5 ms·

I don't know, look at what sells well: massively multiplayer games, and FPSes. As I mentioned in a previous comment, there are exceptions, but as a rule it see

I don't know, look at what sells well: massively multiplayer games, and FPSes. As I mentioned in a previous comment, there are exceptions, but as a rule it seems if you're a game developer you're more likely to make a reaction-based shooter or real time thing, versus a subjectively-paced adventure game with point and click puzzles like Sierra or LucasArts games were. It might be gaming culture changed as consoles got big and more people got interested.

jnurmine 6y ago
It would be awesome to have the old Sierra games like King's Quest, Police Quest, Space Quest, etc. re-born as first-person adventures with photorealistic graphics.
- mancerayder 6y ago
  Sure, if they retain the think-and-click feel versus becoming reaction-based hack and slash / shooters. In that case an emphatic yes.
- WorldMaker 6y ago
  I directly disagree for both King's Quest and Space Quest. So much of the worldbuilding and aesthetic value in those games was their animated styles. King's Quest was about adventuring through fairy tales, and most of our cultural vocabulary around that has been built by Disney animated movies. I very much believe that KQVII hit nearly the epitome of the King's Quest "perfect" aesthetic with its hand drawn art (even if it went sometimes a bit too "Looney Tunes", and some of the embedded 3D effects did not age well) that evoked playing through a darker Disney or Bluth film. (That KQVIII exists right next to it as first-person and 3D stood even then as a stark contrast for why King's Quest is probably a terrible fit for first-person 3D, even if Roberta hadn't been kicked out of the project and it had tried for a better KQ storyline.) Space Quest's aesthetic similarly had a lot of "Saturday morning sci-fi cartoon" in its DNA (such as Battle of the Planets, as one example to mind). Admittedly, part of Space Quest's aesthetic was all over the map if they could find a good joke for something they'd swap aesthetics on they fly for that joke (that's a big part of SQIV after all), but the tonality of the series very much never would fit with "photorealistic graphics" at least not for more than a joke or three. (Two Guys from Andromeda's SpaceVenture went 3D for cost reasons, but still seems to have settled on cell shading/cartoon styling over "photorealistic".)
  - mancerayder 6y ago
    Space Quest was a spoof on a bunch of shows - Buck Rogers comes to mind, but I'm probably older than you. Space Quest took itself a bit less seriously than KQ in that regard, with its many sci fi tropes. Loved them both for different reasons. I thought Space Quest was really funny and intriguing as a kid. King's Quest V along with Monkey Island II are the first games I owned when my parents bought me a 386 SX with a VGA card. At some point later I got a Sound Blaster and suddenly had non-speaker-beeping music.
    - WorldMaker 6y ago
      No it sounds like we're in a relatively close cohort age-wise. I specifically tried to mention cartoon references and skipped mentioning any live action influences/parodies to Space Quest as the point was specifically that Space Quest is as much a cartoon influenced aesthetic as it is influenced by live action or "photo realistic" works (of which there are very many, too many to list), because the point I was making was that specifically I don't think Space Quest itself would work the same in live action/3D/"photorealism", and you would lose a lot of the intentional aesthetic moving to it. In addition to parodying live action works, Space Quest was a cartoon, not just for technical reasons but for art reasons.
      - mancerayder 6y ago
        I don't know, man. You might be onto something with the image of a first person cartoon-ish world. That aesthetic might be very cool and interesting. The quest for the most real realism will get boring eventually, right? The painted and cartoonish world of the 2D adventure games was very cool (in fact I'm playing the Leisure Suit series now, that while not great, fulfills that nostalgic itch), but who knows what comes next.
WorldMaker 6y ago
It's not a zero sum game, however, as players typically buy from a variety of genres (sometimes in the same purchase) and play a large variety of genres over their lives. It's a bit like saying that Hollywood should never make another romcom because all the blockbusters are superhero movies. While there are some crazy enough in Hollywood to suggest exactly that sort of thing, romcoms aren't generally directly competing for superhero dollars (usually; there are some films that some suggest are superhero romcoms), and exist just fine alongside them. It's not likely for a romcom currently to be considered a blockbuster or to be budgeted or pitched as such, but it's also not impossible, and it certainly doesn't mean that the romcom as a genre is dead because it generally won't be a "summer tentpole blockbuster" any time soon (no matter how much clickbait editorials want to disagree on that). It's probably unlikely for an adventure game to again be that "summer tentpole blockbuster", and I'm of the opinion that they were only "summer tentpole blockbusters" very briefly under the reign of Sierra in part because of the Williams' and Sierra's reign, because they managed to make it so, in budget and in attitude. Now that the blockbusters are FPSes and such, people are still disappointed and generate so much vocal controversy when kickstarters are merely aiming to build "romcoms on a romcom budget" adventure games and can't afford the summer blockbuster spectacle that Sierra did at its peak. That's what I think "killed" the genre and keeps it "dead", far more than the competition with other genres or some "shift in gaming culture". (And yeah, I've seen and reject the arguments that gaming culture as it grew mainstream grew a lot less "intellectual" as the computer and consoles went from being niche things only owned by "smart" people to everyone could own one to everyone did own at least one. First of all, that's just terribly reductive and generally far too dismissive of the average game player. Second of all, there's plenty of evidence the other direction: Ask a hardcore "twitch" gamer some day about minutia in Destiny 2 or Dark Souls or WoW and be prepared for flow charts and long detailed narrative digressions and spreadsheets full of math and raid puzzle solving. Talk to the gamers still pouring hundreds of hours in lovingly complicated simulations like Civilization 6. The "intellectual pursuits" in games never went away; some of it dispersed and migrated and changed shape, a lot of it is still around almost unchanged in some genres like simulation that managed to successfully curb expectations and resize budgets as fashions shifted.)

