AGDInteractive - Sierra Adventure Game Remakes Forum

I have a reason for putting this in AGD forum...read on & if it doesn't seem to belong, please bump it to off-topic....

I'm curious, one popular theory of adventure games dying out as a dominant genre was due to production costs. While no game is easy to make, at the time that actually made sense -- the sheer amounts of painted backgrounds, dialogue, animations, etc seemed to be a lot more time and money compared to a licensed shooter engine endeavour. Now, however, I'm not sure if this is still the case. For the new consoles coming out like like the 360, the cost-per-game for consumers is being raised ~$10 due to the ridiculous production costs now required to make a high-end title. Considering that I can't think of a single game that's not 3D-based for those systems, I start to wonder if the adventure game genre may be getting prepped to make a comeback simply due to it now becoming the more "cost effecient" genre...and I think it's safe to say that most companies are more focused on profits. This could take a while, but if a few adventure games did well, big studios/trends could possibly follow.

My question here is, I doubt AGDI and Himalaya want to go throwing out specific numbers, but I was curious if we could get your guess as to what it would likely cost to make a full-fledged adventure game these days? If we are, does anyone happen to know the estimated cost for a shooter (likely a licensed-engine title, not a huge R&D title like doom3, etc?)?

I would say it all depends on how multi-talented the developers are. The less skills each person has, the more it's going to cost. I suspect that a small team of multi-talented developers could develop a traditional 2d adventure game on quite a modest budget.

Adventure games aren't going to become more popular with publishers. Sorry, it's just not going to happen. flashy 3d graphics and fast paced, shallow gameplay attracts most young male gamers (which is the target demographic for most games) and the type of games that provide these things are typically easier to design and create.

Even if adventure games made a profit, it wouldn't be enough. Publishers take into account the ease of development, the time it takes to develop a game, the potential for building a franchise and spinning it off into other genres for a quick profit. Simply put, Monkey Island 5 would probably make a profit for Lucasarts but not as much as some dodgy arcade game with the Star Wars name slapped upon it. Which one do you think they'd choose to develop?

Good adventure games are everything but cost efficient.

Spikey wrote:Good adventure games are everything but cost efficient.

Nicely put, Spikey, but I don't totally agree.  Several independent adventure games have been released recently to mild success.  Granted, they didn't do numbers like most mainstream titles, or even other, non-indie adventure games, but they didn't have to.  Being independent, they had lower budgets and smaller workforces and, as such, needed less to be a success, at least financially speaking.  Granted, the games weren't the most technically advanced products out there, but adventures in general don't need to be and, much like with independent films, gratuitous special effects aren't as expected in projects like that.

I think there is potential for low-budget, independent adventure development.  People just don't see it yet, much like at one time people didn't see the potential of the indie film.  Perhaps Al Emmo (and other indie projects) will be a light for the cause?

What I meant was, good adventure games always cost enormous amounts of time to make. The true adventure aspect of it, figuring out a story, plot, puzzles, characters is so time consuming. The amount of money pales greatly in the light of the work hours put into it.

Spikey wrote:What I meant was, good adventure games always cost enormous amounts of time to make. The true adventure aspect of it, figuring out a story, plot, puzzles, characters is so time consuming. The amount of money pales greatly in the light of the work hours put into it.

I'm starting to think that things are balancing out now though. 3D textures are getting extremely high res & additional layers of displacement, etc are constantly being added. Then geometry and models are getting ridiculously complex, which of course takes a very, very long time -- and as they get more complex skeletons for area-specific animation (IK handles) are needed on top of the animations themselves. For close up shots where a character is talking, etc with a lot of facial movement (eyebrows and such), a completely independent model is very frequently created. Add in that quite a number of games ARE attempting to put in good storylines (Knights of the Old Republic, etc), and it starts to look like adventure games -- while always time consuming and costly -- might not be as time consuming in comparison.

As far as the person who believes that adventure gaming  would never capture developer's attention again, I'm not sure. Lucasarts, Sierra, etc had plenty of other avenues to travel instead of adventure games at the time, but they found it worth their effort to make them even though they were more costly. 3D gaming presented a new area that was less costly and time consuming, so they took it -- but after you consider the things I mentioned above about 3D game development...things may be balancing out. I'm not saying that they have...or that adventure gaming is going to take a dominant stance in the industry again, but we may be heading towards getting some titles developed by bigger studios if companies like Himalaya show that the audience is indeed there (which I believe it is). Just the fact that Full Throttle 2 and Sam & Max 2 *were* in development tells us that they're already thinking about it & on the verge. Something to justify their effort & that they're not as big a risk is all that's needed.

All this is just my observations, but I think they at least make partial sense.

I'm always wondering whether GK3 sold well. Anybody any info on this?

Depends on how you define selling well.  If you mean did it turn a profit, I think so.  If you mean going toe-to-toe with FPS or other "mainstream" products in terms of units sold and profit margins...not a chance.

Yeah but many people think the same thing about KQ7, while actually has been number one in Dutch sales charts.

I tried out a very sucky adventure game that felt cheap in all aspects, but probably wasn't. Have you heard about it? It was called "The quest for the orb" and involved a fox walking around. Didn't think so.

That game was released by New World Computing or 3DO(Don't remember) and is practically unheard of by adventure gamers.

I believe it really WAS expensive to make, and it seems they went out of money even before the game was finished. Some scenes are very bad(alot of boring copy/paste environments), and the game overall is really short.

If you screw up with an adventure game, you screw up bad.  There are probably lots of other examples. We can at least name one or two adventure games among the renowned ones that lack in stability, obviously because of budget restraints or tight schedules. QFG4 anyone?

and there's probably alot of games that never were released at all, of which we'll never know anything about. The adventure game makers were adventurous and often foolish, much like the Klondyke gold diggers.

I tried out a very sucky adventure game that felt cheap in all aspects, but probably wasn't. Have you heard about it? It was called "The quest for the orb" and involved a fox walking around. Didn't think so.

Whoa whoa whoa! That adventure game was awesome! As a matter of fact, it was one of my first. And, apparently someone thought it was good, because it has recently been remade to work on XP.

Whoa whoa whoa! That adventure game was awesome! As a matter of fact, it was one of my first. And, apparently someone thought it was good, because it has recently been remade to work on XP

Well, the first adventure game you play often is  but would you have liked it that much if you had already played Monkey Island and Space Quest series, not to mention Gabriel Knight  

My problem with this game is that it doesn't feel very solid, witty or interesting. I was annoyed with all the recycled graphics in towns and tunnels aso, especially since the game was so short.

But What!? are they going to try and sell that game again? Okay, if it worked before, they probably marketed it to younger children, but isn't the graphics a bit outdated though? For a commercial game today I mean..

i remember the old adventure games we used to play on the commodore 64 that were text based. funny how its gone almost full circle heehe im not playing games on a 64bit machine. nice number 64 is hehe

Actually, yes, I still would like that game, even if I'd already played others. I still like it. And big whoop that the graphics are outdated; graphics aren't the only thing in a game. Same thing goes for recycled sprites, backgrounds, etc. Many games uses the same sprites and backgrounds over and over again. Big deal.