| 17 OCT 2008 at 4:51pm |
Terry PenrodGrand Inquisitor
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An interesting read and I agree with Gilbert on most of his main points. But the industry has changed a lot since the original piece was written and I'd like to see how that impacts his revised / updated version when it gets posted.
Cheers, Terry
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| 18 OCT 2008 at 1:31pm |
Steve VSorcerer Apprentice
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Status : Online | So that was written in 1989? 20 years later the SAME points are raised over and over again on messageboards like this one, that would suggest that nothing fundamental has changed in the Adventure Game genre since then. In reality, there is only one actual point of discussion..his contention that the story should drive the gameplay and not the puzzles. We are still arguing about this in 2008 which suggests that a real schism exists in the customer base for games which are marketed as 'for adventure game lovers'...
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| 18 OCT 2008 at 4:01pm |
Terry PenrodGrand Inquisitor
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Originally Posted By Steve_V (18 OCT 2008 1:31pm)
So that was written in 1989? 20 years later the SAME points are raised over and over again on messageboards like this one, that would suggest that nothing fundamental has changed in the Adventure Game genre since then. In reality, there is only one actual point of discussion..his contention that the story should drive the gameplay and not the puzzles. We are still arguing about this in 2008 which suggests that a real schism exists in the customer base for games which are marketed as 'for adventure game lovers'...
Hi Steve -
That argument only seems to involve a comparatively small community of avid PC adventure game fans and then, only with people who prefer Myst-like titles.
Console players, the larger PC game consumer base and many traditional PC AG fans have long since accepted action-adventures as a legitimate, separate genre and story-driven games of all sorts sell extremely well all over the world.
True that the "classic-style" PC AG genre has not changed much in the past 20 years. But the industry has and now that the Myst series has been retired, there are no more big-selling PC AG franchises of any kind.
The question then is, what kind of adventure games would yield healthier sales in today's marketplace - updated Myst-like titles or those that more resemble Monkey Island?
If you look at all current sales in all categories worldwide, it's pretty easy to see that most people prefer story-driven games (with various degrees of action / combat, stealth and tactical strategy). And even in the niche market of non-action adventures, there seems to be more general interest in games like Syberia and Dreamfall than the latest Myst-like offerings.
So there really is no "should" or "shouldn't" here. There is only what people want and what they don't want. Right now, the majority of them don't want a series of static, mostly unrelated puzzles. They want a cohesive story, interesting characters to interact with, some freedom to explore and well-integrated puzzles that make sense in the context of the game world.
Cheers, Terry
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| 18 OCT 2008 at 4:37pm |
ButterproofSorcerer Apprentice
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Status : Online | Originally Posted By Terry_Penrod (18 OCT 2008 4:00pm)
They want a cohesive story, interesting characters to interact with, some freedom to explore and well-integrated puzzles that make sense in the context of the game world.
I totally agree with that.
Then, about what "people want or don't want", imagine a new AG is marketed, and it has a totally new style, called X style. I can feel I love that style, but 95% of the people don't, so that games with that style aren't going to be designed anymore. That 5% will have to see their favourite style disappear.
For example, I liked the old adventures with 256 colours, but now they are not going to be created with the same intensity as before, because it's not economically useful: most people want them with lots of graphics, that means, AGs with millions of colours will sell better.
Not all people will be 100% satisfied with the adventures that are marketed today, not because they are not good, instead because they know and like a style, and they can miss them to the point of saying "this adventure doesn't have the "magic" of the ones with the X style".
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| 18 OCT 2008 at 6:12pm |
Terry PenrodGrand Inquisitor
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True Butterproof, but that's simply a function of basic economics. Commercially produced games are after all created as entertainment products and what the majority of customers want is what the majority of developers / publishers / retailers will offer.
Besides, in most cases, early titles didn't have any more intrinsic charm than today's games. They were however a whole new type of experience for we players and a great deal of what we think of as quality during that initial era is actually nostalgia.
For instance, the artwork in Monkey Island 1 and Full Throttle were rather crude compared to Monkey Island 3 and Grim Fandango. The character designs, backgrounds and animations were far better in the later works. The writing, puzzle designs, voice-acting and music were also at least as good or better.
A few years latter, Gabriel Knight 3 and Escape From Monkey Island ushered in a new era of full 3D AGs - along with a huge assortment of action-adventures for both the PC and console systems. The same trend took hold in every other major genre and it was only the PC AG community that resisted this sweeping change.
