The third installment of Beiddie Rafól's The Cold Hotspot: A critique of the state of adventure games, is now available! This time Beiddie looks at adventure game marketing. "Marketing is the worst problem of the adventure genre, above outdated design and technology."
Dimitris Manos, Editor of The Inventory magazine, weighs in on Tim Schafer's comments about adventures being dead(from 2-3 posts up):
Quote:
What is your take on Tim Schafer's "Graphics Killed the Adventure Game" statement?
Let me answer your question with another question. What is your take on Robert Theobald’s “The millennium bug will have as big an impact on the global economies as the oil shocks of the 1970s” statement? I really think it’s counterproductive to talk about whether adventure games are dead or not and if they are what killed them. It is as redundant and outdated as talking about whether the millennium bug will cause havoc and mass hysteria. Anyway, you asked so I’ll answer. Adventures faced extinction during the end of the 90s, beginning of 2000. And for those who would like to know what almost killed the adventure genre…well here are in my opinion some of the most serious attempts to murder the genre back at that time:
- Grim Fandango - Phantasmagoria 2 - King’s Quest 8 - Simon the Sorcerer 3D - A bazillion Myst-clones produced by that time - Monkey Island 4 - The guys who fooled Ken Williams into selling Sierra to them
The fact that Sierra and Lucasarts stopped producing adventures was a major blow for the genre. I mean, imagine if today Valve, ID Software and Rockstar Games announced that they would not create shooters anymore, wouldn’t that be a major blow for FPS games? It certainly would, even though it’s easier to create a good FPS than it is to create a good adventure game. If you are an FPS designer, you can come up with a new gun that can pick up objects and throw them at other people, and you’ll have FPS geeks screaming like little girls and worshiping you as the mega-developer of all times. Now compare that to …say…Le Serpent Rouge puzzle from GK3…. and tell me which one is the most difficult to come up with.
Coming back to the adventure genre…well the genre managed to survive each and every blow it received, it’s been recovering for a while and now it’s taking nice healthy walks in the park. Soon we expect the genre to start running again. Let’s see some of the developers working on adventures right now…Autumn Moon Entertainment, Telltale Games, Wicked Studios, Revistronic, House of Tales, Frogwares, Deck 13, Pendulo Studios, White Birds Productions, Microids …those are only some I could remember right now. Compare that with the developers working on adventures in 2000 and you’ll see what I mean. The genre never died and never will, so people… just move on.
You wanna know something that is actually dead? Creativity in the gaming industry. That’s dead with a capital D. Go in a games store and look at the titles there, it should be enough. Half of the titles feature on their box some tough-looking guys pointing a gun at you and the other half consists of licenses and RPGs. If someone would make a statement about “Graphics killing creativity in games”… now that would be something really interesting, up-to-date and exciting to read/comment upon
