Quote:

---

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.

---

Quote:

---

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’.

---

Quote:

---

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.

---

Quote:

---

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.

---

Quote:

---

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.

---