Why Adventure Games Died

[alexxkay]

Yeah, yeah, I know, they're "not quite dead". But it's a thoroughly niche market right now. There hasn't been a bonafide hit in years and years.

Conventional wisdom says (with some justice) that Adventure Games were *never* mainstream -- as the games market expanded, only the genres with mainstream appeal expanded with it. That may be part of the answer, but it overlooks the few legitimate mainstream successes that *did* happen -- notably the first Myst game and The Seventh Guest. Why did they succeed so well for a brief time, and then suddenly *stop* succeeding? I have a possible answer.

As I've discussed in my writing on Evergreen Games, one of the mainfactors that is necessary for mainstream success in a game is longevity -- the game has to stay entertaining for a *lot* of play time. Not only does this create a perception of value in the customer, but it also encourages word of mouth whenever anyone asks "What are you playing?"

Myst was pretty hard, by mainstream standards. Not so much to veteran adventurers, but a novice to the field could spend a *long* time before finishing that game. Even more, when a player *was* stuck, they would typically ask a friend for help -- generating even *more* word of mouth!

Two important things changed in the industry in between the first Myst game and the second one. One, Strategy Guides began to become ubiquitous, and to be available for purchase at the same time as the game, not months later as had previously been the case. Secondly, the Internet had started to really grab hold. "Walkthroughs" or "FAQs" about games became relatively easy to find.

From that point on, Adventure Games lost a huge part of their marketing power. No longer could one of them take up months of your time; now they were down to a few evenings at most. No longer did people ask their friends for help -- answers were far more easily available than that.

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

So in this view, all adventure games are puzzle games (potentially with snazzier interfaces), and being able to solve the puzzles easier is causing dwindling marketing share. I'm not sure I agree with adventure = puzzle, but it's an interesting answer for the dearth (IMHO warranted) of games where you spend all your time figuring out which object to verb next.

I find people are, despite what Gaiman said about the American audience (in comments re: Mononoke), fascinated by stuff they don't *quite* understand; most lingering hit songs have an ununderstandable quality about them, whether it's in the lyrics inherently or put there by mumbling; many hit movies have some element of "hunh. I don't get that. Let me see it again." I think walkthroughts also kill that air of mystery, reminding you that you're just in a giant InfoCom game with better graphics and less plot...

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

being able to solve the puzzles easier

Near as I can tell, "walkthroughs" and suchlike do not let you solve the puzzles/mysteries easier. They let you cheat, by not doing any work at all. I could certainly see how this is not attractive; there's no benefit to someone in cheating; they don't get a sense of accomplishment, and they don't get a good grade (or more money) by cheating, so why bother?

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Some guides give clues, rather than answers; but in any case, the only time I've resorted to them is when I was so stuck I was missing half the game. So that's one reason to bother.

There's an old text-based game that I've been stuck on puzzle #3 of for about...hmm...18 years...I sure wish its built-in(!) cheat function had been a bit clearer so I could play the rest of the game.

[rickthefightguy.livejournal.com]

Because you can. It is true that there is no accomplishment feeling to looking up the answer. But there is way less accomplishment to solving a puzzle on your computer when the answer to the puzzle is RIGHT THERE ON YOUR COMPUTER ALSO - you just stubbornly refuse to look at it. It feels stupid. Which is why I end up looking at the online walkthrough whenever I get stuck, and why I then feel little accomplishment, and why I don't play infocom games any more, and sadly petered out playing Balder's Gate II, Throne of Baal as soon as someone loaned me the strategy guide. And that was an RPG with quests, not a pure adventure game.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Accomplishment is more enjoyable than cheating, yes. But on the other hand, progressing through the game by cheating is more enjoyable than being stuck for N minutes with no progress. N will vary by individual, of course, but I don't think that it's infinite for any significant fraction of the market.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

1. Some people like cheating. Talk to tpau who basically wants to watch a story, and walkthroughed the entire FFVII series. Diff'rent folks.

2. Some books -- I suppose they don't exist any more -- will give you *tips*, not "the key is in the dungeon on the left, push up right left." Those were to what I was referring.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the extra info.

[gyzki.livejournal.com]

"walkthroughed"? Mr. Language Person winces. He doesn't doubt that's what the young people call it these days, but still he winces.

