Current State of Adventure Games by John Florez – Welcome to Just Adventure + – Articles

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John Florez began his career as a record producer in Los Angeles, where his clients included: A&M, Arista, Capitol, CBS, Elektra, RCA and Warner Brothers Records.

Later, his knowledge of software applications led to training contracts with Intel Corporation and SkillPath Seminars, where he facilitated 2 day seminars across the U.S. and Canada for corporate and government technicians.

He is currently a software entrepreneur and developer.

The Adventure Company’s much-heralded “Syberia” was the straw that broke this veteran gamer’s back. Thus, I feel the need to lament, and wax on somewhat non-eloquently, about the current state of adventure gaming.

STATIC
In a race to employ more powerful engines with increasingly stunning graphics, developers have taken the “adventure” out of gaming altogether. Give me the old Tex Murphy “Pandora Directive” and “Realms of the Haunting” engines ANY DAY over what’s currently on the market. With the mouse and/or keyboard we could navigate in “real time” … down hallways, under bridges, around lasers, through mazes. This “real time” navigation immersed the gamer in the environment. With today’s engines, we’ve become spectators – gawking at artistry we can only witness from afar. It’s no wonder that action games continue to grow in popularity, because they offer the very movement and motion the adventure genre abandoned long ago.

MECHANICAL
Though they helped to launch the “salad days” of adventure gaming, Myst and Riven must share the blame for what we’ve become. They were beautiful, static, and their puzzles were largely mechanical in nature … gears, cogs, hubs, ramps, bridges and doors. In this mechanical evolution we lost: dexterity (avoidance) puzzles (running, stooping, sneaking, hiding, etc.) and intellectual puzzles: trivia – math, literature, music, news; misc – sliders, crosswords, anagrams, musical notes, mazes, etc. Unlike several JA reviewers, I NEVER grew tired of these challenges.

ANIMATED
When “Overseer” cost so damn much and earned so little, our “bottom line” as adventure gamers became immediately apparent. Animations took the place of video cut-aways, and resulted in our trying desperately to relate to cartoon characters instead of real people. Was it cost effective? Certainly. Was it de-humanizing? Of course. I, for one, would rather communicate with Tex and Chelsea (and several of the name actors that appeared as their co-stars) than with any 3D, lip-synched drawing of a person or animal. Wouldn’t you?

DIALOGUE-DRIVEN
Speaking of communicating … Am I the only one who tires of endless REQUIRED dialogue? The great adventure games (Pandora, ROTH, Slivers, Lighthouse, Amber, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, The Cassandra Galleries, Timelapse, Ripper, Cydonia, 9, more …) thrived on the premise that “less was more.” And it was.

THIRD PERSON
Third person games are now commonplace. And are also dehumanizing. At least with Gabriel Knight & The Beast Within, you moved a “real” Gabriel across the screen (while, I might add, talking to “real” people). In Syberia, I almost nodded off (after endless dialogues) waiting for Kate Walker to arrive at her next pre-defined hot spot, which was often only a few steps away. Is it too much to ask: Where did our “zoom”, “map” and “turbo” modes go? Are they no longer considered essential by this new breed of developers?

Frankly, fellow adventure gamers, I think we are just so desperate for ANYTHING DECENT within our genre, that we’re willing to accept beauty and technology over depth and content. Wow, did you see those graphics … hear those voice-overs … listen to that music? You see, because the marketplace no longer produces human-based adventure games, we have ceased to demand of it just one ounce of humanity, and have instead, become synthetic voyeurs.