The State of Adventure Gaming
From
My Keyboard to God’s Ears
Just Adventure is taking over the world. Seriously.
The lovely Cindy Kyser Morgan, who does our Eye
on Adventure column, is now also a reviewer for Computer Games Magazine,
home to another world-famous Cindy (big smooch blown your way Yans!). The
cute-as-a-button Audrey Wells, who does our Just
(Free) Adventure Games column and also maintains our links
page, is now the monthly adventure columnist for Computer Gaming World.
How did Audrey score such a prestigious job? As we have been advising adventure
gamers for months—she opened her big mouth and complained about their pathetic
lack of adventure game coverage and for once they listened. Boxes on retail shelves
across North America feature prominent quotes from JA reviews. Newspaper editors
have written asking for our opinion on the resurgence of the genre. PC Gamer
crowned us “the best adventure site on the web,” and we were asked
to make another appearance on the internationally broadcast Into Tomorrow radio
show, but we had to respectfully turn down the offer because …
The
Rugrats Aren’t the Only Ones Running Rampant in Paris
That’s right,
I’ll be dancing my way into the hearts of Frenchwomen across Gay Paree from December
17 to 21. Cryo Networks and Dreamcatcher have invited yours truly to a private
preview of their 2001 lineup. Just Adventure will be the first anywhere, in the
entire civilized world (which excludes parts of Cleveland, Ohio, and Mississauga,
Ontario), to bring you behind-the-scenes information on a new online adventure,
The Fog, and a top-secret project that I am not yet allowed to mention!
Plus you can rest assured that I will be knocking on closed doors in search of
scoops and an interview with the president of Cryo. How will Cryo handle an Ugly
American in their midst? How do you say Big Mac in French? Will Paris burn? Be
here next month, same Just Adventure time, same Just Adventure channel, for the
answer to these and other questions of national importance.
Don’t Bogart
That Kangaroo Tail
After France, we will be making a virtual visit to
Australia as we prepare for Adventure Survivor 2—The Outback Edition! This
time we want you, our readers, to choose the eight adventurers who should be on
the island. As I am sure you remember, the sole survivor of our first Adventure
Island Survivor was Tex Murphy, who then sealed his victory with a speech graciously
written by Tex Murphy creators Chris Jones and Aaron Conners. We can only imagine
what may happen this time around!
The other seven island rejects—Guy
Threepwood and his significant other, Simon the Sorcerer, April Ryan, Edward Carnby,
Twinsen, Laura Bow, and Grim Fandango’s Manny—are all ineligible.
Who would you choose to be stranded together in the wilds—Gabriel Knight,
Larry Laffer, that silly-looking bald guy from Nightlong? Simply email
me at [email protected] with
the word “Survivor” as your subject header. Suggest as many, or as few,
characters as you wish by January 21, 2001, and the top eight vote-getters will
suffer the misfortune of appearing in Adventure Survivor 2—The Outback Edition!
The
Hotel—Closed for the Season
Recently, a special adventure project
was cancelled due to lack of funding. The Hotel, an online adventure game,
lost its sponsor. Many readers were quick to attribute a lack of support from
the adventure community for the cancellation, which in small part is true. Some
placed the blame on specific adventure message boards that refused to publicize
the game because of their dislike of Just Adventure. But I hardly think that a
barely read message board moderated by zealots is the cause, either. Rather, the
reason The Hotel went out of business is because of Just Adventure.
For
you see, the developers of The Hotel asked Just Adventure if we would sponsor
their website—and we could not. And the reason we could not is because the
majority of the companies that make adventure games do not support Just Adventure
with any advertising. Look around the site. Do you see any advertisements for
Escape from Monkey Island, Myst 3, Stupid Invaders? Now look in the magazines
that continuously slam adventure games and glory at the two-page advertisements
that cost tens of thousands of dollars. The only companies that have ever supported
our efforts are SouthPeak and Dreamcatcher. (And yes, every time we give a Dreamcatcher
game a good grade, some idiot is sure to write and say, “The only reason
you gave that game an A is because the distributor advertises on your site.”
Of course I never receive such emails after reviews of games like Time Machine,
Pompei, or The Forgotten.) The sad truth is that if we don’t soon receive
support, then we may also close our doors, and anyone who knows me realizes it
won’t be for lack of trying.
