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Why did adventure games become popular in Germany?

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(Adventure games) exist in our dreams, and memories, and in Germany.” - Tim Schafer

I’m asking sincerely. Were there certain games that blew up in Germany and became insanely popular, leading to adoption of the genre?

Were adventures always relatively popular in Germany?

Just curious. I think it’s great that adventures have done well in Germany, and likewise German developers like Daedalic have created some wonderful games.

     
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Interesting question!

     

Don’t Hate Me Because I Am Beautiful…There Are Many Other Reasons

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It is a really interesting question. And i suspect there might not be an answer. It reminds me of music and other cultural things that just suddenly thrive in one part of the world.

     
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Where’s Jack Vanian when we need him…? And all those German posters who used to frequent the forums?

     

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I’ve also always been really curious about this!

     

Katie Hallahan
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My theory is that the rise of consoles and/or “death” of adventure games had a bigger impact in North America and Japan, but less in Europe. I don’t think it’s Germany per se, but rather Europeans as a whole, and Germany were probably those with the most experience in game design (I’m speaking about over a decade ago) to actually continue to make adventure games instead of just wondering where all the adventure games went…

Maybe that’s why a majority of the most frequent posters here are European…

It’s just my bullshit theory, though. I mean, WTF do I know? I’m not even from Germany - but the genre lingered here as well, so I figured….... Innocent


Edit: about Japan: they were the ones who turned to visual novels, though. It lingered as well and took a similar form?

     

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TimovieMan: It’s more a German thing than it is European. I mean sure, it’s not as unpopular in Europe as it is the states, but you don’t see adventures on the shelves here in Denmark at least or anything close to that in the past 10 years. The last adventure game I saw on the shelves were probably Syberia.

     

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TimovieMan - 19 January 2013 07:58 PM

Edit: about Japan: they were the ones who turned to visual novels, though. It lingered as well and took a similar form?

thats an interesting subject too. VN’s are really popular there, and some of those games are full of adventure elements. But most of them are focused on the novel aspect and have very little interaction.

     
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I always assumed that it was tangentially connected to the strong censorship of violent games in Germany, and a preference for PC gaming over console.

     
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a cause of GK’s Schattenjager !

     
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It’s the bratwurst. There must be something in the bratwurst.

     
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I…dunno. Difficult question, really!
Most gamers around my age know Monkey Island from their childhood. It’s still often referenced in gamer culture here. But I have no clue why Monkey Island got so popular in the first place…

The only thing I can say with certainty is that while adventure games were more popular in Germany than in other places around the world, not many were developed inside the country until a few years ago. In the 90s only the occasional German adventure game was produced, and most of them weren’t any good. Chewy might be the best example from that time, which visually alone remains incredibly close to its inspiration, Day of the Tentacle.
House of Tales might have been the first German developer purely dedicated to adventure games (if we exclude the Byteriders trio from the early 90s at least…).
It’s true that violent video games were heavily censored here. In fact, I don’t think I know anybody who played the original Doom back in the day. Though I did watch a friend play Wolfenstein 3D once, but many years after it got out.

     
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ozzie - 20 January 2013 04:19 AM

I…dunno. Difficult question, really!
Most gamers around my age know Monkey Island from their childhood. It’s still often referenced in gamer culture here. But I have no clue why Monkey Island got so popular in the first place…

if you wanna talk seriously ..Simply it was because the Draw Back (The end] of Lucas and Sierra

     
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Advie - 20 January 2013 04:41 AM

if you wanna talk seriously ..Simply it was because the Draw Back (The end] of Lucas and Sierra

I think you misunderstood me: I only wondered why Monkey Island got more popular in Germany than in other countries. But otherwise I don’t understand what you mean, at all. Meh Maybe it would help if you phrase it in a different way?

     
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orient - 19 January 2013 09:57 PM

I always assumed that it was tangentially connected to the strong censorship of violent games in Germany,

You’ve got a point there. Second World War and all that. I have vague memories of an old discussion at the now virtually dead JA forum.

     

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Adventures are definetely most popular in Germany, but only that is not enough. It help/ed a lot for genre that it found gamers in France, Italy, Spain and Czech (Czech is crazy in a good way anyway, only adventure devs only there is or have been Centauri Productions, Amanita, Unknown Identity, Future Games, plus other studios like Pteron, Illusion Softworks, Bohemia…). Other German speaking markets and Russian speaking countries had/have their role.
As some adventures were successful, snowball effect occured - some publishers were willing to finance and market games. Publishers even created divisions for adv genre, like Anaconda by dtp. Unfortunately no one was really successful - Koch Media/Deep Silver, Lighthouse Interactive, Focus Home Interactive, JoWooD, Microïds etc etc have seen their end or have changed strategy.

Flow of games, marketing push and availability is just one side. As an observer I also feel that especially German adventure communities sticked together. Remember all those German fan made sequels? Developers and games had and have communication, which helps a lot.

As Orient already said, the strong censorship of violent games plays its big role.

I believe Adventure Corner and Adventure-Treff communities would offer more insight.

     

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