[Ninth]

Originally Posted by Duncan

I absolutely agree with what Steve posted. Except I don't think that's what boys 8-13 would like in adventure games, I think it's what a lot of adults want in adventure games.

Yes, that too.

[EasilyConfused]

Originally Posted by Duncan

I absolutely agree with what Steve posted. Except I don't think that's what boys 8-13 would like in adventure games, I think it's what a lot of adults want in adventure games.

Yes, I was going to add that in another thread someone had said something extraordinarily similar, but I couldn't remember who. Thanks for taking care of this and piping up on your own, Duncan!

That house in Syberia II was maddening, and even it had more going on than in the rest of the game. Or what about the store at the beginning--didn't that old, broken down general store just cry out for you to be able to fiddle around with the stuff on the shelves? But no; you were just there to get what you needed and go. Not that the genre has to be realistic, but nobody does this in real life--especially kids. Compare that to the shops in MI3, where there was a ton to, uh, fiddle around with, and you weren't even quite sure what you needed. Great point Steve. Maybe it's about putting some element of play into a game . . . as in, pointless, just-for-yuks, fooling around, instead of goal-directed activities (puzzles, leading dialogues, so on.)

Wow, I just repeated everything two people already said. What a wasted post. Well, maybe it was for moral support.

[Steve Ince]

Originally Posted by Duncan

I absolutely agree with what Steve posted. Except I don't think that's what boys 8-13 would like in adventure games, I think it's what a lot of adults want in adventure games.

I'm not suggesting this is THE solution to attracting the whole of the demographic, but to have a chance of appealing to this age group, these are the things developers should be considering.

Except I don't think higher interactivity is good alone. You referenced Monkey Island, DOTT and BASS, and while all of those games had a lot to look at and interact with, the responses you got were well-written and/or funny. So I don't think simply adding more hot-spots to Syberia would have done the trick, because the dialogue in that was so dull that each screen would have been "No need to go down there!" times ten.

Sorry, I was taking as a given that in the earlier games I mentioned that not only was the interaction density high, it was also of good quality.

Which brings me back to a need for better writing in adventure games. I think I posted that somewhere before. I think more boys 8-13 would play adventure games if they were funny again. A lot of us clearly played the LucasArts classics when we were in the 8-13 age group, and, well, we're here posting on an adventure games message board, so obviously something went right there.

I agree, but I also think there's a need for good writing in all types of games.

[fov]

Originally Posted by Steve Ince

While the recent games are much more polished, with higher production values, more detailed art, etc., the older games are more FUN from the viewpoint of that age group.

There is also more to do on a "per screen" basis. Because of the limitations of floppy disc space, each location was made to work as hard as possible, with multiple characters and hot-spots to interact with. Modern games have their interaction spread very thinly with a lot of walking about between. Adults may marvel at the beautifully rendered scenery, but 8-13 year olds just want to do stuff.

This is an excellent point, and although I've noticed the trend to less interactivity, it didn't occur to me that this was driven by an increase in available disk space. Kids aren't the only ones who would like more to do on the screen. As I have mentioned elsewhere, I have an attention span the size of a thumbtack... I'm a lot more likely to stay in the game and figure stuff out myself if there's a lot to click on and explore, and especially if the commentary gives me very subtle nudges about which items may or may not be useful, etc. when I click on them.

I don't see going from one empty screen to another to another as an opportunity to marvel at the scenery. I think it's boring. When I was playing Syberia 2 and was trying to figure out what to do at the house (in the dream / flashback), I actually turned the game off because I thought I needed to go back and talk to Anna, ran through 6 empty screens to reach her... and it turned out I didn't need to talk to her after all. I just didn't have the patience / energy / desire to run through those 6 empty screens back to the house. Compare this to King's Quest 5, where every one of the screens in Serenia has an important character to talk to, puzzle to solve, item to pick up, etc. (Or any King's Quest game... I can't really think of any throwaway screens.)

It makes me think of how in a good novel or short story, everything that happens supports the main plot and moves it forward. This isn't the case in a lot of adventure games today; if it were, there would be something going on in every one of those "empty" screens.