No,
but I Will for a Cookie
While we’re on the subject of advertising, I
once received an email from a reader who berated me for using the word “sucks”
in a newsletter, so imagine my shock when I visited a competitor’s adventure site
and at the top of the page was a banner advertisement that featured a woman unzipping
her cut-off jeans and the question, “Would You Do It All For the Nookie?”
Rather than crawl on a soapbox and rant about sexism and stereotypes and rather
than dismissing the advertisement due to the age of the individuals running the
site, let me just assure our readers that if we ever have to debase our site with
this type of putrid advertising just because we are part of some network, well,
that’ll be the day I replay The New Adventures of the Time Machine.
We
Don’t Need Your Steenkin’ Business
Sometimes I feel like the Rodney
Dangerfield of adventure gaming. Witness my recent communications with Capcom.
Now for those of you who don’t own console systems, Capcom has a knack for creating
wonderful games—like Street Fighter and Resident Evil—and
then beating them to death with dozens of sequels. Recently they decided to make
a dedicated effort to attract the computer crowd by releasing some of their survival
horror games at an affordable price. Now you’re about to find out why console
games that are ported to PC usually end up in the budget bin a month after release.
Companies
like Capcom deal primarily with teenagers. They heavily advertise in magazines
like Electronic Gaming Monthly and comic books. When their products are
ported to computer, they continue to advertise to the same market instead of attempting
to attract the predominately adult computer crowd, not realizing that the teenagers
who want to play one of their games will have probably already done so on a console
system. So when approached by an adult, they do not know how to react. As our
readers know, we have recently attempted to broaden our scope to include console
and survival horror games in a belief that these are genres that an adventure
gamer would enjoy. Capcom, though, seems to have a different viewpoint on the
matter. A Capcom press representative, after I had the audacity to inquire as
to review copies of their computer products, wrote to me, “… we are
being extremely strict about adding new websites to our online product reviewers
list as we feel we are already covering major videogame websites.” In other
words, “we really don’t care about your 100,000 readers or computer adventure
gamers.” If you don’t care about us, then who are you marketing these games
to? Aren’t they considered action/adventure games? How many of you out there can
even name the two games that Capcom recently ported to computer? Chances are you
never will know—until you see them in the bargain bin at your local Electronics
Boutique.
Take a Walk on the Mild Side
We are always quick
to point out inequities in the gaming business, but for once I would like to congratulate
someone on his professionalism and dignity. Every month in PC Gamer, William
R. Trotter writes an opinion column entitled “Desktop General.” In the
January issue, he reprints a letter received from an irate reader. In a previous
opinion piece, Mr. Trotter was thinking out loud in print about a 1942 battle
and ventured into the always-dangerous “what if” territory. The irate
reader, who had actually participated in said battle, took Mr. Trotter to task
for playing armchair general and having the “audacity to second-guess the
actions of those of us who risked their lives in battle …”
Now
in an age where gamers, many of whom have probably never even seen a dead body,
insist on more realistic death scenes in their games, in an age where most columnists
defend their insipid morals with smart-ass replies, Trotter took the high road
and simply replied, “On behalf of all wargamers, I salute Mr. Hawkins and
his comrades for their valor and sacrifice. Sometimes, the words, ‘It’s only
a game’ seem pathetically lame.”
We desperately need more people like
William R. Trotter to represent mature gamers.
Please, Just Poke My Eyes
out with a Fork
Steven Kent is a god in this industry. His reviews have
appeared in every major publication in the United States. He has written a splendid
book—The First Quarter: A 25-Year History of Videogames. His word
can literally make or break a game. So when I received my Sunday paper on December
10 and opened Access Magazine: America’s Guide to the Internet, a weekly
insert that has more readers then the combined circulation of every monthly gaming
magazine, and saw the article “Best Games of the Year” as chosen by
Contributing Editor Steven Kent, well, I was pretty excited. What would be his
choice as best adventure game of the year, I gleefully wondered—Escape
from Monkey Island, The Longest Journey, Dracula Resurrection?
