The Perfect Adventure Game

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Schafer's not the only one comparing games to film. After leaving Vivendi Universal, Michael Pole joined up with former Electronic Arts Los Angeles executives Rick Giolito and Mark Skaggs to form Trilogy Studios. Where his previous position had him reluctantly nixing innovation as an exec at a worldwide publisher, Pole finds the shoe on the other foot now as CEO of a company making an episodic "first-person shooter/RPG combo" for PCs and next-gen systems.









Pole compares the current game industry landscape to that of the movie industry at the height of the studio system.









"They controlled the talent," Pole said of the movie studios. "They controlled the directors. Everybody was under contract, and for the longest time there seemed to be a stifling of creativity underneath that system. What the games industry is finding now is while you can amass an extraordinary collection of talent, extraordinary games are created within small teams. The best new intellectual properties are coming from independent--self-funded for the most part--studios."

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"This is a fast-changing industry and what feels like a good innovation in one year, you'll often discover in year two [isn't]. What sounded like a brilliant plan, we either just can't pull off because we can't figure out how, or you'll pull it off exactly like you say but when you play it, it's just not fun," Garriott says. "And you don't know it until you're done with the creating process, which is again why it is so risky. And the reason most people avoid risky experiments is because it's common to get to the end of the experiment and then throw it away."









The problem is compounded when innovating because one man's fun can be another man's frustration, which brings the issue back to Castaway and the difficulty of appealing to the masses.









"In order to have a game be successful with the numbers that they need nowadays, you need a significant percentage [of customers] to like the title," Michael says. "And, unfortunately, some people find some kinds of breakfast cereals great and others not, but a general one that we can all agree on is oatmeal, which is one of the blandest of cereals."









When it gets right down to it, oatmeal sells, and everybody knows it. But Stefan sees the mindset that innovation is prone to failure as a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.

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Independent Developers. That small group of individuals with an idea to carve their own path and create games they would enjoy. Unique people with bold ideas and the drive to see them through. In the last few years, their numbers have grown from a few to dozens. It seems like every few days another one crops up with a new adventure game announcement. Many of them never seem to get beyond the announcement stage and simply fade away.










Over the last couple of years I've gotten to know several of them, and have played nearly all of their games - I even got to beta test some of them on occasion! Being able to talk one-on-one with someone whose creation kept you transfixed to your computer screen for hours, even days, is pretty rewarding. I can only compare it to being able to talk to your favorite musician whose music you escape into. I think that is one of the things that set these people apart - they are for the most part, approachable.










I realized that I had many of the same questions for each of them and thought, wouldn't it be interesting to get them all to answer those same questions at the same time? I sent out my emails pitching the idea and was overwhelmed by the response. I figured if I had 25% participation, I would be lucky. They are VERY busy individuals afterall. Net result was around 90% and a really HUGE interview!

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On G4 TV, a group of well-known developers in a roundtable forum were asked by the host their opinions of the potential for the Xbox 360. One of them responded that it would allow him to blow things up in bigger and better ways. And we still wonder why the mainstream community looks upon gamers as idiots.

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Is it still possible for a lone coder to write a game all on his own? DAN MARSHALL finds out…

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Among videogame clichés, the supposed death of the adventure genre takes top honors. It's the one topic that just won't go away. And one has to wonder why that is. Maybe it's because the people asking the questions, namely industry journalists, grew up playing adventure games. Or maybe it's because certain famed developers, true rockstars back in the 80s and 90s, have virtually disappeared and people wonder where they went. Sure, they're not all gone. But it's not like they're still doing their thing, either.








So, why is it? And more importantly, will people ever stop asking? The answer, not so surprisingly, is no. The adventure genre hasn't died, nor will it ever die so long as gamers care about stories. Yes, the genre finds itself in a bit of a slump. In fact, it's been sitting in that slump for years now. But that hardly translates to the passing of an entire genre - one that birthed a slew of titles as seminal for the games industry as silent shorts were for Hollywood.

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Games are a new, different type of narrative, one that inspires emotion and immersion in ways that no other medium can, and strong interactive stories can not emulate the tactics of film. This was the central theme of "Perfecting the Mix of Story, Character Development, and Interactivity," a panel session held this afternoon, on the second day of the E3 2006.

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Cage wants to see games with deeper, more mature stories, with one aspect that games in general are missing: meaning ."In this industry there's a real lack of meaning in general," he said ."Most of the time it's a hero fighting against zombies and killing everyone to save his life or whatever. There are so many other great characters and emotions we can use to create an experience. We shouldn't limit ourselves to basic things."

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he was developing a first-person shooter. And through the simple addition of adding a wedding ring to the character's hand, he said that the game's focus test players responded overwhelmingly, asking questions about the character's past and showing an active interest.

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Contents of a Marketing Plan







These sections of a marketing plan are listed below.