-emily

[EasilyConfused]

Originally Posted by fov

It makes me think of how in a good novel or short story, everything that happens supports the main plot and moves it forward. This isn't the case in a lot of adventure games today; if it were, there would be something going on in every one of those "empty" screens.

Absolutely. Not necessarily moving plot forward . . . you need more compression in a short story . But at least having a FUNCTION beyond being "atmosphere." Some of these games are like overloaded 19th century novels where there's just page after page of description of nature or war or family history "background" . . . (Apologies for getting your fiction analogy more quickly than a gaming one.)

Let's move it along, shall we? I hate to add to our attention-deficit culture, but especially if there are kids, and even when there are adults, let's either have something fun to do--even if it's not going to GET us anywhere that we can see right away, and even if it's a red herring --or forget it. HUGE empty spaces in many games I've played lately--majestic, yes, but I never revisited them, and their effect wore off in about a minute. I don't know how long it takes to generate these . . . I assume awhile, but that it's still less time than it takes to pay someone to write an interesting interaction or create an interactive experience with an object. Too bad.

And as an aside, for boys or girls, I definitely want a game with a tool bench where you can build stuff. I mean, obviously these exist, and we've talked about that in the context of RMI and it's all over the RPG world--but more construction!! Emily, I remember you mentioning how you enjoyed in Runaway (as did I) the fact that Brian actually interacts with his inventory, instead of just having stuff go on "behind your back," so to speak. Even that kind of thing, though that's not necessarily the best example.

[Steve Ince]

Originally Posted by EasilyConfused

And as an aside, for boys or girls, I definitely want a game with a tool bench where you can build stuff. I mean, obviously these exist, and we've talked about that in the context of RMI and it's all over the RPG world--but more construction!!

Cool idea. (Gets thinking...)

[fov]

Originally Posted by EasilyConfused

Absolutely. Not necessarily moving plot forward . . . you need more compression in a short story . But at least having a FUNCTION beyond being "atmosphere."

True you need more compression in a short story, but in a good novel everything that happens leads back to the underlying story too. I'm not really looking to make busywork for the developers (they have enough to do already!) So for example - you have a screen with nothing to do in it (like one of the screens leading to the house in Syberia 2). The developer could spend a lot of time coming up with descriptions and hotspots and stuff for Kate to say, that ultimately don't have anything to do with the story (and if they have nothing to do with the story, why bother?) Or he could a) get rid of that screen altogether (why do we need it?), or b) put something in that screen that DOES drive the story along. Then the added description, etc. that we're asking the developer to add isn't busywork; it's strengthening the story.

I hate to add to our attention-deficit culture, but especially if there are kids, and even when there are adults, let's either have something fun to do--even if it's not going to GET us anywhere that we can see right away, and even if it's a red herring --or forget it.

It's not attention deficit if you're actually *doing* something on the screen.

And as an aside, for boys or girls, I definitely want a game with a tool bench where you can build stuff. I mean, obviously these exist, and we've talked about that in the context of RMI and it's all over the RPG world--but more construction!!

Ever played Freddy Pharkas? It's not a toolbench, but Freddy gets to mix chemicals at his workbench to make medicines... that was kind of fun.

Originally Posted by Steve Ince

I agree, but I also think there's a need for good writing in all types of games.

Agreed.

[Jake]

Steve, while I totally like, and agree with nearly everything you said in your first post in this thiread, this one bit I disagree with:

Originally Posted by Steve Ince

compar[ing] Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle and Beneath a Steel Sky to more recent games like Syberia, The Longest Journey and Broken Sword - The Sleeping Dragon.

While the recent games are much more polished, with higher production values, more detailed art, etc., the older games are more FUN from the viewpoint of that age group.

While on a purely technical level, you can compare BASS or DOTT to Syberia or BS3 and say that the latter games are far more polished with high production values, that is discounting the passage of time.

As a gamer when DOTT or Monkey 2 were new, I was absolutely blown away by the production values those games exhibited. At the time, relative to anything else going on in computer games, it was like playing a real cartoon. BASS, and a couple years later Full Throttle, were like a darker comic books come to life. They were the epitome of what gaming's production values had to offer, at least as far as I knew at the time. That is only very rarely the case these days, if ever.