How about
Half Life: Counter Strike, with Rune as the runner-up? Gee, Steve,
why not Madden 2001 or Frogger 2 as the best adventure game of the
year? I cannot even begin to exaggerate how much harm such clueless choices do
to people’s impressions of the adventure genre.
If you would like to write
to Steve and share your thoughts on his choice of Best Adventure Game of the Year,
you can reach him at [email protected].
As it is the season of giving, I am sure that the editorial staff of Access
Magazine would also love to hear from our readers, so in the spirit of giving,
they are Stephanie Chang,
Dennis Barker, and Jill
Harrington.
Monkey Wearing Eye Patch Arrested, Says, “I Thought
I Was Eating a Banana”
In our July State
of Adventure Gaming, we made it a point to mention that the European versions
of The Longest Journey and The Devil Inside had both been released
with bugs and we fervently hoped the problems would be corrected for their North
American releases. Not one person wrote to question the veracity of the story.
Not one.
Many times we will not even mention a bug in one of our reviews
because all computer systems are configured differently and what may not run on
one system will work on another. This is usually not a bug but more a problem
with trying to program for every different piece of available computer components.
Some bugs are show-stoppers; the game cannot be finished without a patch. The
only time we ever even mention a bug is when numerous consumers are experiencing
the same problem or if the company has already released a patch.
So imagine
my surprise when I received tons of hate mail and was accused of being a liar
when I had the audacity to review
Escape from Monkey Island and complain about the bugs in the game. For
gosh sake people, when the company that made the product releases a patch for
the game, that means they are acutely aware they have released a substandard product.
Never mind that I have since read four other reviews complaining about bugs, that
posts on Internet newsgroups have complained about bugs, and that unmoderated
Monkey Island forum posters have complained about bugs—for some reason
I can’t fathom, many hardcore adventure gamers seem to believe that because it
is a LucasArts product, the problem should be swept under the rug. Sorry, but
it would be a grievous disservice to our readers if we were to show such favoritism.
But
it is just not LucasArts that is guilty of rushing products out the door in hopes
of realizing a Christmas cash cow. Interplay has already, within a week of its
release, produced a patch for Giants. Bethesda just posted a patch for
Sea Dogs. And this is just a small part of a problem that is industrywide,
especially during the holiday season. Maybe we are the problem, for by purchasing
these faulty products we only give the impression that we do not care if it works
correctly, we just want it in time to put under the Christmas tree.
Sir
Lancelot Does a Wham, Bam, Thank You Ma’am, Calls Ziggy JAVE, Infuriates All the
Young Dudes
In response to numerous inquiries, yes, the
JAVE (Just Adventure Virtual Encyclopedia) was my idea, but it was not me
who brought it to life. It seems that one of our readers, Valerie Davis (aka Ziggy)
shared the same dream I had (now that’s a scary thought!)—to document
every adventure game ever made in encyclopedia form on the Internet. Val’s imagination
and creativity are what have brought the JAVE to life. I explained to her what
I wanted and how it should look, and she quite simply exceeded my wildest expectations
(hmm … I wonder how I could transfer that attribute to my wife?). If you have
not yet visited the JAVE, then take a look now while it is still in its infancy,
for I promise you that the JAVE will one day be the definitive source for
adventure gamers worldwide.
Ray
Gay? Randy Dandy? Matt Phat?
Find out for yourself when you visit the
JA
Forum (yes, this is a blatant plug). Rub elbows with the movers and shakers
of the industry, and then when they tell you to quit touching them, join with
the staff of Just Adventure and adventure gamers from around the world as we talk
adventure games until the wee hours of the morning. And this month we have a special
Escape
from Monkey Island contest for our Forum posters, so what are you waiting
for?
And
to All a Good Night
Regardless of what holiday you celebrate or how
it is pronounced, may you have a blessed and safe holiday season. Thank you one
and all for your support and enthusiasm as together we continue to work to reestablish
the adventure genre worldwide.
We will be taking a break from December 23
until early January. In the meantime, catch up on some articles you may not have
read, play some new adventure games, and please, please write to the individuals
or companies that we tell you about and inform them of your satisfaction or dissatisfaction
regarding the treatment of the adventure genre. If you do not speak out now, it
may be too late next year.