* Goals
* Distribution
* Product
* Promotion
* Website
* Demo
* Measurement
* Maintenance
* Refinement

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We recently had the pleasure to devour a book that should be must reading for every single independent developer in the adventure game community. Joseph Lieberman, the author, has collected his years of experience in the gaming industry to provide an outline describing how develop, market and publish your game from start to finish.









Rather than review the book - the title of which speaks for itself - we thought you might instead enjoy this interview with the author.

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So you want to make a living as an adventure game developer? How do you do it? And since the adventure game market is so small, how will you ever make enough money? And what if nobody likes your game enough to buy it? So many questions! Well, it's time to find some answers.







In this essay I will look at the adventure games market in general, then look at some amateur games that tried to go commercial, and then see what we can learn.

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#1 - Competitions
#2 - Selling Stuff via CafePress
#3 - Selling eBooks
#4 - Selling Books (CafePress or Lulu.com)
#5 - Donations
#6 - Text Link Ads (I expect to get $100 this month, and within coming months I’m confident to see this figure go to $200 or more)
#7 - Google AdSense. (For this income stream, I also expect to get around $100 this month and estimating the figure to double in the coming months)

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One of the main concerns for indie game producers is how to price the game. Simplest method would be to use the ‘magical’ $19.95 price for your game, but there are more approaches available. Selecting the right price for your product is one of the key decisions in selling. Common objectives for pricing can be profit maximization, or simply - survival.

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Has the fun gone out of Adventure Games? Perhaps I'd better rephrase that. Has the sense of fun, the sense of playfulness, left the genre?

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Tons of articles

Too many to list....have at it.

Adventure Game Interfaces

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0. Introduction
1. The genre of Adventure Gaming
1.1. Adventure Gaming explained
1.2. Adventure Gaming constructs
1.2.1 Adventure Gaming constructs-Actions
1.2.2 Adventure Gaming constructs-Events
1.2.3 Adventure Gaming constructs-Information as an Item
1.2.4 Adventure Gaming constructs-Conversation Trees
1.2.5 Adventure Gaming constructs-Further Abstractions
1.3. Adventure Game Interfaces
1.4. Analysis of Interfaces
1.5. General rules for Adventure Game Interfaces
1.6. Conclusion

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Now I know there’s such thing as free money. And it’s called: Text Link Ads.

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Fire your lawyer.

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Good luck guys!

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http://www.gameproducer.net/

Bookmark it...use it. Good stuff.

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Suddenly and without warning, the seed of a new idea sprung to life in a simple post.








"We should make our own sequel."

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It isn't a long stretch to think that the Wii can have the same magical effect on adventure games. Sure, if you were paying attention to the Duck Hunt example, it's obvious the Wii controller works great as a point-and-click device. Just point the controller where you want to click. For the first time ever, adventure games can be played on a console without the D-pad or analog stick controls disliked by so many adventure gamers. But that is just scratching the surface of what the Wii could do for adventure games.

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I've also been told by one developer, a guy who worked at Valve, that storyboarding simply isn't valid in their process of testing and testing over and over until the interactive direction works. I personally see this as arrogance - even in a 3D space, you're still working with a 2D screen. Someone who knows how to use compositional space to their advantage surely has more directorial nous and thus is capable of solving more visual narrative issues straight out when presented with such problems than a games tester. How much time did the testing process waste when someone could've been brought in with prior knowledge? Then again, competitor id Software actually went so far as to storyboard their Doom 3 opus from beginning to end as a movie. Whether they're more successful or not is up to you and largely down to the basis of each individual game's components.





But where does this arrogance stem from?

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If games are to truly compete with movies, the strange attitude to direction which seems to curse many productions needs to cease. Lately I found out that a major, major games company has assigned their sound designer for cutscene direction. As someone who works within direction... it makes you do a double take. The sound designer? If anything it sounds like cutting economic corners... professionally... but when you take into account that this is a AAA title that outright RELIES on cinematic direction and has a big grounding in storytelling, it does make you wonder what's going on.








Unfortunately companies see narrative as something to tack on. It's only very rarely that it's applied as part of the design document, but if you're creating a game with a narrative then automatically that becomes the backbone which drives the player through. If the narrative doesn't fit the picture, why bother? It will do your product a disservice.

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Moving to a broadcast TV style business model, based largely on episodic game releases, will benefit not only games developers, but publishers, retailers, middleware and content providers.

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...a trend toward fewer cinematics, and more scripted events. Nolent says Ubisoft is trying to get rid of cinematics entirely, but they do sometimes sneak back in when a map has to be scrapped or there's some other unexpected problem. Nolent expects to see more "playable cut scenes" or scripted events where the story moves ahead, but players still have opportunities for interaction.

