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| 7 APR 2009 at 6:50pm |
shadow9d9Sorcerer Apprentice
Posts : 295
Joined: 17 JUN 2006
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By Terry_Penrod (7 APR 2009 6:45pm)
.
Yeah riiiiiiight Shadow.
We tell you the straight, honest truth in a perfectly civil tone of voice.
You throw a hissy fit and leave.
Well pal, don't let the forum door hit you in the butt on the way out.
Cheers, Terry
No, you are right. The genre is dead because of myst's numbers. I admit it.
That "straight honest truth" is just way too much for me to handle.
Being passive aggressive is not civil, but those that are self-righteous always delude themselves into thinking it is the case.
Later, "pal." I cannot compete with such logic.
Disclaimer:&&&&Please do not take my opinions personally. I have strong opinions that may differ harshly with other popular opinions. I also have a rather direct way of expressing them. Keep this in mind when reading and do not get upset!
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| 7 APR 2009 at 7:02pm |
Terry PenrodGrand Inquisitor
Posts : 6693
Joined: 16 OCT 2004
Location: US, Texas
Status : Offline | .
You also whined like a baby, cast your petty insults and stomped out Shadow.
Please stay gone this time.
Cheers, Terry
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| 7 APR 2009 at 7:24pm |
shadow9d9Sorcerer Apprentice
Posts : 295
Joined: 17 JUN 2006
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By Terry_Penrod (7 APR 2009 7:01pm)
.
You also whined like a baby, cast your petty insults and stomped out Shadow.
Please stay gone this time.
Cheers, Terry
More insults and smears? Shocking!
Keep that "civility" coming.
You aren't capable of keeping your smug self righteousness in check. This is no surprise to me. It oozes out of every post you make.
Disclaimer:&&&&Please do not take my opinions personally. I have strong opinions that may differ harshly with other popular opinions. I also have a rather direct way of expressing them. Keep this in mind when reading and do not get upset!
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| 7 APR 2009 at 7:42pm |
Terry PenrodGrand Inquisitor
Posts : 6693
Joined: 16 OCT 2004
Location: US, Texas
Status : Offline | .
Oh good lord, now it won't leave.
Cheers, Terry
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| 7 APR 2009 at 7:45pm |
loobilooPrivate Detective
Posts : 598
Joined: 3 APR 2008
Location: UK
Status : Offline | Hey! Please can't you all calm down & disgree without being personal & rude (& apologise myself on the occasions in the past of going there myself). We're all here because we like Adventure Games & I like looking here because unliike a lot of other forums the posts are for the most part heart felt & sometimes intelligent [smiley=laughing.gif] even if you don't agree with them! I don't want to see anyone else 'resigning'!
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| 7 APR 2009 at 8:03pm |
Terry PenrodGrand Inquisitor
Posts : 6693
Joined: 16 OCT 2004
Location: US, Texas
Status : Offline | .
We were all being perfectly civil until you-know-who decided to throw a hissy fit.
Cheers, Terry
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| 7 APR 2009 at 8:16pm |
SirDaveGuild Master
Posts : 4941
Joined: 17 OCT 2002
Location: US
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By shadow9d9 (7 APR 2009 6:36pm)
I cannot compete with such logic.
My sense is that the above is more at work than:
Originally Posted By shadow9d9 (7 APR 2009 6:36pm)
Assumptions, lack of actual responses to arguments, I get it.
The future ain't what it used to be!
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| 7 APR 2009 at 9:52pm |
KarstenSorcerer Apprentice
Posts : 347
Joined: 23 SEP 2006
Location: DK
Status : Offline | The thing with numbers these days is that sales do not take into account the sales done on the internet. This goes for both adventure games and rpgs as well. Some sources estimates or guesses that at least half of the sales for both rpgs and adventure games are actually done over the internet, through either Amazon or The Adventure Shop. Or from places like Interact CD or Got Game Entertainment.
