How would YOU reinvent the adventure game genre?

Lately I've been thinking about 2d point 'n' click adventure games. I've been reminiscing about the good old days of Quest for Glory and Monkey Island. Somewhere along the line adventure games fell out of favour and were usurped by other game genres, but why? And what could be done to reverse this trend?

It seems clear to me that adventure games need to be reinvented, but how? I'll throw out a few of my own ideas and I'd be very interested to hear about yours.

1) 2d is out. Interactive 3d is in.

I don't want to stare at static 2d backgrounds, no matter how beautifully painted they might be.
I do want to be able to look around my on screen character and manipulate the camera with the mouse.
I do want to be able to control my character with keys or even a game pad.
I do want text descriptions (or voice descriptions) of interesting environmental objects that I select to examine.

2) Farewell bottomless pockets and endless inventory based puzzles.

I don't want to have to "use the cactus with the gerbil to open the trapdoor".
I don't want to waste time mindlessly clicking upon hotspots with every one of my seemingly endless list of inventory icons.
I don't want there to be a head spinning number of items to collect.
I don't want to have to "hunt the pixel" to find them.
I do want every item I collect to have multiple uses.
I do want to have only one "use" command rather than many push, pull. open, close, take, give (etc) buttons.

3) Strong, highly compelling and tightly structured stories.

I don't want to save the world from an evil wizard or mad scientist.
I don't want to begin the game as an amnesiac with a shady history.
I do want a strong narrative and plot that leads me through the game and doesn't just make a half-hearted appearance in the occasional cutscene.
I do want highly interactive dialogues but I don't want free form, open-ended gameplay. I want adventures to be tightly structured and plotted.
I do want plot and game progression to be dependent on character interaction more than the successful completion of puzzles.


I can think of many more things but I'm going to leave it at that for the time being... So what do other people think?

Didn't like MI4 .. I prefer a decent 2d game over a marketed 3d game (as in: "look! we have 3d, look at our box", while not having decent gameplay and oldfasioned gaming-fun).
I'm not much of a 3d player.. more intro retro and everything else classic.
For example, I prefer Warcraft II over Warcraft III .. and did/does anyone actually lower that camera in War3 for 1st-person-view anyway?

You're basically describing the differeces between the clasic Scumm games and more modern games. A thing that could be nice to point out is that over the years the audience changed a bit. Classic/retro/2d-ppl grew older, and perhaps aren't much of a gamer anymore. The new truckload of gamers, the new audience, grew-up with 3d, perhaps the only thing they know is 3d.

For the most part, I agree with what you've said, except for being able to directly control the camera. I really don't think that's needed and could just add an extra level of complexity to the gaming experience.

As for all the rest, have you played the last Broken Sword game? :) It's not a perfect adventure but is very enjoyable. I just hope there will be more, but I won't hold my breath.

Not sure why point-and-click adventures have gone out of fashion. It's a genre I've had some of my best gaming experiences with. Shame, really.

I agree that the camera doesn't need to be user controlled, although it could be interesting to introduce in some 'scenes' as a game mechanic, while maintaining a static camera for the majority.

A slight twist on the static camera would be to have a roving camera, i.e. within any one 'scene', the camera moves with / around you. For example consider walking along a road with a row of shops, as you move from left to right, the camera could slowly pan with you, highlighting the true 3d nature of the world. It could even roll around a street corner with you. If you approach a shop, or talk to someone in the street, it zooms closer. You could zoom out as you walk past a less interesting area.

I think that it's cinematic tricks like these that should be used in 3d adventure games. While I don't 100% buy the "games must become more like film" argument, camera use is one area where many games could (and already have in some instances) learn a lot. Think along the lines of horror titles, but with a decent story/plot/puzzles.

I also think the answer to those annoying "can't find X" or "use every object with every other" puzzle should be a knowingly intelligent sidekick. For every puzzle, this sidekick should produce snide/humourous/helpful one liners hinting towards what to do next. But that's more dev work, and would kill sales of the guidebook, so marketing would never allow it...

I didn't play Broken Sword 3, but really wanted to - I wanted to get hold of 1 and 2 first, but never managed to pin them down.

I personally think that far too much emphasis is placed on graphics when it comes to adventure games. As soon as you put any kind of graphic in front of the player you have taken away the greatest tool they have for immersing themselves in a story - their own imagination.