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Introversion is an experiment: can three guys set up a successful game development and publishing company with nothing more than £200 and an awful lot of time and energy? Every analyst in the business would tell you it's not possible - but here were are, five years old, stronger than ever.

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I realize I’m preaching to the choir when I complain about the pc gaming magazines almost totally ignoring the adventure genre. Of course, said employees at the magazines like to write me and inform me as to what a silly fool I am (although ‘fool’ is not the word they usually use).








What has happened all too often in the past, is that my complaint about a review that, rather than evaluating the game instead proceeds to bash the entire genre, elicits a response that, “Well, if you’re defending (insert name of game here), then no wonder the genre is in trouble.” What they didn’t, no what they refused to understand, is that it is not any specific game I am defending, but the genre as a whole. So imagine my surprise, nay my unbridled glee, to discover that PC Gamer seems to have undergone an adventure game epiphany.








The past few months have featured articles on independent developers such as The Silver Lining team, the Sam n Max resurrection and numerous reviews of adventure games that actually review the game and not the entire genre. New adventure game reviewer Logan Decker – along with Chuck Osborn - seem to actually appreciate the genre and their recent adventure game reviews, both positive and negative, are as fair and balanced as any that have ever ever appeared in PC Gamer.









The credit for this startling change can surely be attributed to new Editor-in-Chief Greg Vederman - aka The Vede - whom I initially incorrectly pegged as just another in a long line of action-loving, adventure-hating editors. Thanks Vede, for proving me wrong.

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They Also Voted Sam n Max as the Best Sports Game









Adventure gamers are eagerly awaiting Just Cause from Eidos. With over 250,000 acres to explore, 303 missions to accomplish, 89 vehicles to command and 32 stunts to master to ignite a revolution, this is one game that is a must have in the adventure community. What? You didn’t hear? As Eidos is proudly proclaiming in its marketing campaign, Team Xbox.com named Just Cause as the ‘Best Adventure of E3 2006’.

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When you write dialogue, or story materials for a game, you make an effort to write content that's entertaining and well-written. The last thing you want to do is bore your audience by listing facts in a clumsy exposition sequence.









However, when documenting the story content for your game, the reverse is often true. Of course, you still don't want to bore your audience (your fellow game developers). However, the best way to keep your writing from becoming tedious is to stifle your creative urges, and instead approach story documentation as a form of technical writing.

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Like comic books, games have no élite form or widely-venerated body of work yet. We produce light popular entertainment, and light popular entertainment is trivial, disposable, and therefore culturally insignificant, at least so far as podunk city councilors and ill-advised state legislators are concerned. They feel no reason not to censor games, because games have no constituency that matters and no history as important forms of expression.








Now I know from long experience that a certain percentage of you are making derisive snorts of contempt because you personally care nothing for high culture and see no reason why anyone else would either. But even if you don’t like it, you still need it. And before yet another idiot pipes up with Standard Asinine Comment #1 (“but FUN is the only thing that matters!”), let me just say: No, it's not. Shut up and grow up. Our overemphasis on fun—kiddie-style, wheeee-type fun—is part of the reason we’re in this mess in the first place. To merely be fun is to be unimportant, irrelevant, and therefore vulnerable.








The serious games movement will help a little with this problem because serious games aren’t just for fun, but by itself that’s not enough. People write comic books to help teach kids about fire prevention and healthcare, but that doesn’t change the perception that comics are for kids. Serious games that seem unrelated to games for entertainment won’t do much for entertainment itself.








Elite forms of a medium help to legitimize that medium. They provide status symbols that people who want to be thought of as important and respectable can support. That’s why big corporations and wealthy families give money to ballet companies and symphony orchestras: Publicly sponsoring the elite forms of these arts reflects well on the givers. The élite forms also create shelter in which the less “worthy” forms of the medium can operate more safely. Once an élite form of video games exists, nobody can ever again say, “video games are just a silly waste of time.” Nobody would dream of saying that about music, even if they thought it was true of bubble-gum pop.

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We can dismiss the more stupid responses pretty quickly. As I predicted, there was a fair bit of reverse snobbery (“I’m proud that I don’t like literature or classical music, and video games should never be for anybody but people like me”) as well as some regular snobbery (“Merchant Ivory films are powdered-wig costume dramas for middle-class faux intellectuals”). Actually, most Merchant Ivory films are about post-colonial India, not noted for its powdered wigs. Both attitudes are ignorant and tiresome.

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Despite all of the graphical advances, increasingly life-like CG in games has also brought with it some surprising realizations.









The most troubling of these is 'The Uncanny Valley', or the sharp drop in emotional response from an audience as character subtleties and likenesses improve. As is the case with characters in many current Xbox 360 games, our attraction has turned to revulsion. We get creeped out. Is this the result of all our time, money, and hard work? All the per-pixel lighting, dynamic shadows, normal maps, and motion capture of Madden '07 has actually degraded the emotional connection players had with previous versions of the game -- 1 step forward, 2 steps back.






