The State of Adventure Gaming
By Randy
Sluganski
August 1998
The dog days of summer are upon us and
adventure gaming has come to a complete standstill. One nice thing about this
time of the year is that the paucity of new releases gives us the opportunity
to finish games that, for numerous reasons, never captivated our attention the
first time around. So look out, Ripper and Ecstatica 2. Beware,
Lighthouse and Obsidian, I’ll beat you now even if I have to resort
to a (blush) walkthrough! If you are not lucky enough to have any unfinished adventure
games for the computer left to play, then check out my new article, Undiscovered
Gold, for a new twist in adventure gaming.
In the meantime, I thought
it would be intriguing to conduct a survey of our readers. We are the first and
still the best site devoted purely to adventure gaming and I would like to know
more about us. Who are we, how many hours do we spend on one game, do we share
some common interests besides adventure gaming? What we will use this information
for once it is compiled? I don’t know yet, but I would not be surprised if somewhere
down the road a Sierra or LucasArts requested such information so that they better
knew how to tailor their adventure games to their audience. As an added incentive,
one applicant will be randomly chosen to receive a brand new adventure game graciously
donated by Interplay. Look for the questionnaire next week and please tell your
friends about it.
Are adventure games dead? This is a hot subject right
now and I will address it in an upcoming two-part article. But if they are dead,
then we need look no further than the September 1998 issue of Computer Gaming
World to find one of the culprits. An article entitled “100+ Hot New
Games” previews games expected to ship in 1998. The prerequisite adventure
games–Grim Fandango, GK3, Redguard, Vulcan Fury, MOE and Good and Evil
are covered. But in the wrap-up section called “In the Works,” the
editors of CGW state, “the adventure game genre is floundering right now,
and the prognosis–except for the games on this list–is not good.” They
then state that there “hardly are any (adventure) games in development.”
What!? How about Big Brother by Media X, Redjack by THQ, Morpheus
by Piranha, just to name a few. You guys need to get your noses out of the
butts of the Quake clones and the simulations and look around.
Speaking
of being myopic when it comes to adventure games, a source high up tells me that
some of the bigger web sites won’t even preview some adventure games unless the
game is distributed by a big-name publisher. Don’t believe me? Take a look at
some of the bigger web sites and see if you find previews of the games I just
mentioned above. You won’t. Maybe it is time that we as devoted adventure gamers
quit frequenting these sites and quit buying these magazines that are hastening
the demise of the adventure game through their apathy for our genre.
On
a final note for this month, we will soon have some advertisers but are looking
for more. I did notice that another adventure-related site took pride in the fact
that even though they had advertisers, that they did not and would not accept
review copies. Sorry, but I’ll take all of the review copies and demos I can get.
I am not some starstruck fanboy who would let my opinion of a game be influenced
by a gratis review copy. I honestly do not think that there is a company out there
that thinks that anyone is going to give them a good review of a bad game just
because they sent out a review copy. We are not Consumer Reports. What
began as a fan site has quickly become a leading source of information on the
Internet for adventure gamers. Many major companies–Sierra, THQ, Southpeak, Piranha,
Mindscape and more–have been kind enough to visit and positively comment on our
site. This only encourages us to try even harder to please our readers by providing
the best in adventure news. Certainly our devotion to stimulating our readers’
minds is why we have just won the prestigious Cowan Domain Website of the Year
award for 1998. Congratulations to Craig and to everyone on the staff who works
so hard.
‘Til next month, as always, happy adventure gaming! And don’t forget
to fill out the questionnaire.