I know, I mainly by my adventure games over the net these days as very few adventure games seem to make to the retail stores; direct downloads (say from Direct 2 Drive or Steam) are not included in the sales figures as well. Thus, the sales figures is a bit off...
And yes, Myst was a grandseller in its day. However, back then, there weren't much competition. Today, there is. We have far more games, and game genres to play today.
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| 7 APR 2009 at 11:40pm |
Terry PenrodGrand Inquisitor
Posts : 6693
Joined: 16 OCT 2004
Location: US, Texas
Status : Offline | .
Sales records dating back a decade or more aside, the fall of the PC AG genre from a popular retail category to a what it is today can be traced not just to the proliferation of other new game types, but also to the rise of full 3D, real-time technology and Internet use.
The latter has grown tremendously over the last 15 years and millions more people are now accessing the web via broadband connections using vastly improved PCs. This technological boom in turn has led to an explosion of online MP gaming - as well as the ability to download full 3D games and large patches in a fraction of the time it used to. Large mod communities have also sprung up around the net.
So as previously stated, there was a combination of powerful elements in play that "conspired" to draw attention and sales away from traditional adventures, which by nature don't lend themselves to MP gaming, player modding or EPs. The benefits of full 3D, real-time graphics, advanced physics and improved AI are also not nearly as dramatic in puzzle-based games as they are in action titles and newer strategies.
Thus the latest technology was applied faster, easier and more effectively to shooters, RPGs, action-adventures, sports sims, etc. - not just on the PC and Mac platforms, but also on all the big video console systems.
Now we have a global mass market of players that have come to expect all the above cool features and at least to date, PC AGs have not met those higher expectations. Therefore, the vast majority of big publishers, developers and sellers have turned away from the genre and THAT more than anything else has dictated and defined the current state of the genre.
Cheers, Terry
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| 8 APR 2009 at 12:31am |
CarolineJA+ Overseer
Posts : 16540
Joined: 28 JAN 2007
Location: AU
Status : Offline | Surely, the sales figures of any game are worthless numbers without being considered in context of what people were doing at that time?
The internet as we know it only came into being in the 80s and back then owing a home computer was an extremely geeky thing to do. I had one but I was considered an oddity for it by everyone I knew. Console games existed but they were still a kiddy thing.
Now, my experience of the 80s and 90s is further coloured by being in Australia on the bottom of the planet which only shows how context is crucial when looking at experiences/memories AND statistics.
Most young people today who play games can't remember a time without them so they have no idea how revolutionary such old-fashioned items were at the time.
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| 8 APR 2009 at 1:27am |
SirDaveGuild Master
Posts : 4941
Joined: 17 OCT 2002
Location: US
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By Caroline (8 APR 2009 12:30am)
The internet as we know it only came into being in the 80s...
I had no idea things were so advanced down under!
As late as 1993, I was sticking my old-fashioned phone handle into a modem to communicate with various BBSs, in 1994 considered it a major advance to be on Compuserve with my 33.6K modem (while during the same period eyeing that Internet-in-a-Box package at the local Egghead store), and thought I'd died & gone to Heaven when I first got on the internet as we know it using Windows 95 in late 1995.
The future ain't what it used to be!
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| 8 APR 2009 at 1:56am |
IviniaGuild Master
Posts : 4459
Joined: 7 JUN 2003
Location: US
Status : Offline | [smiley=rofl.gif] Shhh, SirDave. When you get up there in age, the decades tend to blur together.
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| 8 APR 2009 at 2:45am |
An_InklingSpace Cadet
Posts : 171
Joined: 20 JUN 2008
Status : Online | Originally Posted By shadow9d9 (7 APR 2009 6:36pm)
Assumptions, lack of actual responses to arguments, I get it. You don't like what I have to say so smearing and going after me is the best resort.
As Terry has said, we're not about to go hunting for 15 year old sales figures just to disprove a generalisation you made - ie. that AGs have never sold particularly well in comparison to other genres. Someone gave the example of Myst, as its massive sales figures are something that come easily to mind when thinking of AGs in the 90s. You countered with some ridiculous comment about it being bundled with PCs.