The visuals are higher resolution these days, with more well executed 3D artwork, but that's true everywhere in gaming. I'd argue that with a few exceptions, accounting for the passing of time, most of today's adventure games have lower production values and less polish as well as less interactivity. When AG reviews modern games that don't get character's walking pathfinding right, or have only one default response for any and all objects not essential to puzzle solving, I can't say that games these days are more polished, even if the background art is cleanly rendered and higher resolution, and the sound is 44k instead of 22.



I realize that this comment isn't entirely constructive -- saying "all games need to have briliant production values, and style, and interactivity!" doesn't exactly help if people are looking to try and pinch pennies and cut corners to actually get their adventure budget under control (or, as the case may be, beyond under control in today's AG publishing/funding climate). That said, looking at the visual and audio design of those AG's you mentioned from yesteryear, and comparing them to my memories of other games of that era (1990-1993ish), as far as I can remember they were at least on par with the rest of gaming, and some cases above and beyond. I don't want that notion to slip through the cracks when trying to devise some accurate formula.

That those games looked hot was part of what drew me in before I knew what the writing was like. "It's like youre playing a cartoon" was literally the pitch my classmate gave me for Monkey Island 2 in before he handed me some pirated floppies and a photocopy of the codewheel.

[Sky Warrior Bob]

I agree with a lot of what's already been said, but as a further aside, I have to say that I find myself being turned off by the adventure games of today. I mean, I liked the adventure games of Lucasarts & Sierra, both in my youth & later in life (around 18 I started collecting to fill the gaps in my collection).

And frankly, I've been rather disappointed with titles of today. Take Syberia for example. Lots of people here just went ga-ga over the title, while I myself consider it a big waste of my money. 2 moreso than 1.

Its just that today's titles take themselves a bit too seriously. Even Lucasarts's The Dig had a few bits that had me chuckle. Full Throttle, which was fairly serious in content, even moreso.

Had it not been for Runaway's unamusing translation or poor scripting (I mean with the cross dressers & some of the things that happen to Brian, I can only assume they were trying to be funny. It just didn't get carried through all that well.), I'd say that title was the closest continuation of the Lucasarts/Sierra legacy. (Can't say the same of The Westerner, which is just too goofy-cute to be allowed.)

SWB

[EasilyConfused]

Originally Posted by fov

True you need more compression in a short story, but in a good novel everything that happens leads back to the underlying story too. . . . The developer could spend a lot of time coming up with descriptions and hotspots and stuff for Kate to say, that ultimately don't have anything to do with the story (and if they have nothing to do with the story, why bother?) Or he could a) get rid of that screen altogether (why do we need it?), or b) put something in that screen that DOES drive the story along. Then the added description, etc. that we're asking the developer to add isn't busywork; it's strengthening the story.

Oh absolutely agreed, Emily. Sorry, I just meant to say that it doesn't have to go as far as the Chekhov "If there's a gun in Act I, it must go off in Act 3" conventions of drama . . . where everything is stripped down to essentials. That's what I think is wrong with a lot of games that are OVERLY linear--you get dropped in-game, you know that everything in the game has a purpose and the purpose is to get you to the end of the game, and you deduce your way through as quickly as possible--using a w/t if anything stands in your way. (Okay not YOU. Me. )

That's why I'm not one of the people who complains about the dialogue in TLJ (well, some of it was . . . annoying, okay, some of it was annoying!) But a lot of it was there to develop a character in a way that furthered the story, and I don't want to do away with THAT. Anyway. (Maybe we should start a subthread on story in game and print? I can think of a few folks who would be all over that. )

Ever played Freddy Pharkas? It's not a toolbench, but Freddy gets to mix chemicals at his workbench to make medicines... that was kind of fun.

No, but this just caught my eye the other day. Gotta check it out--thx.

What else do kids like to do in the real world that might transfer over? Who has kids?????

Exploration is good. Rock climbing, the kind of stuff that we've been asking for in the "grown-up" threads--see FGM's post about how to improve aspects of AGs from within in the "What about THEM" thread. More ability to really explore, but not an empty world that is inert, where you're running through screen after screen of scenery, but a meaningful exploration of a gameworld . . . I thought THAT was fun in Runaway (to come back to it after SkyWarriorBob's post)--all those canyons and things.