Since that time, gameplay-wise, very little evolution has taken place in the genre. All the while, global sales have exploded for shooters, RPGs, action-adventures, real-time strategies, simplistic sims, sports games and MP titles. The Myst franchise also ended and no other PC AG series has come close to replacing it.
Today, as we here all know. our beloved genre is but a faint shadow of its former self. But there have been some improvements in terms of overall design polish, sound quality and interface streamlining.
Game makers now have so many good tools to work with and even the greenest developers can produce relatively good looking titles using open-source tools. Average user specs have also come a long ways and these days, every new PC comes with at least a basic 3D chipset, a fast CPU, a big HD and other relatively advanced components.
I suppose it's enough to say that the world of technology has changed dramatically over the last 20 years and it's not surprosing that so many people want to keep pushing the boundaries. Some also strive to expand creative limits in terms of real-time interactivity, online gaming, moddability, physics, AI, etc.
But all that aside, I still love PC AGs because they marry the best of new-age storytelling with challenging puzzles. I want both elements and I want them to work seamlessly together like most other people.
Cheers, Terry
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| 18 OCT 2008 at 7:27pm |
| Deleted User | Besides, in most cases, early titles didn't have any more intrinsic charm than today's games. They were however a whole new type of experience for we players and a great deal of what we think of as quality during that initial era is actually nostalgia.
QFT
Though there's quite a few people who will want to shoot us for saying that. I've seen the nostalgia thing come into play when I reread beloved old childhood books or rewatch beloved movies/TV shows from earlier in my life; -they just don't seem the same any more; and after giving an initial buzz, they tend to fall flat.
I greatly suspect that it's quite similar with PC games.
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| 18 OCT 2008 at 7:50pm |
Terry PenrodGrand Inquisitor
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I think it's even moreso with interactive games Traveler because they represented a whole new form of entertainment, storytelling, creative expression and technology that nobody had ever seen before.
So people young and old alike were mesmerized by the newness of it all and it's only natural that we look back on those early days with great fondness. Add to that, typical childhood nostalgia and some folks who grew up during that era remember the games with even more fondness.
That isn't to say some of those trailblazing games weren't superb. Some were, but most were actually pretty rough and derivative of other media. Only a few IMO belong in the all-time great category and some of them were important as technological innovations more than for their genuine creative originality.
I mean, the D& craze wasn't responsible for the invention mythical wizards, warriors, elves, trolls or dragons. Myst didn't introduce the first visual puzzles. Doom was hardly the first multimedia production that featured hellish hordes and all the main genres of sci-fi, horror, mystery, comedy, drama, romance and adventure had already long since been thoroughly explored in books, films, TV shows, pop art, etc.
What interactive games did first was to take all those elements and combine them with a whole new kind of technology that average people could enjoy. But we are still far from exhausting the creative or technical possibilties. Some might say the industry is still in its infancy.
Cheers, Terry
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| 18 OCT 2008 at 8:29pm |
Steve VSorcerer Apprentice
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Joined: 16 MAR 2008
Status : Online | Originally Posted By Terry_Penrod (18 OCT 2008 4:00pm)
.
Originally Posted By Steve_V (18 OCT 2008 1:31pm)
So that was written in 1989? 20 years later the SAME points are raised over and over again on messageboards like this one, that would suggest that nothing fundamental has changed in the Adventure Game genre since then. In reality, there is only one actual point of discussion..his contention that the story should drive the gameplay and not the puzzles. We are still arguing about this in 2008 which suggests that a real schism exists in the customer base for games which are marketed as 'for adventure game lovers'...
Hi Steve -
That argument only seems to involve a comparatively small community of avid PC adventure game fans and then, only with people who prefer Myst-like titles.
So there really is no "should" or "shouldn't" here. There is only what people want and what they don't want. Right now, the majority of them don't want a series of static, mostly unrelated puzzles. They want a cohesive story, interesting characters to interact with, some freedom to explore and well-integrated puzzles that make sense in the context of the game world.
Cheers, Terry
Terry,
When you say that the majority of AG players want interesting characters to interact with I'm not sure about this. In order to find out that a character is interesting you have to talk to them..at length and more than once. This dialogue heavy side of games puts a lot of people off, really what a lot of players want is for the NPC's to simply act as sources of informaton to point you in the right direction without having to hear anything irrelevant to the main story.
