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Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

The Future Of Adventure Games Discussed 67

Posted by simoniker from the oft-trodden-path dept.
Thanks to AdventureGamers.com for the first part of their continuing feature article discussing what the future holds for the adventure game as a genre. The author shrewdly points out: "The death of adventure games is a topic that's been... well, done to death", and goes on to muse: "We can restlessly theorize about the genre's supposed 'death' forever, but it won't really get us anywhere. Instead, we need to take a closer look at the stuff (adventure) games are made of." He then points out: "Syberia or Jak & Daxter - ask anyone on the forums which one is the adventure game and everyone will reply the former. It's a no-brainer. However, things get difficult when you try to define exactly why Syberia is the adventure game." It's then claimed that "...the most visible characteristic of adventure games is that they offer a departure from action-and-reaction gameplay and manual dexterity" - but do games in this genre still appeal?
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The Future Of Adventure Games Discussed More

The Future Of Adventure Games Discussed

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  • Adventure is not a True Genre (Score:5, Insightful)

    by illuminata ( 668963 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @09:16AM (#7793990) Journal
    In the 2D console days, most side-scrolling games could be considered an adventure game. Once the PC gained popularity, most of your point and click games, like Myst, were classified as adventure.

    Now, the adventure genre disintegrated into various other genres. Most titles could be considered adventurous, whether they be first-person, third-person, side-scrolling, RPG, point and click, etc. I don't think that the adventure genre should really be considered a genre in which you classify games at all, because the term adventure covers so much ground. In fact, I would even go as far to say that past games shouldn't have been called adventure games, either.

    • Re:Adventure is not a True Genre (Score:4, Informative)

      by scabb ( 670114 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @09:33AM (#7794098)
      Just because the genre has the word "adventure" in it, that doesn't mean that any game featuring some kind of adventure automatically joins the genre. In Super Mario World you play the role of Mario, but is that an RPG? 2D Side-scrolling console games were never considered adventures, unless they featured elements such as the ability to communicate with non-player characters, an inventory, some sort of story and puzzles to solve. More importantly, adventure games should not punish you for being a crappy gamer, as long as you can think you should be able to progress through them nicely. "Adventurous" games are not necessarily adventure games, nor do adventure games need to have huge elements of adventure in them.
      • Super Mario World was not an RPG, but according to Moby Games (not to mention game magazines I've read in the past), it is considered an adventure game, despite not having the elements that you thought have to be in one.

        Perhaps you should go through some old game magazines or browse around the internetnet to see what the mainstream consider to be adventure games? Then, you might see what I'm talking about.
        • Internetnet... hmm, that's a new typo. Or is it? Ponder that!
        • I think the difference here is between pc and console. I know mario world and as a pc player I can't see who would call it an adventure. I would classify it as a platform game.

          Of course consoles never had pc styled adventures.

          To make it clear when pc players talk of adventures they mean games like Monkey Island 1-3, Gabriel Knight Sins of the father, King Quest series, Sam & Max and so on.

          So the original post is true from a console perspective. The response is true from a pc perspective.

          • Well, I would say that this confusion of what exactly makes a game an adventure game further proves that the adventure classification shouldn't be used.
            • This just seems to be a problem that you have in terms of the name not being the best indication of what the genre is all about. There is no real word to describe the types of games that I would call "adventure". I suppose you could invent the "Talk-em-up", but most people know what an adventure game is.

              Like I mentioned before, the same problem exists with Role Playing Games - you play a role in most games, however an RPG is generally a game where you can build up your characters abilities, upgrade your wea

              • My point is that there isn't a good definition of what an adventure game is. As you can see by this thread, elsewhere on the internet, and in print, there are varying ideas as to what makes a game an adventure game.

                Also, I never said that it was a big deal, I just figured that I'd mention my thoughts about the adventure genre. This is a discussion, anyways.
            • In that case, we can't use classifications for anything, since there will always be someone who disputes the accuracy of said classification.

              It's not just the adventure genre that's difficult to classify. RPGs are quite difficult to categorize as well. And then you have games like GTA3 which fuse several genres together.

              Anyway, a good first-approximation definition for "adventure" (at least in the PC sense) was given in an earlier post: An RPG which has no character building. It's slightly more compli

          • Re:PC vs Console (Score:3, Informative)

            by Haeleth ( 414428 )
            Of course consoles never had pc styled adventures.

