
Why are We Still Talking about LucasArts' Old Adventure Games? - ttuominen
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/189899/why_are_we_still_talking_about_.php
======
onosendai
Because, like a lot of old games which were made in a period with
comparatively severe technical limitations, they made more with less. They
managed to squeeze emotion out of orders of magnitude less pixels than the
standard game today. And you've got to admire that.

LucasArts's adventure games in particular were brilliant examples, and I think
their defining characteristic is that they never took themselves too
seriously. From a guy called Guybrush Threepwood wanting to become a pirate,
to time traveling kids trying to stop a mutated tentacle from taking over the
world, the settings just kept getting weirder and funnier.

They had their more serious games too, like Loom which is unique in its tone
and gameplay mechanics, and The Fate of Atlantis which, as far as Indiana
Jones goes, beats the tripe Lucasfilm was trying to push a couple of years
ago.

~~~
dorian-graph
> .. they never took themselves too seriously. From a guy called Guybrush
> Threepwood wanting to become a pirate

How they chose the character name is an example of this:

> The origin of the name "Guybrush" comes in part from Deluxe Paint, the tool
> used by the artists to create the character sprite. Since the character had
> no name at this point, the file was simply called 'Guy'. When the file was
> saved, Steve Purcell, the artist responsible for the sprite, added 'brush'
> to the filename, indicating that it was the Deluxe Paint "brush file" for
> the "Guy" sprite. The file name was then "guybrush.bbm", so the developers
> eventually just started referring to this unnamed 'Guy' as "Guybrush".

The Monkey Island series are my favourite video games. Loom is up there too.

~~~
RBerenguel
Didn't know Steve Purcell (for me, of Sam and Max comics fame) was also an
animator for LucasArts. Neat, this explains some things... And why S&M hit the
roadway was so close to his comic style

------
danso
This is a good question as the answer should be self-evident -- i.e. they were
just great, well-written fun games -- but it's not. As pure gaming, they
weren't "great" in the classical sense. I mean, after you've finished them,
you can't keep playing them over and over because there's nothing really to
"play."

And story-wise...I would think that today's games _should_ have better
writing. I mean, games are a _huge_ industry now, and so, theoretically, the
writing talent should be much better (in the same way that game budgets can
now bring in big name actors to do voices).

So maybe the answer doesn't lie _just_ in the quality of the programming or
writing, but in the execution and the way things just _fit_ , despite the
limitations of the genre. Hand-drawn cartoons are "limited" in their ability
to depict reality, yet the Disney classics will still stand the test of time
no matter how good CGI gets.

Maybe there's just something innately appealing with how adventure games,
designed during the technological limitations in the LucasArts era, clicked in
our brain. Limits are often _good_ things, especially when it stretches
creator and player alike to imagine things outside the boundaries.

Of course, bigger budgets/production quality don't linearly translate to
"better" -- Raiders of the Lost Ark vs. Indiana Jones IV (I can't even
remember the title of it) is a good example. And there's always the power of
nostalgia to exaggerate how good things really were back then...

~~~
EliRivers
_I mean, after you've finished them, you can't keep playing them over and over
because there's nothing really to "play."_

Yet people did. And still do. People read some books over and over again.
People watch some movies over and over again. The same music, over and over
again. And some people, the same games, over and over again.

~~~
DoggettCK
Grim Fandango is at the top of my short list of games I replay once a year, at
least. Followed closely by Mega Man 2 and Wind Waker.

There aren't any surprises to it, just a good story, style, music, and humor.
Some people like to watch certain movies over and over. I like going back to
Rubacava and feeling like an ace detective when I remember Tuesday is Kitty
Hat Day.

~~~
pyre

      > Wind Waker
    

People were mad at Nintendo for going cell-shaded, but the cell-shaded
graphics hold up much better to the test of time, than say The Ocarina of
Time.