[Jake]

Adventure games are technically a really limited, really finicky genre. What the copious interactivity and hotspots really do, I think, is hide this. When you take them away, you're really just revealing the bare simplistic skeleton that is a linear march through some Constructed-with-a-capital-C puzzles. Monkey Island seems alive, seems like you can "explore" because it's well dressed -- it's not a skeleton. If the dialogue in TLJ did that for you, that's cool (it didn't for me), but you need something.

I think the lack of dressing doesn't bother the super hardcore adventure fans, because to them, playing an adventure game isn't entirely about the experience anymore. They look past the decor, a bit like "reading the Matrix," and directly decode the abstract skeleton of the Constructed puzzles. You can't really help but do that after you've played so many adventure games, but (and this is where a lot of people get it wrong) you also can't let yourself slip into thinking that that's what adventure games are all about.

The hardcore adventure fan knows all the little tricks woven into the dialogue that yield puzzle points, knows which hotspots the character is likely to be able to pick up. To a point, to this audience, all the extraneous stuff, the dressing, becomes superfluous.

More and more adventure games are made just for the hardcore audience, because they are very loud and very solidary in their noise, which says very loudly, to develoeprs "we are the real fans of adventure games, and we are the only people who will consistantly support your games."

Anyone who stops and looks into the past knows that this probably isn't the case, but due to a lengthy multifaceted Series of Unfortunate Events in the late 90's, developers, and more importantly those with their hands on the pursestrings, are very very nervous and scared of the adventure genre, so for some reason, they do what these people say.

The abstracted skeleton of Constructed puzzles is obviously mandatory to an adventure game - puzzles are inarguably the "gameplay" element, the collections of obstacles you progress through, that actually make adventure games games at all, but stopping there misses the entire point of what adventure games can truly offer.

When one makes a game in which there are nothing but a series of connected abstract puzzles, simply replacing the cursor with a picture of a man, and covering those puzzles in some Victorian decoration, the hardcore will be pleased. They can continue to think they are being clever by decoding thinly veiled hints, and manipulating some inventory items, but the rest of the world is going to feel left out in the cold.

At their core adventure games are nothing but this weird linear puzzle skeleton -- that is what makes them work. But if that's all there is, any illusion of choice, of exploration, of interaction, of discovery -- especially by people who can't read and infer directly into the abstracted scripts of the game -- is completely obliterated.


---

This is a second, but very related tangential thought.

Hopefully people will be intelligent enough to realize that though my first thought, above, is about what I think is lacking in current traditional adventures, and my second thought is more of the change/progressive adventure school, they are not contradictory, nor is the first thought only valid if the second one is.

They just happened to come into my head at about the same time, and share similar themes:

---

As an aside, I think this is why there is a splintering group of hardcore adventure fans who are asking for change. We have played a lot of adventure games. We know how they work. This amused and entertained us -- held us in its thrall -- for a very long time. But we eventually woke up, and realized that not only was this same bag of tricks seeming all-too-familiar, but it was almost all we had left! The "secondary" things that once seemed primary, or on par with the coded puzzles - compelling characters, unique visual designs, fully realized fictional universes, explorable spaces brimming with interactivity - had all left too! And why did they leave? At the expense of the puzzles we held so dear!

There is one place this abstracted decoding of puzzles on the core level happens for newbie adventurers: When they play the same game through a second time. We are a group of people who have, in essence, done that with the entire adventure genre. And in a sense, the genre has done it to itself: Ideas have been rehashed time and again in the last 15 years without any new blood. Even if the very minute dressing that remains is swapped out from game to game, the skeleton remains exactly the same.

There are no secrets in the adventure genre, there are no mysteries to explore and uncover. Just the same thing to look at again and again. And that's just gotten a bit old.

[RLacey]

^ Listen to the man. I'm lost for anything constructive to add to that.

[Marek]

Wow, that post is gold.