Don't get me wrong, 3d graphics are without doubt the way to go for most of todays games - people simply wont accept anything less. But when it comes to telling a story you want the player to use their own imagination as much as possible.

I've often thought that an adventure game that was totally narrated with atmospheric audio could be interesting - ie you wouldn't even need to read the screen. Instead as you type 'Open the door' the audio starts narrating what happens next as you hear the door creaking. Instead of dictating to the player what the game should look like the sound embelishes their imagination. Kind of like an interactive radio play I guess.

I've you've ever watch a great movie - try turning the sound off - you suddenly realise how much of an influence audio has - the little background noises, the music etc - all these things make the overall impact of the movie so much greater.

Changing the aesthetics (e.g. using 3D), having a tightly-plotted story and fiddling with an inventory system don't actually change the structure of the adventure game format itself, and that's what needs updating (if it does at all).

Personally, I see third- and first-person RPGs taking on a lot of the characteristics of the good old adventure game, mainly because they would make the structure of the game a lot more open-ended and freeform.

The thing that puts people off adventure games is getting stuck at a particular spot. Only a small proportion will look at a walkthrough, and only the hardcore will actually battle it out. It's story-driven - when was the last time you got stuck reading a story? You don't want to make it easy or there's no fun, but the game world doesn't stop if you can't do something, and should offer you other things to do and preferably another way around the puzzle you're stuck on.

I've got the book Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling which offers some interesting insights on how things might progress. Also be sure to check out Facade at http://www.interactivestory.net/. I think Facade is a bit overrated, but it would have been better if it had used a point 'n' click system (or even text adventure-style vocabulary) instead of the broken natural language processing it uses.

Please think very carefully about why this is important to you. This statement leads me to believe that people like you are responsible for the market forces that answer the following question:

Broken Sword 4: The Angel of Death is due out later this year. There's a site and a trailer and everything.

http://www.brokenswordtheangelofdeath.com./index.php?lang=uk


I think I recall reading that Revolution are also working on BASS 2 as well. ( Beneath a Steel Sky for those who aren't old enough. )




I disagree, but I would, wouldn't I? I hate the 30-second attention span world we live in now. If we reach a puzzle we can't get past, we bin it and go and play something else? I'm not for one second going to argue with that, because it's very true and very sad. It probably *is* the reason that adventure games don't sell too. But damn, do we really have to accomodate these children of the MTV generation who can't spend a few moments puzzling? People like me who remember the Scott Adams and Infocom games where you might spend bloody week struggling over how to get past the damn fan ( Spiderman ) or how to get the gems away from Ringmaster without him turning you to stone ( Spiderman ) have a real hard time digesting that people can't stomach even an hour or two of being stuck.

If you take the real puzzles out of adventure games, you've just got a film. :/ But like I said, can't disagree with a word of it factually. I just really wish game designers coud be allowed to pay no mind to it and market to those of us who don't mind real puzzles.

Really?

Adventure sales have never been as low as since the leading studios switched to 3D. Coincidence?

Whether the market kept shrinking despite the switch to 3D or because of may be in question, but for '3D being in' we sure don't see many succesful 3D advantures....

Lucasarts, the long-term ruler of the Adventure genre, discontinued the long-awaited sequel to 'Sam & Max' last year, and issued a press release explaining that this was not the day & age to release an adventure game. They simply didn't see the market there anymore.

I'm sad to see that happen, given that these type of games are by far my favorite genre. I'll pick an adventure game over an FPS or MMORPG any day.



You are right about static 2D -- but you don't have to settle for static. There are a lot of things you can do to create a dynamic 2D environment as well: movement of clouds, bugs, some wind, flags, neon signs, other small background items occasionally changing, can beat a 3D adventure hands down.

They keyword here really isn't '2D', it's 'static': a static 3D environment would look just as boring, if not more so.

In my personaly experience, the older 2D adventure games such as Monkey Island 1, 2 and 3 beat the 'latest and greatest' Monkey Island 4 hands down -- 3D plain and simple makes for a worse experience in those kinds of games.