~~~
DoggettCK
Agreed. Plus, I think the only people who worry that they're going to look
like kids for enjoying it are kids.

~~~
derleth
> the only people who worry that they're going to look like kids for enjoying
> it are kids

Exactly. Well, adolescents, really: People who are insulted by being
considered childish because they still think they _are_ and they don't want to
be. They're trying to transition into the new role of adulthood and confusing
them with their former role of child makes them insecure because they think
they're failing.

They're also embarrassed by the less self-conscious actions of older people,
who _are_ less self-conscious precisely because _nobody_ is going to mistake a
50-year-old for a child.

------
Spooky23
Why? Easy. The kids who are now in their early 30s are feeling nostalgia for
an institution that meant a lot to them, which is forever lost.

I felt the same way about Sierra adventure games from he 80s.

Fact is, gaming sucks these days because the audience has shifted to the
younger equivalent to the millions if people who watch "NCIS: Kansas" on tv.
In the 80s and 90s, the gaming market was this demographic slice that allowed
for more creative risk in gaming. Now we have Medal of Honor 12 and whatever
version Madden is up to, and the whole industry is imploding because they
cannot sustain the movie-like budgets.

~~~
benihana
> _Fact is, gaming sucks these days because the audience has shifted to the
> younger equivalent to the millions if people who watch "NCIS: Kansas" on
> tv._

I'm calling selective "get off my lawn" bullshit on this one. There are many,
many, many brilliant, beautiful, incredibly well written and well executed
games being released every year that will have the same effect in 20 years
that these games have now. Saying that games today suck because "Now we have
Medal of Honor 12 and whatever version Madden is up to" is ridiculously
cynical and very selective.

Sure those games are being churned out as easy money making machines. But
while you're complaining about them, you're forgetting games like Portal and
Portal 2, two of the funniest games released in the past 15 years. Games like
Shadow of the Colossus and Read Dead Redemption, both of which are regularly
used as arguments for why games are art. Magnificent indie games like Braid
and Fez and Limbo.

To say that gaming sucks these days is to ignore all the wonderful things
being done and instead take a dried up, cynical view that is out of touch with
reality.

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
I think some of us lament the loss of certain genres. Turn based strategy,
flight sims, space sims, turn based RPGS. I stopped playing games in the mid
2000. There haven't really been any games in my favourite genres since then.

~~~
PetitPrince
While there's certainly not mainstream, there are still some quality game
(already published or upcoming) that are of "forgotten" genres:

\- XCOM: Enemy Unknown - turn-based strategy

\- Star Citizen - space sim lead by Chros Robert (of the Wing Dommander fame)

\- Project Infinity, Torment Tides of Numerena, Wasteland 2: isometric RPG

\- Kerbal Space Program - non-combat space sim (it's less of a game and more
of an awesome space-nerd sandbox, but I think it should deserve a mention)

~~~
lobster_johnson
Of those, XCOM is the only game that exists. Star Citizen, Project Infinity,
Torment Tides and Wasteland 2 are all Kickstarter-funded games in development.
Kerbal is available, but not finished, and as you say, not really a game.

Sure, there are some interesting games in development (I'd add the Elite
remake and Double Fine's untitled adventure game to the list), but who knows
what they will be like. We don't know if they will be "quality".

------
fiblye
LucasArts old games were essentially perfect adaptations of 90s cartoons that
never existed. With everything from the exaggerated art and sound effects, to
dialogue that caters to both childish and adult humor, LucaArts games
perfectly took the _feel_ of 90s animation and packed it into a couple of
floppies.

I don't think it's unusual that games like Day of the Tentacle are still
popular today when people still talk about 90s cartoons like Rocko and the
Batman, and 80s action movies like Terminator and Die Hard. Media today tries
to emulate that nostalgic feeling, but there's this undefinable element that
distinguishes the time period. Years from now, people will yearn for early
2000's FPSes and we'll remember how games like HL2 and CoD defined this
period.

------
kaoD
I'm in a good position to answer this: because they're AWESOME.

My girlfriend's never been a gamer, but she's been playing some games recently
(specially Minecraft spiked her interest).