[freerange-snark.livejournal.com]

Indeed. "Walkthrown" is infinitely preferable. ;)

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I threw that one in there just for you. Well, not you per se, but whomever it would zing. ;)

[rickthefightguy.livejournal.com]

Adventure = puzzle, not because of the English meaning of Adventure (after all, RPGs have adventure, and so do RTS and FPS games). I think it goes back to "Adventure", the old game with the maze of twisty passages all alike (or Zork mimus one, as I sometimes called it). Great game, but I never really bothered with Zork after having played through it and finally gotten the Plover Egg and so forth.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

As one more tiny datum point.... I don't play, nor wish to play, video games. But I did buy Myst, and play it through. I never bought another.

Why did I buy it? I was assured that it was fun, and interesting, and beautiful.

It was. It was a quantum leap upwards in rendering and sheer prettiness over anything else I had seen. It was fun to look at, and play with, and wander about. But that level of "impressive" is hard to replicate with a newer game. And, over time, the "wandering and looking about" lost its gee-whiz aspect.

I found that almost all of the puzzles were at the right level, hovering between "too damned easy and not interesting" and "too damned hard and frustrating". Except for one, that was too damned hard, and when I found the cheat sheet for the puzzle (after an evenings work on it), the obscurity of the solution seemed to be inapposite to the balance of the game.

At the end of the game, well, the ending sucked. Total disappointment.

When it was done, I didn't want to do it "again", meaning not just play Myst, but play any particular puzzle game again. I didn't see how it could be better, or more satisfying (except for the ending... but fear of the ending being bad wasn't enough on its own to stop me). I didn't want to play Myst: The Second Waste of Time.

Unlike a great book or novel, or mystery story, there was nothing to make me "read it again", or elevate the experience to a new level on repetition of that game, or one just like it.

Make of this what you will....

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Myst was the first computer game I played, save for occasional minutes with text based adventure games in college. I loved it, and after I had solved it, went back to walk around in it for weeks afterwards. But Alexx already knows about me and Myst; I'm curious, Goldsquare, which puzzle was out of of proportion?

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Oh, gosh, I can barely remember.

There was a building, full of stuff, that was roughly octagonal. You had to "find things", and one of the things you had to find was a panel on the wall - which was rendered so poorly and badly that, even with the hint, I had trouble seeing it properly.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Ah! The library, I expect. Lots of "wood" paneling?

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Perhaps. The building was isolated from all other structures by water and one had to cross bridges to enter it.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Oh, ok. Not the library. Could have been a couple of different spots, probably on one of the other "worlds."

[rickthefightguy.livejournal.com]

This was exactly what I said to Alexx when we had this discussion in person this weekend. Myst was a mainstream success because everyone was getting new computers (and mainstream folks were getting their _first_ computers) and they all bought Myst because it was a breakthrough computer program, and most of those folks played the game and went 'Oh. That's a computer game, huh? Kinda fun, but what's the point really?'

[idonotlikepeas]

I agree with your premise but not your conclusion.

To endure, a game has to be hard, but has to also entertain you while being hard. Adventure games had started to get smart about this around the end of the commercial text-game era; you'd get some pretty entertaining text if you tried stupid things, or smart things that didn't quite work. There was stuff built into the game that kept you interested even when you were failing. Even before easily-accessible walkthroughs, people didn't want to fair forever, but were willing to tolerate it for a while if the game entertained them while they were doing it.

Adventure games don't work like that now. You can't make a text-only game a commercial success, and graphical games have only rarely hit a good spot where they're hard enough to keep you engaged but not frustrating enough to make you go to a walkthrough. It's too tempting to make the user interface give you hints, and when most puzzles devolve into "click on this object with every object in your inventory"... well, it doesn't engage one. Myst had clever puzzles that kept you interested even when you weren't winning. Its imitators didn't (always).

There's also the concept of fashions; the game industry is as prey to them as anyone else. You'll get a trendsetting game that does well, and then a dozen copies of it, and then a hundred second-generation copies of it. How many Dooms, Diablos, and Half-lives are there out there? People aren't devoting their time to making good, clever adventure games, because one hasn't succeeded recently, because a good, clever one hasn't been made, etc.

Most likely, someone will eventually come up with an idea for a engaging new adventure game, and there'll be another wave of interest, and then it'll die out again. I think this is a normal thing.

[siderea]

Only the very least tangentially related to this, but mangosteen just posted this trailer for Portal.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

That one had *everyone* in the office yesterday going "I wanna play that *now*!" :-)

[corwyn-ap.livejournal.com]

I really think it is simpler than this. A good adventure game should allow you to be clever. That is extremely hard to do.