
Who Needs Domain Experts - peter123
http://steveblank.com/2009/07/16/rocket-science-5-who-needs-domain-experts/
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anigbrowl
This is a rather fascinating series - it is worth reading the rest, if you
haven't already.

While I was reading I found myself thinking 'well yeah, _Dragon's Lair_ really
sucked'...but then I remembered a time when I thought it didn't. and in fact,
it was a huge financial success, so much so that it is _still_ being ported to
new systems despite its numerous flaws. See
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragons_Lair>

Throughout the 1980s, Sierra sold a ton of games with horrible EGA craphics,
but which were basically cinematic games with fairly simple decision-tree
gameplay. Other high-selling games continue to include lots of cinematic
material, a case in point being the Kojima _Metal Gear Solid_ series or alve
games like Half-life. Having name (or at least professional) actors lend
talent to a game is common now in many genres. And in fact, CD-Rom's _did_
revolutionize the gaming industry - not quite in the way that the company
anticipated, but enough. And San Francisco's SOMA (aka multimedia gulch) is
still the favored home of a lot of startups, again suggesting Rocket Science
were onto something.

I wonder if Mr Blank, ruing the company's failure, is being too harsh on
himself - it sounds like they went terribly astray with the design of their
own games, but that's a problem of execution rather than vision.

~~~
DarkShikari
_Throughout the 1980s, Sierra sold a ton of games with horrible EGA craphics,
but which were basically cinematic games with fairly simple decision-tree
gameplay._

This has always struck me as one of the most interesting aspects of computer
game history.

Back in the old days, adventure games were all about the story and experience,
not the gameplay. This even continued into the 90s in some cases, with games
like _Planescape Torment_ , which contained over _800,000 words_ of text, and
the ill-fated (but brilliant) _Last Express_ , a game whose graphics was made
by rotoscoping tens of thousands of scenes made by professional actors!

These games weren't about brilliant game mechanics, in-depth strategy, or
competitive experience. But few deny that they were great games. Of course,
the genre basically died towards the end of the 90s--and many claim that it
killed itself ( see <http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html> ).

Interestingly enough though, I've noticed that despite the proliferation of
seemingly mindless entertainment these days, there has been somewhat of a
revival of the genre of "games with lots of text". The genre of visual novels,
once just an offshoot of silly Japanese dating sims, has begun to turn out
some seriously impressive material. The most impressive to date, IMO, has been
_Umineko no Naku Koro ni_ ("When the Seagulls Cry"), a murder mystery
reminiscent of a cross between _The Last Express_ , _The Usual Suspects_ , and
Agatha Christie's _And Then There Were None_. Even more unusually, it has no
decision tree at all: it is completely linear. The "gameplay" is the author's
challenge to the players--to solve his mystery before he reveals the true
answer in the final episodes of the game.

In a sense, we've come full circle: we began with simple mostly-linear
adventure games, gone to complex, branching plots, and now we're back to
simple, mostly-linear adventure games.

------
lucifer
Back in the days:
[http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.11/rocket.science_pr.ht...](http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.11/rocket.science_pr.html)

~~~
akeefer
Reading that article, one thing that stood out is how the game industry was so
focused on such a young market segment: they talk about kids and trying to get
them to spend their allowance money. It's interesting how much the gaming
demographic has expanded in the years since the mid-nineties.

~~~
wlievens
It actually seems to have followed the same people. After fifteen years, it's
the same target demography... fifteen years older.

