

The Death of Adventure Games - hnal943
http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html

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pmcginn
Oh, wow. OMM, talk about memories (the linked article is from 2000.) Among
other things Chet and Erik were famous for the Time To Crate system of
reviewing games by how long it took from starting the game until you saw a
crate. Since this was the late 90s/early 2ks, it was generally zero seconds.
This was in comparison to real life, where I frequently go years at a time
without seeing a single crate, but then again, I am not a genius game
designer.

~~~
bonzoesc
Chet and Eric got jobs at Valve, where they helped design a game that has an
inanimate crate as one of its most memorable characters.

~~~
Stormbringer
The companion crate?

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zavulon
I think the iOS platform is helping the revival of adventure games. Just the
ones I've personally played on the iPhone over the last couple of years:

\- Monkey Island 1 & 2 Special Edition (remastered graphics)

\- Broken Sword special edition

\- Hector: Badge of Carnage: EXCELLENT original game (if somewhat short)

\- Flight of the Amazon Queen

\- Beneath the Steel Sky

\- Gobliins

I'm sure I'm missing something... There's also some games that are available
on the iPad only, and I think the trend is there: adventure games are coming
back.

~~~
jestar_jokin
Actually, I would say this is more thanks to ScummVM (an open source re-
implementation of many adventure game engines), as well as the people who
ported it to iOS. The last three games listed probably use ScummVM without
modification (citation needed), and I would be surprised if the Broken Sword
and Monkey Island remakes were not heavily inspired by the efforts of ScummVM
to revitalize interest in the games.

~~~
pyre
I thought that ScummVM was GPL. Doesn't that run against Apple's rules? Wasn't
there a case of a 3rd-party dev team in Europe embedding ScummVM into a Wii
game for EA (or some large name) and it had to get pulled due to Nintendo's
licensing rules (which conflicted with the GPL).

~~~
zavulon
Apple wouldn't allow a ScummVM app into the app store (that it would play any
ScummVM game), but games made on ScummVM platform are ok.

~~~
pyre
I thought it was a matter of licensing, not a matter of 'something that can
run code.'

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sawyer
Hahaha, beautiful article. I'd love to see someone attempt to secure cat hair
to their face with maple syrup.

Having to jump through hoops like forging a mustache onto someone's passport
before applying a fake mustache yourself in order to impersonate said person
is the reason sites like gamefaqs.com exist.

Another stunning realization is that after deciphering that web of absurdity
someone took the time to write it down in a guide instead of just shutting the
program down, ejecting the disc, dousing it in gasoline, and lighting it on
fire.

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Dilpil
Decent graphics are murder for adventure games. With some of the oldest
adventure games, there were only a few places you could plausibly click on and
see a result. Hunting for the interactable object in a 3D textured and
shadered world is less intuitive.

~~~
Dylanlacey
Cel shading gets around this problem somewhat, and also, IMO make the game
"Feel" more like an adventure game.

What shits ME about modern adventure games is when they decide that
interactive objects need to be shiny.

~~~
Qz
An adventure game in the Borderlands art-style (and perhaps the world) would
be pretty fantastic.

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peng
Syberia I & II, The Longest Journey/Dreamfall are a couple of amazing
adventure game series. Neither are exactly recent (2004 and 2007
respectively), but they're still full of atmosphere and enjoyable to play.

~~~
squidsoup
I continue to hope that Ragnar Tornquist will make another game as brilliant
as The Longest Journey. If he can manage to inject some of the creativity of
that game into his upcoming Lovecraftian MMO The Secret World, it could be
superb.

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romaniv
Adventure games continue to be released by indie companies. Some of those are
pretty good. For example, Gemini Rue was released just a few days ago. A Tale
of Two Kingdoms came out couple of years ago. Both were polished and quite
innovative in their own ways. This is more than I can say about many AAA
titles today.

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randall
I think Scribblenauts + adventure game storylines would actually resurrect the
genre in an amazing way. Imagine a harry potter style game where you can
create anything to solve simple puzzles.

Would be amazing.

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r0s
Pretty funny, but point and click adventure games are still popular. There are
several titles on Steam released this year for PC.

The NintendoDS has several successful titles: Trace Memory, Hotel Dusk, and
others. A new Professor Layton title topped sales for the 3DS, recently
released in Japan.

The genre is probably as popular now as ever.

