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The first adventure games I played, back in 1999, were Myst
and Riven.
I only threw Myst into the CD drive because it had come free
with my new G3 PowerMac, and I’d heard a little bit about it being
very popular. I thought, Okay, this is another one of those dumb kiddie
fads. Let’s see what the fuss is about. So I wandered around Myst
island for an hour or so, before it dawned on me that I didn’t have
the faintest idea how to progress. So much for the kiddie game theory.
As I started, slowly, to figure things out, I was stunned to realize
that here was a mass entertainment product that hadn’t, like all the
others, been dumbed down.

I spent a couple of weeks slowly plodding my way through the various
ages of Myst. And finally, almost incredibly, I got to the
end. Okay, at first I got to the wrong end. But at least the game
was over. On my second try I got it right. And I had a tremendous
feeling of satisfaction of a type I don’t frequently experience in
life. Oh, sure, it was just a game. But Myst had done what
art is supposed to do — it exhilarated me, for however brief a time.
It didn’t just help me pass the time. It was, for me, a genuine experience.
At which point I ran out and bought Riven. Which gave me an
even more satisfying, and challenging, run for my money. And this
time, I guessed right at the end.

Once again, it had taken me a solid couple of weeks to painstakingly
crawl my way through Riven. I spent four days alone looking for the
last of those spinning, squeaking, wooden ball thingees. Modern computing
was still something of a novelty for me then. I’d been using an IBM
XT clone for word processing throughout the previous decade, and had
essentially missed the entire graphic computer game explosion of the
Nineties. Hey, I still had a working Atari 5200 console hooked up
to my TV. Pac Man! Space Invaders! Defender!
Wizard of Wor! What more could computer gaming possibly offer?

Even the internet was new to me. I’d signed up for dial-up only a
few months before I played Myst. While I was struggling to
get through both of Cyan’s games, I had no notion that such a thing
as a walkthrough existed. And then surfing the web one day, I stumbled
across Jim Stephenson’s great (now defunct) “unofficial”
Riven site. He had set up a beautiful, multipage hint-through
for Riven. Wow, I thought. If I’d only known about this earlier.

In the meantime, I was scrambling to find another fix, another game
like Myst and Riven. I didn’t as yet realize that games
like that were few and far between to begin with, and ones that would
work on a Mac even harder to locate. At last, I landed a copy of Crystal
Key for Mac from Dreamcatcher (now the Adventure Company).
Once again, I plunged in, banging my head against the wall most of
the way. I was ecstatic. And then I got truly, terminally stuck. I
wandered over those pastel Photoshopped alien worlds for hours. I
didn’t have a clue. But this time, I knew there was probably a walkthrough
on the web somewhere. That would get me going. Sure enough. I downloaded
it, scanned through to where I’d gotten stuck and realized that —
I’d simply overlooked a fairly obvious drawer.

I was heartsick. Really. Heartsick. My stomach hurt. I started to
feel faint. Now, admittedly, this is an overreaction. But, nevertheless,
I’d lost my chance of experiencing with this game the exhilaration
that I’d gotten from Myst and Riven. I’d traded expediency
for satisfaction. Being stuck in an adventure game is frustrating
— but using a walkthrough permanently, indelibly spoils the experience
of playing one. I plunged ahead and finished Crystal Key. But
my sense of “completion” was incomplete. The walkthrough
had halved my enjoyment. And to this day, I still can’t believe I
overlooked that damn compartment!

You cannot unlearn something. Once you know, or are given, the answer,
that’s it. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle, or the toothpaste
back into the genie, or whatever tired cliche you want to drag out.
Never. If you’re one of those people who wonder why some folks get
so worked up about others using spoiler tags on game forum sites,
this is the reason. If someone accidentally gives them the solution,
that puzzle is ruined. Understandably, many visitors to these sites,
and many ardent game players themselves, think such an attitude is
silly. It is silly. It is, after all, only a game. It’s like the people
who say that golf is silly — adults knocking a little white ball
around a field. Golf is silly. But the feeling of satisfaction one
can get from playing golf expertly is a rarer thing on this earth
than gold. It’s not the little white ball that matters. It’s one’s
battle against oneself, against one’s limitations, that matters. Solving
a challenging adventure or puzzle game, however silly the game may
seem to others, is a similar test of one’s mental abilities. When
you cheat, you only cheat yourself.

Which, of course, is perfectly all right, if that’s your preference.
Here, though, is where the problem arises.

Back in the Nineties, during the heyday of the graphic adventure
and the dawn of the world wide web, back when Sierra On-Line was still
in California and LucasArts was still producing adventure games, the
games were noticeably harder. Certainly, they had far less built-in
“help.” Nor was there the extensive worldwide gaming community
only a click away to resort to. True, gamers were posting to bulletin
boards, and you could always telephone the game maker’s hotline (for
a pretty penny usually.) But there were no walkthroughs or even “strategy
guides” like there is today. Most gamers were on their own, unless
they had a buddy who’d gotten the same game for Xmas. Adventure gaming
back then, apparently, was more adventurous. People struggled to get
through a game for months sometimes. Moreover, adventure game developers
were apparently under the mistaken impression that customers wanted
challenging games. Or, more likely, they simply preferred challenging
games themselves.