            Except for, um, Maniac Mansion for the NES. And the PS1 versions of the Broken Sword series. And Clock Tower on the SNES and PS1. And scores of lesser-known titles.

            • Re:PC vs Console (Score:1, Informative)

              by Anonymous Coward
              You forgot to mention the PS2 port of Escape from Monkey Island.
          • Computer adventures and console adventures are really parts of two different genres; why the moniker "adventure" was given to both types is hard to say. This is unlike RPGs, where the differences between console and PC are merely stylistic.

            A computer adventure is a game that has little to no reflex-intensive gameplay to speak of; instead, it relies on puzzles. However, computer adventures are not puzzle games, because the puzzles are suspended within a story that progresses as you play, and those puzzles
            • A computer adventure is a game that has little to no reflex-intensive gameplay to speak of; instead, it relies on puzzles. However, computer adventures are not puzzle games, because the puzzles are suspended within a story that progresses as you play, and those puzzles make sense within the story.

              Heh, not in half the adventure games I used to play and love!
              • Well, the idea is that there's supposed to be a reason you're doing the puzzles beyond "so I can go to the next level." In Leisure Suit Larry, for example, you're doing the puzzles in order to get money, condoms, etc. so you can have sex. In Sokoban, on the other hand, there's no real reason why you're putting the boxes into their places besides "the game told me to."

                Of course, this idea of what a computer adventure is has broken down since the blockbuster coming of Myst; now they're more like glorified
          • You forgot one of the greatest adventure series of all time to be released by Sierra .... Leisure Suit Larry *sound*Bow-chica-wow-wow*sound*.

            Seriously, what about Quest for Glory/Hero's Quest and Space Quest? Those were some awesome adventure games.
        • Super Mario World is a 2D Platformer I would hazard a guess that most all 2D side scrollers are categorized as shooters or platformers.
        • I've played adventure games for over 20 years, and Super Mario World has NEVER been considered an adventure game by ANY fans of the genre, despite how Moby Games might mis-classify it.

          To seriously suggest otherwise is just (grossly misinformed) historical revisionism.

          For adventure game purists, only text adventure were originally considered adventure games, such as the games by Level 9 and Infocom. Graphic adventures (Sierra On-Line, Scott Adams, LucasArts) were later reluctantly admitted to the adventu
      • The original Metroid was called an adventure by Nintendo. They originally labeled every game with a genre on the box.

        I can't find a working link to an image of the box but you can see it in google's thumbnails. Theres a picture of a guy swinging over something in the bottom left. Mario was in a different category though.

        http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8 859-1&q=metroid%20box&sa=N&tab=wi [google.com]
    • I know, this is Slashdot, but you didn't even read the first page or two of the article, did you? They go through a lot of hoops to try to come up with a coherent definition of the genre despite most fans of the genre being more capable of identifying the genre of the games by playing them than describing the genre.

      In the 2D console days, most side-scrolling games could be considered an adventure game.

      No, the Adventure genre actually takes it's name primarily from the console game Adventure, which is, o
  • My favourite Adventure game was 'Little Big Adventure' (or 'Relentless' as it was called in the US, such barbarism).

    An absolutely delightful game and Twinsen will always have a place in my heart. I bought the sequel but I'm stuck near the start!

    Twitch games will always be more popular because by the laws of the bell curve, the brutes will always outnumber the non-brutes.

    It is a genre where the small coding shop can still keep pace.

    Luckily they are games that can never die, Day of The Tentacle is still a

  • Kings Quest and Space Quest were the pinnacle! (Score:3, Informative)

    by SyncNine ( 532248 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @09:24AM (#7794040)
    Adventure games now have all become along the lines of Myst and such, there is very little interaction in them between multiple characters, and most of the games I've played lately that call themselves 'Adventure' games have less adventure in them than Grand Theft Auto! I'd say it's not that Adventure games don't exist or are dying, but that they've changed significantly from the older Adventure games. IMHO, the older games like Kings Quest and Space Quest, Bards Tale, Loom, Sam and Max, Day of the Tentacle, etc, are all substantially better games than the newer Adventure games like Ico (PS2), Syberia (XBOX), or Myst. The new games just seem to be lacking in story and interaction.. Space Quest and such had such great plots (even if they were tongue in cheek!) and at the very least were entertaining throughout, whereas Myst and such just don't seem gripping to me. But-- That's just my opinion, and I've been wrong before. sYn
    • Interesting - that's probably why I liked The Longest Journey (sequel coming!) and disliked Syberia (also sequel coming). The Longest Journey wasn't perfect, but the game itself was by far the best adventure game I've played. My second favorite is probably Full Throttle (sequel shelved and probably cancelled, last I heard). All have lots of character interaction. I have yet to try Beyond Good and Evil, which is supposedly pretty good, so I don't have an opinion on that.

