The "Death of Adventure Games"

Adventure/Lucasfilm Games
201

There has been a lot of talk about “interactive experiences” in which the player faces no real challenges and many gamers definitely don’t consider them games but, as I wrote elsewhere, as long as a person enjoys something it doesn’t necessarily need to be a game. “Dear Esther” or “Proteus” cannot be defined games and there is almost no interaction, just exploration. Still, there is narrative, which is more explicit in the first title and less perceivable in the second one.

In my opinion trying to classify or define in a formal way games or these new “interactive experiences” can somehow put the brake on new (even experimental) ways to entertain people. My impression is that the more we study them with a microscope, the more we lose the larger view of what art and entertainment can accomplish.

202

I think that having a look at how people actually perceive and classify games is a good way to understand the complex task of classification. A good start is to establish that a game doesn’t necessarily belong to a single category but it can belong to a multitude of them.

For example here are the top five user-defined tags on Steam for…

realMyst: Masterpiece Edition:

  • Adventure
  • Puzzle
  • Exploration
  • Point & Click
  • Classic

Grim Fandango Remastered:

  • Adventure
  • Classic
  • Point & Click [note: in the remastered version you can actually point and click with a mouse to move the character]
  • Comedy
  • Story Rich

The Last Express Gold Edition:

  • Adventure
  • Point & Click
  • Mystery
  • Classic
  • Real-Time

The Walking Dead:

  • Zombies
  • Adventure
  • Story Rich
  • Point & Click
  • Episodic

The Walking Dead: Season 2:

  • Zombies
  • Adventure
  • Story Rich
  • Episodic
  • Point & Click

Papers, Please:

  • Indie
  • Political
  • Simulation
  • Point & Click
  • Singleplayer

So, I perfectly agree with you when you say “These are not “technical categories” for programmers, these are categories useful for regular folks to classify games and have some understanding about what to expect.”. Some regular folks actually feel that the above games all deserve to be considered in part “Point & Click”, whatever “Point & Click” means to them.

203

It’s always difficult to be sure of the intent, but PnC adventure games have been declared dead several times in the last years (for good reasons) and every time I read a new further article on this same subject I have the feeling that it was written more to attract pageviews than to add an original or interesting opinion that wasn’t already shared before by someone else.

I agree. I’ll have a deeper look at it in the following weeks, probably.

204

About the expression “walking simulator”…

Yes, any term or expression, no matter how appropriate, would have helped us to classify this kind of game. I would have preferred something else but I have no difficulties at accepting what the market has chosen.

The reason why some people consider it a bit derogatory is that they feel that the expression “walking simulator” trivializes the kind of experience and hides the real intent and value of the game: experiencing an environment or something that some people perceive to be art. People would never describe a visit to a museum as a “walking” activity.

Wikipedia calls them “Exploration games”.

1 Like
205

Actually, in The Sexy Brutale the player doesn’t die. He is just transported back in time without losing the knowledge of what will happen in the future.

It doesn’t seem to me that this is the same kind of “death” about which Ron wrote in his article.

206

Yes, they would be something different because, by definition, “evolving” implies changes, sometimes profound changes.

The more I read and discuss this topic in this forum and the more I’m afraid that all the evidence points to the sad and simple conclusion that the wonderful mix “puzzles+story” needs to be modified so that the first element is less strong and more suited for a wider audience that doesn’t want to experience the frustration of failing brain-teasing puzzles. As a consequence, some developers have focused more on the story, making the puzzles simpler.

207

Memoria has a great story, but do you really rate it as the best adventure (or did you say one of the best, I don’t recall) of recent times? As much as I enjoyed the story, the first couple of hours were awkwardly told as it tries to clumsily ease its way into its story-in-a-story structure. Also, it lacks polish in many regards (and every Daedalic title I play also ends up randomly presenting German subtitles at one point or subtitles that don’t match the speech). The puzzle design is sometimes unsatisfactory I’d say, and there’s no one area as rewarding as the land of the fairies in Chains of Satinav. in terms of puzzle design.

I rate Memoria and Chains of Satinav roughly equal. Memoria helps the gamer a little more. Chains works against the gamer a bit but I like to toil sometimes with games and appreciated the extra hassle of that game.

208

I would have agreed with you but then you said:

Oh boy, they can be so huge…

In this game they’ve made it a feature, but from the player’s perspective it’s the same what Ron was talking about, except instead of reloading a savegame time is rewound.
The game looked interesting to me the first time I saw it, I should get it…

209

I still know cheat codes for Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Monkey Island 1 and Monkey Island 2!

And yes, the big advantage of Doom is that when you die you can immediately get your revenge.

210

Hmm… wouldn’t this perspective make any time rewind game mechanic (Braid, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, etc.) and any checkpoint in a platform game a violation of the “rule”?

It doesn’t seem to me that the “rule” was thought to be applied to time travels or checkpoints. Checkpoints and time rewinds are integrated into the gameplay by design, while loading a savegame is an action extraneous to the gameplay.

211

Yeah, but failure and death can be assimilated, I think.

BTW, do you know if Sexy Brutale makes you listen (or skip) the same dialogs over and over?

212

No, I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about dialogues. But I know that some players have found the game a bit repetitive because the time rewind feature forces the player to watch the same scenes more than one time.

1 Like
213

It’s my all time favourite, (for reasons I’ll elaborate on below), but I also do think that its puzzles are mostly average, and perhaps a bit too much on the easy side.

I could imagine that such a sub-par presentation can ruin the experience quite a bit. The German version doesn’t suffer from these problems.

That part is really outstanding :slight_smile: . If Chains of Satinav would have had a bit of a lighter tone (or a less unsatisfactory ending), it might have been a better game than Memoria, all things considered.

