Adventure Games. My Thoughts Of Late.

[MacTeq]

I wonder if the widespread availability of walkthroughs and FAQs has contributed to this feeling. Maybe there's just less of an incentive to invest time or even get frustrated over puzzles when you know that you could get to the answer in a heartbeat and it takes all of 30 sec to open up a browser and read up on what you have to do. I've noticed that I've started to play more adventure games on my laptop when I'm traveling and a steady internet connection is hard to come by. Other than that, I'm probably not the only one that thinks modern games tend make things a lot easier on gamers and we're all being conditioned to expect most of our games to be a cakewalk, more or less.

[Tawmis]

I'm probably not the only one that thinks modern games tend make things a lot easier on gamers and we're all being conditioned to expect most of our games to be a cakewalk, more or less.

You're definitely not alone there...

[MacTeq]

It's straying a little bit off topic but Richard Garriott talked a bit about how much he disikes all those 'comfort' options in modern RPGs [people with an exclamation mark above their heads, certain dialogue systems, questlogs, automaps etc.]. Not that I'm necessarily willing to believe his Shrouds project is gonna present revolutionary or adequate alternatives here but it is kinda mind-boggling how forgiving and undemanding even complex games can be today.

[DeadPoolX]

It's straying a little bit off topic but Richard Garriott talked a bit about how much he disikes all those 'comfort' options in modern RPGs [people with an exclamation mark above their heads, certain dialogue systems, questlogs, automaps etc.].

Sometimes those are useful. It can be difficult, time consuming and tiring to find people or certain objects at times.

That said, there should be the option to switch these features off for those who don't like them.

[Datadog]

I don't consider these conveniences in modern games a way of making games easier. If anything, what these conveniences do is stop wasting my time. When you're stuck in a game, it doesn't take a lot of skill to click on everything in sight until the puzzle is solved. It just takes a lot of time and OCD.

This is why I favor modern approaches to games. I like my games to have flow. I consistently need to be kept engaged. If I'm playing "L.A. Noire" and the entire game grinds to a halt because I need to locate a single brick in an acre of burned-down houses, then the game stops being fun. It's not challenging; it's annoying. Especially if I don't know the brick exists. So I'll totally favor exclamation points over people's heads if it means I get to the fun/challenging parts of the game sooner.

[Tawmis]

It's straying a little bit off topic but Richard Garriott talked a bit about how much he disikes all those 'comfort' options in modern RPGs [people with an exclamation mark above their heads, certain dialogue systems, questlogs, automaps etc.].

Sometimes those are useful. It can be difficult, time consuming and tiring to find people or certain objects at times.
That said, there should be the option to switch these features off for those who don't like them.

I agree. This is why I think the NEVERWINTER MMO nails it. The people do have the "?" over their heads. And you can turn on/off this little trail that leads you to them, or to the general area of where your quest items are. In games, like MMO's, where they're SO freaking huge, I'd rather know the most direct route to get to my quest turn in and not have to memorize every large town my character strolls into. Hades, at times, I can barely find my way around the REAL world that I live in. I don't need to try and memorize where ONE quest giver was so I can go give back the 3 special flowers she made me go fetch in a field full of undead!

Now, don't get me wrong. I started playing MMO's when EVERQUEST (the first one) came out with their FIRST expansion. And EVERQUEST, if you played it back then, was a VERY unforgiving game. No "!" or "?" marks over ANYONE's head. Dying mean losing a HUGE chunk of your XP bar, unless you could find a cleric to do a 30, 40, 60, or 90% rez on you. You had to run back to your body NAKED - not as a ghost, or fully equipped - naked. (Or give someone permission to drag your body to a safer area). I had a lot of fun in EverQuest. A lot. Some of my most cherished "gaming memories" are in the wipe outs we had in EverQuest. However, I was much younger then. I had WAY more free time than I do now. I used to spend HOURS on end playing EverQuest. Now, I am lucky to get an hour or two in a WEEK, playing a game. So now I like it when it's a little bit easier to get around, and find things, so I can feel like I accomplished something, without the two hours, running around a large city, screaming, "Where the &$% is the damn woman who wanted these $%^&ing flowers from that gawd @$#& mother $%#&ing field full of undead!"

