Throughout the 1980s, Sierra sold a ton of games with horrible EGA craphics, but which were basically cinematic games with fairly simple decision-tree gameplay.

Throughout the 1980s, Sierra sold a ton of games with horrible EGA craphics, but which were basically cinematic games with fairly simple decision-tree gameplay. This has always struck me as one of the most interesting aspects of computer game history. Back in the old days, adventure games were all about the story and experience, not the gameplay. This even continued into the 90s in some cases, with games like Planescape Torment, which contained over 800,000 words of text, and the ill-fated (but brilliant) Last Express, a game whose graphics was made by rotoscoping tens of thousands of scenes made by professional actors! These games weren't about brilliant game mechanics, in-depth strategy, or competitive experience. But few deny that they were great games. Of course, the genre basically died towards the end of the 90s--and many claim that it killed itself ( see http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html ). Interestingly enough though, I've noticed that despite the proliferation of seemingly mindless entertainment these days, there has been somewhat of a revival of the genre of "games with lots of text". The genre of visual novels, once just an offshoot of silly Japanese dating sims, has begun to turn out some seriously impressive material. The most impressive to date, IMO, has been Umineko no Naku Koro ni ("When the Seagulls Cry"), a murder mystery reminiscent of a cross between The Last Express, The Usual Suspects, and Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. Even more unusually, it has no decision tree at all: it is completely linear. The "gameplay" is the author's challenge to the players--to solve his mystery before he reveals the true answer in the final episodes of the game. In a sense, we've come full circle: we began with simple mostly-linear adventure games, gone to complex, branching plots, and now we're back to simple, mostly-linear adventure games.