Also the total linearity of plots in AG games is frustrating, I notice you said 'some' freedom to explore, not 'total' freedom, thus recognising that most, if not all, games released now have one and ONLY one path to the end - Ron Gilbert recognised that this could be a problem in 1989! Game developers obviously have never worked out how to get around the point he raises about 'But the player doesn’t always do what the designer intended, and this causes problems. It is hard to create a cohesive plot when you have no idea what part of the story the player will trip over next' The only answer seems to be that you don't allow them any choice in how to proceed, games are just exercises in solving set piece puzzles in one location which when completed unlocks the next location until the final stage is reached.
By now developers should have found a way to have the entire gameworld available from the start of play,allowing real freedom of action to the player. If you visit a locaton whose importance isn't apparent because you haven't triggered something somewhere else then just have the important hotspots and character interactions locked until that trigger happens..don't just close off that whole area of the game, maybe have some clues as to what you need to do elsewhere incorporated in a conversation or document you can find, basically anything to allow the player to feel that there is more than one 'right' way to finish the game.
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| 18 OCT 2008 at 9:05pm |
Terry PenrodGrand Inquisitor
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Perhaps PC AG developers haven't figured out how to provide a healthy amount of free exploration and multiple paths or solutions to various puzzles, quests and/or situations Steve, but RPG makers certainly have. They have also perfected the art of storytelling in non-linear game worlds inhabited by hundreds of NPCs ranging in importance from mere extras to unique key players.
RPG studios also provide a huge array of other player choices as well as deep tactical combat with sliding difficulty scales, and a very large assortment of interactive items - not to mention dynamic local and world maps, editable journals, adjustable behavioral scripts, etc., etc.
My point is that all those and many other things have already been advanced through a variety of other highly popular genres in every imaginable style and many of those games are story-drive affairs full of interesting characters with loads of dialog options and full 3D, real-time graphics that are now bordering on photorealistic.
As far as what makes a game character interesting, that really is a subjective judgment that each player must make. However, I doubt you would argue that adventure-like RPGs such as Planescape-Torment, Deus Ex, Anachronox or Omikron have dull, unoriginal characters, dialog, stories, settings or puzzles.
Fact is there are numerous titles in several other genres that have broken new ground in the area of interactive storytelling and even a few that have now fully integrated advanced physics with real-time action and true puzzle solving.
Ron Gilbert has created some excellent, traditional-style PC AGs including some of my personal favorites. But as far as I know, he has zero experience in making full-featured RPGs, RPG hybrids, 3D action-adventures or other types of games that encompass a complete spectrum of additional components many of us find entertaining.
Moreover, Gilbert's original comments were written before the last several generations of software and hardware became available. I assume he has at least kept abreast of those industry-changing innovations and that's why I expressed an interest in seeing how his opinions may have changed over the past two decades.
In a nutshell, a lot of the early problems he discusses in that article have been solved.
Cheers, Terry
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| 19 OCT 2008 at 4:04am |
CrisGerSchattenjger
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Status : Offline | The essence of games is play and story telling. We need stories and play to relieve the tension of real life and its inponderables. Even more so in the maze of modern media that bombards us with images and visceral events that we are powerless to effect and affect.
So we have a chance to experince choices and freedom and action in games that never may we have in real life.
The art of CGI games is evolving as any art and medium. Ron has done great work. He is not god however, and his opinions are skewed i think from his own time as well as from ours.
There are no rules. There are ways things have been done. They can always be improved.
The final outcome is the only judge in my humble opinion. There are some smashers, wonderful examples of older games. There are some beautiful ones from the middle period as more advanced 3D was developing say 1992-2000, and now we have super duper all reall stuff.
things change and grow and there are more possiblities. those were both interesting articles, i have read the Ron one before several times and i still think he needs to chill out and enjoy the changes. but thanks for sharing.
Great comments in this thread as ususal
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| 19 OCT 2008 at 12:21pm |
IviniaGuild Master
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Status : Offline | Originally Posted By Terry_Penrod (18 OCT 2008 9:04pm)
Perhaps PC AG developers haven't figured out how to provide a healthy amount of free exploration and multiple paths or solutions to various puzzles, quests and/or situations Steve, but RPG makers certainly have.
I suppose it has to do with the emphasis. RPGs are more about going on adventureS, building up your stats, etc. No one says they play RPGs for the story.
With adventure games though, the emphasis IS on the story itself. Those generally have a beginning, a middle, and an end - linear.