Nowadays, game developers don’t have to wonder what gamers want.
They get flooded with instantaneous feedback on their websites. And
much of that feedback is cries for help. And cries for easier and
easier games. Naturally, the developers, fond of making money, want
to satisfy their customers’ demands. Which is why today’s adventure
games, for all their gorgeous imagery and symphonic sounds and astounding
refresh rates, keep getting, on average, easier and easier. They all
now come jam-packed with all types of help systems. Guides and walkthroughs
and journals and highlighters and — it appears that what most gamers
are most interested in is assistance, not games.

I know I’m going to sound like a spoilsport in saying this, but,
uh, you know, the whole point of a game is to be challenging. If there’s
nothing to puzzle over, there’s no puzzle. One could argue that getting
stuck is the whole raison d’etre of an adventure. The “fun”
is supposed to come from solving the difficulties you encounter, not
in petitioning the publisher for a patch to skip over them. Without
snags, an adventure game is just a mindless joyride, an amusement
park in megabytes. That said, I think that’s what more and more people
want in an “adventure.” They want a pretty grand tour of
some fabulous land. For them, puzzles in an adventure game are like
a series of toll gates on a road-trip vacation.

As a result, the modern commercial adventure game is morphing into
something quite different from what it started out as during the late
Eighties. It’s turning into something closer to a digital storybook.
Of course, there is still a sizable number of gamers who prefer the
traditional adventure. So game developers are now put in the odd position
of trying to simultaneously appeal to two essentially opposed camps
— people who like puzzles and people who don’t. The way, or so it
appears to me, they’ve been dealing with this dilemma so far has been
to load up a traditionally challenging adventure with a boatload of
those help features. That way, everyone can build their own game,
like choosing the toppings for a pizza. I wonder, however, or fear,
that the trend is now irreversible, and that eventually puzzles will
be dropped from adventures entirely — to placate the larger camp.

Obviously, this will destroy the adventure game for those of us who
like the older style. Now, I don’t expect to reverse this trend singlehandedly.
It would be like trying to turn back a flood with a Dixie cup. The
majority will get what it prefers and the minority will have to make
other plans. But before we go however gently into that good night,
let me make at least one argument to the hey-where’s-the-walkthrough?
crowd.

Patience, believe it or not, really is a virtue. When you use a walkthrough,
you really are only cheating yourself. I get a big kick out of people
who complain in forums that they played through a particular game
consulting the walkthrough and that it was no fun. Of course it’s
no fun. The walkthrough has drained not only all the challenge but
all the satisfaction out of the game.

Now, glitches and bugs and bad puzzle design are absolutely another
issue and of course the developer should eliminate those, or write
patches to fix them. I am talking strictly about basic adventure puzzles.
But when gamers write in to say that they don’t like mazes and couldn’t
the developer amend the game to eliminate the maze — I mean, I don’t
enjoy mazes either, but come on. Do people really expect developers
to customize the game for every single player?

I realize that many gamers who use walkthroughs only do so to get
them through one or two rough spots, and that they do prefer to solve
the puzzles on their own. I also have nothing against hints. A really
good hint can be priceless. Still, the overall trend is for easier
games. If more people really preferred challenging games, they’d be
pestering the publishers for less help and greater difficulty. I also
know that many gamers don’t have the luxury of dwelling on a puzzle
for hours or days. That’s fine. The truth remains, though, that for
those who do persist (and dogged persistence will get you over most
gaming humps), the reward is much greater. And for those people who
find recent adventure games boring — have you tried getting through
one entirely on your own? Without the in-game help?

Getting stuck in a game is an unpleasant feeling. Especially if one’s
friends are chatting or posting or tweeting about how they’re breezing
through it on the game’s forum and all those other proliferating social
networking sites. This social aspect of games is another important
new factor. Using a walkthrough is of course a sensible way to keep
up with the Joneses. I would suggest, however, playing a game and
not telling your friends about it. Keep the pressure off yourself.
And if you get stuck, don’t panic. Give the problem some thought.
Sleep on it. Give it a rest and go back to it later. Play another
game for a while. Eventually, you will figure out the solution (the
vast majority of the time it is something simple, like my long ago
Crystal Key drawer), and you will reap the full satisfaction that
a good adventure game can supply. Then go online and brag to your
friends.

I am not saying gamers shouldn’t use walkthroughs. People should
do whatever they like. However, I am saying gamers who tend to rely
on walkthroughs, for whatever reason, would find they enjoy almost
any adventure more without one. Greater patience in playing a game
isn’t one of those golden virtues you develop to benefit others. It
will benefit you.