Why Adventure Games peaked so early

[Quimby]

I wouldn’t say he was blaming anyone for anything. He was stating that the market changed so the product changed with it.

[tapu]

Wow! I had no idea Myst lived on! Thanks, guys.

I was into the 2nd one when I was pregnant and then when I had the baby, things like Myst were replaced by things like Bob the Builder.

Maybe I’ll look into it again. realMyst sounds interesting

[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.

[Zabali_Clawbane]

@Quimby

I wouldn’t say he was blaming anyone for anything. He was stating that the market changed so the product changed with it.

Yes. The point I was making is that they didn’t die out. They waned for a bit, but never really quit being made. Games like Portal are actually very popular, in fact.

[Johnny_Angel]

@Quimby

In this interview with Al Lowe (creator of Leisure Suit Larry and other Sierra adventure games), he makes a point about why Adventure games were so popular early on and then flamed out so quickly that I never considered: basically in the 80s and early 90s the majority of people who owned PCs were the type of people that enjoyed solving problems and puzzles. As PCs became more mainstream, the amount of people who liked that got diluted and thus those games started selling less and less (I am extrapolating his point somewhat). That makes a lot of sense to me and I never thought of it. I certainly fit that mold. Just curious what others thought.

I read a similar explanation by Lowe years ago that additionally suggested that Myst helped bury the genre. The boom in non-technical people aquiring computers co-incided with the rise of the critically acclaimed Myst, which a lot of people bought due to exuberant praise and discovered it was way beyond them, and effectively the well was poisoned from then on.

Telltale Games still makes excellent point-and-click adventure games. I have complained about their heavy reliance on licensed properties like Jurassic Park and Back to the Future, because in trying to draw those fans they have basically dumbed down the games. But even those are good fun, and are well worth the price to pick up after the price has gone down. But they’ve got some excellent titles in their back catalog:

Sam & Max, Seasons 1-3 - The gold standard for point-and-click adventure games. Quite challenging without ever bogging down into doldrums. The puzzles delight with their cleverness and humor. The dialogue itself is frequently hilarious.

Puzzle Agent 1+2 - A quirky story wrapped around a series of classic puzzle-magazine-type puzzles. Weird and wonderful.

Strong Bad’s Cool Games for Attractive People - A successful conversion of the Strong Bad humor into an adventure game, with Telltale’s characteristic flair for clever puzzle design.

I have purchased most of their games, and there are none I wouldn’t recommend. But right now, their individual games are priced like practically new. The only discounts they’re giving is for a package of eleven games for $45, but that right there would be a pretty good value if it only included the Sam & Max games.

Although I got in on the Kickstarter project for the new Double Fine point-and-click adventure, the fact is that Telltale has been doing a fine job keeping the genre alive.

[Kamino_Neko]

@Zabali_Clawbane

Games like Portal are actually very popular, in fact.

That’s exactly my point. Portal is not an Adventure Game, it’s an FPS based around puzzle solving.

Lowe’s trying to claim that Adventure Games died out because computer ownership shifted away from the kind of people who like to solve puzzles.

Which is demonstrably nonsense, when you look at the amount of puzzle solving in other genres. And, of course, the fact that the vast majority of the product put out in the genre was so terribly designed as to make ‘solving puzzles’ impossible.

[Mahaloth]

I thought it was Jim Carrey’s fault.

[cckerberos]

@Johnny_Angel

I read a similar explanation by Lowe years ago that additionally suggested that Myst helped bury the genre. The boom in non-technical people aquiring computers co-incided with the rise of the critically acclaimed Myst, which a lot of people bought due to exuberant praise and discovered it was way beyond them, and effectively the well was poisoned from then on.

Doesn’t seem likely, IMHO. Myst’s sequel Riven sold 4.5 million copies, which doesn’t fit with the idea that Myst turned people off of adventure games.

[cckerberos]

@Tengu

That’s exactly my point. Portal is not an Adventure Game, it’s an FPS based around puzzle solving.

Lowe’s trying to claim that Adventure Games died out because computer ownership shifted away from the kind of people who like to solve puzzles.

Which is demonstrably nonsense, when you look at the amount of puzzle solving in other genres. And, of course, the fact that the vast majority of the product put out in the genre was so terribly designed as to make ‘solving puzzles’ impossible.

Yep. The Tomb Raider series features a ton of puzzle solving, yet it took off just as adventure games died.

