# Why Adventure Games peaked so early **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [June 28, 2012, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-adventure-games-peaked-so-early/626593 "2012-06-28T16:04:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Merneith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/57b2e6/32.png) [@Merneith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merneith)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2012, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-adventure-games-peaked-so-early/626593/41 "2012-06-29T14:31:04Z")
Bugger. I should have written “Jane Jensen” instead of “Roberta Williams”. But since I’m here adding this, I’ll include this quote from the OMM introduction: > [@](#): > > As far as I can tell, the Gamecenter “death of adventure” timeline goes something like this: > [ol] > [li] The action-packed Myst introduces casual gamers to the pleasures of Tomb Raider.[/li] > [li] Genius adventure gamers come to the painful realization that **the same equipment** they use to explore the complex fantasy world of Leisure Suit Larry can also be utilized by stupid people to run Quake. Thanks to their television-atrophied attention spans, these casual gamers are mentally incapable of spending six hours trying to randomly guess at the absurd dream logic Roberta Williams has applied to the problem of getting the dungeon key out of the bluebird’s nest.[/li] > [li] Horrified by the knowledge that somewhere someone is playing a game that is not an adventure, genius adventure gamers abandon the hobby in droves and resort to their backup source of entertainment: various combinations of Babylon 5 novels and masturbating.[/li][/ol] ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2012, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-adventure-games-peaked-so-early/626593/42 "2012-06-29T14:44:52Z")
How does one play Myst or Riven on newer machines? I have them, but it sure seems like the Quicktime isn’t backward-compatible and the graphics don’t work. ---
**Author:** ![Merneith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/57b2e6/32.png) [@Merneith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merneith)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2012, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-adventure-games-peaked-so-early/626593/43 "2012-06-29T15:10:11Z")
You can get both those games at [www.gog.com](http://www.gog.com) - it’s a website that specializes in selling older games in versions that work on modern hardware. They have Myst, Riven, Real Myst & Myst 5 for $5-10. GoG is short of Good Old Games. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2012, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-adventure-games-peaked-so-early/626593/44 "2012-06-29T17:28:40Z")
> [@Merneith](#): > > 1. The legendary Old Man Murray article on [The Death of Adventure Games](http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html) - an epic takedown Yeah, that’s an epic takedown all right. My patience with such games evaporated pretty quickly, when my delighted friends introduced me to the gameplay: EXAMINE KEY –You can’t do that USE KEY –You can’t do that TRY KEY –You can’t do that OPEN DOOR WITH KEY –I don’t know that OPEN DOOR –You can’t do that OPEN KEY –You can’t do that TURN KEY –You can’t do that KEY–\>LOCK –I don’t know that KEY:LOCK –I don’t know that KEY: DOOR –I don’t know that ---
**Author:** ![Zabali\_Clawbane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/ecd19e/32.png) [@Zabali\_Clawbane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zabali_Clawbane)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2012, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-adventure-games-peaked-so-early/626593/45 "2012-06-29T17:57:37Z")
> [@YogSosoth](#): > > Every new generation of games always tries to take advantage of the technology. Adventure games really don’t require that. Some flashy graphics, sure, but Quest for Glory is just as much fun as The Longest Journey. An innovative company like Valve can do a game like Portal, but its rare that an adventure game requires the manual dexterity it takes to play a FPS Ah, The Longest Journey! Loved that game. 🙂 (Still love that game!) ---
**Author:** ![Balance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Balance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balance)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2012, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-adventure-games-peaked-so-early/626593/46 "2012-06-29T18:07:36Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > I played Myst IV about a year ago for the first time. I got bored watching the movies and didn’t have the patience for the puzzles. > > Now, some in this thread have implied such puzzles are “beyond” some people, but I don’t think they are that hard; they just require you to patiently look at one static screen or area longer than most people can be bothered. The difficulty of the puzzles was pretty uneven from game to game. I think _Riven_ probably had the most difficult legitimate (i.e. non-arbitrary-moon-logic) puzzles. If I recall correctly, one puzzle required you to deduce from the contents of a classroom that the D’ni numbering system was base-5, then use base-5 arithmetic to determine the correct way to do…something-or-other. Typical math education for most people in the US does not include base-N mathematics, as far as I know, or it did not at the time. Therefore, many people simply did not have the background knowledge necessary to solve the puzzle “properly”. That seems to qualify as being “beyond” them–not because they weren’t sufficiently intelligent to solve it, but because they lacked the necessary framework to start from. (People who were already into computers, however, were often more aware of base-N via dealing with binary and hex.) ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2012, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-adventure-games-peaked-so-early/626593/47 "2012-06-29T18:15:45Z")
> [@hogarth](#): > > Personally, I think one reason they’re less popular nowadays is because many of them lack replayability. I never bothered playing Leisure Suit Larry more than once, personally. To me, that’s no more of a dealbreaker than a book I’d only want to read once or a movie I’d only want to watch once—provided the enjoyment I get out of that one play is enough to justify the money (and time) I spent on it. > [@GreasyJack](#): > > You also need a lot more will power to get the most out of an adventure game in these days when walkthroughs are only a google away. On the other hand, those just-a-google-away walkthroughs can enable one to get more out of an adventure game, by eliminating the unfun flailing around and giving up in frustration. ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2012, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-adventure-games-peaked-so-early/626593/48 "2012-06-29T18:20:56Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > My patience with such games evaporated pretty quickly, when my delighted friends introduced me to the gameplay: > > EXAMINE KEY > > –You can’t do that > > [..] > > KEY: DOOR > > –I don’t know that Even better is when it’s something like: OPEN LOCK WITH KEY –“You try to open the lock, but you feel like you’re missing something. Maybe a key…?” ---