I've played pretty much every 2D adventure known to man, and half a dozen 3D ones or so.
In general, 3D has a couple of problems over 2D:

- The controls tend to be awkward, and make you feel like the character is drunk half the time
- Due to changing camera viewpoints, it is easy to unintentionally have things obscured when they shouldn't be.
- 2D can look a lot better graphically than a 3D adventure, since you can do pixel-perfect graphics and are not bound by polygon limits. so far all the 3D ones I've seen just look too 'boxy'. Another problem with 3D graphically, is that it tends to look a lot more repetitive due to recycled textures and such to work around memory limitations. Especially the very appealing looking cartoony, distorted geometry commonly found in 2D graphical adventures is near impossible to represent in a 3D environment. It no longer looks 'cute' in 3D, it just looks like crap. so you have to tone down those kind of things, making the 3D version look more 'boxy' again, and also come across a lot more sterile and less organic.

Because of this (and more), the 3D adventures don't feel half as immersive as the 2D ones ever did... Which is rather ironic, when you think about it.



Of course you need to keep things in check and within reason. We've all seen adventure games where certain of the puzzles and item combinations were just too far fetched... But you need to find a middle ground. The whole inventory deal is part of the charm of adventure games, in my opinion. Without it, you end up with something like The 7th Guest -- a bunch of unrelated stand-alone puzzles thrown together in a pack, that while looking good, don't make for a very immersive total package.

If you have a problem with the 'bottomless pocket' principle itself, it's really just a matter of convenience: Having to juggle items around and keep going back and forth between locations simply because you can't carry the ladder and a chair at the same time gets really tiresome, really quick. Imposing a limit like that takes away from the immersiveness of a game.

In the Discworld game they used the 'luggage' as a way of addressing the pocket issue: The main character could carry only a few items on himself at any time, but you have a secondary character following you around: the luggage. The luggage is a wooden chest with little feet, that follows the main character around wherever he goes. Kinda like a pet. He contains the rest of your inventory. There are a couple of places where he can't follow (e.g. can't climb ladders), so on a few occasions you have to be creative and make sure that you have the correct items in your own pockets because you won't be able to reach the rest of your full inventory since the luggage can't come with you.

In other games you may (temporarily) lose (part of) your inventory along the story line: you may get mugged, captured, put things away for safe-keeping, can't carry everything with you, or simply 'lose' it somewhere. (e.g. the carnival ride in Sam & Max, where your entire inventory gets thrown out of your pockets)



'Highly compelling' is very subjective. Some people love the 'pirate' environment of Monkey Island, and hate the Space Quest universe -- and vice versa.

Tightly structured stories sound good, but you need to make sure that there is plenty of room for 'freedom' as well. Good adventures allow you to do a bunch of the puzzles simultaneously, provider a richer environment to the user. You can have a bigger overall story line, with certain objectives that need to be met before advancing to the next part of the story, unlocking new locations, etc... But to remain immersive, you need to make sure that the player isn't steered towards just a single possible line, but can do some things out of order.

Have multiple little sub-adventures that need to be completed in order to complete a 'main' event, e.g. obtaining transportation to the next location. It shouldn't matter in what order to stole item -x-, discovered information -y- and got information you needed from person -z-.... That way you give people a chance to clear their mind by focusing on another mini-mission if they get stuck trying to accomplish one particular task.
Of course, ther ewill be a bunch of 'main' tasks that will be carefully scripted, but a lot of the smaller stuff can easily done out-of-order. You need to make sure that possibility is there, or you will quickly frustrate players when they get 'stuck' and have nothing else to do to distract them for a while.



Be careful... I'm currently playing 'Discworld Noir', which is kind of a 'film noir' style detective game located on the Discworld. 'character interaction' quickly succombs to 'talk as much as you can to every person on the planet until they bore you to tears. Then go back to every single other person you already talked to to make sure that they don't have anything else to say on the subject either. Repeat ad nausum'. The first two discworld adventures were vastly superior to the 3rd one. In my opinion, the background characters should provide you with needed information, give you clues that help to solve your puzzles, or just provide general ambience... But they are all just supporting characters.

Maybe it's just me, but I like the 2D-with-weird-puzzles-and-bottomless-inventory stuff.

For the most part I disagree with the topic author. It seems he's asking for resident evil.

If you are not referring to resident Evil 4, I forgive you and agree with you.

both broken sword 3 and Farenheit/Indigo prophecy are Brilliant Adventure games. I can't emphesize enough just how good these games are.

