Hi fellow muters.
Do you remember the old times of IF? I remember it like today. I was standing on the rainbow in Zork 1 figuring out what to do. I was very young I had a lot of time and finally I found out (after weeks) that I have to type a command "wave scepter" which would split the color spectrum etc... This was a time of word forging. Operation systems were not THAT clickable and we had to figure out by ourselves how to load himem.sys and emm386.exe (Bill's wraiths) so our game would work properly. We had to think a lot and this was fun.
We played these games long before "point and click" system and it built up our imagination. So when the graphics came in, we were able to imagine a whole lot of details into it (I can't forget playing Elvira 2 on C64, which was very scary) even without explicitly showing us. I believe this is the root of our ability to percept a game as excellent even if it lacks AAA graphics. We were able to imagine lipsync even when character just moves his mouse and there is a text bubble above. Text bubble, which can express emotions.
Unfortunately, as technology grows, it also provides some "comfort" for us what is certainly double-sided. Nowadays installations are done by clicking on next button, game doesn't require anything special to run (except sometimes latest hardware
) and we are set. With this simplification people also simplify their gaming habits. They are looking in walkthrough when their first idea doesn't work, they despise with ideas which are not obvious, they never resort to make some paper notes etc. But the worst problem is that they NEED to have everything served on a silver plate. I am now speaking slightly in the "generalistic" way, but you will get my reason later. With easy access to pirated copies, many persons are fed up with the latest games without giving a special treatment to each of them.
This causes in turn large companies to produce mindless FPS games (with a few honorable exceptions), countless Dune 2 / Warcraft variations, Soccer games more of the same etc. Adventure gaming has been put behind, but it is NOT dead.
But there is a group of people who is obviously trying to kill it. These are unfortunately reviewers. With Legend, Sierra, LucasArts and others out of Adventure game bussiness, the only persons who can market the games are reviewers for there is no longer high budget in AG industry. But reviewers, being more and more of the above mentioned sort, don't care much about games as it would seem. They care about graphics, about voice overs (if Joe has british or Californian dialect), nitpicking here and there. For common reviewer would be perfect if this adventure game ran on Source engine and brought at least 3 groundbreaking technology advancements.
How can anyone be so stupid to think, that there actually IS that kind of money in Adventure gaming. So the conclusion of this? The only way out are Indie games. But we have to work on rising the "Independent" from the commonly assigned status crappy. Lot of us worked on projects which already accomplished this, but first I believe we need to find grounds for our games. That's why I got this very weird idea of writing an open letter to gaming sites with some of formerly mentioned statements. The point is to point out for reviewers, that when they judge independent titles (more or less every adventure game nowadays except a few pure adventure exceptions like great TMOS or Silver Earring) they have to choose FAIR criterions.
1, Every developer is responsible for a STORY and ATMOSPHERE. There is no excuse for badly thought of story or plot holes. On the other hand, reviewer has to accept that he sometimes is not able to understand everything, just because he is maybe too used to "Postal" games
2, Every developer is responsible for Puzzles and interface design. Again, no excuse there, because there is no reason to put sliders in every adventure game available.
3, Voiceovers are mandatory! Better than bad voiceovers are text bubbles. And profi actors are expensive. Without proper contacts, this is very hard to manage for Indie teams. And bad voiceovers really spoil the game. BUT reviewers scorns games without voiceovers and with bad voiceovers even more.
4, Graphics is the most expensive part of the game producing. Starting from GFX software going through artist hiring etc. etc. This is achilles heel. We have tons of programmers, musicians, writers. We don't have google of quality gfx artists who would work on indie game for some future vague promise of money income. So we are using what we have. Sometimes it's great sometimes not so, but we don't have budgets of LucasArts to hire team of *ARTISTS*.
So the bottom line is - reviews of the next wave of adventure games should be focused on Story, design, puzzles, dialogues and fluidity NOT on used technology. Think of DarkFall 1 (when it was released it was terrible scorned by *not-naming-who* only to be later recognized as a real hit. The reason for bad review was just the static gfx of Myst like engine even when it was so atmospheric and well rendered by a real artist)
I hope it makes a sense at least a bit and for anyone who would comment this and add something I'd be really happy. I was provoked by reactions of some of adventure reviewers I found on various forums. Also we discussed this with Tol (Hi Tol
) both of us angry about some of those ascpects.
Ok, that's it. Steam is out. Thank you for wasting your time by reading this.
PS. Don't expect to be successful with your adventure game when there is 10000 idiots yelling at forums that HalfLife 2, Moment Of Silence etc. sucks. LOL
) and here it is for anyone who would need something like this.