The Adventure Game Is Dead--Long Live the Adventure Game!
Part 1

By Randy Sluganski

Just as the text adventure died with the advent of the animated graphical adventure game, so too is the 2D animated adventure game about to go the way of the text adventure. What will it be replaced by? It is too early to know for sure, but it looks like the leading contender will be the 3D animated action/adventure hybrid genre. But is the adventure game as we know it today truly dead or just in a deep slumber? What happens if the hybrid action/adventure genre falls on its face, and it will unless the publishers and distributors quickly alter their marketing strategies. My contention, as I will prove in the first half of this article, is that the adventure game is dead. The second part of this article will offer solutions for the resurgence of this beloved genre.

What killed the adventure game? A combination of a glut of bad products, low sales and a dwindling fan base have all mightily contributed to the demise. Let's also add to the obituary, poor marketing, the Internet, awful Myst clones and what some think is the worst evil of all--the Nintendo generation. Each one has contributed in its own way to chip away at the very foundation of adventure gaming.

Poor Marketing

Just as times and tastes change so should marketing strategies, but they have not. They have stagnated. Common policy dictates that we will see a colorful two-page spread for the hottest new Sierra or LucasArts release in PC Gamer or Computer Gaming World. Not that there is anything wrong with that, mind you, but we are already a guaranteed buy, a built-in audience. What worked 10 years ago is still working, but the marketplace is larger and more diverse now, and adventure games have not caught the attention of many new players. Why not attempt to appeal to the casual potential adventure gamer via unorthodox advertising methods? What methods? you ask--well, that is for discussion next month. Another marketing mishap is that the larger software chains--Best Buy, CompUSA--seem to have forgotten that the adventure game ever existed. Best Buy has their game selection broken out into the following categories: Action/Arcade, Fantasy/Roleplaying, Sports, Children's Titles and so on. I found Blade Runner and X-Files in the Fantasy/Roleplaying section. Black Dahlia was nestled alongside Duke Nukem add-ons in the Action/Arcade area. CompUSA was even worse. The local CompUSA in Pittsburgh does not designate categories, but has all games of the same genre bunched together. Baseball, football, et al., are with other sports games. Quake, Unreal and similar titles are together. Adventure games are, of course, spread out everywhere. But, unbelievably, Curse of Monkey Island and Armed and Delirious are all the way on the other end of the sales floor in the children's section! Sitting next to Carmen Sandiego and Dr. Seuss titles. When I explained to the store manager why these games should not be in the children's section, he promised to rectify the situation and he did, for about a week; they are now back in the children's section. Still wondering why the sales figures for Curse of Monkey Island were so low? The larger software companies have geographical sales representatives. Maybe it is time that these sales reps did their jobs a little better and give new adventure releases the attention they deserve.

The Internet

While the Internet and the newsgroups are a great source of information and discussion for adventure gamers, they have also taken away much of the fun of adventuring. It used to be that you were stuck on a puzzle for days before you would even think of asking for help. Now, I have actually seen people post in the newsgroups the same day a game is released and ask for a walkthrough! Even worse are the "I have been stuck on this puzzle for two hours. I can't take it anymore. Help!" Whoa. What ever happened to utilizing your gray cells to attempt to solve the puzzle on your own? Are the puzzles that much harder now then they were 10 years ago? I don't think so--I just think we as a group are more impatient. Even the companies that produce and distribute the adventure games have jumped on this bandwagon. Authorized strategy books are often in the store the same day the game is released. These guidebooks offer higher profit margins than the software titles that spawn them so it is unlikely that they will disappear. Games that used to take a month or more to complete are now finished in a week or even a weekend. Are the newer adventure games shorter than were the Zorks of an earlier era? No, but they have been made so easy to beat that we have driven them to the brink of extinction. Adventure games are a rare animal in that they are the ultimate gaming experience. While we are playing, they engage all of our senses. A really good puzzle will haunt our thoughts at work or even in our sleep. But once an adventure game is over, it is truly over. There is no replay value. Sport games, Quake clones and real-time simulations all have the advantage of occupying an unlimited play time. The conquered adventure game sits forgotten on our bookshelf collecting dust or it is sold at a loss on the newsgroups.

The Great Myst Conspiracy

As we all know, Myst is responsible for many things: the JFK assassination, Area 51 and the Green Bay Packers losing the Super Bowl. But it is not responsible for the death of adventure games. Rather, it was the game developers who attempted to suck a quick buck from the genre without being aware of what made Myst work. Myst was a subtle adventure game that incorporated puzzles that were integral to a finely woven plot. It was, for its time, a nontraditional adventure game. The numerous emulations that followed mistakenly believed that the puzzles were the game and thus we were force-fed innumerable sliding-tile puzzle games that were full of pretty pictures and devoid of a coherent plot. Suffice it to say that two of the top five best-selling games for this year are adventure games: Riven and Titanic. Both of these games appeal to the casual gamer: Riven because it is the sequel to Myst and Titanic because it is riding on the coattails of the success of the James Cameron movie. This normally would be great news for adventure gamers, but we have already seen what the unbridled success of Myst wrought. It does not seem, though, that the success of Riven has inspired the same rush to release games with impracticable puzzles and little or no plot as did Myst. Why no feeding frenzy this time? Well, a lot of those companies have either gone belly-up or they saw their profit/loss margin take a huge hit as their cookie-cutter creations were relegated to the clearance bin. What could have been a great opportunity for the future of adventure games instead turned into a death knell.

The Nintendo Generation

Without a doubt the biggest factor in the death of adventure games has been the Nintendo generation. These "twitch" gamers, as they are known, were weaned on the Sonics and the Marios of the console world. Games that beep, blast and bleed their way to the finish. Now these gamers have graduated to the PC, and we are feeling the consequences: Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, Unreal, Sin--an almost endless progression of "twitch" games. The 8-bit Nintendo, 16-bit SNES and Sega Genesis and the 32-bit N64 all have one thing in common: not one of these machines ever had an original adventure game released for them. Only recently has the Sony Playstation begun to add adventure titles to its extensive selection. While these games have not been bestsellers, at least now the younger generation is at least finally being exposed to these games. When adventure games were at their peak they were being played by gamers who had sharpened their teeth on the Infocom text adventures. Maybe now, after having missed a generation of players, the adventure game is poised to make a comeback.