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Article about the history of Adventure Games

Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2011 3:01 pm
by MusicallyInspired
A very thorough bit of history on the adventure genre. Worth a read.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/reviews/2 ... tures.ars/

Re: Article about the history of Adventure Games

Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2011 6:01 pm
by DrJones
I already read it in Slashdot, but it doesn't mention any of the Infocom games. :(

Re: Article about the history of Adventure Games

Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2011 6:26 pm
by Anonymous Game Creator 2
I doesn't mention AGDI or Himalaya Studios either. Boo!

The writer should be replaced with someone more competent who doesn't skim over such historical milestones. :p

Re: Article about the history of Adventure Games

Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2011 7:17 pm
by MusicallyInspired
Still, I haven't seen such a thorough article about the history of adventures in a while.

Re: Article about the history of Adventure Games

Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2011 12:48 am
by rugged
I would also love to see mention of magnetic scrolls.

Re: Article about the history of Adventure Games

Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2011 3:16 am
by pbpb33
Anonymous Game Creator 2 wrote:I doesn't mention AGDI or Himalaya Studios either. Boo!
Agreed 100%! I'm personally appalled by that outrageous display of journalistic negligence. The only option now is to unleash a legion of AGDI superfans to take over their comment section and set them straight! ;)

Seriously, though, I think in the final sections of the article they definitely should have covered fan-made games and the AGS community, especially considering the very high quality and impressive number of times some of these games have been downloaded! Otherwise, I thought it was a wonderful article... and I'm happy to see appreciation for the adventure game genre and recognition of what specific adventure games have achieved over the years. Thanks for sharing the article!

Re: Article about the history of Adventure Games

Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2011 2:08 pm
by MusicallyInspired
Guys, it's still a great article. I mean, considering the highlights, AGDI and Himalaya are relatively obscure. He probably had a limit or something and didn't have room for fan efforts and their own commercial ventures. It doesn't have TSL either.

Re: Article about the history of Adventure Games

Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2011 2:42 pm
by DrJones
But the problem is that the article forgets a vast amount of key companies. It's like writing an article about the history of videogames and only talk about Atari and Nintendo games, with a brief mention of Sega. Yes, for many people these were the only videogame companies/platforms that existed/mattered, but they were only a part of the overall picture, and moreover, a part already documented to death. The feeling that I got from the article is that the writer didn't bother to do his or her research and took the easy path of Sierra vs LucasArts, so it's a quite weak article in my eyes.

Re: Article about the history of Adventure Games

Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2011 7:07 pm
by MusicallyInspired
Still better than any other article out there lately. I'm just saying we should be grateful that adventures got s lengthy a feature as this as it is.

Re: Article about the history of Adventure Games

Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2011 7:53 pm
by Anonymous Game Creator 2
I consider the article rather useless (in relation to our own efforts helping the genre expand) if it's not gonna draw traffic here when King's Quest III Redux is just about ready to release. Considering the traffic and exposure this article got (and that the timing was perfect), it's a let-down that he didn't even so much as mention the existence of fan games. Just one link or small mention in that article could have been enough to get the word out to many more people who might be interested.

I mean, we, along with other fan game and AGS developers have been keeping the oven warm for a decade now. It's not like the fan-game movement has been that obscure, really. And if it truly has, then we've all been wasting our time if we're still not worth a mention. It's kind of annoying for the writer to not even make a passing mention of ANYTHING fan-game related, and jump straight from the early 2000's "The Longest Journey" era, directly to Telltale's efforts, like absolutely nothing happened in-between. I think most readers would probably be interested to read about all the lesser-known things that occurred in the interim as well. One way of making obscure things become less obscure is for journalists to give them exposure in articles on the topic. It gives me no satisfaction to know that these adventure game articles come along so rarely, and when they do, there's STILL no mention of what we've done. It's crap when yet another article like this takes 5 pages to regurgitate the same things over and over without mentioning anything NEW. Fangames were the glue that helped to hold the genre together during the lull of the early part of the last decade, and I think the writer's done a disservice to the genre and those still trying to carry it forward by summarizing the same things everyone already knows, and by avoiding writing about the missing fangame content that others before him also neglected to mention in similar pieces.

This article reads, more or less, like a trip down memory lane. And aside from Telltale, and a fleeting mention of the Whispered World, it doesn't mention the fact that other indie teams like Himalaya Studios, Wadjet Eye Games, and Brawesome, are also doing their bit to keep the genre going commercially. It's another case of the small guys getting snubbed because the writer couldn't be bothered to look beyond the companies that have a sizable enough marketing budget to get their products under his nose without him having to consult Google. This kind of lazy research makes the rich richer and the lesser known... still lesser known. Would be nice if they actually got someone who knows the genre more intimately (both past and present) to write these articles.

Guess I'll wait the mandatory 5 years for the next adventure gaming article to surface. Hopefully it'll be more encompassing than this one. :p

Re: Article about the history of Adventure Games

Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 12:21 am
by rugged
I have only glanced over the article but I think many things were missing. Maybe for me the most glaring was no mention of Heavy Rain. This was a massive success, won quite a few ps3 gameof the year awards and had mass mainstream appeal. These kind of things are unheard of the genre these days.

Re: Article about the history of Adventure Games

Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 3:09 am
by MusicallyInspired
It mentions it but not very much. They spent more time talking about Zak and Wiki which I thought was retarded. That's not even a good adventure.

Re: Article about the history of Adventure Games

Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 8:22 pm
by gamecreator
I agree with MusicallyInspired - this article sucks! ;)

I'd say they missed Full Throttle and the Kyrandia series but neither made a huge impact on the genre. I just love the games.

Re: Article about the history of Adventure Games

Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2011 3:46 am
by Lambonius
Kyrandia was great, especially Hand of Fate.