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KickStarter The Failure of the Adventure Game Renaissance

gaussgunner

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ХУДШИЕ США
I had to listen to it in shifts, but that's just because it was long. Pretty interesting.
 

Blackthorne

Infamous Quests
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Codex 2014 Divinity: Original Sin 2
What? Cause nu-King's Quest flopped like a dying fish? The writing was on the wall with that, I called it years before the game came out. Just because Activision royally fucked up the Sierra license doesn't mean the genre is dead; sure, as an AAA convention, it's worthless to big publishers now. It doesn't feature multi-player or micro-transactions! And just because there are some indie devs who are struggling doesn't mean it's dead: a bunch of devs are still making a releasing games. It's not dead, but it's not a major genre anymore, that's for sure.


Bt
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
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I think the major changes for the worse are that Daedelic no longer seems to be producing high quality traditional adventures, WEG's publishing arm has shrunken a bit, and that Tell Tale has moved farther from adventure gaming while also losing sales. The changes for the better are that there are many other indie developers beyond WEG now operating in this space (hence Dropsy, Kathy Rain, Paradigm, etc., etc.) That said, 2002 is a weird year to compare to, since that was pre Tell Tale, pre Daedelic, pre WEG.
 
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I think the major changes for the worse are that Daedelic no longer seems to be producing high quality traditional adventures, WEG's publishing arm has shrunken a bit, and that Tell Tale has moved farther from adventure gaming while also losing sales. The changes for the better are that there are many other indie developers beyond WEG now operating in this space (hence Dropsy, Kathy Rain, Paradigm, etc., etc.) That said, 2002 is a weird year to compare to, since that was pre Tell Tale, pre Daedelic, pre WEG.

As BT said, Sierra (and LucasArts to a lesser extent) are my only love when it comes to adventure games, so for me, the early-mid 00s, when Sierra was dead and LA was pretty dead were the nadir. You had cool fan projects but that's it. Also, I only like medieval fantasy and/or space based adventure games, and there's not many of those coming out.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
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But right now you have medieval and space adventures coming from ex-Sierra devs -- it seems by your standard the genre is less dead, although perhaps watching a geriatric monstrosity parading as your favorite genre from your favorite dev is worth than death. :)
 

Modron

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The Inner World sequel came out a month ago and like nobody noticed so I am spreading it around a few threads here, seems like it is doing poorly since it already is marked half of in this autumn sale
 
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But right now you have medieval and space adventures coming from ex-Sierra devs -- it seems by your standard the genre is less dead, although perhaps watching a geriatric monstrosity parading as your favorite genre from your favorite dev is worth than death. :)

Yeah, the KQ sequel was barely fantasy and was utter shit and SpaceVenture will never come out. The closest we'll get is Starr Mazer, which is what I'd like to see more of. To be honest, I would be 100% fine if the adventure genre fully evolved into the cool platformer/adventure hybrids I've seen (another example is Owlboy). The future of adventure games, at least as hybrids, is in pixel-art games.
 

SilverSpook

Silver Spook Games
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I like K'Nossos a lot, and I'm glad the K'Nossos Kickstarter succeeded. I need to get that Svarun guy on the podcast one day, maybe closer to launch.

The Inner World sequel came out a month ago and like nobody noticed so I am spreading it around a few threads here, seems like it is doing poorly since it already is marked half of in this autumn sale


Damn, that really sucks! Neofeud has been out about two months and it's just at the 33% level on Steam now. Although since The Inner World sequel started at $24.99, that 50% off is still not so cheap, for point-and-click adventures. I think The Journey Down started at $19.99.
 

