The "Escape from the sewers" puzzle

let me rephrase… what’s wrong with an interactive comic book? Why is this a bad thing? (Since it can be made.)

I might try that, but probably get bored pretty soon because of the limitations.

what limitations do you have in mind? (does a comic book have limitations with respect to a movie? I don’t see why. It can tell the same stories. of course a movie is preferrable if you have billions to spend…)

It’s hard for me to judge a completely hypothetical example. I’ve never played an interactive comic book, it may be fine.

I was just judging the specific example of static images you posted. That style looks dated to me.

dZ.

Less interactivity, less life, less of pretty much everything. I like to interact with a fictional world in my games but still don´t have a problem if I can´t climb down into every single rabbit hole.

Yes totally, and if you don´t get that I don´t know how to explain it.

Yeah right, why aspire to be Heart when you can be The Shaggs?

What I don´t get though is the attitude that seems to say:“If you can´t be perfect don´t bother trying. If you can´t do proper 3D go back to black and white, that used to be good, right?”

The thing is I prefer as much immersion as possible while still leaving enough suspension of disbelief to not be bothered and totally taken out of it when there are flaws. It´s obviously the exact opposite for you.
I leave you that, but I think we can agree to disagree.

Ok, I am sorry guys, I am bad at explaining what I mean. I will try again.

Suppose you are a comic book artist. You draw comic books, you tell good stories. Now someone tells you “this sucks. There are no animations. It is “dull”. Why don’t you make an animated movie instead?”

what would you reply to this? Probably you would reply: “because it would either cost ten times as much, or I would have to decrease the graphic detail a lot, to make it cost the same”.

Anyway, this critique would not seem to make a lot of sense, would it?

you don’t call a comic book “dull” or “dated” just because it is not a movie (i.e. an animated sequence of pictures).

Ok. Now… an adventure game with static pictures is analogous to a comic book. An adventure game with animations is analogous to a movie.

there’s exactly the same relation:

adventure-game-with-static-pictures —> comic book
adventure-game-with-animations —> movie

now, since it makes no sense to call a comic book “dull” or “dated” just because it is not a movie, for the same reason it makes no sense to call an adventure-game-with-static-pictures “dull” or “dated” because it is not an adventure-game-with-animations.

And it makes no sense to say “it’s a different media”. what relevance does this have? These days I even read comics on my PC, with comicrack or other programs, because it’s a much better media. (Pictures are much bigger, I don’t need a light, I can read in bed with just a mouse on my tv instead of holding the book, and so on…)

It took many words, but I hope this time it’s clear…

when I used the term “interactive comic book”, what I meant is “adventure-game-with-static-pictures”. They are exactly the same thing. And this led to confusion…

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Can´t we come to the conclusion that both can be okay under the right circumstances?

Dear @seguso,

I think you overthink these things. Sometimes, it sounds to me like you are trying to convince others that your own preferences are better if only they understood the reasons. Maybe it’s a language issue (English may not be your mother tongue).

It’s perfectly fine to have differing tastes, and it’s also fine to not be consistent with your own preferences. Variety is the spice of life; it’s what makes this world so interesting. :slight_smile:

dZ.

I know I give this impression :slight_smile: It’s a language issue.

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Well, yes. Everything started from me being suprised that you and DJz thought the opposite…

You have, let´s say a very specific taste. And it seems you´re surprised by not everyone sharing it.

Would you say that the perfect adventure game in your mind consists of static images, doesn´t use a verb interface, gets more complicated near the end and is pay-to-play (based on some of your suggestions in the past) ?!!

It’s an interesting topic to me. :slight_smile:

Personally I might play any kind of adventure game, regardless of the nature (animated or static) of its graphics, as long as I like the story, the environments and the puzzles.

But I understand why some people can perceive adventure games with static graphics as something related to the past: I don’t think that it has something to do with the media itself but with the history and evolution of adventure games.

They started as textual interactive fictions, later some developers added static non-interactive images to be shown alongside the texts, then the graphics became the main attraction and the developers started using it as an interactive and animated medium.

So, yes, I think that the fact that static graphics were more used in the past is a characteristic that can make people feel that this kind of games is related to a previous period.

Just to clarify… :slight_smile: It looks like I was surprised because people don’t share my tastes. But actually it’s not that… I was surprised because I read something that (to me) is equivalent to “I don’t like comics because they have no animations”. that said, I know I have specific tastes and I don’t expect people to have the same :slight_smile:

This just in: People (especially those from other countries) have different tastes. News at 11. :laughing:

Just kidding. Yes, I may not agree with your preferences (I obviously have my own), but that’s OK. :slight_smile:

I think the biggest difference I see between us is that you seem to propose certain features as objectively better or superior than others; while I think they are just personal preferences.

When you say things like “imagine contrived scenario XXX. If you accept that, then personal opinion YYY must be true”; to me that sounds like you do not accept that others may have different opinions or that there is more nuance than merely “XXX vs. YYY.”

It could be I am missing something from your comments. You seem like a very nice and friendly guy, I don’t want to sound like I am putting you down or anything. God knows people disagree with my own opinions often enough! :laughing:

dZ.

Apologies for that! It’s a total failure on my part. I find it so hard to express myself in English that all my brain is employed to express what I mean, and I got no neurons left to think about the impression I give.

Nah, don’t be too hard on yourself. It takes two to miscommunicate effectively (or is that communicate ineffectively?) :laughing: LOL!

Your English is quite good, I should say. And just to be sure, English is also my second language; my mother tongue is Spanish (I’m Latin-American). :smiley:

dZ.

It seems to me a problem of expectations. if you call something a “game” , I automatically expect graphics and animations. Maybe one should just avoid the word “game”? Maybe if you call a text-adventure “interactive novel”, and a graphic-adventure-with-no-animations “interactive comic book”, people would not have this instinctive feeling of “related to the past”?

Personally, I don’t require nor search for this kind of realistic behavior.

I’m so accustomed to the fact that an adventure game character usually makes a generic move to use any item in his pockets, that this solution has become perfectly natural to me.

I don’t think that that’s a cause for misunderstanding. Text adventure games are still considered games by most of their players. I just think that if a game uses a technique or has a feature that was used in the past more than it’s used today, that’s enough to make several people to perceive it as “old-looking” or “retro-looking”.

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The problem with this analogy is that while people do enjoy comic books and traditional novels, they often do want to see them brought to life in movie format. Marvel has turned comic books into their own genre of movie, and many successful films started life as novels, such as Jurassic Park, the Harry Potter series, The Lord of the Rings series, and many, many more.

Games do something somewhat similar by effectively letting you participate in your favorite fiction. Why settle for only watching Indiana Jones when you can actually tell him what to do? Why settle for only watching Star Wars when you can pilot an X-Wing on the Death Star trench run? Why settle for only watching Terminator when you can scavenge supplies from bombed-out ruins while keeping watch for Terminators and Hunter Killers? If you start cutting back on the animations and visuals, it ruins a lot of the appeal of an interactive medium for many people.

And yet, a megaton of more people have watched the movies and not played the games. I have never understood the appeal of Let’s Play videos, and yet a lot of people just watch other people play a game.

As a comic book artist, I can tell you that these are completely different experiences. Comic books are NOT improved by animation, and this has been proved again and again. There are experiments out there about these “dynamic” comics, that incorporate bits of animation here and there. They completely disrupt the immersion.

As for comics in opposition of animated movies, again: different experiences. With comic books, your own mind “fills in the blanks” of what happens from panel to panel, adding your personal input to the whole thing. You go see a movie and what you see is what you get. As far as experiences go, comic books allow you more room for imagination.

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