I finally convinced her to play some Lucasarts classic adventures some months
ago. She loved them. Went through the whole Day of the Tentacle in three days
on her own! No walkthroughs. I didn't even help her once. She was obsessed
with it! Now she's eager to play more adventure games and looking forward to
the new release of ResidualVM (Grim Fandango's engine reimplementation) which
she left halfway through because she met a nasty blocker bug.

Lucasarts adventures are and will be all-time classics because they're
genuinely good. The plots are engaging, the dialogues are real fun and they're
good intellectual challenges.

I play the games regularly, at least once a year (the whole collection!) and I
still enjoy them. There's always something left to explore, an action you
didn't try, a line you didn't pick... and just like The Simpsons, you can re-
experience them several times as you grow older (the funny jokes are not the
same when you're 8 then when you're 21).

------
christopheraden
There was always something very accessible about SCUMM games (not just
LucasArts ones, but they certainly had some great ones). The story lines were
simple and playful enough for kids to enjoy--even 8 year olds can understand
the humor in an evil purple tentacle trying to take over the world, or a
talking dog and rabbit solving crimes, or a quiet biker trying to repair his
motorcycle.

It didn't take an intricate story or fast-paced action to set the LucasArts
games apart from the competition. It was how simple, yet outlandish the plots
were. 15 years later, I can still remember using a crowbar to remove a coin
from the ground that was stuck there by chewing gum in Day of the Tenacle, or
Ben Franklin naming a sandwich after a main character (Hoagie). I remember
SCUMM games much in the same way I remember the plots of my favorite books I
read as a kid. For me, they were much more like interactive novels or comic
books than they were like video games. I remember Full Throttle, Dig, Loom,
Monkey Island, and Day of the Tentacle in a very different way than I remember
the other video games I played at the same age (Final Fantasy, Link to the
Past, Super Mario World).

If you haven't had a chance to play any of these wonderful titles, I would
highly recomend you grab the ScummVM and play some of the freeware titles
(even if they aren't LucasArts):
<http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Where_to_get_the_games>.

------
larrydavid
Here is the article on a single page rather than split across 6 pages.

[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/189899/why_are_we_stil...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/189899/why_are_we_still_talking_about_.php?print=1)

------
chaostheory
I don't even know why people are having this conversation. Most of those guys
from Lucasarts' golden age left to form a studio called Double Fine.

~~~
ttuominen
It was just a good excuse to talk about our favorite games. I haven't played
any of the Double Fine games yet, but to my knowledge they haven't made any
classic point-and-click graphic adventures - before the kickstarter-backed
Broken Age that is [1]. I hear the old talent is still evident in the DF games
though, and they seem to be story and character based.

[1] <http://www.brokenagegame.com/>

~~~
PetitPrince
While not a point and click, Psychonauts is widely considered to be a worthy
successor of the golden age Lucasarts craziness. Let's have a look at the
synopsys: a runaway circus boy goes to a summer camp for psychics lead by a
international team of superspy. He discovers that a mad dentist is stealing
everyone's brain by making them sneeze, and in order to get him he has to
travel into the mind of several deranged persons. Certainly on par with the
purple tentacle trying to take over the world or the deathly travel agent, if
you ask me :) .

Also, while not being a point-and-click game stricto sensu, you should really
have a try at Stacking. It maybe not as brilliantly written as Psychonauts, it
has some pacing issue but it's a really charming adventure (with Matryoshka
dolls !) from the start to the end !

~~~
sesqu
I would not consider Psychonauts a worthy successor, nor do a wide section of
people who have tried it. A good deal of the issue seems to be exactly because
it's not a point and click - it's actually a 3D platformer with a number of
playability issues. Most point-and-clicks have major playability shortcomings
as well, but they're such different breeds that the appreciative audiences are
distinctly different.

------
garry
FWIW I've been a huge fan of indie developer Wadjet Eye Games, who have
continued to make old-school adventure games in the modern era (all available
on Steam). <http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/>

~~~
lobster_johnson
Ooh, they are the ones who made Gemini Rue [1], which is _great_. It's a low-
rez game that looks a lot like Beneath a Steel Sky. Impeccable cyberpunk
design, interesting story, very well written. (Gemini Rue is for Windows, but
it's playable on the Mac via Wine. Happy to explain how, if anyone is
interested.) I didn't know about their other games.