CryptRat

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It's so sad that Daedalic certainly stopped making adventure games. :cry: It is very easily my favourite video game studio of the 2010s.
Talking only about adventure games half their games are better than any game made by anyone else during the same period as far as I'm concerned, except arguably a couple of isolated titles like Primordia or Dropsy which are just on par, not better. Regarding puzzles most recent games don't even come close so they can't be near as good.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
It's so sad that Daedalic certainly stopped making adventure games. :cry:

It's a dramatic fall which was totally missed by the mainstream gaming press (which also never noticed how good Daedalic were in the first place, of course)

Maybe the German-language media has written something about it?
 

SilverSpook

Silver Spook Games
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It's indeed sad to see Daedalic go.

I just recently read somewhere that games released to the unstoppable monopoly that is Steam get a mere hour, 60 minutes, of feature time on the front page, in which they either succeed or fail, based on clickthrough rate of a 400x300 screenshot and maybe a bit of trailer. Apparently, most people don't ask for a refund, even if they get tricked into buying a piece of crap game, especially if it's less than five bucks, because the inconvenience of going through the refund process isn't worth it. (The math does add up, as 6000+ games / 365 days = about 1 game released per hour)

This is in a certain sense old news, although it's just another reminder of why it's tough for adventure games nowadays. I'm considering other funding options like crowdfunding, more focus on patronage, or possibly releasing the next Silver Spook game episodically, so that the entire game's future doesn't hinge on such a tiny blip.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
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It's one reason that we need more than just one fucking platform (or, fine, two).
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
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I haven't played Daedelic's games, so I can't really say much about them. They certainly looked beautiful, and lots of people have told me that they were quite strong, particularly Deponia.

I think part of what killed them is the bad-faith "moon logic" argument that I talked about in the other thread. Basically, a non-trivial segment of the press, and not just the mass press but the niche press read by adventure game fans, engaged in the following routine:

(1) "Old school adventure games puzzles were ludicrous, as exemplified by the Gabriel Knight 3 mustache puzzle. (Link to OMM article.)" This is simply not true. A very small minority of old school adventure game puzzles were like that.

(2) "[Daedelic game] has the same punishing difficulty and moon logic." Can't speak to this, but I would strongly surmise that Daedelic's puzzles were actually on balance much easier than 90s adventure games'.

(3) "[Walking simulator / visual novel / interactive cartoon] has logical puzzles that enhance the story." In fact, it has stupidly easy puzzles that may or may not be logical, and don't enhance the story -- they simply don't impede the story.

If you read this argument in enough places, in places where the writers wrap themselves in classic adventure game credentials, where the writers ought to know better than the readers about adventure games, where the writers seem to know better, for instance by deploying trivia about adventure games the readers never played, you start to believe the argument. You doubt your own recollection of the games you played, or your mold your memories to the frame that's been provided to you.

In fact, the puzzle model that most people hated was not the "monkey wrench" or the cat mustache -- the puzzles generally were logical, it's just that it was fairly easy to miss an item or a hotspot, such that you didn't even know the game was posing a puzzle or a possible solution to you. While that puzzle-solution relationship might actually have been highly logical, and the most logical next step, because it seemed unavailable, you keep trying suboptimal (but faintly logical) solutions and getting madder and madder they didn't work. When you do get the solution (from a walkthrough) you're so mad about it that you're disposed to think it illogical. But even though most people hit such snags at least a few times in most adventure games, more often they solved puzzles on their own, sometimes tricky puzzles, and when that happened, they felt glad and proud. Most people who played adventure games liked adventure games (if most people disliked them, they wouldn't have been so successful) and probably would've kept enjoying them if they continued to believe that solving adventure game puzzles was proof you were clever. But when The Best Minds are telling you that, in fact, the puzzles are just dumb guesswork and that solving them is just evidence that you spent long enough at your typewriter, Mr. Monkey, to produce a solution, then the glow starts to come off.

The Best Minds decided to pursue that strategy, for whatever nefarious reason, and now we get puzzle-free adventure games that require you to "git gud" at your feelings or something because the height of introspective literature is clearly sophomoric not-game writing.

Anyway, I'll stop yelling at clouds now.
 
