Oh gosh, I didn’t even mean to sound like I was disagreeing with you! I’m so sorry!
I guess I was trying to say that I think all the kinds of games people enjoy can exist in the same space together, but I was nearly driven away from games entirely when it felt like every title was just a photocopy of Bonestorm or Violence 2: The Bludgeoning or something. But as it turns out, Violence 2 was just the game getting all the attention. Indie developers have been out there forever, trying to get me the games I want, but I just… couldn’t hear them. Now I’m trying to be savvy about which developers I follow and which media outlets I visit (i.e. none of them).
Buuuut I may also be a hypocrite because I really enjoy survival horror games, but I always liked the “slow boil” kind with sprawling storylines and mystery doors to nowhere. Speaking of which, PT was a very interesting blend of puzzle-solving and horror, and while it had violent themes, it was at least weaving the necessity for them into a narrative. Even for a demo, that’s pretty ambitious—but look who I’m talking about! Hideo Kojima is a storyteller at his core. He may be a bit of a nutty guy, but at least he’s doing something different.
“This adventure game looks intriguing but I´m put off by the fact that I can´t violently kill anyone in it”
no one ever
People don´t play shooters or violent video games for the violence in and off itself. It certainly is a selling point because like it or not violence in media is and always will be intriguing. But if that all there is to it people get bored and put off as much. For that reason the game Shocker isn´t the most popluar game of all time. People play CoD or CS for their cooperative aspects. So while violence may be an initial selling factor it´s not the reason those games remain popluar. First you got to intrigue people with something (like a popluar license) and then hook them with good gameplay aspects. Look at some of the most popluar selling games like Myst, The Sims or heck even Wii Sports, no violence anywhere.
So I´m sorry but “adventure games aren´t popular because they don´t have violence in them unlike all those popluar violent games” just does not compute.
“This adventure game looks intriguing but I´m put off by the fact that I can´t violently kill anyone in it”
Whaa?
I wasn’t really talking about people buying games, I meant that non-violent games receive different or no coverage in the media. Notice the part where I said “all the kinds of games people enjoy can exist in the same space together.” That includes games with violence.
And I was also talking a lot about my personal experience. One of the things that made Bioshock Infinite hard to play was the savage violence. I got through it unscathed, and I knew it was serving a narrative purpose, but it was excessive to me.
Oh if we´re talking media coverage blame the media for it´s obsession with scandalous topics. Thimbleweed Park´s reference to “murder simulators” is a clever jab at a perception of video games in general that you can get when your only look at the whole culture comes through a mainstream media filter.
If you´re a put off by the violence in a game that you otherwise like, obviously somebody integrated that aspect not coherently enough into the whole picture, otherwise it would look more natural and less glaring, I suppose.
It´s funny you mention PT. In my opinion one of the greatest narrative games of all time is Silent Hill 2 they even made a point out of the way you keep shooting monstrosites throughout the whole game when near the end your chracter is deeply disturbed when you actually have to kill a real person in self defense, and then there is of course that twist ending…
That’s not the only reason: They play no more games. They just have other priorities, like their own kids. But most of them would buy games that remember them of their own childhood.
I don’t think that they moved on. Like Ron said somewhere: Nowadays we have far more (casual) gamers. When I was a kid only a few nerds had a computer and played games. Then came Freecel and the PlayStation. More and more had a computer. And they were attracted by the (beautiful) graphics of the action games. You get into theses games very quick (just run and shoot) and you could progress fast (the first level in DOOM is very easy). Another group of gamers are the “casual players”. They like to play The Sims, Freecel or Bejeweld clones. The costs for a game are rising too. So the publishers focus on games that target at a mass market. As a consequence the millennials played primary action games (like we played adventure games). So they grew up with action games - and buying more of them.
Long story short: There were several reasons why action and casual games have a bigger market.
btw: PnC is not the only genre that is “death” (note the quotes :)). Old-school RPGs and strategy games are today niche products too.
OT: I didn’t knew that “verboten” is an english word! I’m consistently amazed how many german words are adopted by the english language (Kindergarten, Rucksack, …)
You know what the casual gamers from back then had they don´t have now? Arcade games. Fewer people actually owned computers or systems themselves but I think many we now would consider casual gamers dropped quite a few coins into the machines that used to be in just about every public place. By the time they didn´t have a technical (mostly graphics and sound) advantage over the homesystems anymore they started to disappear.
There is a lot more and I think it has to do with a fact that many words we both use have common roots in the jiddish language. Really quite a lot words that have an “sch” in it.
to solve this problem, you could: A) remove the puzzles completely, i.e. only keep story and dialogues; B) keep the puzzles, but the character solves them automatically, and the story goes on.
Either way, question: where does the challenge come from? possible answers: 1) the challenge comes from dexterity ; 2) the challenge comes from exploration and searching; 3) there is no challenge at all.
Let’s leave aside (1) because that’s what most games do, and we are not interested in dexterity and reflexes.
Let’s cancel (2) because exploration is a kind of puzzle, and previously we said “no puzzles”, so (2) is contradictory.
Let’s explore (3). Here, you have a story, you have dialogs, but there is no challenge. Question: can this still be called a game? what distinguishes this product from a movie? possible answer: interaction. Picking up stuff, moving stuff around, operating stuff, not because it solves a puzzle, but just for the heck of it. Prepare your own meals, talk about stuff, go to sleep, open drawers and browse in them, see night and day change, etc. Interaction that is not required to have the story move on, but still adds to the experience, and could make it superior to a movie. — Interesting consequence: you would still have verbs, but not to solve puzzles, just to enable these interactions. — Related question: why are books still around, when movies exist?