[DeadPoolX]

Exactly. That's why I can't stand the use of checkpoint saves.

There are people who claim that manual saves (often erroneously referred to as quicksave) somehow make the game easier. It doesn't, it just skips past the unnecessary bullshit.

Replaying what I successfully completed before doesn't make the game more challenging, it simply adds to the frustration level.

Going beyond that, checkpoint saves aren't convenient.

If I need or want to stop playing, I should damn well be able to save right then and there. It's ridiculous to be put into the position of "keep playing until you find a checkpoint" or "quit and lose a ton of time you've spent playing."

These are games we're playing and as such, they are supposed to fit into our schedule. I shouldn't have to rearrange my life to play a game.

[BBP]

Part of the games getting easier is there is a lot adventure games can't get away with, without getting lots of criticism. Flushed the toilet in LSL1? Should've saved. Frustrating maze with limited amount of moves? Check, LSL3 for instance. Maze with twisty passages so that going left does not bring you to the screen where you just were when you took right, and all screens are the same so you need to drop all your items while mapping it then walk around again to pick up all your items? Check, Mystery House, possibly elsewhere as well.
Cheep Maze In General? Let's not start summing those up.
Installing point of no return so that people who didn't find that one pixel are screwed big time? Examples a-plenty in Sierra. Random kill creatures popping up all the time? Mannannan, those guys from SQ1, the Bogeyman you just can't escape because the protagonists walk too slow... Progress that makes items unreachable? Check, LSL7 (mucilage/Vicky). Difficult repetitive mini-games? In LSL at least. Intuition-defying item combination? Any game up to GK3. Death is the end and you should save more often? About the whole base of most Sierra games, period. Dreaded checkpoints, as in, I want to quit but can't? LB2. Games with low puzzle ratio? The FMVs.

TVTropes calls it "fake difficulty" and classifies it as bad game design. Not fair and not realistic since the games were popular enough to warrant reprint after reprint, but it's the kind of game design that makes a game significally harder. And there is no difficulty replacement. Gray Matter was just a tad more difficult than Putt-Putt Saves The Zoo. LSL1 Reloaded has truly made LSL1 easy because it removed all these elements and that one added girl is not hard: the only thing I had problems with, was poor icon use design.

[MacTeq]

Just to be clear: I'm not arguing against modern gaming comfort. I can do without a lot of it but I like a questlog, for instance. I don't want to be taking handwritten notes during the game and I don't want to have to draw my own maps of dungeons and whatnot. I even like checkpoint saves for certain games. My point (I think) was that the comfort options provide a much more streamlined gaming experience. There's no point in talking to anyone that does NOT have a exclamation mark over their head anymore. Why would you go someplace else when the map tells you where the quest needs you to go? Why explore other dialogue options when the one at the top of the screen in green is so obviously the right one? What this leads to is cutting out free exploration and to some extent, your own creativity. And I think that may be where adventure games suffer these days, because that's exactly what you're being asked to do in most games: trial and error. Now granted, it's different genres for different audiences but I don't know if the adventure genre offers enough of these shortcuts for modern gamers. The only two 'innovations' I can really think of are the hotspots-key and a hint-system, maaaaybe quick-travel options. Other than that, things haven't really changed since the mid-90s.

[Tawmis]

Exactly. That's why I can't stand the use of checkpoint saves.

I can definitely see your point, despite previous discussions we've had.

If the save points are fairly close, I can understand why they do it. But if the save points are more than 30 minutes apart, then it'd definitely bug me. But over all the manual save is the much preferred method. I think as I get older, I just need to be able to save and walk away, whenever I need/want to. Just too cranky to deal with it otherwise.