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CryptRat

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You can't realize how much you're just proving Infinitron 's point with this post (and triggering me by the way) ; nobody knows they stand aside from other modern studios because nobody who cares about puzzles played their games and vice versa. No, their games are in no way much easier than 90s games on average, they're maybe slighty easier alright, you're talking about other modern studios here, not about them.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
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I was mostly trying to make the point that people complaining that Daedelic puzzles were too hard we're almost certainly wrong.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I was mostly trying to make the point that people complaining that Daedelic puzzles were too hard we're almost certainly wrong.

Even before that, Daedalic's bigger problem was that they were seemingly automatically dismissed as a foreign shovelware dev with "bad localization" (even though their localization was actually excellent). I think there are lots of adventure nostalgists out there who have bought every Wadjet Eye game but have no idea that Memoria is a modern masterpiece.
 

CryptRat

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I know I'm not clear but I think I'm trying to make an important point.
I was mostly trying to make the point that people complaining that Daedelic puzzles were too hard we're almost certainly wrong.
Yes, I'm sorry, I could have said that I agree with the core of your message because I kinda do.

But my point is different :
I would strongly surmise that Daedelic's puzzles were actually on balance much easier than 90s adventure games'.
Now imagine if everyone else who also like good puzzles think exactly the same. Overall the reason why playing their games rather than others is their puzzles so you should be their target audience. Now you've not played their games and you don't even seem convinced that their puzzles are any good. I think this is very relevant. It's ridiculous that with more than 10 games they didn't even reach the small niche of players who care about puzzles.

Players who don't (really) like puzzles should avoid their games at all cost, while players who do like puzzles should play their games, and I don't think that really ever happened. On Steam they're just flooded in the mass of adventure games, in AdventureGamers reviews or mainstream reviews it's the same. You want LucasArts successors then they're your best only bet, I do think their games are weaker and I'm sure that everybody else also do too, but my point is that they should at least have earned the reputation of the only ones who make "hard" adventure games (as in as hard as the old ones) and never earned it for some reason.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
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I always assumed their games had sold well among the core adventure game crowd. My own failure to play is just because I don't play much at all and I gathered the games wouldn't be idea for young kids, in comparison to the gentler humor of Lucas and Sierra classics.
 

LeStryfe79

President Spartacus
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Codex 2012 Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Adventure games will make a comeback. The genre is just waiting for that Dark Souls title. Make fucking up great again and so forth. Might take a time travel mechanic with a radio drama in the background, but they'll come back.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
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I was mostly trying to make the point that people complaining that Daedelic puzzles were too hard we're almost certainly wrong.

Even before that, Daedalic's bigger problem was that they were seemingly automatically dismissed as a foreign shovelware dev with "bad localization" (even though their localization was actually excellent). I think there are lots of adventure nostalgists out there who have bought every Wadjet Eye game but have no idea that Memoria is a modern masterpiece.
So, with all of their games very cheap on GOG, I was thinking of at least buying one if not ever playing it. I had heard that Deponia was their masterpiece, but is Memoria better?
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I was mostly trying to make the point that people complaining that Daedelic puzzles were too hard we're almost certainly wrong.

Even before that, Daedalic's bigger problem was that they were seemingly automatically dismissed as a foreign shovelware dev with "bad localization" (even though their localization was actually excellent). I think there are lots of adventure nostalgists out there who have bought every Wadjet Eye game but have no idea that Memoria is a modern masterpiece.
So, with all of their games very cheap on GOG, I was thinking of at least buying one if not ever playing it. I had heard that Deponia was their masterpiece, but is Memoria better?

According to the Codex, yes.

However it doesn't work as well if you don't play the first game Chains of Satinav first, so (knowing your time constraints) maybe you should just go with Deponia.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
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Is Chains of Satinav good?

Also, I gather that neither of Dark Eye game (nor Deponia) would be kid friendly?
 

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