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In the quest for this immersive photo-real environment, creativity has died on the operating table. Given all these fantastic tools, the best we can do is attempt to duplicate our own environment on the same regurgitated topics and themes. In an interview with Tomek Bagiñski on his recent CG film 'Fallen Art,' Tomek states that he doesn't see any reason to do photo-real 3d graphics unless you are working for the SFX film industry. His reasoning is that stylized art is far more interesting to look at than just another attempt at reality. The photo-real painting movement ended after a brief period in the late 1960's for exactly the same reason - it was boring to look at. Guess what? So are the majority of today's video games.

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In the quest for this immersive photo-real environment, creativity has died on the operating table. Given all these fantastic tools, the best we can do is attempt to duplicate our own environment on the same regurgitated topics and themes. In an interview with Tomek Bagiñski on his recent CG film 'Fallen Art,' Tomek states that he doesn't see any reason to do photo-real 3d graphics unless you are working for the SFX film industry. His reasoning is that stylized art is far more interesting to look at than just another attempt at reality. The photo-real painting movement ended after a brief period in the late 1960's for exactly the same reason - it was boring to look at. Guess what? So are the majority of today's video games.

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Everyone should check out his Fallen Art movie by the way, it's totally awesome!

As for the topic, I don't think we've reached the realism limit just yet, however I do think non 100% realistic art looks way more interesting, so yes they probably have a point hehehehe.

Cheers

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The most troubling of these is 'The Uncanny Valley', or the sharp drop in emotional response from an audience as character subtleties and likenesses improve.

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The more realistic they try to make it, the more people will scrutinize it since it isn't quite right

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A GAME HAS TO LOOK LIKE A GAME.

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I think it's that "wow" factor -- not the aesthetic, itself -- that people are looking for.

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Adventure game fans, on the other hand, have adapted to pretty much every gaming system that has come along. Why is the adventure game so adaptable? In part, because it has to be to survive, but also because it's based on a very simple, yet powerful idea. It's a treasure hunt. It's an irresistible (well, to fans at least) combination of story and puzzle-solving. Of course, the FPS is based on an even simpler concept kill everything in sight. But the FPS depends on great visuals. It's difficult to shoot something you can't see.

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In October 2006, the editors of Gamasutra asked its readership of game industry professionals to chime in and vote for which game brought storytelling forward in the biggest way, from any genre (text adventure through action title to RPG or sim and beyond), and from the early days of video gaming right through to the present day. We were looking for any game which in some way moved, astounded, or engrossed the player through its plot and the way the game evolves through it - and has specifically advanced game storytelling in the largest way. Specifically, we asked:









"Which video game has made the biggest 'quantum leap' in terms of storytelling, and why?"









On the following pages, we'll first present the "honorable mentions" - games that, while certainly innovative and important, did not receive enough votes to make it into the top echelon.









Following this, we'll present the top five best storytellers voted for by our readers, in reverse order, ending with the overall recipient of Gamasutra's third Quantum Leap Award, which received the largest amount of votes from game professionals.

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Honorable Mentions:
The Sims
System Shock(Series)
Marathon
Baldur's Gate 2
Jade Empire
Gabriel Knight(Series)
A Mind Forever Voyaging
Zelda II
Xenogears
Torment
Fallout
Façade
Dreamfall
Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy





#5. Grim Fandango
#4. Starcraft
#3. Final Fantasy VII
#2. Half-Life
#1. Deux Ex

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Game Quest follows the doomed final years of Madre Entertainment, a homegrown software company nestled in the Sierra Madre mountains. The discerning adventure gamer will recognize dozens of links between the fictional Madre and real life Sierra.

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Despite this seemingly hostile climate, there is a ray of hope. A rapidly growing movement - plainly visible on sites like Adventure Gamers and in the sales figures of games like Phoenix Wright - is throwing their support behind Nintendo to get the ball back into the adventure gamer’s court.

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Adventure games at their best, and even sometimes at their worst, are the closest thing we have to virtual reality. You can truly feel like you’ve entered another world, and that your actions there have consequences. The trouble is, the more imbedded in the game world you get, the more of a jolt it is when you get stuck and all comes crashing to a stop. A walkthrough will get you going again, but by then, it seems to me, the illusion is broken. It’s no longer adventurous when you know what’s coming.

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Sadly, the power of the gaming press is not always so illusory. The "Death of Adventure Games" mantra gained wide currency amongst reviewers for many of the multi-genre gaming magazines and websites, and is still trotted out occasionally by the ill-informed. How much influence this pronouncement has had on publishers is, perhaps, debatable, but it is no thanks to such reviews that adventures are still being made.