Edit: Oh, they are a publisher. Gemini Rue was not created by them. Anyway,
looks like they have quality stuff. Will be checking out their other games.

[1] <http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/gemini-rue.html>

------
jamesrcole
I think the most interesting bit is on the last page:

 _While other game companies of the 1980s had to rely on the income from their
games to survive, we had the unheard-of luxury of taking our time to get our
games right, with years to experiment, try new things, push the envelope, and
with no pressure from marketing, focus testing, or even George Lucas. We also
had time to develop our company culture, starting where the Lucasfilm culture
left off.

So we’d spend months thinking about our games... brainstorming with the other
brilliant designers, refining, reworking, revamping, tossing out the parts
that didn’t work (or the entire concept) and starting again. One of our edicts
was “don’t ship shit” and we wanted to make sure we never did.

Maybe working in a creatively supportive environment like that, one that
wasn’t just focused on the bottom line, enabled us to think outside the box,
take time to add tons of backstory and detail... tune, tune, and tune again.
Until WE felt it was time to ship. Unheard of then and I’m sure even more
unusual now (other than with indie games done by people in their spare time)._

------
ErikAugust
Point-and-Click Adventure is my favorite genre... LucasArts made great games
but I'd have to hand the crown to Sierra for King's Quest VI.

------
exratione
For the same reason we still talk about Planescape: Torment - quality writing
is quality writing.

~~~
drivers99
I'm not sure if I should mention this here, since it looks like an ad, but
that also happens to be on sale this weekend (along with a bunch of other D&D
games) at gog.com. It's $1.99. I'm not sure if that's the price for it by
itself or if it's in the bigger bundle.

------
trotsky
The games you played as a kid will always be the best ones.

------
libria
Not mentioned in the article (strangely) was the innovative music system in
X-wing, iMuse, where the music dynamically and seamlessly shifted depending on
the situation. It's surprising how useful and immersive that was from a game
play perspective and it was often my only cue not only that enemies were
inbound, but how large the threat was (squadron vs capital ship). I admit
there's some nostalgia here, but how often do you play games scored by John
Williams?

Perhaps not the first time it's ever been done, but their execution of it was
amazing. Lucasarts was literally a game changer.

------
xorgar831
From the LucasArts final final party tonight:
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/1u95h9n5y9ytv8j/2013-04-05%2017.20...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/1u95h9n5y9ytv8j/2013-04-05%2017.20.20.jpg)
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/1jyp0i5cvpuujhm/2013-04-05%2017.22...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/1jyp0i5cvpuujhm/2013-04-05%2017.22.20.jpg)
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/x9j2x7g6wfqavlj/2013-04-05%2017.19...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/x9j2x7g6wfqavlj/2013-04-05%2017.19.04.jpg)

------
hobb0001
I'm of two minds when it comes to LucasArts. In both graphic adventures and in
space shooters, they owned the genres with quality games, which is great. The
problem is that because they so totally dominated, all competition left to
pursue other branches (mostly to FPS, it seems). When they stopped development
in those genres, there was nobody remaining to fill the void. Those genres are
now the sad, atrophied remains of what used to be pillars of computer gaming.

~~~
Gravityloss
Sierra was just as big if not bigger in graphic adventures. Same with Origin
in space shooters.

------
mprinz
I was not a Sierra adventure fan (except Gabriel Knight), but I loved EVERY
ONE of the Lucasfilm Games. Why? I think they managed perfection in these four
areas:

ACCESS, FUN, CHARACTERS, DESIGN

ACCESS: You fired up the game and could immediately start playing. Most of the
games had no or very short intros or cutscenes. Lucasfilm was very strong at
telling the story throughout the game. "I'm Guybrush Threepwood and I wanna be
a pirate" -> There you go!