[Zabali_Clawbane]

@Tengu

That’s exactly my point. Portal is not an Adventure Game, it’s an FPS based around puzzle solving.<snip>

A Portal “gun” is not a weapon. Portal is not a FPS. It is, however, a first person adventure game. :dubious:

@Wikipedia

The game primarily comprises a series of puzzles that must be solved by teleporting the player’s character and simple objects using “the handheld portal device”, a device that can create inter-spatial portals between two flat planes. The player-character, Chell, is challenged by an artificial intelligence named GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System) to complete each puzzle in the Aperture Science Enrichment Center using the portal gun with the promise of receiving cake when all the puzzles are completed. The game’s unique physics allows momentum to be retained through portals, requiring creative use of portals to maneuver through the test chambers. This gameplay element is based on a similar concept from the game Narbacular Drop; many of the team members from the DigiPen Institute of Technology who worked on Narbacular Drop were hired by Valve for the creation of Portal.

[Palooka]

If Portal is anything besides a shooter, it’s a platformer. It’s only an adventure game by the kind of crazy thinking that produced most of that genre’s puzzles.

[Zabali_Clawbane]

@Palooka

If Portal is anything besides a shooter, it’s a platformer. It’s only an adventure game by the kind of crazy thinking that produced most of that genre’s puzzles.

Explain to me what you mean by adventure game? Does Syberia count? Myst, surely? List a game(s) that you consider “adventure” and the elements that make it so. This way, at least we can speak the same dialect here…

[Kamino_Neko]

Adventure Games are am interactive storytelling medium that doesn’t involve action, stats &c that you’d find in other genres, like FPS, Platformers, or RPGs

I think that article including VNs in the AG umbrella is pushing it a little bit…while I can see the logic, I’d count them as a separate genre, as they’ve got totally different gameplay than any of the AG subgenres. (And may not have any real gameplay at all.)

[Zabali_Clawbane]

@Tengu

Adventure Games are am interactive storytelling medium that doesn’t involve action, stats &c that you’d find in other genres, like FPS, Platformers, or RPGs

I think that article including VNs in the AG umbrella is pushing it a little bit…while I can see the logic, I’d count them as a separate genre, as they’ve got totally different gameplay than any of the AG subgenres. (And may not have any real gameplay at all.)

According to your prerequisites, and that article, Portal IS an adventure game!

[YogSothoth]

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

[Kamino_Neko]

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.

[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.
It’s the same reason I couldn’t now sit and play pacman for longer than a few minutes…I expect more variety and more of a payoff now. And that’s not a bad thing.

[Odesio]

@Quimby

In this interview with Al Lowe (creator of Leisure Suit Larry and other Sierra adventure games), he makes a point about why Adventure games were so popular early on and then flamed out so quickly that I never considered: basically in the 80s and early 90s the majority of people who owned PCs were the type of people that enjoyed solving problems and puzzles.

Robertta Williams, creator of beloved adventure games King’s Quest and Phantasmagoria makes a similar claim.

@Roberta Williams in 1999

So the people that played computer games 15 years ago were that type of person. They probably didn’t watch television as much, and the instant gratification era hadn’t quite grown the way it has lately. I think in the last 5 or 6 years, the demographics have really changed, now this is my opinion, because computers are less expensive so more people can afford them. More “average” people now feel they should own one.

I cut my teeth on adventure games like Monkey Island, Space Quest and King’s Quest and I don’t really like those same types of games today. The big challenge with a lot of those games is simply trying to figure out the mindset of the creators in order to figure out the solution to the puzzles. While I had enough patience for these games in 1989 I don’t have a whole lot of patience for them today.

[hogarth]

In other news, horsewhips used to be more popular 150 years ago because people used to love whipping.

Seriously, I don’t think anyone is suggesting that if a time traveler brought Skyrim or Grand Theft Auto III back to 1987, people would say “no thanks, I’d rather play Space Quest”.

[Merneith]

1. The legendary Old Man Murray article on The Death of Adventure Games - an epic takedown of a Roberta Williams designed puzzle by the guy who would go on to write Portal. The conclusion is as true today as it was in 2000.

2. In addition to the examples above, the casual Hidden Object Games genre is full of adventure games, only substituting the hidden object scenes for the non-stop pixel hunts. These games are hugely popular.

3. It’s true that games today are not as brutally difficult as they were in the eighties. But harder is not the same thing as better. No one today would put up with, say, the sudden death scenes in Laura Bow - that’s because sudden death scenes are bullshit.

4. Al Lowe needs to make peace with the fact that Leisure Suit Larry just is not a major literary achievement.