Adventure Gamers - Forums

SoccerDude28 - 16 August 2017 03:46 PM

diego - 16 August 2017 03:02 PM

I don’t quite agree with that. It’s policy. They’re trying to be more commercial by dumbing-down (sorry, I couldn’t find less intrusive term) their games, which is quite different to just “making profit”.

Why are they trying to “dumb down” their games? If they are making enough money from the old model, why change it? It just doesn’t make any fiscal sense. Whether it’s new management or the old one, the old model must not be working for them financially, and they look at the financial success of companies like Telltale and want to follow suit.

Also the landscape of adventure games has changed significantly between 2013 and 2017. We just had a thread about if adventure games are dying. The whole kickstarter craze is over, and the main torch bearers of the old school adventure games are indie devs who work in much smaller teams than Daedalic.

Don’t take me wrong, I am not saying that I like it. I am just saying that I understand where they are coming from.

That’s not necessarily true.  Sometimes companies are doing well, but they think they can make MORE by going more mainstream, and their whole premise is wrong.  Remember the years of companies claiming that turn based can’t make any money?  Divinity OS proved that wrong.  It was just companies repeating each other, based on a fault premise.

They stripped Star Trek Nemesis of character moments to make it into an action movie, in order to try to appeal to a broader market, and it did worse than any of the previous movies. 

Sometimes companies are misguided.  The notion of the idea that the past ideas must not be profitable enough is bunk propaganda that seems to be repeated.

darthmaul - 20 August 2017 12:27 PM

That’s not necessarily true.  Sometimes companies are doing well, but they think they can make MORE by going more mainstream, and their whole premise is wrong.  Remember the years of companies claiming that turn based can’t make any money?  Divinity OS proved that wrong.  It was just companies repeating each other, based on a fault premise.

They stripped Star Trek Nemesis of character moments to make it into an action movie, in order to try to appeal to a broader market, and it did worse than any of the previous movies. 

Sometimes companies are misguided.  The notion of the idea that the past ideas must not be profitable enough is bunk propaganda that seems to be repeated.

That is true, but your premise for turn based RPG does not apply to the point and click. Like you said, companies did try turn based RPGs during the kickstarter craze, and they were so successful that we are getting sequels to games like Divinity Original Sin and Wasteland. I don’t believe the same success happened with the many PnC released from the kickstarter. I haven’t heard about sequels to Broken Age, Tex Murphy and others yet.

diego - 16 August 2017 09:55 PM

Headycakesofdoom - 16 August 2017 08:58 PM

However Daedelic suffers from dreadful English localization. Hiring better writers and voice actors would have improved their games massively.

I don’t know what are you guys talking about. Rock Bros, for example, along with Froderick in A Vampyre Story, are what I consider the best “modern” voice overs. The other characters are not bad, too. Even if you’re annoyed by the main character, that’s seldom a reason for me not to continue with the game (trust me, I played the original Al Emmo).

Wtf… if that is the best voice acting in modern adventure, the genre is in REALLY bad shape. Awful.  

SoccerDude28 - 20 August 2017 01:14 PM

I don’t believe the same success happened with the many PnC released from the kickstarter. I haven’t heard about sequels to Broken Age, Tex Murphy and others yet.

Tex has The Poisoned Pawn

http://chaoticfusion.com/
Estimated release 2018 according to their website.
I don’t know if it’s point-and-click.

SoccerDude28 - 20 August 2017 01:14 PM

darthmaul - 20 August 2017 12:27 PM

That’s not necessarily true.  Sometimes companies are doing well, but they think they can make MORE by going more mainstream, and their whole premise is wrong.  Remember the years of companies claiming that turn based can’t make any money?  Divinity OS proved that wrong.  It was just companies repeating each other, based on a fault premise.

They stripped Star Trek Nemesis of character moments to make it into an action movie, in order to try to appeal to a broader market, and it did worse than any of the previous movies. 