jnurmine 6y ago

It would be awesome to have the old Sierra games like King's Quest, Police Quest, Space Quest, etc. re-born as first-person adventures with photorealistic graphics.

mancerayder 6y ago
Sure, if they retain the think-and-click feel versus becoming reaction-based hack and slash / shooters. In that case an emphatic yes.
WorldMaker 6y ago
I directly disagree for both King's Quest and Space Quest. So much of the worldbuilding and aesthetic value in those games was their animated styles. King's Quest was about adventuring through fairy tales, and most of our cultural vocabulary around that has been built by Disney animated movies. I very much believe that KQVII hit nearly the epitome of the King's Quest "perfect" aesthetic with its hand drawn art (even if it went sometimes a bit too "Looney Tunes", and some of the embedded 3D effects did not age well) that evoked playing through a darker Disney or Bluth film. (That KQVIII exists right next to it as first-person and 3D stood even then as a stark contrast for why King's Quest is probably a terrible fit for first-person 3D, even if Roberta hadn't been kicked out of the project and it had tried for a better KQ storyline.) Space Quest's aesthetic similarly had a lot of "Saturday morning sci-fi cartoon" in its DNA (such as Battle of the Planets, as one example to mind). Admittedly, part of Space Quest's aesthetic was all over the map if they could find a good joke for something they'd swap aesthetics on they fly for that joke (that's a big part of SQIV after all), but the tonality of the series very much never would fit with "photorealistic graphics" at least not for more than a joke or three. (Two Guys from Andromeda's SpaceVenture went 3D for cost reasons, but still seems to have settled on cell shading/cartoon styling over "photorealistic".)
- mancerayder 6y ago
  Space Quest was a spoof on a bunch of shows - Buck Rogers comes to mind, but I'm probably older than you. Space Quest took itself a bit less seriously than KQ in that regard, with its many sci fi tropes. Loved them both for different reasons. I thought Space Quest was really funny and intriguing as a kid. King's Quest V along with Monkey Island II are the first games I owned when my parents bought me a 386 SX with a VGA card. At some point later I got a Sound Blaster and suddenly had non-speaker-beeping music.
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    No it sounds like we're in a relatively close cohort age-wise. I specifically tried to mention cartoon references and skipped mentioning any live action influences/parodies to Space Quest as the point was specifically that Space Quest is as much a cartoon influenced aesthetic as it is influenced by live action or "photo realistic" works (of which there are very many, too many to list), because the point I was making was that specifically I don't think Space Quest itself would work the same in live action/3D/"photorealism", and you would lose a lot of the intentional aesthetic moving to it. In addition to parodying live action works, Space Quest was a cartoon, not just for technical reasons but for art reasons.
    - mancerayder 6y ago
      I don't know, man. You might be onto something with the image of a first person cartoon-ish world. That aesthetic might be very cool and interesting. The quest for the most real realism will get boring eventually, right? The painted and cartoonish world of the 2D adventure games was very cool (in fact I'm playing the Leisure Suit series now, that while not great, fulfills that nostalgic itch), but who knows what comes next.

WorldMaker 6y ago

It's not a zero sum game, however, as players typically buy from a variety of genres (sometimes in the same purchase) and play a large variety of genres over their lives. It's a bit like saying that Hollywood should never make another romcom because all the blockbusters are superhero movies. While there are some crazy enough in Hollywood to suggest exactly that sort of thing, romcoms aren't generally directly competing for superhero dollars (usually; there are some films that some suggest are superhero romcoms), and exist just fine alongside them. It's not likely for a romcom currently to be considered a blockbuster or to be budgeted or pitched as such, but it's also not impossible, and it certainly doesn't mean that the romcom as a genre is dead because it generally won't be a "summer tentpole blockbuster" any time soon (no matter how much clickbait editorials want to disagree on that). It's probably unlikely for an adventure game to again be that "summer tentpole blockbuster", and I'm of the opinion that they were only "summer tentpole blockbusters" very briefly under the reign of Sierra in part because of the Williams' and Sierra's reign, because they managed to make it so, in budget and in attitude. Now that the blockbusters are FPSes and such, people are still disappointed and generate so much vocal controversy when kickstarters are merely aiming to build "romcoms on a romcom budget" adventure games and can't afford the summer blockbuster spectacle that Sierra did at its peak. That's what I think "killed" the genre and keeps it "dead", far more than the competition with other genres or some "shift in gaming culture". (And yeah, I've seen and reject the arguments that gaming culture as it grew mainstream grew a lot less "intellectual" as the computer and consoles went from being niche things only owned by "smart" people to everyone could own one to everyone did own at least one. First of all, that's just terribly reductive and generally far too dismissive of the average game player. Second of all, there's plenty of evidence the other direction: Ask a hardcore "twitch" gamer some day about minutia in Destiny 2 or Dark Souls or WoW and be prepared for flow charts and long detailed narrative digressions and spreadsheets full of math and raid puzzle solving. Talk to the gamers still pouring hundreds of hours in lovingly complicated simulations like Civilization 6. The "intellectual pursuits" in games never went away; some of it dispersed and migrated and changed shape, a lot of it is still around almost unchanged in some genres like simulation that managed to successfully curb expectations and resize budgets as fashions shifted.)