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SHUT UP! by Ray Ivey June 2003

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A loving message to our readers from Ray Ivey.

Okay, folks, I’m usually pretty mild-mannered. I like being the nice guy. I celebrate diversity. I love friendly debate. I respect everyone’s opinions (unless, of course, you like white chocolate, Henry James or Eminem).

However, there’s an issue that’s been getting me progressively more and more steamed in the last few months. I’ve tried to ignore it, but just like those growing allegations about the election fraud in Florida in 2000, it just won’t go away.

So, fasten your seat belts, Dear Readers, and continue reading, if you dare, as we post

RAY’S FIRST RANT

I’d like to introduce our Topic of Bile by quoting a sample letter JA+ received recently:

Why the hell was Broken Game 3 awarded Best Adventure LetGame 2003 E3???

Aren’t you the one who hates bastardized adventure games?? With all it’s action elements and its pathetic disgusting looking 3d graphics Broken Game 3 doesn’t even deserve to be covered on your website so why the damn award for a piece of shit like that????

And with keyboard controls???? Come on man! Since when are “real” adventure games controlled by keyboard??? Broken Game 3 is nothing but a Tomb Raider ripoff with some odd adventure elements thrown in to please adventure players.

Mr. Cecil’s elegant response?? Give me a freaking break! That british faggot should be dragged into the streets and shot.

Get ready to jump and shoot in Broken Game 3. And be grateful to people like charles motherfucking cecil that the adventure genre is taking a dive into total destruction and 3d action mania.

I of course respect our reader’s privacy, so I’ll keep the writer of this charming missive anonymous, except to tell you that his email address is [email protected] and he signed his name “Gaston.”

Let’s begin by scolding me. How petty, you must be thinking, to actually quote such a stupid letter. And you’re right! Petty, petty petty. And that’s the central point of today’s rant. Pettiness.

ME TALK PETTY ONE DAY

But before I can even get to the pettiness, we have to deal with another thing that’s been sticking in my otherwise kind and tolerant craw: IGNORANCE.

Aside from displaying his lack of knowledge of basic grammar (“it’s” doesn’t take an apostrophe unless you are meaning to make a contraction of “it is”), Mr. Gaston displays a shocking lack of understanding of basic game genres. He accuses Broken Sword 3 of being a Tomb Raider clone.

Uh, WRONG. The Tomb Raider games are classic examples of a genre called “action-adventure.” This is a completely separate genre from “adventure.” What makes the difference? It’s actually quite easy to define. In an action-adventure, some form of combat is as important to the gameplay as puzzle-solving and story. The Tomb Raider games are a very satisfying combination (for many players, anyway) of these three types of gameplay elements. Other great examples of action-adventures would be the last two Indiana Jones games, Outcast, the Resident Evil series (and all survival horror games, for that matter) and the Prince of Persia games.

While there may be some combat in the final build of BK: The Sleeping Dragon, I didn’t see one shred of evidence of any in the playable portions of the game we were shown at E3.

IN DEFENSE OF THAT BRITISH F&%#(T

Okay, big flippin’ deal, you might be saying to yourself. Why go off on one letter from an ill-informed, ignorant, illiterate homophobe?

Because, and it pains me to report this, Dear Readers, but Randy and I get letters like this every week.

And every day, I read opinions like this in fora across the internet.

And, though I know it could put my very readership at risk for saying so, I’ve got to say it. And I say the following with all the love in my heart:

HERE GOES: We adventure gamers are the biggest bunch of hair-triggered, provincial, neophobic, judgmental whiny babies since that huge group of southern American women who, sixty-five years ago, threatened to boycott the film of “Gone With the Wind” because David O. Selznick hired a Brit to play Scarlet O’Hara.

SO JUST WHAT THE HELL IS AN ADVENTURE GAME, THEN?

Yep, I’m feeling arrogant enough to venture an actual strict definition of what a Pure Adventure Game is.

ADVENTURE GAME: A computer/video game wherein the gameplay is a mixture of story, exploration and puzzle solving (in almost ANY ratio of the three), WITHOUT containing SIGNIFICANT combat elements.