      I solved Myst so fast (like 11 ho

  • This Line is why Adventure games are dead (Score:5, Insightful)

    by *weasel ( 174362 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @09:35AM (#7794109)
    But if you think I'm going to advocate the bastardization of adventure games through the inclusion of action elements, you are wrong.

    I nearly wrote a rant about how assinine a name 'Adventure' is for this genre that really means 'ass backwards dream logic'. But that's not the point.

    the point is, the absolute refusal of any genre, to accept a blend of good elements from other genres is the mark of death. If you refuse to accept new ideas - you will stagnate and die. It's that simple.

    The games that revitalize and create genres blur traditional boundaries. Diablo, Thief, Half-Life, Deus Ex, GTA -- they're great -games- regardless of what 'genre' you try to lump them into.

    Adventure games are dead because they weren't fun anymore: developers and purists refused to aknowledge that their genre -needs- a shot in the arm.

    The stories were no longer compelling, and the puzzles were overly ludicrous in the name of making them 'clever'.

    Most Adventure purists reviled at even the idea of 3d engines, with first person or chase cam views. I mean, a camera angle? Is your genre so incredibly fragile that changing the camera angle or rendering style is enough to destroy everything about it? christ.

    Adventure games as these people define them are better off dead. Any genre that refuses to aknowledge its own shortcomings does not merit anything more than a fringe, niche market.
    • Any genre that refuses to aknowledge its own shortcomings does not merit anything more than a fringe, niche market.

      Not exactly true. I agree that adventure games are a niche genre, and that they most likely remain such in the near future. However, what you describe as shortcomings I see as features, and the main reason why I buy adventure games.

      Let's take your example, action in adventure games. There are already so many action games that if I want to play a nice, point-and-click game where it doesn

      • I'm not saying they should incorporate running and gunning, or jump puzzles or any of that crap. The point was that 'action elements' are regarded as 'bastardization'. It's the mindset that anything that hasn't been done before in the 2d and text roots is anathema.

        And I only describe the shortcomings as being the -mass market acceptance- obstacles. If you dig that stuff, of course you see them as features. But the overwhelming majority of fans don't - and gaming isn't big enough for your fringe to garn
        • As for the genre being dead for you... well I hate to break it to you - but it already is. Your threat to stop buying games altogether is fairly idle - as that is what most 'adventure' gamers already did.

          Not true. First, adventure gaming is far from dead; in fact, it is becoming a second life. This year I played about a donez new adventure games. Some of the best included Dark Fall and Post Mortem, both of which were point-and-click puzzle orgies. The you have the traditional caqrtoonish 2D games, lik

          • fine, 'threat' was a bad choice of words, and apparently there is a steady supply of adventure games that fit your preferences. and while adventure gaming isn't completely dead, the numbers of released and sold 'pure' adventure games is certainly a very small number compared to other genre's, and is down quite a bit from where it once was.

            similarly, i never suggested anyone change their tastes to fit with the mass market. I'm not saying you should change; I'm not saying any gamer should change.

            I am saying
    • the point is, the absolute refusal of any genre, to accept a blend of good elements from other genres is the mark of death. If you refuse to accept new ideas - you will stagnate and die. It's that simple.

      While I do agree to some extent, I don't know if that applies to something which is in many ways defined by a lack of a certain element. Adding action elements to adventure games to make them better seems like trying to make someone a better vegitarian by adding meat to their salad.
      • Dunno. I challenge anyone to tell me that Quest for Glory/Hero's Quest wasn't an adventure game, despite all its swordplay and simple action elements. It was certainly one of my favorites in the genre.

        I'd say that the QG series was your vegetarian's 'salad' with croutons.

        --Jeremy

    • Re:This Line is why Adventure games are dead (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TRACK-YOUR-POSITION ( 553878 ) on Wednesday December 24, 2003 @01:11AM (#7801154)
      I nearly wrote a rant about how assinine a name 'Adventure' is for this genre that really means 'ass backwards dream logic'. But that's not the point.