Sometimes companies are misguided.  The notion of the idea that the past ideas must not be profitable enough is bunk propaganda that seems to be repeated.

That is true, but your premise for turn based RPG does not apply to the point and click. Like you said, companies did try turn based RPGs during the kickstarter craze, and they were so successful that we are getting sequels to games like Divinity Original Sin and Wasteland. I don’t believe the same success happened with the many PnC released from the kickstarter. I haven’t heard about sequels to Broken Age, Tex Murphy and others yet.

There was a lost decade for crpgs because of the repeated and made up lie that turn based rpgs were not profitable.  There was never any evidence of this.  It was simply that big games like Oblivion’s bethesda tried to push this line because it was not the direction they were heading.  This nonsense, like most nonsense, was repeated and repeated until people believed it to be true.

The kickstarter return proved that this had all been a lie made up by executives who wanted to push games in a different, more mainstream audience, to chase bigger bucks they imagined were there.

Same happened with Star Trek Nemesis, and others.

The point applies here.  Just because executives may push something doesn’t mean it is for legitimate reasons.

As for the separate issue of breakout success with point and click adventure game kickstarters… Well, it isn’t comparable in any way.  The very biggest reason is that point and click adventures never died.  Not for a second.  Matter of fact, there were more and higher quality releases than ever before, and the genre has been thriving since 2000 without a break in sight.  It may not have high profile, big budget releases, but that isn’t what determines if something is quality or not. 

The funny thing is that the Double Fine kickstarter was all based on this false premise, that adventures had died, and they wanted to relive the glory days.  Anyone who ACTUALLY still played adventure games knew this to be complete bunk.  But, from nostalgia and foolish hype, people who decided to abandon the genre for years, jumped on the bandwagon and gave their money to a hasbeen who hadn’t made game of quality for decades…

So, no, I don’t think the kickstarter craze for adventure games has much of a relevance here.  It just so happened to have relevance when it came to rpgs because the lie told had been accepted as gospel by not only all of the developers, but by gamers who blindly lapped up this line of BS. 

The point is that there is no way to know the real reason for the switch.  It could be executives wanting to chase big bucks that they imagine are elsewhere.  It could be lackluster sales.  It could be anything in between.  There is no evidence of anything, so there is no reason to leap to the conclusion that it is because of one.

By hiring an action director for Star Trek Nemesis, who hated Star Trek:TNG, (He literally refused to watch the series) the killed off the franchise.  He cut out character scenes and made it an action movie.  There were plans for a followup movie and it was axed after the lack of movie success.  Executives control companies and as things move away from love of projects to the bottom line, souls get removed.

Donuts McGee - 21 August 2017 10:56 AM

darthmaul - 20 August 2017 04:26 PM

By hiring an action director for Star Trek Nemesis, who hated Star Trek:TNG, (He literally refused to watch the series) the killed off the franchise.  He cut out character scenes and made it an action movie.  There were plans for a followup movie and it was axed after the lack of movie success.  Executives control companies and as things move away from love of projects to the bottom line, souls get removed.

I don’t know why you would bring Star Trek into it. The reboot was the most profitable of the franchise, and it ramped up the action massively.

I brought it in because it was analogous.

Harald B - 16 August 2017 05:34 AM

Sillyness besides, it is slightly bothersome to see big German companies move in the casual direction. Germany was supposed to be the market where highly traditional adventures thrived even in the mainstream.

The problem with anything independent is that, with just a slight wiff and tease of more money to be made, many companies will eventually succumb to the dark side in some shape or form.

Then again, from the point of view of the creators, sometimes they just get bored of doing the same thing over and over. What’s considered as selling out by the consumer is actually the developer trying their hand at something slightly different.

And I don’t know what things are like in Germany right now, but I’ve been under the impression that the country, and Europe as a whole, isn’t as financially stable as it once was hence maybe traditional adventures aren’t selling as well as they once were, period.