(Need an old man with a walker or cane emoticon)...

[stuntology]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toVNkuCELpU

This is a very interesting video I came across a while ago, and it discusses concepts pretty relevant to this discussion.

[Tawmis]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toVNkuCELpU
This is a very interesting video I came across a while ago, and it discusses concepts pretty relevant to this discussion.

I freaking love this. And I love how they used the same example of going from EverQuest to World of Warcraft.

[MacTeq]

Yeah, this is pretty good. I haven't really played any of the games he brings up (except for one stage of Super Meat Boy) but I recently played through Hotline Miami and this ticks a lot of the same boxes. Steam tells me I died about 560 times in the course of doing so but I can't say I was ever really frustrated by it.

[Expack3]

I know it's been awhile since I posted on these forums, but I thought I'd share my point-of-view on the subject.

I've found whenever I have a lot of work to do, or have a job, my willingness to dedicate time to games just goes down the drain because I feel like I won't be able to dedicate sufficient time to make the experience worthwhile. It also sucks the life out of my creative projects, like my "Let's Play" of Lighthouse: The Dark Being, for the same reason.

To illustrate my point, I'll use a non-adventure-game example from a game I played recently, Hardwar, which is a combination of a ground-based Elite with some (for the time) exceptionally-intelligent and emergent AI capable of acting in a near-human fashion. During the first day of a new game, I've decided to investigate a building the local police have cordoned off for reasons unknown. Low and behold, when I reach the site I see this blinking light near the edge of the flyable gameworld. I investigate, only to be treated to a cutscene of an alien-looking spacecraft crash-landing into the ground! It leaves behind debris, so I'm thinking I can simply use my moth (the Hardwar term for "solar-powered aircraft"), which has a cargo pod, to scoop it up and sell it for crazy amounts of money. Unfortunately, I find out this isn't possible without owning a scavenger drone and ordering it to pick up targeted objects or debris. I then proceed to rage-quit, thinking I've just messed up the game's storyline and fearing I won't be able to dedicate the time needed to get back on-track with my work schedule.

Thankfully, I calmed down enough to look at a walkthough and discover that no, you don't need to pick up those pieces of debris. So, I go into another new game of Hardwar, play through the same event again, and leave the debris alone - and nothing bad came of it. I had gotten a good way into the game's first act, only to need to re-install my copy of Windows onto a new hard drive thanks to the old one dying. I've never played it again since, but I'd be willing to get back into it someday.

Now in spite of what I've just said, I'd say I'm an oddball. I love playing almost any game which came out during my younger days but never knew about - hence why I've played through much of Sierra's adventure gaming library over the years, especially the King's Quest and Space Quest series. I also don't mind pointless deaths much - I usually see them as me not quite obeying the rules of the game, not the programmers trying to kill me in creative violations of common sense. These things, among others, allow me to soldier through Sierra's older adventure games without giving up simply because the puzzles are too hard. (Of course, that's not to say I'll resort to a walkthrough if I absolutely need to, but I try to make that a last resort.)

[Simo Sakari Aaltonen]

My apologies in advance for such a long, disorganized message, but I didn't have time to write a shorter one.

I've seen a lot of friends express something along these lines, and I have to say I myself feel rather disconnected and alienated from gaming these days. My feelings on this are kind of a muddle, though, with many conflicting impulses. I mean, I'm somebody who was playing and replaying the original King's Quest obsessively -- and truly enjoying it! -- just some six years ago. I did various hobby projects related to it (like a full text content dump, sorted by location). And it was only one of the many ancient games that I was playing around that time.

But things have really changed since then. There are several reasons, and I'm probably not even aware of all the factors, but in the order that they occurred to me when thinking about this just now, the two big ones are: A) practical limitations relating to the longevity of all works in this medium (games), and B) my own writerly interests shifting to older forms.