Finding anything like accurate sales figures for older games is not going to be an easy task. However, I think everyone will agree that the shelf space, and gaming media interest afforded AGs (eg. magazine column inches) in the 80s to mid 90s was far greater than today. This, I assume unchallenged fact, would strongly suggest that AG games, in general, sold more than they do now in a comparative sense, rather than just being isolated to Myst. As we see today with the low level of gaming media interest, and the harshness of that which is afforded to AGs, the gaming media follow, and almost always praise, what sells. Whatever your thoughts on the genre's health, most AGs just aint it these days. This approach by the gaming media makes perfect sense, as the more popular the products they focus on in their pages, the more people are likely to buy their magazines.
Who is this great burdensome slavering dog-thing that mediocres my every thought? ([i]Nick Cave - We Call Upon the Author[/i])
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| 8 APR 2009 at 3:26am |
SirDaveGuild Master
Posts : 4941
Joined: 17 OCT 2002
Location: US
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By Ivinia (8 APR 2009 1:56am)
[smiley=rofl.gif] Shhh, SirDave. When you get up there in age, the decades tend to blur together.
Come to think of it, I do recall the arpanet as we know it in the 80s! 8-)
The future ain't what it used to be!
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| 8 APR 2009 at 7:05am |
CarolineJA+ Overseer
Posts : 16540
Joined: 28 JAN 2007
Location: AU
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By Ivinia (8 APR 2009 1:56am)
[smiley=rofl.gif] Shhh, SirDave. When you get up there in age, the decades tend to blur together.
oh... [smiley=doh.gif] ....shut up..... [smiley=rofl.gif]
My next door neighbour set himself up as an ISP before we called it the internet. He told me about it as the 'world wide web'. Back then he had a huge aerial on the roof to service his customers via radio waves.... and it totally ruined my TV reception and then I found out I had no rights to complain. That was prior to 1991.
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| 11 APR 2009 at 4:19pm |
jalexSchattenjger
Posts : 2503
Joined: 5 MAR 2003
Status : Offline | There is a lot of interesting views here and I agree with almost all of them. AG's have changed a lot. Movies have too. I have been watching re-makes and the old originals always seem better to me.
I havn't been playing AG's for a while and I recently bought some more. The older games had a lot of clues to keep a person on track and not wondering what to do to advance the story and they seem to leave them out now. To me this means that an average AG'er could never play them without a walkthrough like we used to do in the days before the internet. A lot of them also have a poor endings leaving a person wondering what happened to certain charators in the game and how it all came out. I don't like having to make up my own ending but I guess some do. To me it seems unfinished. This seems to be common now in a lot of the new movies as well. I don't read many books but the ones I have read seem to end well so why is this hapening because I think books have a lot to do with movies and games.
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| 11 APR 2009 at 5:18pm |
KarstenSorcerer Apprentice
Posts : 347
Joined: 23 SEP 2006
Location: DK
Status : Offline | I think the reason why so many Adventure Gamers these days seem to not get to the ending that well i.e. feeling unfinished is that the developers probably ran out of money or funding for the game. And then we get the sequels...Nothing wrong with that, in my book
On a more general note, I like open endings where I, as the player, can think for myself about what happened - after the ending of the game.
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| 11 APR 2009 at 6:36pm |
loobilooPrivate Detective
Posts : 598
Joined: 3 APR 2008
Location: UK
Status : Offline | I have to disagree Karsten, if I buy a game I want the story to be complete in itself! I find it difficult enough to keep track of a plot in a TV serial aired on a weekly basis & a continuation of a game to get more of the story can take at least 2 years to turn up if it turns up at all! I don't mind ambiguous endings where you are left wondering a little e.g. Paradise, & games that tie up a story but leave 'teasers' such as Culpa Innata & Dreamfall. A game series that I think does particularly well in an 'episodic' form is Agon - each story is self- contained but part of a much larger picture envisaged by the developers & linked by the board games.
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