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It's the gameplay elements of each genre that appeals to the players and brings them back for more. These gameplay elements then 'define' the genre. Therefore it is important that the reviewer has played sufficient games of a particular type in order to write about them in a knowledgeable way. Conversely, it's not possible to fairly review a game unless you are familiar with the genre or game type to which it belongs.








This underlines the importance of the reviewer being someone who understands and likes the genre and wants to see the quality continue to improve. Unfortunately, too many of the reviews of adventure games in magazines and on multi-genre sites are written by those who actively dislike the genre and are openly hostile or ambivalent towards it. Often such reviews fail to critique adventure games for what they are, but rather criticise them for what they are not (eg other genres, as in "this game is boring it has no fighting in it"). Such generally destructive reviews serve no useful purpose as they mainly focus on the perceived shortcomings of the genre rather than the merits of the particular game under review. It's the equivalent of saying "This genre sux".

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John Green, creator of the Lassie game Nearly Departed, has been receiving international attention for his revival of the classic adventure game in full 2D glory. Much praise and discussion has been devoted to exceptional art style, which has become his trademark. So, this month I asked John for an interview to get some insight on his artistic process. He was kind enough to give us some answers and provide some process illustrations of how his work develops. Thanks John!

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David Fox forwarded me a link to Maniac Mansion being played through in nine minutes. This is about 2 hours and 27 minutes faster than I could do it.

I found it fascinating to watch this video. It's was like thumbing through an old family album of childhood photos. Memories long forgotten are jarred to the surface by the smallest of details. An old and forgotten toy. The front grill of your fathers car. Things you could never have remembered if you tried become so clear they could have happened yesterday.

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Lee Sheldon is an award winning writer and a triple threat in the truest sense. His past and current works span across television, books, and video games. As a scriptwriter, his television credits include (amongst others) Charlie’s Angels, Quincy, Cagney & Lacey, Edge of Night, Snoops, Another World, and even Star Trek: The Next Generation. As a book author, his works include the fiction novel Impossible Bliss and the reference text Character Development and Storytelling for Games that is part of the Course PTR Game Development Series. As a game designer, however, Sheldon is best known to adventure fans for his works in Ripley’s Believe it or Not!: The Riddle of Master Lu, Dark Side of the Moon, Wild Wild West: The Steel Assassin, Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, and many others.










Most recently, Sheldon has been recruited by The Adventure Company to design an adventure game series based on the licensed works of Agatha Christie. Today, the games Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None and Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express have been published and are well received by both fans and critics. We are extremely privileged to have the opportunity to interview this media legend. In the interview, Sheldon speaks of his works in television, his philosophy in game design, the challenges of adapting the Agatha Christie novels into adventure games, his other current projects, and what holds for him in the future.

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We had the great opportunity to talk to Al Lowe, the father of Leisure Suit Larry and Freddy Pharkas - if you've ever laughed when playing a computer game, chances are good, the game was made by him.

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I have started a brand new project: a twisted fantasy adventure called Chivalry is Not Dead.






This series of articles will serve as a chronicle of my quest in developing Chivalry, taking you behind the scenes of its design, production, and eventually, testing and release. If you yourself are at all involved or hoping to be involved with amateur adventure development, I hope you'll find something of use in my methods; otherwise, just sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

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With the first Half-life game there was already a sense of humor. With Half-life 2 they have reached back to the adventure games and put much more emphasis on story. It has believable dialogue and an engaging plot. It’s still a shooter but it’s a start. Keeping the action going and unfolding a well-constructed story at the same time is no mean feat with a user running around loose in there.

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Naivety is the key. It’s like a fountain of youth. It’s what keeps you open to pursue something out of pure curiosity to find the magic in something new.

As strange as it may sound I don’t believe naivety is exclusively the domain of the uninitiated. In the same way that any skill can be cultivated I believe that this way of looking at the work can be enhanced. I believe it’s at the hart of creativity and invention.

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Today's Playing Catch-Up, a weekly column that dares to speak to notable video game industry figures about their celebrated pasts and promising futures, speaks to Jane Jensen, creator and designer of Sierra’s Gabriel Knight series of adventure games, and co-founder of casual games publisher Oberon.

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As the creative figure in the director’s chair for the groundbreaking adventure Gabriel Knight II (also known as The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery), Will Binder is the unequivocal master of game directing. His credits in Hollywood include work on “Scent of a Woman” and “Greedy”. Co-working with game designer Jane Jensen and directing the talents of Dean Ericksen, Joanne Takahashi, and the remaining cast of Gabriel Knight II, Binder has shown a remarkable ability to create exactly the right ambience for this much loved game. At the heart of his directing lies the same love of a great story that typifies the storyteller, and that is perhaps how we can best understand Binder—as a storyteller whose words are painted in the visual canvas. We are honoured to have the opportunity to interview him. In this interview, we discuss with him the technical behind the scenes magic of Gabriel Knight II, learn that he is also a gifted oil painter, and discover some exclusive snippets about his future scripts and projects.