      I'm disappointed--that's a pretty brilliant way to both define the category of games and exactly what's wrong with them. When an adventure game stops using Bizarro World logic and bases itself on clearly defined, predictable rules, it becomes a Puzzle game instead of an Adventure game. Which is why RPGs and action games with Adventure elements have taken a lot of the space that Adventure games once enjoyed--players want to explore new worlds with interesting stories, but they hate having the game designer's arbitrary whims inflicted upon them unpredictably at every turn.

      • The question is, when computers become powerful enough that we can create non-arbitrary adventure games--the designer creates a world of characters controlled by realistic AIs and the story emerges from interaction between player and AI, will we still call such games Adventure games? Or will that genre be long dead by the time this happens?
  • I know that "Beyond Good and Evil" is an adventure game, and a very good one at that.

  • Adventures didn't die. They were killed. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @10:09AM (#7794377) Journal
    Monkey Island. A great point and click adventure series. Killed by the fourth installment wich added well a "different" way of doing things. Instead of moving your mouse around the screen hunting for pixels that would do something you now had to move a tiny character with the cursor keys to hunt for pixels that would do something. The reviewers loved it. Adventure reborn! An important thing to remember about reviewers is that they get PAID to play games. Where as buyers PAY to play. The game didn't sell and lucasarts adventures are no more.

    The Gabriel Knight series is another example. The first was a classic point and click and sold well. Sadly the developers caught the "full motion video" bug that was doing the rounds and number 2 was well not as good. By the time it was time for number 3 the FMV bug had died but a more virulent strain had sprung up called "3D". Even reviewers thought this Gabriel Knight 3 was not very good. The public avoided it like the plague.

    Broken Sword 1 & 2 were moderately succefull point & click adventures. Number 3 caught the 3D bug however and while it makes for a nice looking game you once again find yourselve controlling a character with sub-standard controls (no side stepping) in the hunt of pixels. Add some pointless Tombraider bits (pointless since there is no skill involved) and a bit of dragon lair and you got another adventure killer. Nice game but not an adventure as we know and love them.

    Is all hope lost? No. Funcom released a little gem called "The longest journey". In a great example that shows the value of reviews it was highly regarded by most game sites and mags and totally ignored by the buyers. Then something happened. Word of mouth got out that here was a classic point and click like in the olden days and slowly it started to sell becoming a moderate success.

    And here is the good bit. THEY ARE MAKING A SEQUEL. Oh yes. Working title "The longest journey. Static".

    Another new hopefull is syberia. Granted I thought it had a few to many empty screens but at least the interface worked. It is successfull enough for a sequel as well.

    Out of nowhere came also "Runaway a road adventure" not sure how this one did but it again is a classic point and click and a lot of fun to play even if the characters are horrible ripoffs from the broken sword series.

    So what of the future? Well it is hard to tell. With PC games becoming more of a niche the lure of consoles and a more arcade like adventure may proof unresistable. Broken sword has fallen to the unwashed hordes of the gamepad others may follow. However there will always be new and brave people who are willing to make the classic adventure. After all did not a group of volunteers make a classic "Space Quest" game? Even got the old ega graphics for that bit of nostalgia.

    • Funcom released a little gem called "The longest journey".

      It's is a little off topic I know, but this post reminded me of something I've been wondering for a while. Has anyone played The Longest Journey in Linux with Wine or WineX? The demo seemed to work OK with a recent cvs build of WineX, but I'm a bit nervous about buying such a long game with no word as to whether I'll be able to finish it or not.
  • I have always thought that adventure games didn't die, they just got eaten up by other genres. There are plenty of games, especially in the console world, that involve solving complicated environment puzzles. It's just that puzzles by themselves can't support a whole game.

    I just finished Mysterious Journey II, a child of the Myth school, and found while the puzzles were generally interesting and about the right difficulty, they actually interfered with the story instead of complementing it. Puzzle games

    • Re:Puzzle games (Score:4, Interesting)

      by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @10:25AM (#7794505) Journal
      Myst is of the school of "The 7th guest". This had a story but in order to progress you had to solve puzzles. These puzzles had little today with the story but were classic braintwisters. Simple things like moving pieces on chessboard or answering riddles.

      The other style of adventure is the Sierra or Lucasarts adventure. Here the puzzles are usually based in items you collected and combinging them with other items to move along. Think MacGuyver. For instance in the recent adventure "Runaway a road adventure" you have problem. You need to convince some killers that your love intrest is in another bed. How? Well there is a card with her name on it at the bottom of the bed and an empty bed next to it. So locate some cushions a dummy head a wig and a sheet and you got a nice target. Now to do the medical chart. You found a marker pen but it is dry. You also found some alcohol and a syringe. Hmmm, can you figure out what to do next? Probably. Do you like figuring it out or do you go, why don't I just shoot the killers?