Farenheight has some pretty innovative controls for certaint parts of the gameplay which had a mixed reception. For the most part I really enjoyed the action aspect with the simon says mechanism, but I did play it on the Xbox with dual sticks. I can imagine the mechanism being a nightmare on a keyboard.

It was so good that Eurogamers readers placed it 4th place in the best of 2005 games. Thats higher than WOW, MGS3,shadow of collosus, battlefield 2, pro evo soccer 9, and half life 2.

Not bad for an adventure game ;)

------------------------------

PS2, Xbox, PC

http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/926559.asp?q=indigo%20prophecy


Gamespot Review:

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/adventure/fahrenheit/index.html

I agree, Broken Sword 3 and Fahrenheit are both fantastic adventure games, and completely different too. Fahrenheit does pretty much what Luke wants adventures to do, but Broken Sword 3 doesn't ( apart from being 3d. ) Both can be good and both can be successful.

We can only hope that Atari ( or someone else ) give Quantic Dream ( the developers of Fahrenheit ) some serious money and a top-class engine. Just imagine what they could do with a high-quality 3d engine.

The adventure game still exists... it just has guns now... and zombies..

Survival Horror.

Speaking of adventures: Any news on 'Project Joe'? That one looked very promising. :-)

Interesting responses, guys. I've been thinking some more about this and I have another question:

Are puzzles a necessary element of adventure games?

For me, at least, the plot, subplots, characterisations, dialogues and sense of immersion are the most important things. Puzzles always felt like a necessary evil, but now I think about it is that really true?

According to dictionary.com, the word "adventure" means:

1. An undertaking or enterprise of a hazardous nature.
2. An undertaking of a questionable nature, especially one involving intervention in another state's affairs.
3. An unusual or exciting experience: an adventure in dining.
4. Participation in hazardous or exciting experiences: the love of adventure.
5. A financial speculation or business venture.

Conflict of some sort is an essential element of any plot. Most novels and movies feature conflict or "adventure" in some form without the characters having to resort to brain-twisting puzzles or fighting to solve them. So why must adventure games?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_games

"Adventure is a genre of video game typified by exploration, puzzle-solving, interaction with game characters, and a focus on narrative rather than reflex-based challenges."

Frankly, I think an adventure game without puzzles is scarcely an adventure game at all!

Intresting posts.
What do you think of the usage of AIML.

Character interaction - an integral part of the adventure game genre - is currently dead.

Everything else got more realistic, but character interaction is still limited to watching the playback of prerecorded animation sequences and prerecorded dialog. Contrasted against beautifully rendered models, it feels awful. Humans in games look more like real humans now, and our brains expect them to move and react more like real humans too. They don't, so we dislike interacting with them.

In yesteryear, our imagination fleshed out social interactions in games; while you talked with someone, the static or poorly-animating sprite served only as a prop to remind you what the actor typically looked like - the majority of the experience came from reading the onscreen text narrative which would collaborate with your imagination to paint a vivid mental image of the interaction.

To top it off, text entry has all but disappeared. How much can you really "interact" with someone who acts as a pushbutton?


How would I reinvent adventure games?

First, text entry. Provide a tutorial stage to help uninitiated players learn to use their dusty old keyboards. 3d graphics, but not 1st or 3rd person perspective - fixed or panning cameras a la Resident Evil. The scenery graphics would need to be beautiful. Simultaneously voice-acted and onscreen narration, especially for character interaction, to keep players from focusing on the pretty pictures. Of course, I wouldn't be zooming up on characters when they talk. Pretty much I'd just be putting a new suit on the old Sierra games, such as Quest For Glory (or Hero's Quest, as it was called when I first got ahold of it) - which is my favourite game from that genre.

EDIT: Actually, maybe I'd kill the voice-acting to force people to pay visual attention to the words of the narration.

Haven't read much of the thread but to respond to a couple of Luke's points-


NO! Botomless pockets are an absolute must in my book. I've been put off games by having to continually retread my steps back to a stash of objects i think i may need. This becomes even more important if it's an arcade adventure where you use ammo/life every time you backtrack.