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This scene sent chills down my spine. The human race has become a collection of cattle, shoved into the ghettos to be controlled and handled. It was a terrifying portrait of lost humanity; we didn't even have the ability to create new life. That chill I felt wasn't created by the graphics: the writing did it.







Half-Life 2 is loaded with powerful moments like this, and the writing worked with the technology to make the game a modern classic. Bad writing could have turned the same game into a B-novel of the ripest variety. But the very success of the game points up the weakness of game writing in general, and it begs the question: why don't we have more examples of scenes like this? What, exactly, is the problem?

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Great writing comes from converting the energy of experience into product, and there is far more vitality in scouring the world at large for source than relying on someone else's pre-chewed, pre-digested output. Creating an open experience, a fully interactive and enriched game experience, is new and scarcely-plundered territory for gamers, but we need to pursue it in order to avoid the mainstream Michael Bay effect that diminishes story as productions chase the wallets of the lowest common denominator.







Ian's piece is certainly an interesting look at what an industry veteran thinks about how to improve the writing in games. One thing everyone agrees on is that this isn't easy to do, and will mostly likely be a gradual process as people work through the problems, both financial and creative, to making gaming an art form with story and characters just as good as those in movies, television, or even novels.







Next week we'll hear from someone who makes her living writing games and deals with these problems every day. Stay tuned.

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The way in which I like to approach the adventure game is as an interactive story; as such, the very first thing I focus on when creating a game is the story it will tell. But I feel that it isn't enough to make up a story solely for the sake of justifying the gameplay that emerges from it. While doing so in and of itself is certainly a lofty goal to strive for, it does tend to make for a shallow and formulaic end product. For a story to truly stand out as a meaningful work of art, it must convey a purpose and make some sort of statement about the world. Hence, this next article in the series will focus on the process of coming up with such a story.

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The PS3 is $500 to $600. The 360 is $300 to $400. A good gaming PC can cost in the thousands. What we are we paying for? The more games I play these days, the more I see that many of the "next-gen" games are simply prettier versions of games we've already played. We're paying for more lines of resolution and audio that comes at us through more speakers. When we're able to put a human-looking character on the screen and make him or her look and act like an actual person, that presents a problem. What do we want that person to do? What do we want them to say?









Back when games featured a few colors and some simple sprites, we didn't need these characters to do much. Swing on that vine. Eat that mushroom. Asking how or why someone did something in a game is silly and rarely asked. Now we have the tools to make something that has special effects comparable to what we see at the movies, and we give control of this world over to a player who is going to wonder very quickly why he or she should care about what's going on when a button is pressed. The technology may be getting better, but the quality of the stories generally isn't.

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So why do trends exist? Because they are familiar, they enable standards, and they just make life easier. In the case of video games, trends help companies maximize sales while reducing costs because gamers will purchase what they are accustomed to. But easier isn't always better. Here are eleven reasons why...

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I’ve always enjoyed holding forth about how many limitations there are for stories in video games. Often to an audience of non-gamer friends, I’ll start by pointing out what you can’t do in a game with regards to the story. Most of it has to do with the protagonist. Because the hero is the player character, you can’t make that hero anything the player might balk at playing. For this reason, many of the most awesome main characters from film, fiction, and television don’t really work so well as a main game character.









For example, take Oedipus or Clytemnestra: the emotions that might make you gouge your own eyes out or stab your husband to death are one thing to witness, and another to do, even fictionally, even by proxy. Even Achilles doesn’t really fit the bill. There’s nothing wrong with being the world’s greatest warrior, but sitting and sulking in your tent – over some slave girl? Let’s say you begin the plot immediately after all the pouting – it’s still going to sit wrong. “Wait, why was I mad? Why was I being such an idiot? And now I’m suddenly supposed to be all mad about this friend who went and got himself killed?”








There’s no need to resort to antiquity, either. Add to the list Thelma and Louise, Travis Bickle, Holden Caulfield, Amelie, even good old Hamlet. What makes every one of these characters memorable depends on a key moment or characteristic that the player would resist and resent as an imposition on his free will.

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Just Adventure staff writer Bob Washburne recently had the pleasure to conduct a telephone interview with Myst creator Rand Miller to discuss the past, present and future of Myst Online: Uru Live which is featured exclusively on GameTap.







We thought that our readers would like to listen to the actual interview and hear Rand Miller for themselves, so we are offering the opportunity to either read a written transcript of the interview or, to download and listen to an MP3 file of the interview.







Whichever you choose, we hope you enjoy this unique opportunity to spend some time with one of the gaming industry’s most influential developers and an icon in the adventure community.