~~~
jhamburger
Hmm, as popular as ever? I dunno. King's Quest, Myst, 7th Guest, these were
the 'Call of Duty's of 80s/90s PC gaming.

~~~
code_duck
They might not be as popular percentage-wise, but what are the sales totals
and revenue like compared directly to those titles, I wonder? The total market
must be a lot larger than it was back then.

~~~
ido
Myst is still one of the biggest sellers (in units total) even today, IIRC it
sold 6 million units.

~~~
weavejester
Layton's sold 9.5 million, and Phoenix Wright is not far off with 3.9 million.

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zandorg
Before I clicked, I thought it meant text adventures. Clearly they're deader
than corduroy if graphical ones are now 'old'.

~~~
dwc
The graphic ones took all the depth out of the text adventures, but offered
eye candy. So the trend goes...

~~~
athom
Actually, much of the Myst series' "eye candy" provided _considerable_ depth,
with all the journals and their diagrams, video segments, and (sort of)
interactive points. While the environments were largely static (read: empty,
dead), the back story found in the journals and other elements was interesting
enough to keep going, at least for a while.

Depth in graphic adventures may be tough, but it's doable.

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trotsky
Old man murray was the best content site ever. RIP.

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GvS
They are not dead, just less popular. Check out Gray Matter
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_Matter_(video_game)>) or 999
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/999:_Nine_Hours,_Nine_Persons,_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/999:_Nine_Hours,_Nine_Persons,_Nine_Doors))
- very good and recently released adventure games.

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coderdude
I used to be a humongous fan of 2D adventure games. Most notably the Space
Quest series. If you've never played them start out with Space Quest 4 and
then play SQ6. The audio dialog in the game is unrivaled humor. Full Throttle
was also one of the mega-classics of 2D adventure games. I think the downfall
of these games came when the studios tried to go the 3D route.

~~~
hnal943
In general, I agree. However, Grim Fandango (1998) was both 3D and brilliant.

~~~
timknauf
The story, characters, art direction, music and puzzles were brilliant. I'm
pretty sure the interface could have been better, though. Steering Manny
through the environments felt like driving a malfunctioning tank at times.

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paylesworth
ars technica had a very recent and in-depth article about the Rise and Fall
(and re-rise?) of the genre. Definitely worth a read:
[http://arstechnica.com/gaming/reviews/2011/01/history-of-
gra...](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/reviews/2011/01/history-of-graphic-
adventures.ars/)

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iuguy
I think the relaunch of Monkey Island on the iPhone proved that adventures are
far from dead. Are they still mainstream? Maybe not, but I definitely see
elements of adventures in modern games. Games like Fallout 3 and Bioshock rely
heavily on storytelling. You could argue that some sandbox games like GTA San
Andreas (haven't played IV, sorry) are technically adventure games or have
adventure components. While I think the point and click (and text-based IF)
adventures of years gone by are no longer mainstream, to say that it's dead is
like saying that RTS is dead because there's no more fixed-view overhead style
Command & Conquer games - they've just evolved.

~~~
technomancy
> Games like Fallout 3 and Bioshock rely heavily on storytelling.

Compare Bioshock to System Shock 2 though; Bioshock is extremely simplified in
order to still be playable on point-n-grunt console platforms.

~~~
iuguy
The more I think about it I think you're right, but if you look at the way
that games are made now, the costs and the audiences they have to reach,
making a highly cerebral adventure game is quite risky. I don't see EA ever
doing it for example.

I can see adventures working well in the casual gaming space, but I think that
the mass appeal side probably needs to be there too.

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cliff
Double Fine's new game Stacking on xbox live arcade is definitely reminiscent
of old-school adventure games, and it's great!

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pcorsaro
Satcking is not a Telltale game. It's made by Double Fine, the people who made
Psychonauts. Double Fine is run by Tim Schaefer, who helped create many
classic adventure games like Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, etc.