True but I think a well made 2d adventure can compete with a 3D one. I think if lucas arts began producing quality 2d adventures like Monkey Island 1/2, The Dig etc again they could make good money. Both 2d and 3d have a lot of potential IMO.

On the whole I agree with the rest of your points.

octothorpe:



When I first read this my immediate reaction was to disagree but you might actually be right. I can't think of any recent games that featured particularly good character interaction.



Quest for Glory III was my favourite game in the genre. Although some would call it an adventure/rpg hybrid.



Agreed. I loved the text paser in the early Quest for Glory games. You really felt like you were uncovering some new information once you figured out the right questions to ask. There was definately a greater sense of achievement than just clicking on a button or an onscreen text message saying "Ask about the Mayor" or whatever. But don't you think that a text parser can alienate a lot of people? And don't you also agree that it can be very frustrating to reach a virtual dead end just because you have chosen the correct vocabulary to trigger a necessary response?



Absolutely. Couldn't agree more. I've always found voice-acting to be a distraction at best.

I would reinvent adventure gaming by making games where you live a life of a "famous" person. Be it in present or 100 years ago. A game like "indigo prophecy" with a lot of multiple outcomes, real moods, dialogues, and of course nice 3d graphics :)

kinda stupid really

I don't know if anyone has looked at the new "Radiant AI" in the forthcoming Elder Scrolls Oblivion but that would sure make for some interesting character interaction.
I doubt we'll ever see another 2d point and click adventure game from any major publishing house as it just doesn't have wide enough appeal ( unfairly imo).
Another niche for the indy programmer !

Gabriel: Thanks for the heads up on Broken Sword 4. Do you know what platforms it's going to be available on?

The announcment I saw just said PC, but I wouldn't be surprised to find it on PS3 and XBox360 as well.

Can't wait. I hope it's available on a console in time for next Xmas as I have various other family members around at this time who love playing these games, also. We've played all the Broken Sword games and they are always asking me if a new one is out yet. :)

Long story short, I have a game design on the back-burner that is a really interesting evolution of point-n-click adventures. I don't expect I'll be really working on it for a while, though.

You know... Personally I like the point-and-click interfaces, but I can't help with wondering: has technology advanced far enough to make it feasible to have a reliable enough voice recognition system to replace a text input interface in adventure games?

It's not so much that, more that people expect more from their games these days. Why are they stuck like that? People expect interaction and a richer environment, they expect non-linearity and a more open approach to puzzles. They want to be able to use their own ingenuity to solve a puzzle, not the ideas of someone else.

Yes, lazy people. Unfortunately, they make up a large portion of the target market for video games.



A better text parser would solve those agreeably obnoxious problems: more synonyms and better heuristics.

Yes. This is the reason i said AIML those things are all ready in.
Also have you seen Facade by Procedural Arts at InteractiveStory.net?
This is how my opinion Adventure games will be reinvented.

We're working on it, some sort of it, in final phases of negotiations before we can hire externals again.

teamonkey: This has been bouncing around in my head, pestering me. What exactly do you mean by "using their own ingenuity" not "the ideas of someone else"? Can you give an example?

Y'know, I had that downloaded on my work computer forever, but I only just last week burned it to a DVD to take home and play. I've been following the progress of interactive storytelling technology since I was in college, so I knew about those guys since their Dogz days.

You don't need to re-invent the Adventure Game genre. I love old school lucas arts or sierra point and click adventure games. I wan't those... the only difference is I want them in 1024x768+ resolution... but other than that, they are perfect.

The trouble with old school adventure games is that NO ONE MAKES THEM ANY MORE!!!!

Now, there are enough hard core old school adventure game fans to support a few small companies continuing to make the old school adventure games... so this is what the adventure game folks need to do:

1. Keep it 2D and low machine requirements... The people who are into adventure games are not the people with the newest 3D graphics cards. We could be working on our old work laptops, and want something to play during lunchtime, etc. Of course when you make your newest adventure game with system requirements that are off the scale, not a lot of people play the game, because the hardcore gamers play first person shooters.

2. Make it simple to buy and download and play. I can tell you how many times I have heard of an adventure game that I want to play (for example, Voyage), but I either have to look for it at the store (and my local EB Games has a small selection of computer games, so it isn't going to have it), or I have to order it online, and wait for 6 weeks for it to come (which I am not going to do). If I could order it, download it to my desktop right away, and click the executable to play, they got my sale.