      Some of use like adventures and puzzles like this. Some like myst style puzzels. You like patformers and rpgs en shooters with a few puzzles. Genre mixing doesn't work for everyone. Adventure gaming isn't dead but people sure keep trying to kill it.

  • Adventure game = hassle free RPG (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BMonger ( 68213 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @10:29AM (#7794545)
    An adventure game to me is pretty much the same as an RPG but without stats, armor, weapons, and fighting. A lot of the old school Sierra/Dynamix games would fall into this category for me. Kings Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Freddy Pharkas, Phantasmagoria, Gabriel Knight, Leisure Suit Larry, Quest for Glory, and Adventures of Willy Beamish. Most of these could be full RPG's if stats, weapons, and armor were added. These games usually require you to get item A bring it to person B to get item C. How you get item A can be a decently long puzzle.

    I guess adventure games could almost be considered to be puzzles which are brought to you in a non-straightforward sort of way...
  • Take an action game. At it's base an action game is a game where a character goes around getting involved in some form of combat. These kinds of games include everything from Devil May Cry to Jak & Daxter, or even Beyond Good & Evil. These games may or may not have extra elements involved, such as puzzles, storylines, whatever. As long as it's third person and it has more than a few combat moments, it's an action game. A adventure game is pretty much the same thing, only you cut out the combat.

  • I don't know what we expected (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dr. Spork ( 142693 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @10:56AM (#7794749)
    There were a few good adventure games early on, but as a genre, there is just far too much crap being released. This is because unless a story behind an adventure game is awesome, the game will make players yawn with boredom.

    And it takes a really immersive story to make a normal human care enough to "procure A, bring it to be in order to accomplish C" over and over.

    CRPG games also have some "fetch-bitch" tasks for the characters, but the designers have an easier time. If the back story is a bit stale, a heated fight with a few orcs will liven it up. That's a luxury adventure game authors don't have. If their stories are a bit stale, their game fails.

    I think this is enough to explain why adventure games must inevitably suck, on average. When it's done on a large scale and by the numbers, it always fails. It reminds me of romance novels: Seriously, how likely is a romance novel to be a good book? Vanishingly. And how many are you able to read before you declare the genre "dead" as far as you care? Even if romance novelists were good writers, there is a certain wall that the genre hits. Everything will read like something else. That's what's happening to adventure games. It gets progressively harder to write original ones, to the point where it starts requiring storywriting genius. And that genius is busy on other genres with more vitality (and money).

    So did I just describe the death of adventure games? Not really. I mean, they'll live on in exactly the same way that romance novels with bumpy covers live on.

  • Roughly half a million downloads for King's Quest 1 VGA and King's Quest 2+ VGA can't be wrong.

    Above games were created by AGDInteractive [agdinteractive.com], formerly Tierra Entertainment.

    They're currently working on a VGA version of Quest for Glory 2.

  • Fun for more than one weekend (Score:4, Insightful)

    by EarwigTC ( 579471 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @11:39AM (#7795154)

    Many people now only buy games with a high replayability or a strong multiplayer component. Pure adventure games almost never have either. That's a big factor in the declining financial success of these kinds of games.

    Pure adventures need some value added, like new monthly content or game editors. Imagine an easily mod-able Leisure Suit Larry...

  • No recent titles ? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DrSkwid ( 118965 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2003 @12:30PM (#7795623) Journal
    What about Pokemon?

    It's a classic adventure game, running round collecting bits you need to open the door to get more bits to open the door ....

    oh and we also loved the 'Tombi' series on PS1

    Whacky Japanese nonsense, run round collecting feathers and leaves and stupid stuff to take to the old man to get the magic mushroom to .....

    The genre isn't dead by a long stretch, we are out here playing and enjoying them games it's just a trip to the games shop will show you 500 fps/driving/sim X games for the brutes.

  • Sadly, most of them have been completely ignored by other companies who make said games.

    The 'Tex Murphy' games spring to mind. They combined full motion video and a first person 360 degree perspective, with everything you'd expect in an adventure game.

  • Like RPGs did with Baldur's Gate. Well, survival horror games are a form of adventure game so, it hasn't entirely died out.

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