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brainstorming mode…
[/quote]Exactly what Telltale Games did since Jurassic Park. Only worse, they combined it with annoying quick time events.
Are you sure? I played “walking dead ep 1” for 30 minutes, but I don’t see the “interaction” part. I cannot open drawers and browse the content. I cannot turn on the tap and drink water. and so on. Do pointless things that are not required to have the story go on. (That’s something that possibly only Richard Garriott gives value to.) . I think if you remove puzzles, you could push in that direction .
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Are you sure?
[/quote]I also didn’t play most of them for more than 30 minutes, with the exception of Minecraft Story Mode, which I actually liked for some reason. In that, you have access to chests occasionally, but instead of browsing its contest, you just take what you need and that’s it. There are also some optional things you can do which are not related to the story, like dancing to the DJ in the first episode. The only thing I would call a puzzle is to figure out some lever combinations or in which order to put items, which you have to do in a few occasions. There are hints to the solutions, but it is easy enough to just guess it, if you don’t bother to pay attention. Also crafting tables are interactive, but you always have just the resources to craft what you need to in order to progress in the story.
For moving stuff around, well, you can’t. Eventhough the inventory is visible most of the time, it is only usable when you really need it.
If you like to move stuff around and do pointless things, maybe Else Heart.Break() is a game for you. Since coding is an important game mechanic, you can do a lot of silly stuff with it.
The cabinets disappeared, yes. But the “arcade games” were always there. Nowadays on mobile phones and tablets. (And note that the classic arcade games were primary played by kids.)
One part of me wants to answer with “exactly!”. I am content with how P&C adventures are being made since the 90s. And I think there is very little to the formula that could actually be evolved while still staying true to the heart and soul of what makes a P&C adventure.
But, if I were tasked with evolving the genre, and didn’t have to work with a limited budget, there were two things on the top of my head that I would change:
Introduce puzzles with multiple solutions, or tasks that can be accomplished by solving only a single of several puzzles, with the potential of story-altering consequences.
Make the environment fully 3D, state-of-the-art, open-world with a 1st person perspective. I’d limit it to a fairly small and dense location so it wouldn’t feel empty or require hours of needlessly walking back and forth, mind you.
The first point serves a number of purposes:
Make it harder to get stuck, without actually simplifying or removing puzzles altogether
Give incentive to the hardcore audience to find the “best” way through the story and/or uncover optional “secrets”
Make the experience less “railroaded”, allowing players not only to follow a pre-made story, but have a more active part in important decisions
I guess all of those could well be implemented with traditional 2D graphics, though you’d basically be rolling 2 or 3 games into one, at least from the writing and puzzle-design aspect. Choices will quickly snowball and testing will grow much more complex.
The 2nd point is mostly there to bring the game on par, eye-candy-wise, with present-day games, at considerable cost. You’d still explore the world, pick up or manipulate objects, converse with NPCs, combine stuff in your inventory and do all the other classic P&C activities, but in a way that would “wow” the average gamer of today just like MI or MM wowed us back in the day.
Both things aren’t new. For example in Indy III you had multiple solution (at least for some puzzles). And Maniac Mansion had story-altering consequences with different endings. So both techniques weren’t new and they evolved the genre back in the 90s. As you said they are hard to implement so only a few adventures use them.
There are many PnC adventures with full 3D (for example Tales of MI). If you chose the 1st person perspective you haven’t a PnC adventure anymore. At the end you get something like Firewatch with few puzzles or Normality with more puzzles. Have you played Normality? The graphics looks crappy these days, but back then they were good. That’s another drawback with the 3D graphics: They age more quickly then 2D graphics. For example MI3 looks very good today while Normality is ugly.
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If you chose the 1st person perspective you haven’t a PnC adventure anymore.
[/quote]Normality is PnC. It even has a constant set of verbs. From a puzzle point of view, it is a very classic PnC adventure. The unusual thing is the 2.5d engine with sprite npc’s (similar to Doom) and the ego perspective.
Yes and no. For me a PnC adventure is a game, where I see the hero on the screen and move him with mouse clicks.
But you are right: If you take the definition from Wikipedia, Normality is a PnC adventure, as you have to click on objects (and it has a coin interface).
Look at the release date. AFAIR Normality uses the Duke Nukem engine.
I haven’t played Kona yet, but it looks interesting. As I wrote in a post above, the implementation of those survival elements in an adventure game might be difficult. They have to be balanced well. And you have a choice between different approaches.
btw: Bozuma had the “survival” elements already in 1988.
I’m sceptic that the “survival” elements work at all. You have constantly to find water/food/whatever. While this could be fun in the first hour, it will bug you later in the game. Especially in Bozuma I disliked the survival elements a lot, they were just annoying (I wasn’t able to concentrate on solving the case). But I will change my mind if someone shows me a game with working survival elements.
For me, what is a P&C adventure or not doesn’t hinge on the perspective. It’s more the style of gameplay and interaction with the environment, and that works in 2D as well as 3rd or 1st person 3D. As sad as it is, 3D is the de-facto standard for games these days, and by my reasoning, P&C adventures would have to embrace that as part of their “evolution”. And a 1st person view should work quite well, I’d say: move with WSAD and look around and interact with the mouse.
I guess if you split the world into individual rooms, you might get away with a fixed camera, 3rd person view and everything purely mouse-controlled. But to me, a seamless world would also be part of the evolution. (You could have a 3rd person, over the shoulder view in that case too, but interacting with stuff would definitely be clunkier, and besides, who wants to stare at their characters backside all the time?)
For me a PnC adventure is a game, where I see the hero on the screen and move him with mouse clicks.