My wife loves 3D adventure games. I gave her broken sword 3 and she loved it. Same with Farenheight. She didn't enjoy BS2 much, and although she likes the look of the screenshots of most 2D adventure games. She doesn't enjoy the games themselves.

We have 2 unopened never played and several like siberia and the longest journey, but she really didn't enjoy them and stopped playing within a couple of hours.

What she likes about the 3D ones is the visual representation of emotional content during the dialogue that make her get involved with the characters.

I remember as a kid. How much I loved the monkey island games. I recently played the original and was disappointed. Just wasn't as fun as I remembered it. Same with Full Throttle, which I found in a box of CD's fairly recently.

I think the AI in Oblivion if it really works as shown in the lengthy E3 demo video would allow a hell of a lot of potential in an adventure game.

I played Broken Sword 3 recently and thought it was okay apart from some minor issues and the REALLY annoying sections where they tried to make an adventure game into a stealth game, which I hate. Anyway, after completing BS3 I went back and played the first two games which I only played the demos to back in the day. Needless to say I remembered how brilliant adventure games were back then and realised the poor bland 3D tosh of the third game wasn't a way forwards, it was a way backwards. Tripe.

I'm really glad I played them in the order I did because the third game would have been such a let down had I played them in order. I love Beneath a Steel Sky and live in terror that the 3D tripe they'll trundle out will be the worst @#!*isation I've ever seen.

The only thing old 2D games didn't do that they should have (and 3D adventure games still do it too) is the ability to solve puzzles in multiple ways. It's so annoying to think of a solution to a problem using an item from the inventory that would work in reality but doesn't in the game because the designer wanted you to do it another more implausible way. I don't like getting stuck but it's excusable if I'm the one being stupid but it isn't if the game's being stupid.

I really don't think so! Some games try to reinvent the genre but all thier attemps fall flat!
And old LucasArts and Sierra games will always be on top of that little pile of garbage that we got during last several years.

So you think that a completely traditional 2d Monkey Island or King's Quest game would be commercially succesful (or for that matter enjoyed by many people) if it was released today?

It would be fine by me! If you get Ron Gilbert and Tim Schaffer to make a new adventure game I'll buy it no matter how bad the graphics are by todays standart. I've played 310 adventure games over the years and all of the latest stuff is mostly a pile of crap.
I know it's possible to make a 3d adventure game (Tex Murphy latest games, Normality, Gabriel Knight 3 and stuff like that) and I have nothing against it, but I would rather like to see something done by a good game designer. Syberia gained a lot of popularity because it had pretty pictures and great music. It's a good game don't get me wrong, but in my eyes it doesn't stand a chance against Day of the Tentacle or Full Throttle for that matter.
By the way... Another "innovation" in the genre. Can be good, who knows. Donwload the trailer (22 mb) from here:
[url]http://www.adventure-eu.com/fr/index.php?option=com_repository&Itemid=&cat_id=1&game_id=40&file_id=26&act=launchDl[/url]

The succes of a product is a task for the marketing-department. With all the retro-stuff coming back (old homecomputers do have a bit of a revival), don't be surprised when a lot ppl prefer "old quality" over "new quantity".
I'm not against 3d perse, but 3d needs to be VERY HIGH QUALITY 3d to match traditional 2d in style. Also first person view is not my taste. I like how 3d is used in Gradius 5 for example, but that's simply a 2d-game using 3d gfx to build the screens.

After all those old years of no 3d, developers seem to get thrilled by finally doing 3d, resulting in an explosion of everything-3d.

It's analogue with the movie-industry, for years there were movies made with really primitive means, and then there was Jurassic Park! We got crap like The Mummy ... laughable.. esp. since it was meant to be scary (because it was sooooooo realistic) .. and then M.Night Shyamalan hit the stage and brought us T6S, and after that movies somewhat went back to real directing again, with less over-the-top CGI to carry the movie, and more real tension.

Something like that needs to happen with games too I think.. 3d/fps all fun, and it was a nice trip, but gamemakers need to re-discover the old gameplay of yesteryear.

[/2cts.]

Justluke: As far as commercially succesful: it's all relative. One of the big downsides of a good adventure game is that they are relatively expensive to produce, in part due to the insane amounts of artwork that needs to be created for them. This means that you have more development costs to recoup, in a market were only a small percentage of any released games can be considered commercially succesful.

