The Fate of a Dying Genre

The Fate of a Dying Genre

By Peter Rollo

Are adventure games dead? Nah, but definitely as we know them today. Adventure games evolve over the years, just as the technology that runs them. Change is often welcome when it comes to computers and technology, but as soon as people try to change something we are all used to, it’s not welcome.

When adventure games started to lose their text-parsers, gamers were upset, complaining that the icon interface makes the games too easy and not as challenging. Moving up to the “no-typing” interface was a big deal.

Now adventure gamers are worried again. But this time it’s not about changing the interface, it’s something much bigger. This change that is about to take place will change adventure games forever.

One thing that is motivating the change is sales. Up until a few years ago, adventure games were in their prime. This was of course before first-person shooters and real-time strategy games. We must also take into consideration the gaming audience of today. As computers become more commonplace (which is happening very rapidly), it’s not only the adults that own and use computers. Every child knows what a computer is, and almost every child knows how to use one. More “senseless” games such as Doom and Quake dominate sales nowadays. The desire for involving story and puzzle oriented games is waning. Adventure games now rarely hold a spot in the top-ten sales charts (with the exception of one game, which has always been a plague to the genre, contributing to its fate). More and more developers just don’t want to make adventure games anymore. The profit is rather small, and adventure games are often the most costly type of game to make.

Adventure games with the first-person perspective (Myst-type view) will probably continue as they are right now. If they were to ever change, it would probably be for the worse. I really don’t see these types of adventures changing before they die out.

But some adventure game developers are beginning to test this 3D craze. LucasArts and Sierra On-Line are attempting 3D, but Activision (Zork series) is sticking with 2D-type adventure for the time being. Could 3D be the fate of adventures? Could combining genres (Mask of Eternity will be action/adventure) be the future? Taking into consideration the sales of adventure games right now … I would say so. Sierra On-Line especially is looking to revive the genre and keep it alive. But until we see how this new crop of adventure games sell and play, we can only make educated guesses.

Adventure games are not dead … just dead as we know them. Classics will always live on.