By A) I mean my increasing belief that these works come with an enormous handicap in terms of longevity. I personally love old graphics and old audio, often better than more modern, smoother offerings. And some other people even agree with me on this. But it goes deeper than that, of course.

The fact is that you can still sit down and watch an episode of The Twilight Zone made fifty years ago, and what is required of you is no more than it was back then: you sit and enjoy. The episodes still hold up, and the medium itself was such that the passing of time has only enhanced the quality available (quality DVD transfers as opposed to fuzzy broadcasts). The only obstacle to clear is the extent to which a viewer is used to current television offerings as opposed to more venerable ones. It's not an obstacle I take very seriously, because I've discovered for myself that if you sit down with a classic in this medium, all it takes is an open mind to be able to get into it, if it's at all in your area of interests.

With games, it's such a different story. I've just gotten to the point where I go "ehhh" when I consider the hassle I would need to go through to even get an older game running. And I mean, I'm not bad at that. I don't remember any game that I would have failed to get up and running when I put my mind to it. But it just seems less and less worth the trouble, and that feeling gets stronger the more time passes. DOSBox is wonderful, as are ScummVM and Collector's installers, for example, and I know how to use all these... but I can take a book from the shelf in five seconds. With a game, I need to first locate a file or a disc, install and configure...

...and then there are also the myriad technical things you have to deal with with regard to the gameplay itself of most games. With point-and-click games it's easier, but you know, even with those, almost every classic title that I can think of includes at least one technical glitch or dead-end issue that you have to bear in mind if you want to even entertain hopes of completing the thing.

And again, I've been playing all kinds of games since the mid-80s, starting with the VIC-20 and moving on to the Commodore 64 and then the PC, and later the iPad. I'm a pretty good, experienced player. But I find it ever more difficult to justify the bother that you have to suffer through with games -- when there are TV series and films and books that I can just enjoy straight out of the box. It's not a question of laziness, but of how enjoyable and rewarding the whole process is to me these days.

Heck, I also get eyestrain and shoulder aches and whatnot far more easily nowadays, so the prospect of gaming isn't even physically as trouble-free as it used to be. And I'm only 34. I'm starting to understand why not many older people spend much time gaming. It plays hell with your health if you're not careful.

I'm totally rambling here, and this is not proceeding in any kind of structured way, but to kind of return to my first point, I've also become disenchanted with the cultural longevity of games. I can't believe even our most beloved Sierra favorites can really be enjoyed by future generations, except for handfuls of devotees. It's a sad prospect, most definitely, but that seems like a likely prediction. Remakes don't actually solve the problem unless they are done like the brilliant Monkey Island ones, where the original work is preserved and remains accessible at the touch of a button. If the series are merely continued, there's something like a built-in amnesia factor, because the older games would just start fading away from collective, fresh experience. And if the characters and series were reinvented or re-imagined... same problem. Maybe that's not a problem for people who aren't like me in terms of wanting to experience things from the beginning -- not a remake, but the original. Remakes are almost always different works altogether, just based on the original blueprints.

My B) point (about my interests in terms of my writing goals) largely derives from ruminations along these lines. My head is with TV series and films these days.

By the way, I hope it's clear that none of this is meant to say that games are bad or unworthy or anything silly like that!

It's just that I see so many limitations in terms of how much impact games can have, as opposed to TV, films, and books. With those latter media, the works and the way they are experienced remain essentially unchanged from decade to decade. Making your way through works in each of these media is always the exact same process. Whereas with games, it's always another learning curve. I know many people enjoy precisely that, but I don't, at least right at this point in my life.

I didn't get to even touch on the design philosophy issues that have been brought up, but this is already way too long... But since the first Laura Bow was already mentioned, I want to add that that's one of the Sierra classics that I can still imagine myself enjoying even in my current mindset. I love the balance of structure and free exploration in The Colonel's Bequest. Like already discussed earlier in the thread, you get more out of it the more you poke around -- but that's not strictly required. I love that.