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Façade is a prototype of interactive drama, a new genre of character and story-intensive interactive entertainment. Façade is freely downloadable at interactivestory.net. In Façade, you, the player, using your own name and gender, play the character of a longtime friend of Grace and Trip, an attractive and materially successful couple in their early thirties. During an evening get-together at their apartment that quickly turns ugly, you become entangled in the high-conflict dissolution of Grace and Trip’s marriage. No one is safe as the accusations fly, sides are taken and irreversible decisions are forced to be made. By the end of this intense one-act play you will have changed the course of Grace and Trip’s lives – motivating you to re-play the drama to find out how your interaction could make things turn out differently the next time.

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The movies were originally black and white, and the method of lighting these films relied heavily on shadow to create mood. The subject matter is also dark, as are the heroes. Noir as an English adjective means all of this and more; a small word with many meanings. We call films that reflect the noir hallmarks "noir" to identify them. We call heroes with a checkered past "noir." We call movies, even if brightly lit, and in color, "noir," if they strike us a certain way.











This week, The Escapist tackles the subject of noir games. What are they, and why? It's Issue 107, "Dark and Stormy Night." Now get out of here kid, you bother me.

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In my previous Adventure Architect installment, I mentioned interactive storytelling as my primary approach in the creation of an adventure game. I also emphasized how important a role the story plays in such a game, and how all other things must be subservient to it. This time around, however, I am going to be placing my emphasis on the word "interactive" in interactive storytelling, which is of equally paramount importance. After all, without interactivity, I wouldn't be creating a game so much as I would be creating a machinima movie.

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Sadly, in many adventures, character interaction has presented itself as extra window dressing rather than as a primary gameplay element. At most, it is useful in the way that talking to a character sometimes provides clues as to how to solve a puzzle; other times, it is simply a fun little diversion and nothing more. Save for a relatively minute handful of exceptions, what you say or do to characters has no significant effect on the game itself — if you make someone angry by choosing one dialogue option, it is virtually forgotten by the time you go back and choose a different one. Although a mixture of clever writing and careful limiting of possible choices can effectively maintain the player's suspension of disbelief in this regard, it still begs the question as to what an adventure game would be like if non-player characters did remember how the player treated them. This is a question I plan to explore at length throughout the making of Chivalry is Not Dead.

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Whether your chosen medium is pictures or language, food or formulas, everyone has the capacity to be creative in their work. But we can often lose our motivation to create, making it difficult to stay focused and excited on a project. So how does one keep their creative well from drying up?

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In our weekly game design column, Activision's James Portnow discusses the many different kinds of arcs in games, and how they can serve as a means of keeping a player invested in a game.

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At the 'Once Upon a Time… Storytelling in Games Today' panel at this year's Penny Arcade Expo,
Sam & Max developer Dave Grossman, former LucasArts creator Ron Gilbert and Nate Fox from Sucker Punch (Sly Cooper) talked at length about linearity, choice, death, and tragedy in modern games.

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Videogames shouldn’t try and develop more complex stories, because designers haven’t found a way to make it work well enough, according to two of the industry’s longest-serving storytellers.

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Activision’s James Portnow analyzes the various methods of penning stories for games…

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This article is about creating a window into player activities by using passive tracking systems to measure and improve the player experience.

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My introduction to adventure games may be unique or it may not, but it's my story. There are probably as many stories of how this genre entered into someone's life as there are adventure gamers. So what draws someone to this genre and why do they stay?

For me, there are a few things, and they continue to affect the games I choose to play. The primary reason is the idea of escape. That is the original reason I got so hooked. Being on Myst island meant leaving behind the tough cases, temperamental clients and annoying co-workers, if only for a few hours. One of the best ways for me to escape, and to honor my investigative tendencies, is lots of exploration. Even when playing adventure games today, be it first or third-person perspective, full of other characters or not, I love being able to travel around the environment and have a look around, even if there aren't many things to click on. That is one of the reasons why I love Syberia so much (and have replayed it at least three or four times).

The other main reason why I love adventure games is the story.......

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Balancing one’s day job and game production is not an easy task. There’s a great thread about How to balance game production and your day job at the new game producer forums. The thread contains some excellent pieces of advice, and I simply had to share these with you blog readers.








I’m sure all of us would like to know how to get more hours… but sometimes it can be about how to spend the few hours we have.








Here’s some tips from the members about how to balance game production and your day job.

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There are three important principles I’ve practiced to get traffic to my website. This article covers how these principled helped me to get 206,670 visitors to see what I have to offer. The article headline actually contains all these principles - in an erroneous manner.

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Game business question regarding profits was posed at the Indiegamer thread. I made a brief post at the forums, and decided to describe bit deeper these factors on the blog too. Here are 11 factors that can kill your game business.

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Activision's James Portnow examines the methods games use to create a sense of reward that keeps gamers coming back for more.

