Great listen, there! It's always enlightening to hear from the AGS vets.
On the topic of audience expectations of adventure games, and the stereotype that p-n-c adventures are generally a series of silly puzzles- I do tend to agree with Grundislav that the gaming market of the pre-2000's had a very different set of expectations of games. Games were things that had "gameplay", that you blew $20 at at the arcade after homework (or while skipping homework), were centerpieces for sleepovers, and mom made eggs and waffles the next day when you woke up at 11:00 PM cause you were binging on that Final Fantasy RPG or swearing at each other over Golden Eye, or getting the shit scared out of you by Resident Evil.
Games were things you played. Games were for fun. Being too much a gamer "nerd" was generally frowned upon and could get you swirlied.
If you wanted a serious story you read a book. Or watched a movie, maybe. That was just the cultural millieu of the time, at least I saw it.
It's true that a lot of the adventure games had great storylines, and a lot of players played for the stories, but by and large they were story LINES. The armature set up that the designers put the "meat" on, the meat being the gameplay.
It seems to me to be a recent development that games exist as delivery mechanisms for stories. It's telling there are adventure games nowadays that get labeled, by both creators and players, as "interactive novels", "visual novels" or "interactive fiction". Point-And-Click Adventures PERIOD. Dropping the "game". This wasn't a thing 20, 30 years ago, as far as I know.
It would seem an outgrowth of the ubiquity of gaming, and computers in general, such that staring at screens hitting buttons all the time is not something you get swirlied for, but everyone from prom queens to jocks to successful businessmen/women and even novelists and filmmakers do to exist in modern civilization. (William Gibson would call it the "eversion of cyberspace").
It's not Warner Brothers, Marvel, the President or the Pope who has the most subscribers, the guy with 10 billion views is Pewdiepie, a guy who makes his living letting other people watch him play games.
So you have this mass migration to the world of games, where all the eyeballs and the billions (what is it, a hundred billion industry worldwide?) and it's only natural that a large percentage of these are people who are not into "gameplay" but love story, are writers and directors, and want to push games in that direction. So we get a lot of focus on story, story, story.
How can we tell a better story? How can we develop believable characters? Why don't certain games make me care about the characters?
I honestly couldn't have given less of a shit, and I'm guessing most people don't either, about the story of Super Mario. Fantastic game. I don't need to know how Mario is a down-on-his-luck Italian plumber who always dreamt of opening a spaghetti place, has a crush on a high town WASP debutante who loves pink, and is on a journey of self discovery in the sewers after being laid off during the Reaganomics-era downsizing. I jump on the angry vampire-mushroom thingies and throw turtle shells at Little-Shop-Of-Horrors plants and all that other Jap-Gonzo-shit that goes on in Mario because the *gameplay* is fun as hell. I don't need to care why the characters are doing the things they are doing because it is just fun to do the things. This is a turn-key argument for a whole lot of games.
Now, I say all this being a writer, as well as a game-maker. I love stories. I enter that story competition thing on the AGS forums every chance I get. I am a recovering sci-fi writer-holic.
I don't want games to not take story seriously, at all. I chose adventure games and AGS in particular, BECAUSE it lends itself to storytelling, and the audience seems more literate than the average genre. I loved every single Wadjet Eye game I can get my hands on, and can only hope to aspire to that level of quality storytelling in a game some day.
Still, I understand where the point-and-click adventure naysayers and complainers are coming from.
It's possible to just start calling all of these games "interactive visual novels", or "interactive films", but there's a reason we don't, and I think it has at least something to do with the branding that the term "game" still carries. Like you want to move products on Steam, and Steam sells "games". People type into Google and look for hashtags with "games", "adventure games", "point and click adventure games". PC Gamer and Rock-Paper-Shotgun reviews "games".
The branding, and the baggage. Like that multi-millionairess widower aunt that is a real controlling bitch who criticizes your silly indie films but who you need to butter up and beg for funding every time. Gaming is a cruel mistress.
This is getting really long, so I will now stop.
Thanks for the great podcast and good luck with Shardlight, etc!
On the topic of audience expectations of adventure games, and the stereotype that p-n-c adventures are generally a series of silly puzzles- I do tend to agree with Grundislav that the gaming market of the pre-2000's had a very different set of expectations of games. Games were things that had "gameplay", that you blew $20 at at the arcade after homework (or while skipping homework), were centerpieces for sleepovers, and mom made eggs and waffles the next day when you woke up at 11:00 PM cause you were binging on that Final Fantasy RPG or swearing at each other over Golden Eye, or getting the shit scared out of you by Resident Evil.
Games were things you played. Games were for fun. Being too much a gamer "nerd" was generally frowned upon and could get you swirlied.
If you wanted a serious story you read a book. Or watched a movie, maybe. That was just the cultural millieu of the time, at least I saw it.
It's true that a lot of the adventure games had great storylines, and a lot of players played for the stories, but by and large they were story LINES. The armature set up that the designers put the "meat" on, the meat being the gameplay.
It seems to me to be a recent development that games exist as delivery mechanisms for stories. It's telling there are adventure games nowadays that get labeled, by both creators and players, as "interactive novels", "visual novels" or "interactive fiction". Point-And-Click Adventures PERIOD. