Organize adventure game resources into 7 category subdirectories
Created category structure: - criticism/ (5 articles) - Design critiques and anti-patterns - defense/ (2 articles) - Praise and genre defense - puzzle-design/ (7 articles) - Puzzle mechanics and methodology - technical/ (4 articles) - SCUMM and engineering history - history/ (6 articles) - Genre evolution and decline analysis - moon-logic/ (5 articles) - Moon logic puzzle psychology - community/ (2 articles) - Community discussions and analysis Each category has README.md with summaries and key themes. Main index.md updated to link to all categories.
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# History & Analysis
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Articles examining the adventure game genre's evolution, decline, and the factors that shaped its history.
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## Articles
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| File | Title | Source | Summary |
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|------|-------|--------|---------|
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| `fall-point-click-adventure-game.md` | The Fall of the Point-and-Click Adventure Game | Game Developer | Analysis of how internet walkthroughs fundamentally changed point-and-click viability and the challenge of designing puzzles that don't require external assistance. |
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| `who-really-killed-adventure-games.md` | Who Really Killed Adventure Games? | Slatt Studio | Argument that hardware progress enabled other genres to offer "exploration experiences" that adventure games couldn't replicate without fundamental mechanic changes. |
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| `death-of-adventure-games-part-1.md` | Death and Rebirth of Adventure Games Part 1 | Genesis Temple | First in a series examining the FMV era, 3D revolution, and how LucasArts and Sierra's decline led to genre collapse. |
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| `death-rebirth-adventure-games-part-3.md` | Death and Rebirth Part 3 | Genesis Temple | Analysis of the Kickstarter era and Double Fine's 2012 campaign as a turning point for reviving classic 2D adventure gaming. |
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| `without-readability-decline-adventure-games.md` | Without Readability | Game Developer | Argument that adventure games' combinatorial action space (768 possible actions) created poor "readability" where players couldn't understand game dynamics. |
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| `thimbleweed-park-ron-gilbert-rockpapershotgun.md` | Thimbleweed Park Preview | Rock Paper Shotgun | Ron Gilbert interview on making adventure games that don't suck, discussing his return to the genre with Thimbleweed Park. |
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## Key Themes
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- **Genre death causes** - FMV era, 3D revolution, market forces
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- **Exploration experience** - What made adventure games unique and irreplaceable
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- **Hardware constraints** - How technical limitations shaped genre possibilities
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- **Kickstarter revival** - Community-driven resurrection of classic adventure gaming
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- **Design lessons learned** - How modern developers apply historical knowledge
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## Usage
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These articles provide historical context for understanding why certain design patterns became dominant and how the genre's低谷 shaped modern adventure game design philosophy.
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---
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source: https://genesistemple.com/the-death-of-adventure-games-part-1-dead-and-buried
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---
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# The Death and Rebirth of Adventure Games - Part 1: Dead and Buried
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Apparently, much has been said about the death of adventure games, so much so that it's become a stereotype. In my teenage years, adventure games were my favourite genre. While I did play many other games, every time I knew about the release of an adventure game, I would make sure to track it down and play. This for two critical reasons: they offered the better writing in the industry and, naturally, characters and story always came first.
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I was more than willing to stomach dead ends and antique game design to enjoy a bit of good story, but that did not mean I liked everything I played, obviously. Unfortunately, when everyone jumped into adventure game development as a quick way of making a buck, the quality of the writing started to drop. This became especially evident around the mid 90s when Full Motion Videos were the new big thing and development studios thought that hiring real actors was just the right way to make a game fly off the shelves.
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# The FMV Era
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Many adventures of the time had very little gameplay to speak of. Simple puzzles or, even worse, complicated puzzles just for the sake of proloning the experience, was the main thing on offer. Games were also becoming quite a bit shorter since, obviously, filming was rather expensive. The FMV era brought us such gems as Ripper (Christopher Walken reading cue cards), Phantasmagoria (which had its charms as b-movie horror) and, of course, Harvester.
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# The 3D Revolution
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When the FMV era came to an end, by the mid 90s, because people just had enough of real life actors, game companies had a great idea: virtual actors. Indeed, the big 3D revolution was just around the corner.
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With the millennium coming to a close, it seemed like everyone had found a solution, even real time strategy managed to, somehow, survive. Well, everyone except… adventure games. Developers found that, apparently, no one wanted to play a slow-paced, verbose game. With people demanding excitement and action sequences, publishers just started turning down everything that resembled a point and click.
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As 2003 rolled in, the point and click genre seemed to be dead and buried.
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# What Were They Doing?
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**Lucasarts** - In 2000 Lucasarts released the last chapter of the celebrated Monkey Island series, Escape from Monkey Island, arguably the weakest out of the original saga. It would end up being their last adventure game. Ron Gilbert, designer of Monkey Island who had left years before, provided satirical insights on the state of things at the time on his Grumpy Gamer blog: "for developers, making an adventure game was like going around saying you have the plague". Tim Schafer – designer of Full Throttle and Grim Fandango – left in 2004 and went on to found Double Fine.
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**Sierra** - Sierra went through radical management changes in the late 90s. The last titles in the King's Quest and Quest for Glory series were both released in 1998, with little acclaim by fans. It was especially King's Quest: Mask of Eternity to be quite criticized by fans and critics, because of how it tried embracing the 3D action adventure genre with questionable results. By 2000, Sierra, as most gamers have grown to know it, had basically ceased to exist.
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**Revolution Software** - Revolution Software, developers of the Broken Sword series, released their first game in 3D, In Cold Blood, in 2000. The team persevered, releasing Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon in 2003.
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# The Moustache That Killed the Cat
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There have been years of discussion on what exactly cause the "death" of adventure games. While 3D graphics were surely a big change, especially in how quickly they changed the public' tastes, they were not the only cause. Overall, it is not really fair to blame graphics for the downfall of adventure games. Many fans of the genre had seen the writing on the wall even before 3D: the genre had been choking on itself for a while.
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Most articles love to quote the infamous "cat moustache hair" puzzle in GK3 as a clear sign adventure games jumping the shark. In order to rent a motorcycle, Gabriel Knight has to disguise himself as his friend Mosley. To do that, Gabriel needs to steal Mosley's ID, wear a hat, a jacket and a fake moustache made of cat hair.
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Still focusing too much on Gabriel Knight 3 would mean missing the point entirely. Adventure games had been guilty of such illogical conundrums since day one. Other famous examples of moon logic:
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- In Full Throttle you had to kick a wall in a specific point with perfect timing to open a door
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- In The Longest Journey you had to get a key stuck on the electrified train tracks, for no apparent reason whatsoever
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- In Runaway, combining peanuts and butter and then leaving them in the sun to melt, you create peanut butter
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- In Grim Fandango, you have to get a suitcase from a hidden floor and have to drive a forklift inside an elevator WHILE the elevator is moving
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# Hidden Items, Clear Frustration
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Pixel hunting is another design sin exclusively related to adventure games. Many adventures, especially ones from Sierra, had fantastic hand drawn background art, thus each location could be as big as the developers wanted. But still, the one thing on the designer's mind seemed to be: how many items can I hide inside this drawing to make the player cry out in desperation?
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Obviously, the interface never clearly indicated what items could be picked up so, most times, you had to scout every single screen in the hopes you had left something somewhere.
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This goes hand in hand with "try everything with everything", since the games would hardly provide clues. Any adventure gamer would probably start to squirm if, by the end of the game, there were still unused items. Had something been missed? Do I have to restart the game all over again?
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# Death is Not the End
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Adventure games were the only genre that never really did listen to the players' complaints and desires. The death of adventure games was self-inflicted, that part we can all agree with.
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---
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source: https://genesistemple.com/the-death-and-rebirth-of-adventure-games-part-3-false-hopes-and-promises
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---
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The Death and Rebirth of Adventure Games - part 3 - False hopes and promises - The Genesis Temple
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======
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[Skip to content](#content)
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The Genesis Temple
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Video game Design & Gaming History
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[](https://genesistemple.com/)
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- [Home](https://genesistemple.com/)
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- [Game Design Vault](https://genesistemple.com/category/game-design-vault)
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- [History of Videogames](https://genesistemple.com/category/history-videogames)
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- [Modern gaming](https://genesistemple.com/category/modern-gaming-design)
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- [Interviews and small talks](https://genesistemple.com/category/small-talks)
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- [About](https://genesistemple.com/about-the-genesis-temple)
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- [](https://genesistemple.com/the-death-and-rebirth-of-adventure-games-part-3-false-hopes-and-promises)
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- [](https://genesistemple.com/it/homepage-italiano)
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- [Home](https://genesistemple.com/)
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||||
- [Game Design Vault](https://genesistemple.com/category/game-design-vault)
|
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- [History of Videogames](https://genesistemple.com/category/history-videogames)
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||||
- [Modern gaming](https://genesistemple.com/category/modern-gaming-design)
|
||||
- [Interviews and small talks](https://genesistemple.com/category/small-talks)
|
||||
- [About](https://genesistemple.com/about-the-genesis-temple)
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||||
- [](https://genesistemple.com/the-death-and-rebirth-of-adventure-games-part-3-false-hopes-and-promises)
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- [](https://genesistemple.com/it/homepage-italiano)
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[Apr42020](https://genesistemple.com/2020/04/04 "12:08 pm")
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[History of Videogames](https://genesistemple.com/category/history-videogames)
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We've seen how adventure gaming struggled to survive after 2000, bouncing back after some lackluster years. The message was clear: the adventure gaming market was dedicated only to titles developed in 3D and console-friendly. Apparently old school point'n'click 2D had irremediably lost its marketability.
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The Walking Dead series from TellTale and the success of Quantic Dream with Heavy Rain had created a new generation of fans of adventure games, who just wanted to sit and enjoy a story and characters and didn't mind limited interactivity and simple puzzles.
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This of course brought all kinds of frustration to old school adventure fans, they wanted a new "Sierra" that rounded up talented developers or, at least, a new title in the style of Lucasarts.
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Naturally we know that several former Lucas developers had joined TellTale but they were making those same "useless" episodic adventures in 3D. Of all the nerve!
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Where was the saviour that would bring back good ol' 2D adventure gaming?
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It soon became obvious we fans had to make the Wicker Man ourselves.
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#### Beware the nostalgia you cannot see
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During that wave of unsatisfied nostalgic longing, hopes for the rebirth of the "classic" adventure genre sprung up **when the "Double Fine adventure" Kickstarter was launched in 2012**.
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Kickstarter was a site that offered projects a chance to launch a public campaign to ask for money by "backers", anything could be funded: videogames, t-shirts, gaming consoles, portable expresso machines, etc.
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**"Bring back the adventure**" was the motto of the Double Fine campaign. Tim Schafer, designer of Full Throttle and Grim Fandango, promised his backers to work on an old style 2D adventure game, since the general market wasn't interested.
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Many publishers indeed pricked up their ears when **the project racked up a staggering 3.45 million dollars**, from an original request of 40K (considered by Schafer the minimum to develop a commercial game), one of the most successful Kickstarter projects ever.
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The idea to bring back the 2D adventures we've all "groan" to love sounded awesome and, since an original Lucasarts game designer was involved, **everyone knew it was gonna be EPIC**. Double Fine was also riding high on the critical success of Psychonauts, proof of their ability at developing a unique and original title.
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The Double Fine Adventure seemed like the perfect meal to satisfy our nostalgic appetites, **it would have been the rebirth of the genre as we knew it**.
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Looking back eight years later, all I see is **ANOTHER nail in the coffin for the traditional adventure genre** and a perfect cautionary tale for the medium as a whole.
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#### Shut up and take my money
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Reading between the lines of the original Kickstarter text, it'd soon become clear that it was little more than an elevator pitch. Perfectly good intentions, very few ideas. No wonder **Schafer was caught off guard by the staggering success of his Kickstarter project**. He just wanted some money to make a straightforward old style 2d point'n'click; when things turned out more complicated than that, he had no idea what to do.
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He **promised the excess funding would go towards "better production values"**, even though really the one thing most adventure gaming fans, especially old school ones, **DON'T care** about are modern graphics or an orchestrated soundtrack.
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**Poor planning, lack of ideas and an excessive amount of money** soon got in the way of what could have been heralded as the second coming of 2D point'n'click adventures.
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The **3 million dollars turned out to be not enough** (!) and **Double Fine was forced to split the game in two.** They hurriedly release a morsel of the game on Steam early access, just to rack up more money and continue development.
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The first part (not the first half, mind you) of the game was released in early 2014 and, honestly, **it is pretty good, both storywise and gameplaywise**, even though just 3-4 hours long. The graphics have a pretty pastel style that make them look to be hand drawn, even though I'm not especially crazy about the character design.
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The definitive title had been revealed in 2013 to be "Broken Age". The game stars two characters, Shay and Vella, and their stories juxtaposed, along with many mysteries that prop up during the first part of their quirky adventures. Beside an anticipation of the interesting plot, many found **the puzzles to be too easy**.
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Then 2014 ended with the second part nowhere in sight.
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#### I'd buy that for six million dollars!
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Broken Age ended up costing **six million dollars**, with two coming directly from the studio's own budget, a rob Peter to pay Paul situation, basically. As a reference, the original budget for Full Throttle was 1.5 million dollars (in 1995, sure, but still…).
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I don't know how Schafer usually approaches writing a story, but the one he took for Broken Age definitely left something to be desired. The development team worked a full year on the graphical side of the game, while **ideas for the story were few and far between**.
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Apparently Schafer finally finished writing in October of 2014; indeed, the game wasn't written as a single story but as two separated ones. Unfortunately, it very much shows.
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The second part was delayed in order for Double Fine to keep their promise of converting the title for all platforms**.** **Releasing the game on every console known to man didn't appear to make much sense**, considering the original idea was for the game to be "traditional". It was possibly a last attempt to try to and at least get some money back, since already by 2013 it dawned on most backers that Double Fine had screwed the pooch. I still have a Broken Age code for Ouya (another [Kickstarter darling](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTqhyHuKVKA)), hit me up if you, for some reason, need one.
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In April of 2015, a full year after the first, the second part, the remaining 10-12 hours of game, was finally released.
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**Broken Age ended up being one of the biggest punches in the gut I remember in my not-so-short career as a gamer**.
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There are articles around that state the delay was useful so that "Double Fine was able to use feedback from the first act's release to improve and alter some aspects of the second."
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**A textbook definition of irony if I ever read one**, since anything remotely good about Broken Age's first part was thrown in the garbage.
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**Part 2 indeed manages to answer every question, unfortunately it does so with half-hearted expositions and contrived answers, leaving massive plot holes.**
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#### Broken Age, broken heart, when the two will have to part
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What interesting characters established in the first part, thrown away, their motivations changed so that **Double Fine could forcibly extend the game's length with a series of baffling plot choices** (I can't bring myself to write "plot twists") and horrendously complicated puzzles. Above all, the worst one I remember was the "take the icing off the cake" puzzle, with Shay refusing to do so for no apparent reason, a puzzle which really harkens back to the worst Sierra of the 90s.
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But hey, illogical and frustrating puzzles were the bread and butter of traditional adventure gaming, so maybe they got me there!
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Worst of all, **the last half hour of the game hurriedly introduces the "real enemy"**, unknown to the player up until that point, then concludes with a quick lightweight ending that carries no real meaning or moral message.
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As I was one of the highest tier backers, **I gave DoubleFine something like 120$**, the highest amount I ever paid for a game, before and after that. I received the big carton box release for PC, five years after I backed the game. Yeah, FIVE.
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I sold it a couple of weeks later.
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I know game development is not easy, accidents may happen and delays are the soup du jour. But what hit me the most weren't the delays, but how Broken Age didn't feel traditional at all: instead felt **forced, contrived, the product of someone that just wanted to get the job done** and not look back at it ever again.
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What's more is that Part one felt naturally good, exactly like I expected the game to feel. Then the second one was like being shoved from Heaven directly into the bowels of hell.
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What should have been a joyous reunion of old friends, instead was like having dinner with the one aunt you could never stand.
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**The less said about Broken Age being the second big bang for classic adventure gaming, the better**. All Broken Age managed to show the world was why traditional 2D point'n'clicks couldn't work anymore on modern platforms.
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Tim Schafer hasn't worked on an adventure game since then and, my guess is, probably he never will again.
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#### You break it, you (don't) buy it.
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Except **this time, the genre wasn't to blame.**
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Kickstarter was another platform where promises only went so far and did not guarantee the backer anything, stories of failed launches are [a dime a dozen](https://www.thegamer.com/failure-to-launch-the-15-biggest-kickstarter-fails/).
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Still that didn't rule out its usefulness as a venture for other adventure developers to **fund less expensive but, arguably, more inspired** **projects**. Many nostalgic titles saw the light of day thanks to public funding: Revolution Software used it to develop the perfectly playable Broken Sword – The Serpent's Curse, along with Jane Jensen bringing back the Gabriel Knight flavoured adventure with [the disastrous Moebius](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/04/15/moebius-review/). Larry Laffer also came back to life in a **remake of the first Leisure suit Larry** title, with the collaboration of original author Al Lowe, while the two guys from Andromeda **brought back Space Quest**.
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Most dear to me, **Corey and Lori Ann Cole released a new title in the spirit of my beloved Quest for Glory: Hero's U – Rogue to Redemption**. Even though I didn't really appreciate the tight confines you're playing in – the university for heroes – it embodies the original Quest for Glory spirit, bad puns and all, nice to see it back in full form.
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Fortunately Double Fine, while doing great harm to the dream, didn't succeed in killing it for good.
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#### Daedalic Entertainment – all hail the hero of resistance
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Beyond nostalgic projects, there was something more for fans to find a bit of consolation. Founded in Germany in 2007, **Daedalic was created with the precise objective to develop and publish strictly 2D point'n'click adventure games**. It soon became clear that Daedalic was really dedicated and had the talent to bring to the public some interesting adventures like the **Edna & Harvey, Deponia and the rather unique Dark Eye series**.
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Most of their games featured mature themes intertwined with detailed 2D graphics, traditional point'n'click gameplay without the need for illogical puzzles, with beautiful graphics and polished dubbing. All of this **without dumping buckets of money on 3D engines or huge development teams**.
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I've recently played the first title in the Dark Eye series and I can safely say, even though almost ten years old, the game has aged gracefully and is still a breath of fresh air. **Chains of Satinav is the perfect example that a point'n'click doesn't need to be a nostalgic or humouristic title in the vein of Lucasarts** to be fun and emotionally engaging. Probably it is not the one game I would recommend to someone who doesn't like 2D adventure games but **definitely one for the fans of the genre**.
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Naturally, **Daedalic has relaxed a bit in the following years** and it also publishes 3D adventure games, like **State of Mind** – designed by Martin Ganteföhr, which we have already mentioned in the previous chapter – **a pretty interesting experiment in the vein of interactive movies à la Quantic Dream**, but, honestly, with much better writing.
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#### In the heat of the argument, you're gonna need a whole lot of fans
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The fans of the genre had also been keeping busy with their Wicker Man: **several interesting projects had already popped up years before the Broken Age kickstarter**.
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AGD Interactive got the license to **remaster of some of the older Sierra titles**, like the first three chapters of King's Quest and [Quest for Glory II](http://www.agdinteractive.com/games/qfg2/homepage/homepage.html), doing a wonderful job. Then, thanks to the availability of free adventure game engines like Adventure Game Studio and more sophisticated ones, it seemed like **fans could finally do justice to their beloved genre: games by fans for fans!**
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AGS games had been around since 2001 (when one of my favourites was released, [Pleurghburg: Dark Ages](https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/35-pleurghburg-dark-ages/)), it took them some time to become something more than nice free games, like the fantastic [Chzio Mythos series](https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/269-5-days-a-stranger/) from 2003. Many of those titles were impressively well written and played better than many big budgeted titles, while being developed by one man teams. A [taste of things to come](https://www.gamedesigning.org/gaming/games-made-by-one-person/) for indie gaming as a whole?
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Thanks to the increasing complexity of the engine, around 2007 **the first AGS-developed titles had enough clout and fan support to become more than free games**.
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Many AGS games went on to become fully fledged commercial adventures with full dubbing and videos, like The Journey Down or the Blackwell series, developed by Wadjet eye, a studio we'll meet again in the next chapter.
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The Double Fine adventure project showed that – apparently – a big budget 2D "Lucasarts" styled adventure that could both please the players and bring back the good ol' times, wasn't possible anymore.
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In the end, the fans saved the 2D point'n'click adventure genre.
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They understood what was marketable, had the resources to make it possible and they were, by then, old enough to be capable of delving into more mature themes and storytelling.
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Hence, limited budgets old school point'n'clicks seemed to be marketable only to a small niche of fans.
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Naturally, Daedalic entertainment publishing and developing 2D adventures also majorly contributed to that niche that seemed like it could survive way beyond 2010.
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We'll see what happens to the fans and to the adventure genre in the next and final chapter.
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[By Damiano Gerli](https://genesistemple.com/author/mdmaster "View all posts by Damiano Gerli")[April 4, 2020](https://genesistemple.com/2020/04/04 "12:08 pm")[Leave a comment](https://genesistemple.com/the-death-and-rebirth-of-adventure-games-part-3-false-hopes-and-promises#respond)
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Tags: [Al Lowe](https://genesistemple.com/tag/al-lowe)[Broken Age](https://genesistemple.com/tag/broken-age)[Broken Sword](https://genesistemple.com/tag/broken-sword)[Full Throttle](https://genesistemple.com/tag/full-throttle)[Jane Jensen](https://genesistemple.com/tag/jane-jensen)[Leisure Suit Larry](https://genesistemple.com/tag/leisure-suit-larry)[Moebius](https://genesistemple.com/tag/moebius)[Quantic Dream](https://genesistemple.com/tag/quantic-dream)[Quest for Glory](https://genesistemple.com/tag/quest-for-glory)[Steam](https://genesistemple.com/tag/steam)[TellTale Games](https://genesistemple.com/tag/telltale-games)[Tim Schafer](https://genesistemple.com/tag/tim-schafer)
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31
src/resources/history/fall-point-click-adventure-game.md
Normal file
31
src/resources/history/fall-point-click-adventure-game.md
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@@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
|
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---
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||||
source: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/the-fall-of-the-point-and-click-adventure-game
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
# The Fall of the 'Point-and-Click' Adventure Game
|
||||
|
||||
Has the internet age rendered the "point-and-click" adventure game hopelessly obsolete, or can gamers and developers work together to save a dying genre?
|
||||
|
||||
## Background
|
||||
|
||||
The very first video game—if one is to be liberal with that classification—I ever played was the 1976 Colossal Cave Adventure, a DOS-based text-only adventure game in which the player explored a massive subterranean labyrinth and collected various items to further his progress by defeating foes or solving puzzles. The kernel of the game's design is, as is so often the case with great puzzle games, astoundingly simple: your goal is progress, you encounter obstacles, you collect items, you overcome obstacles by pairing the correct item with the appropriate action on the appropriate target. This simple structure yields an inherent depth, even when there are ultimately few items, actions, and things that may be acted upon. For example, to give a rough approximation, the number of possible combinations a player could potentially try with a full inventory would equal [(number of items) * (number of actions) * (number of things that could be acted upon)]. The result: a game with exceptional depth achieved based on a simple and attainable premise for the game designer.
|
||||
|
||||
Since the release of the Colossal Cave Adventure, countless games have evolved along substantially similar lines, eventually reaching the console market with NES games such as Shadowgate, Maniac Mansion, Deja Vu and Uninvited (together with a myriad of PC games). Thanks to the possibility of a GUI, a genre that in truth began in a text-based context ultimately adopted the moniker of the "point-and-click" adventure game. The genre reached its climax, one could argue, with the game Myst (and the subsequent series it spawned), where developers introduced a rich and engaging storyline; and increased the 'possible scenarios' to an extent that forced the player to abandon any realistic hope of success via a trial-and-error approach, electing instead to incorporate clues into the scenery and storyline which the player could use to guide his decision-making: a significant step forward for the genre.
|
||||
|
||||
These days, the true "point-and-click' adventure game seems to have all but disappeared. Admittedly, there are limitations inherent in the genre: there is virtually no replay value, for once you've figured out the sequence of what is to be done, the challenge disappears; and there is no social value in the genre, for telling a friend how something is accomplished undermines the principle challenge of the game, and trying to play any such game with a group is a recipe for frustration and boredom. That being said, there surely still exists a market demand for even the most rudimentary point-and-click adventure game that exceeds the supply (or lack thereof in this case) of new incarnations in the genre, and this discrepancy exists despite the relative ease with which a game of this ilk can be developed—a justification is called for.
|
||||
|
||||
## The Underlying Nature of the Genre
|
||||
|
||||
The point-and-click adventure genre is a pointed representation of a theme ubiquitously present in all video games: increasing the difficulty-level of a challenge simultaneously and proportionately increases the player's level of frustration while trying to reach the goal (the Trial) and the player's level of elation at having overcome the challenge and reached the goal (the Payoff). Were it not the case that people in general find the joy of the Payoff to exceed the frustrations of the Trial, I daresay people might not play video games at all. By and large developers have scaled back the challenge level of all games over the years, perhaps in an effort to make games more accessible to those who are not so compelled to undertake a significant Trial, and are satisfied with the reduced Payoff of an easily-defeated game because they derive their game utility from other sources, such as social aspects or merely the passing of time. Yet the point-and-click adventure genre embodies a uniquely-fashioned difficulty-level profile that is difficult (if not impossible) for developers to foresee because it will vary significantly from player to player. This variable and highly volatile profile exists due to the ever-present possibility of 'getting stuck'—the circumstance in which the player's progress is stymied because he or she simply cannot figure out the next action required to allow further progress. As was mentioned previously, point-and-click adventure games have almost no replay value because once the player knows what to do, the challenge, and hence the essence, of the game is lost. This implies, however, that what makes a point-and-click adventure game enjoyable in the first place is the fact that what ought to be done next is not immediately obvious. Simple trial and error can be somewhat enjoyable, but it is those situations in which the player has to think long and hard about what ought to be done next—those Trials that eventually lead to a 'eureka!' moment—that give the genre its substance. It is those moments that push us towards the zenith of our frustration and angst, and yet it is those very same moments we eventually look back on with the most pride and satisfaction at having overcome.
|
||||
|
||||
## The Conflict
|
||||
|
||||
It wasn't long after the dawning of the internet and information age that one could within days of a game's release hop online and find a comprehensive walkthrough of any adventure game. I've never been a fan of the walkthrough concept or similar manifestations such as strategy guides, etc.—to me this undermines the very concept of a game. But at least with respect to a game such as any in the Final Fantasy series a walkthrough destroys only the strategic elements for the player, leaving some degree of actual execution to provide a challenge—with respect to point-and-click adventure games, a walkthrough destroys everything that gives the game purpose and life. With a walkthrough in hand, the point-and-click adventure game devolves to the same state that is realized upon defeating the game: purposeless, without challenge, and a simple cause-and-effect chain that can be predicted with mathematical precision. A player beginning a point-and-click game with walkthrough in hand would be better served to save himself the time by declaring the game conquered before even loading it up.
|
||||
|
||||
At this point, the reader has surely devised a solution to the problem: simply don't use a walkthrough. Certainly this is an admirable mindset to embark with, but what happens when you truly get stuck? How long can you as a player hold out while knowing the solution is a few clicks away? Before the internet existed, players had little choice in the matter. Unless you wanted to admit defeat in the form of paying an outrageous charge to call the NES hotline, you were stuck wandering around the castle Shadowgate clicking on every little thing and reexamining every room until finally the correct action was taken. As has been mentioned, these are the moments that define the quality and nature of the genre. Overcoming frustration through personal perseverance is part of what makes games as a whole great, but a person's willpower in those moments of frustration will be severely tested if he knows he can end the frustration with great ease. If a man sets out into the woods and resolves to survive by making a fire with sticks and leaves, how long will he bear the frustration of failure, the physical toll on his body, the hunger and the cold if he has a lighter in his pocket? Willpower will only take one so far—the outdoor adventurer may abandon his cell phone and lighter to divest himself of temptations in order to achieve his true personal goal, but the gaming adventurer cannot truly divest himself of the internet.
|
||||
|
||||
The scope of this problem, unfortunately, runs even deeper than a matter of willpower. Suppose the existence of a player with perfect willpower who has resolved to defeat a point-and-click adventure game without an ounce of outside help of any kind—even if he gets stuck for months on end trying to figure out the next correct move—and who is so resolute that he will indeed never give in to temptation. If playing an old game, like 1987's Shadowgate, such a player knows definitively that he can defeat the game without outside help, for the game was designed at a time when outside help was generally not available and so part of the development of the game certainly involved ensuring that a player could defeat the game on his own. But now, developers are aware that players will have access to online walkthroughs, so there exists the possibility that a developer will incorporate into his point-and-click adventure game an obstacle that actually requires the player to seek the solution on the internet or in a strategy guide (that is to say, the solution is made so obscure it goes beyond the realm of what a player could reasonably be asked to figure out on his own). Our ideally-resolute gamer playing Shadowgate can, in times of great frustration, always remind himself that the solution to any obstacle is indeed there to be found and can reasonably be ascertained with some pluck and perseverance; our ideally-resolute gamer playing a modern point-and-click adventure game, however, will always have the nagging and entirely realistic suspicion in the back of his mind any time he gets stuck that the solution may actually lie beyond that which is contained within the game itself, viz., it may turn out to be the case that he has embarked on a hopeless campaign to figure out something which simply could not by any reasonable person be ascertained. Not even the ideally-resolute gamer can resist temptation for too long once this possibility is in play; and it is only after the spoiler has spoiled that the player will know if the impediment was something he could have and should have been able to himself overcome, or if the solution was beyond the pale of what could reasonably be asked of his problem-solving faculties.
|
||||
|
||||
## Conclusion
|
||||
|
||||
Since the invention of the turbo controller for the SNES I have considered the need for a code of ethics to be established in the gaming world. While I at this point have not given the matter nearly enough thought to propose much in the way of specifics, I might offer that the basic underlying idea would be the establishment of something of a guild binding both players and developers by honor to certain standards and understandings. In the case of the point-and-click adventure game, developers would affirmatively attest that, however difficult the game may be, everything in the game could be reasonably ascertained and the game defeated without assistance from any outside sources; and gamers would in turn agree to seek no outside assistance in completing the game, no matter how perplexed or frustrated they may become. Obviously this code would require significant development and variation from the basic framework I have just now laid out, but the reader should be able to grasp the underlying premise behind the idea, even in its infancy. Without the development of such a code, I see no way that the point-and-click genre can persist in a meaningful capacity—developers will try to increase the difficulty in the only way they can in light of the existence of the internet: by creating content that virtually requires the player to seek assistance outside of the game itself; and gamers will give in to temptation and find solutions online whenever frustrated beyond the threshold of their willpower. It would truly be a shame to lose the point-and-click adventure genre—I'm sure many look back on their gaming accomplishments and place defeating Myst quite high up on the list. Because every point-and-click adventure game yields its own sequence and its own story, it is nearly impossible for the genre to get old as long as you have good story-tellers and puzzle-constructors creating games, and I believe there is yet a wealth of excellent games that could be developed in this genre that would provide immense satisfaction to those gamers willing to dedicate themselves to a truly difficult and trying endeavor.
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,336 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
source: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/thimbleweed-park-preview
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---
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||||
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# Why Adventure Games Don't Have To Suck: Ron Gilbert Talks Thimbleweed Park | Rock Paper Shotgun
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||||
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# Why Adventure Games Don't Have To Suck: Ron Gilbert Talks Thimbleweed Park
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More than a throwback
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Feature by [Adam Smith](/authors/adam-smith) Former Deputy Editor
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Published on March 15, 2016
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[27 comments](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/thimbleweed-park-preview?view=comments)
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Follow Thimbleweed Park
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Yesterday, I spent forty five minutes with influential adventure game designer of yore Ron Gilbert. We played a portion of his point and click revival [Thimbleweed Park](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/tag/thimbleweed-park) and discussed adventure game design in depth. Many of my questions were inspired by Gilbert's 1989 statement of intent, [Why Adventure Games Suck](http://grumpygamer.com/why_adventure_games_suck). As [Thimbleweed Park](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/games/thimbleweed-park) looks back to that time, it seemed appropriate to ask what has changed for the better. And for the worse.
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A clown is scrubbing and clawing at his face, attempting to remove the pasty makeup and honking red nose that are the tools of his trade. He can't. The clowning is no longer a costume, it has become his reality. Long live the new flesh.
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Thimbleweed Park is an absurd, sinister, comedic point and click adventure that looks back to the golden age of Lucasarts, when its creator Ron Gilbert helped to forge many of the rules and standards of the genre. I spoke with Gilbert at GDC as he and programmer Jenn Sandercock walked me through a few scenes from the story's first act.
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It begins with the detectives, the two first playable characters, but the demonstration is all about Ransome the clown. He's grotesque, in both appearance and character, an uncaring celebrity made famous by a stand-up routine that seems to consist entirely of heckling his own audience. The insults he slings aren't creative or witty; they're cruel, attacking any visible difference or perceived flaw for cheap laughs.
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In a flashback sequence, he targets someone whose words have actual power and she responds by cursing him, making the cosmetic alterations that are the costume he hides behind a permanent fixture. Of the five playable characters in the game, three will be introduced through similar interactive flashback sequences, set in self-contained areas of the wider world. They're origin stories, of a sort, explaining how these people came to be the (in one case literal) ghosts that haunt this derelict town.
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An important part of Gilbert's design ethos, as I understand it, is that every part of the game should serve every other part of the game. At its most basic level, that means a puzzle should inform the player about the state of the world, the progress of the plot, or the motivations and flaws of a character. In a more intricate sense, as it relates to the flashbacks, it requires the self-contained puzzles within to teach the player, ensuring that the kind of logic they're discovering is applicable in the large, nonlinear area of the 'present day'.
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I hadn't expected to find the game as weirdly charming and creepy as I did. The entire setup of Ransome's life has its own peculiar logic that serves as an efficient cornerstone of worldbuilding. We're in America - the diner, the feds and the store signs are confirmation - but this is an America where an Insult Clown is not only a celebrity, but an apparent A-lister, who can treat fans and employees with Hollywood disdain and fly from show to holiday home by private jet. He's a rockstar and circus tents are the stadia and arenas of this world.
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And, yes, Ransome's introduction is funny, packed with gags that in the current build are delivered through uncannily well-timed text that leaves just the right pauses and hits all the right beats (voice acting will come later). It's also weird though. Why a clown celebrity, I ask Gilbert.
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"I'm a huge fan of David Lynch and, as you pointed out, the agent coming to a small town to investigate a murder is reminiscent of Twin Peaks." The Lynchian influence isn't just present in terms of nods, winks and allusions though. "What I love about Lynch is that he can show an ordinary situation, something calm and everyday, and skew it so that it becomes strange."
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Strange and sinister.
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"Yeah. He only has to change one or two details to make something recognisable seem incomprehensible. Thimbleweed Park isn't about the corpse you see at the beginning. I can't tell you what it is about but it's much bigger than that and you haven't even seen the beginning of the real mystery yet.
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"It is a dark story. Not as dark as some of the things in The Cave but it does have a serious quality to it. That's been the case as long as I've been making games - look back to Monkey Island and it's a serious story about a man who wants to become something better than what he is, a pirate in this case, but he is a flawed character. It's a romance as much as anything else."
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Any story can become funny when seen through the right lens, perhaps. I'm reminded of the Mel Brooks line: "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die." Tragedy is when my aspirations are mocked and the person I love is abducted by a hideous undead brute. Comedy is when you make a point and click game about it. I suggest that point and click adventures have an inherent absurdity that can become comedic even unwittingly.
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"I think you're absolutely right. The way that you interact with the world and the things that you're asked to do are often so unusual that it becomes amusing. If you need to open a door, you don't get the key out of your pocket, there's a whole sequence of convoluted events required to get where you need to be. If I don't acknowledge the absurdity of that by having the characters respond humorously, the player will still recognise it."
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While we're on the topic of convoluted and absurd things, it seems appropriate to ask Gilbert about puzzle design. I relate to good puzzle design in the same way that Justice Potter Stewart related to pornography: I find it hard to describe but I know it when I see it.
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"An adventure game is like an onion." Not that it should make you cry, The Walking Dead style, but in that it's constructed of layers. "Every layer should feed into the ones around it. A good puzzle has to tell you something about the world, about the characters, about the mystery, about the plot. Too often, and I've been guilty of this myself, puzzles are used as roadblocks to slow you down and block your progress. Really they should be like signposts that you're trying to decipher.
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"In Thimbleweed Park we have a large world to explore and that can be intimidating so there are some obstacles to prevent you from going everywhere right at the start. But when you need to solve a puzzle to advance, that puzzle must have some context. When you solve it you should understand how and why it was necessary to do what you did in order to move forward and to open up a new area."
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A good puzzle should also make you think. You should puzzle over it. This is one of the reasons Gilbert and his team have returned to a verb interface similar to that seen in his SCUMM days.
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"I sometimes enjoy the simplicity of modern point and click interfaces but I like to make the player think and explore the world in more detail. If you can choose to push or pull something, or use it or look at it, you're thinking about the specific way in which the character is interacting. It helps you to understand the interactivity rather than clicking on something and seeing an animation play out that shows something completely unexpected. Maybe you didn't want to, or understand that you had to, act in such a way but the game does the thinking for you."
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For convenience, Thimbleweed does highlight a suggested verb when you hover the pointer over an object in the world, but you're free to select any of the available options. And the suggestion is the most obvious choice - for a door, 'open' or 'close', for a person, 'talk to' - rather than the *correct* choice. Correct and obvious might be one and the same in most cases, but not always.
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"Having these interactions, particularly 'look at', is a way to add details to the world as well as more jokes. And the jokes are adding detail to the world as well."
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The same is true of dialogue.
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"The two agents have different dialogue trees and they'll reveal more information about the people you're talking to and the history of the town, as well as characters' motivations and thoughts. You learn about the agents, who are working together for the first time and don't always trust one another, by seeing how they read situations differently."
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I asked Gilbert if he can think of a single puzzle that he's created that captures his thoughts as to how good design can work. One that he's particularly proud of. He thinks for a while before answering.
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"The faith puzzle in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is one of my favourites. The game tells you that if you need to have faith to walk across a ledge that seems impossible to cross. If you spend time clicking on things in the environment and trying to find a solution, you will fall. To cross, you need to ignore all of the usual puzzle interactions and just click the other side of the bridge.
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In that sense, it's not a complex puzzle but the player has to read the situation and understand the context of the world in order to solve it."
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That subversion of expectation is something that has been a part of Gilbert's games since the beginning.
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"With [Maniac Mansion](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/games/maniac-mansion), we didn't really know what we were doing. Monkey Island refined our ideas." I've never been sure if the fake death scene in the first Monkey Island game, in which Guybrush falls to his apparent death, terrifying any players who haven't saved recently before delivering a punchline that allows them to continue, was a jab at Maniac Mansion's punishing design or a jab at rival developers Sierra, whose Quest games required a great deal of trial and error.
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"It was mainly aimed at Sierra," Gilbert says without hesitating. "That whole situation was so annoying because we made these games that encouraged players to explore and experiment and rewarded them, and we got better reviews, but Sierra would outsell us. They sold ten times as many games as we did sometimes."
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That's not to say there isn't an element of self-critique though. "With Monkey Island we were supposed to make a forty hour game. That was the requirement, seen as value for money. That leads to filler and puzzles that serve to frustrate and delay the player rather than to tell a good story.
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"Thimbleweed Park is challenging, the verb system is part of that, but there's an easy mode in which the harder puzzles will be solved for you. You still encounter them but the solutions are in place. Even if you're playing in the regular mode, those puzzles form part of the story and characterisation though. Everything that you do has to fit in with the context of the plot and the world."
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The entire conversation changes my idea of what Thimbleweed Park is, or of what it is supposed to be. I'd thought, backed up by the notion that this is a throwback of sorts, that Thimbleweed was about returning to a golden age. Finding solutions by looking to the past where problems had already been solved and correcting decades of deviation from the correct course.
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Gilbert's views are far more complex.
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"We want to make a game that is like your memories of those games. If you go back and play Maniac Mansion or Monkey Island now, they're kind of crappy, and not necessarily as you remember them at all. We want to make a game like the thing that you remember rather than the thing that you played."
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|
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The Lucasarts games, beloved though they are, were experiments. Not the ideal form of the adventure game but a process of discovery for the designers as well as the players. When he says that Thimbleweed Park should feel like the way you remember those games rather than they way they are, he isn't simply talking about the addition of neat lighting effects and pixel graphics that are an improvement what could have been achieved on the machines of the time, he's also talking about the design of the puzzles. And, perhaps most important of all, the storytelling.
|
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|
||||
"The behind the scenes fight in Monkey Island," a scene in which a prolonged action sequence takes place entirely out of sight, "had originally been planned as a big visual setpiece. We didn't have time to finish it so we came up with the solution of hiding the action and suggesting all of these things through on-screen text and visual cues. It turned out to be a great gag.
|
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|
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"Working within limitations is always helpful and makes you think of solutions that work. People sometimes say to me, what would you do if you had an infinite supply of money. What kind of game would you make? And I say, I wouldn't make ANY game. I'd fuck it up.
|
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|
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"Good design needs limitations and flexibility. And that's what we're working within. It's like a stage play, where you need to understand and work within the specific limitations of the set and the space."
|
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|
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*Thimbleweed Park will be out at the end of the year or early 2017.*
|
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|
||||
## Read this next
|
||||
|
||||
- [That Zelda-ish, Diablo-ish RPG Monkey Island designer Ron Gilbert was working on has, unfortunately, been canned](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/that-zelda-ish-diablo-ish-rpg-monkey-island-designer-ron-gilbert-was-working-on-has-unfortunately-been-canned)
|
||||
- [Monkey Island creator's new RPG is "best described as Classic Zelda meets Diablo meets Thimbleweed Park"](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/monkey-island-creators-next-game-is-best-described-as-classic-zelda-meets-diablo-meets-thimbleweed-park)
|
||||
- [Return to Thimbleweed Park in a free new mini-adventure](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/free-new-thimbleweed-park-mini-adventure)
|
||||
|
||||
[Adam Smith](/authors/adam-smith): Adam wrote for Rock Paper Shotgun between 2011-2018, rising through the ranks to become its Deputy Editor. He now works at Larian Studios on Baldur's Gate 3.
|
||||
|
||||
[View comments (27)](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/thimbleweed-park-preview?view=comments)
|
||||
|
||||
In this article
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
[Thimbleweed Park](/games/thimbleweed-park)
|
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|
||||
Android, iOS, PS4, Xbox One, PC, Mac, Nintendo Switch
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[Action Adventure](/genres/action-adventure) [Feature](/topics/feature) [Gary Winnick](/topics/gary-winnick) [Ron Gilbert](/topics/ron-gilbert)
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Latest On Thimbleweed Park
|
||||
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||||
|
||||
|
||||
[Have You Played... Thimbleweed Park?](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/have-you-played-thimbleweed-park)
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[When is it OK to remake a classic game?](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/when-is-it-ok-to-remake-a-classic-game)
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||||
[Thimbleweed Park's arcade is now open](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/thimbleweed-park-adds-arcade)
|
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|
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|
||||
[Thimbleweed Park gets in-game hint hotline](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/thimbleweed-park-adds-in-game-hint-hotline)
|
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|
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|
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[Everything wrong with the first three minutes of Thimbleweed Park](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/everything-wrong-with-thimbleweed-park)
|
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|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Review: [Wot I Think: Thimbleweed Park](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/thimbleweed-park-review)
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
[Click me up: Thimbleweed Park coming March 30th](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/thimbleweed-park-release-date-announced)
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[What point and click adventures could learn from hidden object games](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/thimbleweed-park)
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41
src/resources/history/who-really-killed-adventure-games.md
Normal file
41
src/resources/history/who-really-killed-adventure-games.md
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@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
source: https://slattstudio.com/2021/02/19/who-really-killed-adventure-games/
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
# Who REALLY Killed Adventure Games?
|
||||
|
||||
Adventure games were quite popular at the beginning of the video gaming revolution and the reason to me is clear: Adventure games offered a kind of gaming experience other genres couldn't come near: the Experience of Exploration. Graphical Adventure games let you walk, run, and fly through strange and big worlds in a way no other genre could.
|
||||
|
||||
I define the "Experience of Exploration" as the feeling one gets when they feel they can "get lost" in a world. Great books and movies do something similar, but video games offer a level of interaction that make this experience all the more rewarding.
|
||||
|
||||
Other genres of games couldn't replicate anything like this experience. You had Mario-style platformers, but they focused more on arcade-style mechanics than the experience of exploring a new world. Metroid was about exploration, but it was a fairly lonely experience, and the landscapes, while cool, were rarely anything more than platforming or fighting backdrops. Final Fantasy and other RPG's did a better job at achieving the experience, but interactivity with the world was far more limited and stats grinding the and focus on random combat did hinder the experience for many people.
|
||||
|
||||
Adventure games were the only place to go to get that Experience of Exploration, at your own pace, on your own terms.
|
||||
|
||||
# The Real Killer – Hardware
|
||||
|
||||
As the years went by, games were getting bigger, better, and more advanced. Adventure games did evolve with the hardware, but their main gimmick, the thing that kept most people coming, was that Experience of Exploration. And while Adventure games could get bigger, better, and more advanced just like everything else – their gameplay loop never fundamentally changed. Nor could it change without becoming something fundamentally different.
|
||||
|
||||
The problem wasn't that Adventure games were getting "better," it's that the other genres were getting better at the same time, and the hardware upgrades allowed them to also start planting their flags in Adventure games' sacred spot – the Experience of Exploration.
|
||||
|
||||
While it is true that platformers didn't mechanically change that much (bigger jumps, longer jumps, 3D jumps! etc.) the change in hardware allowed them to expand into territory that once only Adventure games roamed – the Experience of Exploration. A platformer like Mario 64 could now be both a joy to explore while also having a gameplay loop that was more "fun" than your typical Adventure game.
|
||||
|
||||
As Al Lowe said: "To a certain extent, adventure games' key elements have been absorbed by the other game genres. Action games, shooters, and RPG's have all adopted many of the characteristics of adventures."
|
||||
|
||||
And all of this happened at the beginning of the 3D consoles' history. The Playstation debuted in the United States in 1995. Three years later Adventure game Grim Fandango could win Gamespot's "Game of the Year" and have universal critical acclaim, but still underperform financially.
|
||||
|
||||
# Where Does That Leave Adventure Games?
|
||||
|
||||
They used to have the market cornered on a really lucrative experience – that of really getting lost in a world. While Adventure games haven't been evicted from this design space, they now share it with any genre that wants it, thanks to the greater flexibility hardware progress has made possible.
|
||||
|
||||
Adventure game fans are a comparatively tiny, niche community now. Passionate for sure, but the heyday of Adventure Games as a truly mainstream contender is gone, and I think it's because what it did best was an artifact of hardware limitations.
|
||||
|
||||
# What Makes Adventure Games Unique?
|
||||
|
||||
- **A "go-at-your-own pace" gameplay speed** - Most adventure games let you explore and interact with things without pressuring you to get things done before you are good and ready. There are usually little to no arcade-style dexterity challenges.
|
||||
- **Inventory and environmental puzzle-solving** - This is the main gameplay loop for almost all adventure games. In my experience, these types of puzzles are what separate the proverbial sheep from the goats.
|
||||
- **Narrative storytelling as a focus** - Adventure games still live and thrive on their storytelling. Open world games tend to be more about creating your own stories within a wider narrative.
|
||||
|
||||
# Adventure Games – Dead or Alive?
|
||||
|
||||
Some people would say that Adventure games are indeed alive and well. I think those people are correct! I chalk that mainly up to the internet's ability to connect people to their tribes. Adventure game enthusiasts are all around us on the internet and they are an amazingly positive community. But it's a small community, and Adventure games don't in my opinion have much power to regain their status as big sellers in the videogames market.
|
||||
@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
source: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/without-readability---the-decline-of-adventure-games
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
# Without Readability - The Decline of Adventure Games
|
||||
|
||||
A discussion of how poor readability contributed to the decline of adventure games.
|
||||
|
||||
At long last, we have arrived at something tangible. Dispensing with hand-waving theory, I'm going to discuss how the murky readability of adventure games contributed to their falling from prominence. In retrospect, I should have presented this sooner.
|
||||
|
||||
Before I launch in, I need to reiterate that I have a great fondness for adventure games. Some of my fondest gaming moments came when playing adventures. I want to be able to share those experiences with folks who haven't, rather than pine for halcyon times long past.
|
||||
|
||||
It's clear adventure games, of both the text and graphical variety, have lost their once prominent position. There are a number of reasons for this, but one that seems largely ignored is the poor readability of the gameplay systems of adventure games. Sometimes this will be addressed by people saying, "they were too hard." But that claim is actually quite misleading, especially given the notions most have about difficulty in video games.
|
||||
|
||||
Adventure games suffered from poor readability. Full stop. The mechanics of adventure games provided a truly colossal number of possible actions, but with no real relationship to each other. There was no systematic way to understand or improve at playing adventure games, beyond learning that you should try to pick up every single thing in the game that isn't nailed down (and those you'll probably just have to pry up).
|
||||
|
||||
As a quick terminology note, Jesse Schell mentioned this very issue in his book when discussing player actions as a game mechanic. He identifies "operative" actions as distinct from "resultant" actions. The former would be fundamental actions the player can execute at any distinct moment, while the latter are broader strategies or behaviours that emerge from understanding how the game's systems inter-operate. This is remarkably similar to the mechanics vs. dynamics distinction in the MDA framework, and it seems both are describing the same phenomena.
|
||||
|
||||
Back to the readability problems in adventure games. Take the quintessential LucasArts/Sierra adventure game. The main interactions in the game consist of using a number of verbs (e.g. push, pull, pick up, talk to, use, etc.) with various objects in the environment. Additionally, your character likely has an inventory that allows you to move some objects from one place to another and use them on other objects.
|
||||
|
||||
Unfortunately, the way these verbs operate is based on a carnival mirror version of the real world. Pushing object X does nothing, but pushing object Y will get you closer to a solution. Trying to pick up one object results in the player's character saying "I don't want that," but the character is perfectly happy to pick up a different object.
|
||||
|
||||
This provides the player with a tremendous number of possible actions to perform, but no way to understanding how they work in conjunction (because they almost never do). There are a lot of ways to use the game's mechanics, but no enjoyable dynamics arise from them. If the player isn't able to infer the designer's intentions, their only option is trial and error. But the permutations of the various mechanics result in a truly colossal number of actions, only a tiny fraction of which have meaningful outcomes.
|
||||
|
||||
As a hypothetical, say there are six areas a player can go during a certain stage of an adventure game. On each screen there are an average of eight interactive objects. The player has five possible verbs they can use on any object. They also have seven items in their inventory, all of which can be used on any object. This means that at any given time, the player has 768 potential actions to perform.
|
||||
|
||||
Text adventures (or interactive fiction, whatever your preference on terminology) exacerbate this problem, as the limit to possible verbs is literally the player's vocabulary. When stuck, the player becomes a thesaurus, struggling to find the right combination of words to execute what they think makes sense. But as it's impossible to know when an action is incorrect due to logic or just due to the parse, the player can never be certain their solution was fundamentally incorrect, instead of just linguistically incorrect.
|
||||
|
||||
Compound this with the truly absurd logic of some adventure games (see Old Man Murray's discussion of Gabriel Knight 3) and it's really no surprise that adventure games fell out of favour. The dynamics of adventure games are not enjoyable the moment the player falls out of sync with the designer's intentions. Coming full circle, adventure games have a readability problem. With all that being said, this definition of readability should make sense:
|
||||
|
||||
**Readability is a measure of how easily a player can understand a game's dynamics.**
|
||||
|
||||
To provide contrast, Braid is a good example of a game with a small number of mechanics giving rise to rich, understandable dynamics. Some criticized Braid for requiring the player to guess the designer's intent. While this is true, the mechanics in Braid number in single digits. Personally, I was never particularly frustrated with Braid, nor did I ever feel like a puzzle was obtuse or unfair. Upon solving, my reaction was universally, "Oh yeah, that makes sense." I cannot say the same for needing a cat hair and syrup mustache to impersonate a man that doesn't even have a mustache.
|
||||
|
||||
This post has become much longer than intended. In the interest I've brevity, I've broken it in two. Wednesday's post will discuss some ways in which adventure games can be made more readable.
|
||||
Reference in New Issue
Block a user