I can clearly say that I do value Memoria more for the story, and the ending specifically, than for the puzzles, so I too tend to lean more towards a story first, puzzles second design, provided the two aspects remain at least somewhat in balance.

So why is Memoria my most loved P&C adventure, all things considered?

First, there is the setting. It’s taking place in The Dark Eye universe, which is the German equivalent of Dungeons & Dragons. Even though I never played the actual pen & paper RPG, I did play a large variety of TDE computer adaptations (Realms of Arkania trilogy, Drakensang 1 and 2, Blackguards), and that makes many of the places and things on screen instantly recognizable. As franchises go, for me that’s in the same league as, say, the LA Indy games. (Makes me really wonder why there never were any P&C adventures in a Forgotton Realms or Dragonlance setting.)

Second, and more important, was the emotional impact the ending had on me. I can’t think of any other game that had invoked such a reaction in my 25+ year history of gaming. That it had accomplished the feat of bringing actual tears (of joy) to my eyes made it instant #1.

Finally, I am also a bit a fan of Kevin Mentz, though hard to say if that’s not more a result of playing Memoria. But I thoroughly enjoy any interviews he gives, his ideas about P&C adventure design, and am eagerly awaiting his next oeuvre (which was first announced in 2014, and may or may not be released next year).

1 Like
214

@kaiman

It definitely has one of the most captivating stories in gaming I’ve ever experienced alongside only a handful of other titles, so it gets pretty much a 10 out of 10 from me in that regard despite what I feel to be a kinda clumsy opening couple of hours. No doubt the German version won’t have the subtitle and voice acting occasional mismatches but I’m guessing it still has all the awkward music/sound transitions and some visual bugs that can be triggered but this was much better in Memoria than Chains (Chains had a lot of really awkward transitions regarding the in-game sound). Also, I love the look of both games and many of the locations are pure eye candy. I do think Satinav has Memoria beat on puzzles but, in general, puzzles aren’t the strongest point of those games. They’re definitely two games I really enjoyed and Memoria is exceptionally well paced, which could’ve been disturbed if the game was substantially more difficult. I liked the ending of Satinav, though!

Overall, I wish Memoria was slightly tougher and that the quality of the puzzle design was more consistent, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t like many of the puzzles. Some of them were very satisfying and very clever still so it’s not like the game was bad in that regard, just not top notch. My favourite thing about both games are the relationships between the protagonists and I’m guessing it’s getting to know those characters and watch them interact which had you shedding tears. I was overcome with perpetual frisson through the final moments.

1 Like
215

I guess you can make every game frustrating if you really want to :slight_smile:

But in many platformers it’s part of the gameplay to fail all the time and you need some type of reload/rewind mechanism, the typical one being used today are checkpoints.

Sierra made this kind of game mechanic their thing, but for a completely different genre. Adventure games are exploration based games and it’s not really nice if you get punished all the time when you just want to explore.

The Sexy Brutale looks very cute and worth a purchase, but since I haven’t played it yet I have no idea how well its game mechanic actually works.

1 Like
216

I have not studied philosophy but I’m familiar with a few very popular concepts related to philosophy of science, like Popper’s falsifiability and Kuhn’s paradigm shift. My knowledge is extremely superficial, though. Thanks for the remarks, I think I’ll read something about integroup bias. :slight_smile:

217

I see that you subscribe to the school of words can mean anything I want them to mean. I, however, think that in order for a civilized society to communicate adequately and to gain common understanding, some words and concepts must have a common consensual meaning to a majority.

Otherwise, I would just say that I classify all those games as Banana Adventures, while Thimbleweed Park is obviously a Cake & Ice Cream Adventure. :stuck_out_tongue:

Believe it or not, sometimes concepts have a shared common cultural meaning, even if flawed and limited. :wink:

-dZ.

218

The idea is that it can be a sign of lazy writing. Just like a comedy that relies constantly on prat-falls and cake-on-face gags in order to get a laugh, it suggests that the writer has gotten stuck on an facile trope instead of exploring more complex ways of reaching their goal.

Back in the day when we had to hunt dinosaurs for food, adventure games writing got so ridiculously lazy that an entire game consisted of having to re-load constantly at every step. Think about that. Instead of coming up with a clever and interesting puzzle, the author’s puzzle was “try to guess what is going to kill you, and avoid it” – all the time!

This is not only lazy, but leads to player frustration, as now re-loading the game (which takes time and effort) becomes a game mechanic, and his adventure must be interrupted constantly to do it, losing time and perhaps inventory items.

One of Mr. Gilbert’s greatest insight, and the one he shares with all other famous great designers, is to acknowledge that the game is for the player to have fun, not for the designer or programmer. Now, all those tricks and twists that designers were adding to games because they thought they were clever and because they found them fun to play with the player’s expectations, become anathema.

Of course, as with any rule, they can be and should be broken on occasion. Even Mr. Gilbert admits that he broke most of his own rules in Maniac Mansion (mostly because they were just figuring it out at the time), and that game is still more playable and fun than many of its contemporaries.

-dZ.

219

Hmm… I don’t see how “I” or, more generally, anyone’s personal preferences are relevant to what people actually do. If many people have considered those titles “Point & Click” games, then it is a linguistic, semantic and social phenomenon more meaningful than a personal and isolated definition. They become “Point & Click” games because that’s what many people perceive them to be. Language evolution (and, by consequence, dictionaries) is based mainly on usage: the more a word or expression is used in a specific way, the more that usage becomes meaningful.

2 Likes
220

That’s why literally means literally literally and figuratively figuratively, but figuratively means only literally figuratively, and is never used figuratively.

2 Likes