At the moment, LucasArts doesn't think the world is ready for another adventure game, their odds of making money are bigger by slapping together some other FPS and pasting their starwars junk on top of it.

It can still be succesful of course, it's just that *any* game that's expensive to create has a smaller chance of being so, the more expensive it is to produce.

Would a real-time 3d adventure require more artwork than a modern fps? I'm not sure it would. Also, adventure games such as Bone (www.telltalegames.com) seem to indicate that professional quality adventure games can still be produced without breaking the bank.

Speaking of Bone, let me throw out another question:

Do you think that releasing adventure games episodically is viable?

I have my own opinion about this but I'd like to hear what others think before I share it.

Episodically: Greatly depends on how long and self-contained the episodes are.
I mean, you can have a series of adventures that take place in the same universe (Monkey Island, Larry, Spacequest, King's Quest, etc.) which you could technically consider episodes, but they are all self-contained.
Chopping up a single adventure storyline into multiple seperate release chunks (is this what you are asking?) sounds like a bad idea, since you would impose your schedule on the player rather than having him/her play the entire thing at their own pace.

*especially* since you are talking about trying to make things interesting and challenging for your players, you should consider how much more disjointed and less immersive it would make it for a player if they have to wait -x- time for the next chapter to be released, rather than playing it through start to end in a weeks time on their own schedule.

I think that Bone is a piece of crap. Even if I keep in mind that it's a kids adventure. For several reasons:
1) It's too short!
2) It's too easy!
3) Graphics are crap!
Bone can't even remotely compare with Ron Gilbert's Pyjama Sam or Spy Fox or any other Humongous game!
It's pricey for it's content! You can get Pyjama Sam for the same (if not less) and get a better game with REPLAYABILITY!
So far I'm not impressed and I'm afraid to think what will become of the new Sam & Max.
You need a good designer to make an adventure game. TellTale has the artists, but not designers. The original Sam & Max Hit the Road was designed by Stemmle and Clark and, from what i've heard, they are not a part of TellTale.
When I've played Bone demo I've found out that in 30 minutes I've beaten 45% of the game! When I've played the Pajama Sam demo I've beaten about 15% of the game . So it should answer the question about my opinion on episodic games.

I thought you said "even if I keep in mind that it's a kids adventure". :)

Yes, that's what I said. Even for a kids adventure it's all these things! Look at Ron Gilbert's kids games! They are great! Pyjama Sam, Freddy Fish, SpyFox... Bone is an ultimate piece of crap in compareson!

Interesting. Actually, I dont think that Bone is meant to be a kids game anymore than, say, Monkey Island is. I agree with your opinions on it though.

In my opinion Stemmle and Clark were by far the weakest designers during lucasarts' "classic era". I didn't enjoy Sam & Max half as much as Monkey Islands 1 - 3, Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango or even Full Throttle, and I loathed Escape from monkey Island - a game which they designed.

Anyway, back to episodic games. I think it's a fundamentally flawed idea. The concept seems to be one of the in things lately - Bone is the first but the upcoming FPS Sin 2 will follow a similar formula. In both cases, the designers draw comparisons with on-going TV shows and talk about cliff-hanger endings and story arcs. What they fail to mention is that most TV series' broadcast an episode each week. I used to really enjoy watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer but I would have lost interest and patience in it if I had to wait upwards of six months for each new episode to air. I don't see how this problem can easily be overcome when it comes to releasing games in an episodic way.

Well, I finally decided to finish Escape from Monkey Island a month ago and I must say that past the first impressions - it's a very solid game. It has it's flaws, but I liked it. Several yeas after I've seen it... ;-)
You also have to respect them for bringing Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. But I do agree - these ganes are not as enjoyable as DotT, MI or FT. So it's scary to see what's going on with the new game that will be done without their design! And with the TellTale's first attempt future doesn't look too promising.
Thank Tim for Psychonauts or I would kill myself last year - one good game, even if it's not an adventure the design is still genious!
I don't care how short the game is, or how pretty graphics are, or music... All I care is how entertaining the adventure game is. At that's what have been missing for a while now.