There you have it. I stand by this definition. By this definition even story-free games like Jewels of the Oracle and Safecracker are “pure” adventure games. So are Azrael’s Tear and In Cold Blood, because even though both have combat, in neither game is the combat a significant element of the gameplay.

Adventure purists, who’ve been hyperventilating ever since adventure games began inching toward 3D, don’t understand the difference between “action” and “combat.”

In a 3D environment, the game designer is freed to expand puzzle solving into the physical world. In a game like Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon, this means that there can be a puzzle like this: How can Nico get from this hotel room, through the balcony, and into the other hotel room without falling or being detected? I submit that this sort of puzzle has absolutely as much right to be in an adventure game as the “How to make Rube Goldberg tea” in Temujin or “How to make a monkey wrench” in Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge. It’s just a different kind of puzzle.

Just because some of the new wave of adventure games having characters that can move through realistic environments doesn’t make these games “action” games. In most cases, it doesn’t even make them “action-adventure” games.

I find it incredibly short-sighted and, frankly, ungrateful when I see the sort of petty sniping that ensues on our beloved message boards. The things that have been written about Charles Cecil literally make me sick. This is one of the most creative, dynamic and proven designers in the history of the adventure game genre.

If you adopted this short-sighted criteria, here’s a classic “adventure” game that wouldn’t make the cut: Bad Mojo. Essentially that game is ALL “action.” Or how about Phantasmagoria and Are You Afraid of the Dark? Both games end with frantic, life or death chase scenes involving the player. Sounds suspiciously action-y to me!

Are you folks forgetting all of the fist fighting in Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis? How about the game of darts in The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Rose Tattoo? Ooh, let’s not forget the battle in the pumpkin patch in Sanitarium. Or the final showdown battles in Ripper and Gabriel Knight 3. Or the various deadly amusement park gauntlets in Part 2 of The Quivering. Or the gunfight in Dust: A Tale of the Wired West. Or evading the robots in Alcatraz in Tex Murphy: Overseer? These are all considered to be completely respectable, if not classic, “pure adventure” games.

And guess what much-beloved, endlessly-discussed game on boards like this ISN’T an adventure game at all? That’s right, Realms of the Haunting. By any reasonable definition, that’s an action adventure: the combat never stops in it.

I’ve said it a million times and I’ll say it once again. Anytime you are dealing with an endeavor that has anything to do with computers, you don’t get to wish things wouldn’t progress forward. The world of computers will ALWAYS move quickly. And of all genres, only adventure players constantly whine about game technology advancing. Without exception, players of every other genre welcome new technologies with wide open eyes. If you want your games to stay frozen in time, I suggest you develop a newfound appreciation for board games or jigsaw puzzles.

CONCLUSION: OPEN A NEW WINDOW

Anyone a musical comedy fan? (Anyone still reading?!) Remember these lyrics from Jerry Herman’s Mame?:

Open a new window
Open a new door
Travel a new highway
That’s never been tried before
Before you find you’re a dull fellow
Punching the same clock
Walking the same tightrope
As everyone on the block . . .

We are living in the most exciting times to EVER play computer and video games, my friends. This is really true. What overwhelmed me the most at E3 this year was the sheer width of the umbrella of today’s game world. There is truly something for everyone out there. New technologies are expanding what’s possible in gaming faster than designers can even figure out how to exploit them.

Therefore, with the best will in the world, I entreat my adventure-loving friends to take a moment, take a deep breath, and go the dictionary. That book has a much broader definition of “adventure” than the one I used for “adventure game.”

TOUGH LOVE

I’m awfully sorry for the edge in my voice, Dear Readers, but as always I have to tell it to you as I see it. You, of course, are free to snort at me and go back to playing The Cassandra Galleries.

But I beg you to open a new window. There’s a staggering world of adventure out there in the world of computer and video games. Instead of whining that games aren’t the same as they were in 1992, why not open your eyes and see all the wonderful things that are headed your way?