The Death of Adventure Games • Hacker News Board

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#31

Post by sid0 » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 10:30 PM UTC

mechanical_fish wrote: post #20

dpritchett wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of Steam - the OMM authors Chet and Erik have been working at Valve for years.

Erik Wolpaw was the lead writer of Portal, and is also the writer of Portal II. The guy can write.

OK, I did not know that. I love the writing in Portal.

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#32

Post by jarin » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 10:32 PM UTC

pcorsaro wrote: post #19

sid0 wrote: post #13

The article's over ten years old, and since then there's been a sorta revival of the genre. There are all the Telltale games, the Monkey Island remakes, and more recently the brilliant Machinarium. Digital distribution services like Steam have helped, of course.

Plus, Telltale just announced the revival of the King's Quest series. It doesn't get a whole lot more adventure than that.

And the Back to the Future series is AMAZING.

Episode 1 is free right now: http://www.telltalegames.com/bttfoffer

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#33

Post by Dilpil » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 10:33 PM UTC

Decent graphics are murder for adventure games. With some of the oldest adventure games, there were only a few places you could plausibly click on and see a result. Hunting for the interactable object in a 3D textured and shadered world is less intuitive.

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#34

Post by code_duck » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 10:35 PM UTC

jhamburger wrote: post #24

r0s wrote: post #22

Pretty funny, but point and click adventure games are still popular. There are several titles on Steam released this year for PC. The NintendoDS has several successful titles: Trace Memory, Hotel Dusk, and others. A new Professor Layton title topped sales for the 3DS, recently released in Japan. The genre is probably as popular now as ever.

Hmm, as popular as ever? I dunno. King's Quest, Myst, 7th Guest, these were the 'Call of Duty's of 80s/90s PC gaming.

They might not be as popular percentage-wise, but what are the sales totals and revenue like compared directly to those titles, I wonder? The total market must be a lot larger than it was back then.

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#35

Post by code_duck » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 10:38 PM UTC

DanI-S wrote: post #3

Perhaps they'll be back soon. Point and click would work well on the iPad...

Definitely, RPGs and adventure games work well with touch screen devices that lack traditional game inputs (game controllers, keyboards), especially compared to action or platform type games.

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#36

Post by anthonyb » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 10:39 PM UTC

pmcginn wrote: post #8

Oh, wow. OMM, talk about memories (the linked article is from 2000.) Among other things Chet and Erik were famous for the Time To Crate system of reviewing games by how long it took from starting the game until you saw a crate. Since this was the late 90s/early 2ks, it was generally zero seconds. This was in comparison to real life, where I frequently go years at a time without seeing a single crate, but then again,…

Not to mention their 'beta testing' of Asheron's Call's anti-griefing features by playing an effeminate sailor and harassing people.

The highlight for me though was their guest book. Rather than write their own, they and their entire readership would go and crash someone else's, with a new one each week. Here's a wayback link: http://replay.waybackmachine.org/19991010010423/http://www.o...

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to have archived any of the actual postings, but they were as deranged as they sound :)

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#37

Post by eps » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 10:40 PM UTC

pcorsaro wrote: post #19

sid0 wrote: post #13

The article's over ten years old, and since then there's been a sorta revival of the genre. There are all the Telltale games, the Monkey Island remakes, and more recently the brilliant Machinarium. Digital distribution services like Steam have helped, of course.

Plus, Telltale just announced the revival of the King's Quest series. It doesn't get a whole lot more adventure than that.

Oh, dang. I am sitting here waiting to pay my big adult bucks for the HD remake of Space Quest and they had to revive that girly knock-off quest... jeez :)

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#38

Post by mkr-hn » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 10:44 PM UTC

zandorg wrote: post #12

Before I clicked, I thought it meant text adventures. Clearly they're deader than corduroy if graphical ones are now 'old'.

Text adventures are still alive and well: http://www.ifwiki.org/index.php/Current_events

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#39

Post by coderdude » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 10:49 PM UTC

I used to be a humongous fan of 2D adventure games. Most notably the Space Quest series. If you've never played them start out with Space Quest 4 and then play SQ6. The audio dialog in the game is unrivaled humor. Full Throttle was also one of the mega-classics of 2D adventure games. I think the downfall of these games came when the studios tried to go the 3D route.

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#40

Post by paylesworth » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 10:51 PM UTC

ars technica had a very recent and in-depth article about the Rise and Fall (and re-rise?) of the genre. Definitely worth a read: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/reviews/2011/01/history-of-gra...