**Author:** ![panamajack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/47e85d/32.png) [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2012, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-adventure-games-peaked-so-early/626593/49 "2012-06-29T18:46:09Z")
There’s no lack of dumb design in games today. I just played Amnesia:The Dark Descent for the first time, and spent half an hour fumbling around because the designers don’t know what the word ‘transept’ means. There is an easily accessible section named “nave”, which includes two rooms in the transept and a chancel (possibly even named as such) at the end. Another character tells you to look for some important items in the choir and transept. Turns out he’s talking about a section named ‘Transept’ that is a random unconnected room behind an unmarked door that can only be opened by solving another puzzle. Also of note, the ‘Choir’ is a large underground chamber. Just want to point out it’s a good game overall; the level layout (if not the names) are wonderful, and it 's wonderfully fear-inducing. It may actually be that part of the decline was really the result of the lack of good designers making the games. And eventually you did need to add something beyond just figuring out their intent. The UHS (Universal Hint System) is a great help but that can’t be the whole game anymore. ---
**Author:** ![Zabali\_Clawbane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/ecd19e/32.png) [@Zabali\_Clawbane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zabali_Clawbane)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2012, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-adventure-games-peaked-so-early/626593/50 "2012-06-29T20:03:21Z")
> [@Tengu](#): > > I’m really not sure where you got the idea that Portal was devoid of action. > > It is an action game, where half the challenge of the later puzzles is timing things just right. Its empahsis is more on adventure than action. They threw some action in there for variety’s sake. But it is about the story, about figuring out what happened, and is there really going to be cake. Just because the game has some blending does _NOT_ kick it out of the genre… :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2012, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-adventure-games-peaked-so-early/626593/51 "2012-06-29T21:40:07Z")
Surely you remember the infamous Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy game. Where, at the beginning of the game, you had to feed a cheese sandwich to a dog. To prevent him from chomping on a tiny spaceship. Which was you, halfway through the game, traveling back in time and miniaturized. And if you didn’t do that at the beginning, you automatically lost the game and had to restart. The game was full of this sort of nonsense, and the only way to find out that you should have performed an action hours earlier was to lose the game and restart. This was the last text adventure game I ever played. Must have been 1987. Bastards. ---
**Author:** ![panamajack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/47e85d/32.png) [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2012, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-adventure-games-peaked-so-early/626593/52 "2012-06-29T22:00:30Z")
I think the Hitchhiker’s Guide game was one of the first to intentionally take advantage of the players to frustrate them. Realizing that players would keep trying to find solutions despite their illogical basis eventually was taken too far. For me, I first soured on adventure games with a puzzle in _The Lurking Horror_. My 12-year-old self could not fathom that a person would have the strength to pry open a closed elevator door using a crowbar. That’s another failing - they worked best only when the players thought much like the designer. What is interesting is that sadistic puzzles like that did have something of a resurgence in ARGs. There, the wisdom of the crowd actually worked rather well in finding solutions. Thus, making them super-difficult wasn’t as much of a hindrance. Also, I realized what I said of Amnesia I was slightly off. The section I thought was called ‘Nave’ was actually labeled ‘Chancel’ though it looked the most like a church. The ‘Nave’ section was a series of rooms including a makeshift insane asylum, massive spiral staircase and a laboratory. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2012, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-adventure-games-peaked-so-early/626593/53 "2012-06-29T22:18:48Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Surely you remember the infamous Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy game. Where, at the beginning of the game, you had to feed a cheese sandwich to a dog. To prevent him from chomping on a tiny spaceship. Which was you, halfway through the game, traveling back in time and miniaturized. And if you didn’t do that at the beginning, you automatically lost the game and had to restart. > > The game was full of this sort of nonsense, and the only way to find out that you should have performed an action hours earlier was to lose the game and restart. > > This was the last text adventure game I ever played. Must have been 1987. Bastards. No, you didn’t. At a certain point in the game, you could go back in time and redo that section. The bad puzzle was getting the Babel fish, which I never did without a walkthrough. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2012, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-adventure-games-peaked-so-early/626593/54 "2012-06-29T22:18:55Z")