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| 19 OCT 2008 at 12:43pm |
| Deleted User | Originally Posted By Ivinia (19 OCT 2008 12:21pm)
Originally Posted By Terry_Penrod (18 OCT 2008 9:04pm)
Perhaps PC AG developers haven't figured out how to provide a healthy amount of free exploration and multiple paths or solutions to various puzzles, quests and/or situations Steve, but RPG makers certainly have.
I suppose it has to do with the emphasis. RPGs are more about going on adventureS, building up your stats, etc. No one says they play RPGs for the story.
With adventure games though, the emphasis IS on the story itself. Those generally have a beginning, a middle, and an end - linear.
I know this thread is actually about AG's but I'm going to slightly digress to include the RPG genre, as the emphasis of the discussion seems to have shifted to the importance of story, and I'd like to speak up for RPG-lovers here.
Some of the Adv. gamers here have specifically stated they just want to do puzzles and exploration, no conversations or story.
So there one could probably argue that if RPG's are about stats only, Adventure games are about puzzles only, if you wanted to make that kind of analogy.
I've never heard an RPG fan say that they don't prefer a good story, even when they're playing the sandbox open-ended kind of RPG.
One of the main reasons, for instance, that I personally like Morrowind so much (a very non-linear game indeed), is that it has a good non-generic backstory, which you don't know the outcome of beforehand - for a change. A lot of the subquests also have to do with the politics of the gameworld, and are not merely the "bring me five phoenix feathers" kind of quest.
To me the difference between "just another RPG" and an outstanding RPG, is having interesting, non-generic story-like quests and side-quests.
The messenger-boy type of quest is frighteningly boring and should have gone out with the ark already.
Unfortunately, lazy unimaginative developers still make use of them, but that is not to say that we RPG gamers are actually happy with that status quo.
Tbh, I would prefer a good story in all the games I play. Adventure, Action, RPG, and even Strategy, (with the exclusion of sims like City-builders or Economic sims).
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| 19 OCT 2008 at 4:04pm |
Terry PenrodGrand Inquisitor
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I've played all sorts of adventures, RPGs and RPG hybrids, and the best of them (IMO) all revolve around compelling stories with interesting characters and good dialog.
As Traveler mentioned, there are differences in some of the gameplay elements between these genres. But all of them depend on storytelling as the glue that holds everything together.
However, that's really beside the point, which is that RPG makers have developed effective methods for providing a wide assortment of player choices and far more freedom to explore in a non-linear fashion in large, complex game worlds.
By using simple devices like dynamic maps, quest logs and auto-updated yet editable journals, they assure that the player always has some solid direction about where they've been, where they are going, who they have talked to and what their various missions are.
It's just not that difficult to keep the player informed and steer them in the right direction. It's also not that hard to build in a set of triggers that allow for more than one solution or to offer more than one path between two points in a story.
RPG studios do all those things and much more. So there are plenty of good examples available for AG designers to take their cues from. If they wanted to create epic adventure games with multiple paths and lots of choices, the lessons for how to do that while telling a compelling, original story are there for the taking.
Cheers, Terry
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| 20 OCT 2008 at 4:14pm |
avatar_58Private Detective
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Status : Online | Personally I don't care what is said - newer adventure games don't have the same charm they did years ago even despite all their issues like dead ends and pixel hunts.
Take games like Tunguska for instance. Generic characters, a story no one can sympathize with, silly scenarios that arise simply to delay your goal (hey let's do some puzzles to open a safe, when I *should* be looking for my father) and rediculous puzzles such as the lemon. Or we have the myst clones without the feel of myst, just the hair pulling puzzles.
I don't really understand why either. One can't cite budgets or team sizes, since clearly games like Sanitarium can come from unknowns (both in publisher AND developer). I think it's a lack of effort. No one cares anymore. If it's got puzzles, it has a napkin story that lasts a few hours and a 3d animation system it can ship and sell a few copies. Thats all that seems to matter.
Anyway what I'm trying to say is the new breed of adventure gameplay we've been given is actually far worse than the old days. It's not even the loss of the parser - since games like Gabriel Knight never had it to begin with. Today the only reason to play adventures is the story, and since the story of most modern adventures suck - what's left? While devs argue todays games are friendlier to the casual gamer - I argue they've lost what made this genre fun in the first place.
Personally I'd KILL for more games that suffer from Gilbert's list of flaws over a Secret Files 2 or Frogwares bargain bin adventure. But hey thats just my opinion...
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| 20 OCT 2008 at 5:56pm |
Terry PenrodGrand Inquisitor
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Originally Posted By avatar_58 (20 OCT 2008 4:14pm)
Personally I don't care what is said - newer adventure games don't have the same charm they did years ago even despite all their issues like dead ends and pixel hunts.