[Steve Ince]

Originally Posted by Jake

As a gamer when DOTT or Monkey 2 were new, I was absolutely blown away by the production values those games exhibited. At the time, relative to anything else going on in computer games, it was like playing a real cartoon. BASS, and a couple years later Full Throttle, were like a darker comic books come to life. They were the epitome of what gaming's production values had to offer, at least as far as I knew at the time. That is only very rarely the case these days, if ever.

You're absolutely right and maybe production values was the wrong term. I wasn't actually trying to imply that the older games were inferior in any way (the opposite in fact), simply that the low resolutions and disc limitations forced a different set of standards to what we expect these days.

In many respects developers had to be much more creative in order to get a worthwhile experience. Very few developers really push the limits of the system they are working with (unless it's to wring a few extra polygons out of an ageing PS2).

To the outside world - and to many adventure gamers, judging by comments here - adventures are boring because there doesn't seem to be much to do. This is probably not the case, but if it is perceived to be the case, then it might as well be true. It's unlikely that adventure games have less gameplay than they did 10 or 15 years ago, it's just that instead of putting all the gameplay into 60 screens or so, it's probably spread over 200. In Cold Blood, for instance, had 600 separate camera renders (I know this should be tempered by it being an action-adventure, but it shows the tendency).

I'd also like to echo Marek's statement, too, about your last post, Jake.

[remixor]

What Marek said.

[LauraMac]

Best thing I have read in a while....

But then there is a bit more. There is a concept or a story that is brought to bear and more so in a few current games then in earlier ones, where stories and characters served to propel and as this window dressing.

There is a sense in more games of trying to be evocative. To elicit reactions and engage senses in games. There is a need for games that thrill, those that make us laugh and now increasingly those that try to be adult. or perhaps try to make people think and identify.

I am not sure if this makes sense but it is another way -- maybe it is not an adventure game but rather a step into that area of an art form.

Not sure.

[Ninth]

I can't help thinking that if someone was to make an adventure with standards as high as they used to be (especially in terms of immersion and interactivity), we would all forget our aspirations no novelty and die of happiness. I would, anyway.
So I can't exactly agree with all Jake said, but still his post raises some incredibly valid points. They're kind of frightening, too. :eek:

[Jake]

Originally Posted by Ninth

I can't help thinking that if someone was to make an adventure with standards as high as they used to be (especially in terms of immersion and interactivity), we would all forget our aspirations no novelty and die of happiness. I would, anyway.
So I can't exactly agree with all Jake said, but still his post raises some incredibly valid points. They're kind of frightening, too. :eek:

I think at least the first half of my monster post up there was pointing out, at least as part of my point, what has been lost in the time between then and now.

I think that "if someone was to mane an adventure with standards as high as they used to be, especially in terms of immersion and interactivity," they would be directly fulfilling what I am longing for in my post. At least in the first half.

In all seriousness, please explain to me why you see my post (at least the upper-half), and your wishes, as different. I don't see the conflict between these two things in your head, but want to know what it is

Also, sorry for frightening you.

[Ninth]

Originally Posted by Jake

In all seriousness, please explain to me why you see my post (at least the upper-half), and your wishes, as different. I don't see the conflict between these two things in your head, but want to know what it is

Also, sorry for frightening you.

Well, I was mostly answering "There are no secrets in the adventure genre, there are no mysteries to explore and uncover. Just the same thing to look at again and again. And that's just gotten a bit old.", which (as the last sentence of your post) gave the overall feeling that you saw evolution (rather than improvement) as the only way to renew your interest in AGs. Because after all, what's old can only wither and die.
I might have misunderstood you, though. If not, then our wishes are different in that I believe more in improvements within the boundaries of the genre than I do in improvements out of these boundaries (not that a transgressing now and then can hurt, of course. Don't kill me now, Trep ).
And in any case, even though I long for better games, I know I can't be bored with the genre, even as it is today. So I can't relate with the "it's gotten old" part. To me, it's more a case of "it's gotten soft".

Still, even if as I said, I can't agree completely with your post, I can still agree mostly.

EDIT: Or to be clear, I see the same thing that you do, but the conclusions that I draw are slightly different from yours.

[Jake]

Ah ok, good enough. I think in my eyes the line is far more blurred between "improvements within the boundaries of the genre" and "improvements out of these boundaries," which is probably where the difference in conclusion comes from.