~~~
cliff
Yup, you're right!!! Fixed my comment, I get mixed up because I love those
companies and both of them have ex-lucasarts people

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rsheridan6
They trash Gabriel Knight III, but I would go back farther and trash Gabriel
Knight II and other games of that era. That was when it first became
technically possible to have a significant amount of multimedia in a game, so
it did things like make you watch your avatar walk excruciatingly slowly from
the car to the edge of the screen everytime you wanted to go anywhere, and you
had to listen to a bunch of interminable bad acting.

I wouldn't know about Gabriel Knight III because I didn't bother to play it,
or other Sierra games, after getting burnt by their earlier CD-ROM era games.

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davidjhall
Check out AGDinteractive : <http://www.agdinteractive.com/> They remade the
KQuests and QFG2 and are building brand new adventure games.

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trevelyan
It's not entirely dead. I grew up with adventure games and the best one I've
played to date was actually a platformer. Highly recommend Psychonauts to
anyone mourning the death of the genre.

~~~
sawyer
Psychonauts is a great game, but it wouldn't be categorized in the adventure
genre - at least not in the vein this article is referring to (old school
point and click puzzle solving).

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cawlin
Superbrothers are trying a fresh approach to adventure games with Sword &
Sworcery EP: <http://www.swordandsworcery.com/>

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darthvivi
It's ironic to see this article just days after the release of Gemini Rue,
which is an outstanding adventure game. But I agree with the general message.

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pnathan
I hate puzzle games, personally. Diddle the widget so that the frobulent
gibbers the foomatic - extend the prior implication chain a few levels - just
gets more than a little old.

I really enjoyed an interactive text-based fiction game recently. But that
palled - I realized I could be coding and being productive. >..

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architectzero
11 years old and still relevant.

As commercially available products, they're definitely not dead. Studios keep
churning out point-and-click adventure games, just check out
www.jayisgames.com, the Nintendo DS, and the smart phone app stores.

However, innovation within the genre is on life support and in critical
condition, but it has been like that since long before that article was
published.

They still largely depend on puzzles with only a single correct solution, even
if you have items in plain view on the screen that in reality would solve the
problem (this is the "dream logic" mentioned in the linked article). They also
rely on pixel hunting. Nothing has really changed.

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praptak
There are some good flash adventure games. "Alice is Dead", "Hansel and
Gretel" to name two.

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JoeAltmaier
Sanitarium was weird, frustrating, surreal, fascinating. I loved when the boss
tossed you out of the barn with a complimentary wrench, just what you needed
to wire the tractor battery to the gas drum or whatever, and blow up the barn.

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DanI-S
Perhaps they'll be back soon. Point and click would work well on the iPad...

~~~
code_duck
Definitely, RPGs and adventure games work well with touch screen devices that
lack traditional game inputs (game controllers, keyboards), especially
compared to action or platform type games.

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jhamburger
FMV killed adventure games

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sid0
The article's over ten years old, and since then there's been a sorta revival
of the genre. There are all the Telltale games, the Monkey Island remakes, and
more recently the brilliant Machinarium. Digital distribution services like
Steam have helped, of course.

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pragmatic
Problem is that games like Machinarium are still just "hunt the live pixel".
You have to hope you get close enough to the active object in order to notice
it/grab it/operate it. On a larger resolution, this can be quite maddening.

Game Designers: How about making the useable objects more noticeable (like a
glimmer or something). Also having the puzzles make sense goes a long way.

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limmeau
I think it was in Simon the Sorcerer: a hotkey that highlighted all clickable
objects.

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timknauf
Yeah, that's the route we took with Scarlett on the iPhone as well — there's
just an icon you can touch to highlight everything of interest. I'm not sure
why it hasn't been a standard feature of the genre; maybe some people enjoy
pixel-hunting?