Take games like Tunguska for instance. Generic characters, a story no one can sympathize with, silly scenarios that arise simply to delay your goal (hey let's do some puzzles to open a safe, when I *should* be looking for my father) and rediculous puzzles such as the lemon. Or we have the myst clones without the feel of myst, just the hair pulling puzzles.
I don't really understand why either. One can't cite budgets or team sizes, since clearly games like Sanitarium can come from unknowns (both in publisher AND developer). I think it's a lack of effort. No one cares anymore. If it's got puzzles, it has a napkin story that lasts a few hours and a 3d animation system it can ship and sell a few copies. Thats all that seems to matter.
Anyway what I'm trying to say is the new breed of adventure gameplay we've been given is actually far worse than the old days. It's not even the loss of the parser - since games like Gabriel Knight never had it to begin with. Today the only reason to play adventures is the story, and since the story of most modern adventures suck - what's left? While devs argue todays games are friendlier to the casual gamer - I argue they've lost what made this genre fun in the first place.
Personally I'd KILL for more games that suffer from Gilbert's list of flaws over a Secret Files 2 or Frogwares bargain bin adventure. But hey thats just my opinion...
I think it all still comes down to basic supply-and-demand economics Avatar.
It takes real talent to create fresh, funny, original stories with great graphics (no matter the style or era), world-class voice acting, memorable music and all the rest.
The PC AG genre began to stagnate when most all the top talent left for greener pastures and those key people have never been replaced.
Sure, a few promising new faces have cropped up in the genre like Jonathan Boakes and Benoit Sokal. But the average AG studio just can't compete with the likes of Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer, Jane Jensen and a long list of others that once devoted all their time and talent to traditional adventures - with the full support of major studios / publishers.
After LucasArts and Sierra shut down their AG divisions, many other fine studios followed and there simply has not been enough financial motivation for a new generation of creatives to enter this niche market.
Hey, people have got to eat and most talented artists who agree to toil on commercial projects want to be compensated equitably.
Without a sharp rise in consumer demand for classic-style PC AGs, no big publishers or investors will touch the genre. Retailers are the same way.
So now, the very best and brightest new gamemaking stars (including writers, designers, animators, programmers, etc.) are working on the type of products that do yield healthy sales and the money guys are backing those projects, not adventures. Can anyone really blame them?
Cheers, Terry
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| 20 OCT 2008 at 8:50pm |
ButterproofSorcerer Apprentice
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Status : Online | So now, the very best and brightest new gamemaking stars (including writers, designers, animators, programmers, etc.) are working on the type of products that do yield healthy sales and the money guys are backing those projects, not adventures. Can anyone really blame them
Of course not, Terry, but it's not blaming them, it's just gripping to the air: "oh I wish they make more adventures like that!". Not their fault.
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| 20 OCT 2008 at 9:22pm |
Terry PenrodGrand Inquisitor
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Actually Butterproof (sans Brush), several top AG designers tried to hang in there a lot longer than most people would. But being over-worked, under-appreciated and broke is no fun and in the end, making games should be fun - not to mention profitable - for the creators too.
Cheers, Terry
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| 26 OCT 2008 at 5:46pm |
ButterproofSorcerer Apprentice
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Status : Online | Absolutely right Terry, they must do what's profittable in first orden, then if they can, have fun. As in almost all jobs...
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| 28 OCT 2008 at 4:15pm |
LadyDiIntergalactic Janitor
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Status : Online | I found the article amazingly spot-on for one written in 1989, but has anyone followed the link for Old Man Murray? This made me laugh right out loud several times!
http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html
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| 28 OCT 2008 at 9:25pm |
Steve VSorcerer Apprentice
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Status : Online | Originally Posted By LadyDi (28 OCT 2008 4:15pm)
I found the article amazingly spot-on for one written in 1989, but has anyone followed the link for Old Man Murray? This made me laugh right out loud several times!
http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html
I think I've read that before, its a bit harsh to use one example of a dodgy puzzle to generalise about all Adventure games but taking into account that Gabriel Knight 3 is considered one of the all-time greats you can see the guy's point.. I wonder how many hard core adventure players even recognised the flawed logic involved in solving it? Even the 'try everything and see what happens' school of solving would struggle with the concept of disguising yourself as a clean shaven man by creating a fake mustache and altering his passport to match :-/
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