Controls were also very easy, I think they were even the first games that you
could play through by only using your mouse. That's important, because you
could just literally lean back and play.

FUN Maybe it's just me (obviously not) but Gilbert's and Schafer's writing
style, that's my idea of fun! Well written, perfectly executed and timed.
Often with very few or no words at all. Sometimes Bernard or Guybrush just
turned to you and said nothing…all said!

CHARACTERS The teams put a lot of effort in creating unique characters. Why
the hell do I know names like Guybrush, Elaine, Stan, Bernard, Hoagie,
Laverne, Ben, Bobbin, Manny, Glottis; but I can hardly remember any other
adventure game character names. It's because I was emotionally bounded with
them. They were mostly struggling with their environment but managed their
obstacles often with unorthodox methods.

DESIGN Especially Ron Gilbert and Hal Barwood established adventure game
design that is still considered standard today. Brought to fame by Ron's
article "Why adventure games suck – And what we can do about it"
(<http://grumpygamer.com/2152210>). This article still inspires me today and
I'm throughout checking my designs against it.

------
b0rsuk
Here's a provocative thought: RPG games have boomed because they're the
descendants of point&click adventure games. I'd like to have the name "cRPG"
changed to "Adventure". It describes much better what the game is about, the
majority of players doesn't care about role playing, and many cRPG games don't
even support that. Diablo is often called Action RPG for some reason despite
not offering a choice at all, the story always unfolds in exactly the same
way.

Anyway, old point&click games were usually about a story. Now cRPG games are
the vessel for that. Exploration is also crucial to both genres, I know of no
cRPG game which takes place in the same area, where variety comes from
changes, events, new people arriving rather than unlocking new zones. Baldur's
Gate 2 and Planescape: Torment are a good example of what I'm talking about -
both have big cities, but what you're really doing is getting access to new
areas within them.

------
kayoone
I remember even the copy protection puzzles of these games! This attention to
detail and charm is hardly found anywhere today.

~~~
_ZeD_
the DIAL-A-PIRATE!

I still have it somewhere!

------
sdrinf
There was an episode on the topic of resurrecting the adventure-game genre
(and what exactly made it so special to us) this week on Extra-Credits:
<http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/raising-the-dead>

I highly, and wholeheartedly recommend checking the rest of extra-credits
series, for anyone interested in game design, gamification, and the gaming
industry in general:

<http://penny-arcade.com/patv/show/extra-credits>

And specifically those of you creating experiences: <http://penny-
arcade.com/patv/episode/gamification>

------
dakrisht
Going to go and play Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis after reading this
post... For the 5th time.

Today's game are total crap. Just kids shooting and killing each other, DRM
issues and a corporate veil set out to destroy the experience. Bullshit

~~~
StavrosK
Does anyone remember what the "in my time, everything was better" fallacy is
called? I forget.

Anyway, if you really think today's games are total crap, you haven't played
masterpieces like Braid, Fez, Limbo, etc. Stop playing total crap.

------
varelse
All that and no mention of _Rescue at Fractalus_, _The Eidolon_ (An 8-bit FPS
11 years before Doom), _Koronis Rift_, or _Ballblazer_? I'm getting old...

~~~
wolfgke
Koronis Rift and Ballblazer are mentioned on page 5:

>
> [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/189899/why_are_we_stil...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/189899/why_are_we_still_talking_about_.php?page=5)

"LucasArts games have always had a special place in my heart; from Loom to
Koronis Rift to Ballblazer and the Monkey Island series. [...]"

~~~
varelse
I post corrected!

Still, relating this to storytelling, I continue to believe that the single
most terrifying moment in a video game, to this day, occurs in _Rescue at
Fractalus_. Everyone I know has literally fallen backwards in their chair at
_that moment_.

But since all the people I allude to are now old fogies, it would be
interesting to see the reaction of someone a lot younger who went into the
game unaware and played up to that point, a point integral to the gameplay,
and to see if they instinctively do the right thing to address it.

Good times, good times...

------
conradfr
DOTT sold me to PC games.