> [@panamajack](#): > > What is interesting is that sadistic puzzles like that did have something of a resurgence in ARGs. There, the wisdom of the crowd actually worked rather well in finding solutions. Thus, making them super-difficult wasn’t as much of a hindrance. [Complete with unholy moon logic pizzles!](http://www.unfiction.com/compendium/2002/11/15/wheregif/) ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2012, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-adventure-games-peaked-so-early/626593/55 "2012-06-29T22:34:08Z")
> [@Zabali\_Clawbane](#): > > Its empahsis is more on adventure than action. They threw some action in there for variety’s sake. But it is about the story, about figuring out what happened, and is there really going to be cake. Just because the game has some blending does _NOT_ kick it out of the genre… :eek: You’re right; it wouldn’t. But that’s not what Portal is. It’s not just one section of the game that requires a bit of timed gameplay. The entire game works that way. There are numerous portions of the game where you must make a split second movement to do something. That’s not an adventure game. Portal is a first person platform puzzle game. Maybe you could argue it has adventure elements, but it’s not an adventure game. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2012, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-adventure-games-peaked-so-early/626593/56 "2012-06-29T22:41:36Z")
> [@Tengu](#): > > Yes, Al, that’s why. > > That’s why actual puzzle games, RPGs with puzzle elements, and so forth also died. > > It couldn’t possibly be the genre’s reliance on moon logic puzzles (or, at best, puzzles whose logic only makes sense after you solve them), pixel hunts, and unwinnable scenarios. Which, of course, make problem/puzzle solving impossible. I don’t think you’re really disagreeing. Those very things are the things that you could expect the typical computer user to be okay with. People who got their computers to work well had to be able to keep working at a problem, trying esoteric solutions, and dealt with frustration well. These type of people are no longer the main owners of computers. Plus there’s so much variety that you don’t want to waste your time figuring out one game when you can be having fun doing something else. This is the reason I think platformers got so much easier, too. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2012, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-adventure-games-peaked-so-early/626593/57 "2012-06-29T23:18:45Z")
I’m pretty sure the primary reason platformers got easier is that developers finally realized that they weren’t trying to suck quarters out of kids at an arcade. Even so, there’s been a resurgence of platform hell games like I Wanna Be the Guy and Super Meat Boy which are harder than even most nintendo hard games of yore – the only thing that makes them seem easier is unlimited retries (and even then, I Wanna Be the Guy has the insanity difficulty for the truly masochistic). In those old games, you had to bang your head against the wall at certain sections, but what made it hard is that after your 3 lives were up, your muscle memory had time to forget what it had already learned. That is when the games weren’t outright buggy (collision detection problems was the big one). ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Angel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d26b3c/32.png) [@Johnny\_Angel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Angel)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2012, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-adventure-games-peaked-so-early/626593/58 "2012-06-30T01:00:38Z")
The Babel Fish puzzle, though rightfully infamous, was a good one that my uncle and I between us managed to figure out to our great satisfaction. What stumped us for over a decade was getting through the Haughty Door. I know the trick now, but we never noticed the quirk of the game that made it possible. As for the bit with the dog, yeah, as I recall, you can get back to feed the dog the same way you get into the ship. But it’s still tricky. Anyway, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is milk run next to Discworld. It all makes sense, really, but the sense it makes is so twisted that if you made it through to the end scene without a walkthrough, then congratulate your mom for having raised a big fat liar. One of the items you have to gather requires you to give a guy the squirts so that he will get molested by a squid doped with love potion, so you can steal his belt. I do think it’s far better to design adventure games so that you can’t die, and you can’t get past an area you can’t go back to without getting everything you need. But I don’t fault the original innovators for not having thought of something that seems obvious in hindsight. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2012, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-adventure-games-peaked-so-early/626593/59 "2012-06-30T16:02:58Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > I’m pretty sure the primary reason platformers got easier is that developers finally realized that they weren’t trying to suck quarters out of kids at an arcade. Even so, there’s been a resurgence of platform hell games like I Wanna Be the Guy and Super Meat Boy which are harder than even most nintendo hard games of yore – the only thing that makes them seem easier is unlimited retries (and even then, I Wanna Be the Guy has the insanity difficulty for the truly masochistic). In those old games, you had to bang your head against the wall at certain sections, but what made it hard is that after your 3 lives were up, your muscle memory had time to forget what it had already learned. That is when the games weren’t outright buggy (collision detection problems was the big one). Did you wander into the wrong thread? Isn’t this about adventure games? But if there’s a platformer thread, point me to it! ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2012, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-adventure-games-peaked-so-early/626593/60 "2012-06-30T21:51:38Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > Did you wander into the wrong thread? Isn’t this about adventure games? > > But if there’s a platformer thread, point me to it! I was responding to BigT’s assertion that “This is the reason I think platformers got so much easier, too.” In the post above mine [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-adventure-games-peaked-so-early/626593.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-adventure-games-peaked-so-early/626593.md?page=4)