01:14 AM

If there’s a problem with the adventure game genre right now, it’s that the market is SATURATED. There are more adventure game developers than there are adventure game players.

That’s certainly an opinion that I have never heard before!

hightreason - 08 October 2018 01:14 AM

There were three HUGE adventure game releases this year alone (Unforeseen Incidents, Unavowed, Lamplight City) and many many smaller ones. There are tons of people still making great adventure games: Infamous Quests, CaptainD, Wadjet Eye, Grundislav Games, Charlotte Gore, Phil Fortier, SilverSpook, and many many others.

I’m sorry, but none of the games you mentioned is nowhere near “huge”. I’m not saying they are bad games, they can be excellent, but none of them is huge. If the genre has fallen into a situation where a couple of guys doing something with AGS is huge, then Houston, we have a very serious problem right there.

Also “tons of people” is not really true. What you have mentioned is basically a collection of one guy companies that make games. Thanks to technology, one person can do what took an entire team 30 years ago, but if any of the games wants to be even a step nearer to mainstream, you need to have more than that. And that’s exactly what Telltale had, although they never fully took advantage of their resources.

As of its closing, Telltale hadn’t made an adventure game in about seven years. They had switched entirely to an interactive visual novel studio, so you can’t say Telltale was keeping adventure games alive.

And yes, I did miss a few big ones as well, that’s true, but that just goes to prove my point even further. There are more good adventure games coming out than people buying adventure games.

GateKeeper - 08 October 2018 02:42 AM

hightreason - 08 October 2018 01:14 AM

There were three HUGE adventure game releases this year alone (Unforeseen Incidents, Unavowed, Lamplight City) and many many smaller ones. There are tons of people still making great adventure games: Infamous Quests, CaptainD, Wadjet Eye, Grundislav Games, Charlotte Gore, Phil Fortier, SilverSpook, and many many others.

I’m sorry, but none of the games you mentioned is nowhere near “huge”. I’m not saying they are bad games, they can be excellent, but none of them is huge. If the genre has fallen into a situation where a couple of guys doing something with AGS is huge, then Houston, we have a very serious problem right there.

Also “tons of people” is not really true. What you have mentioned is basically a collection of one guy companies that make games. Thanks to technology, one person can do what took an entire team 30 years ago, but if any of the games wants to be even a step nearer to mainstream, you need to have more than that. And that’s exactly what Telltale had, although they never fully took advantage of their resources.

Is our goal to get more “huge” adventure games or get more “good” ones? Because most of these “one guy companies” have been making better games than Telltale for years.