Yeah, Psychonauts was great. It would have been even better without the arcadey platform bits. But then it would just be an adventure game without the puzzles.

... Which now I think about it is exactly what I think a modern adventure game should be. Psychonauts - arcadey bits + more conversation, characterisation and plot. Yeah, that sounds good to me.

Well, then it wouldn't be an adventure game to me... I really liked Psychonauts the way it was. The gameplay is great and so is the story and all the characters.
I don't think that adventure games should be modernized in any way (Probably just graphics). Companies should just make a good adventure game that would be considered good 10 years ago. What shows is that a 10-15 year old adventure game is as good now as it was (don't count the graphics). Shooters, stategies and others evolved, but adventure genre was so heavily developed that it really was in its top. So I don't think that mixing genres would do it any good.

To me, 'arcade bits' are a huge turn-off in an adventure game.

It's the puzzle & problem solving part that makes them appealing to me. Thingsl ike the fight-scenes and such in the old Indiana Jones adventure just make the entire game less appealing.
But aside from not liking them, there's another potential problem: Part of the audience for adventure games are people who play them because they are more accessible that many other games, exactly because they don't need lightning-fast reflexes to play unlike many other games. That includes physically disabled people, older people, etc. By throwing in arcade stuff, you're locking out a sizable portion of your potential customer base.
If nothing else, you should make the arcade parts optional. (e.g. have two solutions to a particular problem, one involving arcade and one involving puzzling, or have the ability to auto-play the arcade part if it is crucial to the story line, or have an 'easy' mode where you can't really do wrong.

I think that it could be enjoyed by more people... I think it could make just as much money. Remember that the audience of people with computers to play the games, and internet connections to download the games, is much larger today.

That being said, I don't think 2D Monkey Island or Kings Quest games can compete with the "next big game". But I think they can be commercially viable. I think someone can make a pretty good living, with a small company, making the games! I think the same way as there is Dexterity Games and Popcap games making good money selling puzzle games (even though the puzzle games are no more advanced than games that came out 10 years ago), there is a huge demand for classic adventure games.

They just need to make sure, like Dexterity Games and Popcap games, that the games run on even old crappy PCs, and that the games are super easy to purchase and play immediatly (so they get impulse buyers... of which I am one! :) ).

i think that arcade bits ruin a adventure game completely if they're not carefully planned. in indiana jones and the last crusade, if you didn't do everything just right, you would be forced to fight in impossible battles against the nazis. i still can't figure out how to beat up the nazis correctly.

Echo: Arcade action has no place in adventure games, IMO.

I knew a guy who used to run paper-based RPGs who would insist that a player verbalise what their character would say when trying to 'fasttalk' their way out of a situation. A character could have FastTalk(98%) but be played by some kid with a stammer. Harsh !

Same deal with Adventure games that insist on arcade skills - If the character should be able to do it, it should be coded by the programmer, not down to the vagaries of the players reflexes.

I'm thinking of situations where you struggle to get past a puzzle, then when you do you're frustrated and think "well why couldn't I have just done X?" If you can allow them to do X (or give them a good reason why they can't do it another way) then they won't have that problem.

For example, there's a puzzle in Gabriel Knight 3 where you have to open an office window. To do this you have to use a certain combination of obscure items on the window in order to open it and keep it open. All well and good, but if you want to get in that badly, why not smash the window? Smashing a window isn't a particularly good example of ingenuity, but there are often puzzles where the solution is a bit contrived, or the player could think of another way of doing things.

Designing for that is easier said than done, obviously - if you've smashed the window you'd expect there to be repurcussions: a police investigation might find your footsteps or fingerprints, yet it would have to work in such a way that you could always complete the game.

I suppose there's the Deus Ex approach, where there's always at least three ways to solve a puzzle (stealth, hacking and combat plus optional routes for certain superpowers you might have upgraded yourself to). It's a bit hackneyed though and you have to forsee all the different routes the player might take.

In GTA some of the mission scripts are quite freeform and can be "broken" in so many ways that the designer can't allow for them all. For example, if you're supposed to kill someone on foot and find it difficult you might be able to sneak a car or a rocket launcher into that area, or barricade an exit with a truck. This can be nice, but a pain to code, and how do you prevent the player from doing something really stupid that breaks the storyline completely?

Neither of those games are adventure games, obviously :)