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Why do so many of our characters fall flat? In his weekly game design column, Activision's James Portnow explores why so many videogame characters turn out to be "anemic marionettes."

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Anyone who thinks they have come up with an idea that is completely new, and not influenced by any existing work, is either:








* An absolute genius (or possibly a messiah of some sort)
* Delusional
* Lying








With all the folks I've met over the years, I never had the pleasure of meeting the first type, but plenty of the second two.

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How many people have you killed? How many animals have you slaughtered? How many planes have you shot down? Aliens have you murdered? Anthropomorphic-turtles have you bopped?







Are you ... evil?







Videogames are violent affairs. No gamer can deny he's committed hundreds of awful acts that in normal society would have him captured, maimed or killed in retaliation. Not that all violent acts are evil, but it's safe to assume at least someone would be upset that his loved one was not coming home from the battlefield. Players never really think about the consequences of their virtual violence, and that is by design.

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Defining the precise role of a scriptwriter in the videogame industry is not as straightforward as pointing out the rather obvious "dialogue" tip of the game development iceberg. Although scriptwriters are a moderately recent addition to the dev team, their function can be surprisingly widespread, and when properly involved, a professional writer can turn an ordinary game into an extraordinary entertainment experience.

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In his latest column, Activision's James Portnow has a "eureka" moment about one of the biggest issues in game design: choice. You may be surprised with his conclusion...

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It's time once again for another edition of that annual favorite, Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie! Since last year I've collected up another batch of Twinkie Denial Conditions from my readers, which I present for your edification and entertainment.

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Follow along as Activision's James Portnow delves deeper into one of the most dizzying game design elements: choice.

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Our design expert discusses clear goals with John Romero

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Game Designer is one of those mythical positions everyone wants to fill. What isn't cool about getting to actually make the games you love so much? What isn't cool about being able to brag to all of your old-school gaming buddies that you are a real live game designer? What isn't cool about getting to come up with awesome ideas and having the programmers and artists implement them? Well, there isn't anything uncool about any of that. Unfortunately, reality is a bit different.

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This essay looks at the foundations of interactive storytelling, with a focus on their relevance to computer games. Tabletop RPGs (and the related medium of adventure gamebooks) are an important part of the background and history of this new medium, but will forever by a minority pursuit. Computer games, on the other hand, look set to take the reigns of interactive storytelling and bring them to a broad, diverse and expectant audience.

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Death on the Nile, the downloadable game, sells 10 million copies in six months as casual gamers hop on board

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"You can't overestimate the stupidity of the mass market." - Jane Jensen

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And going back to Benoît Sokal's Syberia , we see evidence of the philosophy described by White Birds' Michel Bams, who says the goal was to avoid two longstanding adventure staples: "Firstly, the kind of wacky puzzles that were the hallmark of many LucasArts games. Secondly, esoteric Myst-style puzzles involving astral conjunctions and runes. Our idea at the time was that, if your car is out of gas, you get a can, find somewhere to fill it with gas, get back to your car and start driving."

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Plot, Background Design, Character Design

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First, let me state what this is not. This is not an end all be all discussion on character design. This is not a drawing tutorial. My only intention is to present an approach to the visual side of character design that I find effective. The methods and techniques discussed may not work for everybody, but I believe they will help most to develop stronger, more visually appealing characters.

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The rise of the independent gaming movement is a vital one, and in this in-depth article, game development veteran Marsh showcases nine methods that indies are using to develop games with fewer resources.

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Games and films both require writers for their scripts, of course, but there are obviously major differences between writing for games and writing for film. Now, how about when a writer must work on a game adaptation of a film?

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We got a chance to sit down with one of the sparkling celebrities of the IT industry during the the Game Developers Conference 2008: Tim Sweeney is founder and CEO of Epic Games, creator of the famous Unreal game engines.








TG Daily editor Theo Valich spoke with Sweeney about the future of the PC as a game platform, the role of the next-generation of game consoles, the next Unreal engine as well as the future of Epic.








We have known Sweeney for several years and are always looking forward to his view on the state of the gaming industry, which he is not afraid to discuss openly. In this first part of our three-part interview, Sweeney takes on the PC, which he believes is in trouble and can’t keep up with game consoles, mistakes in Windows Vista and the integrated graphics dilemma.

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Yeah, it's all there, but applying that knowledge to an original work is tricky. Plus, I'm really burned out right now, so I'm not even thinking about it much these days. I'm trying to get out of my slump, and get the ball rolling, but that too is tricky.

Here's an appropriate link I think:

Trying to Design a Truly Entertaining Game Can Defeat Even a Certified Genius

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Ted Castronova, a social scientist and professor at Indiana University, made a name for himself studying the economies of online games, going so far as to calculate the exchange rate between US dollars and EverQuest platinum. But he wanted to do more than study virtual worlds — he wanted to create one.

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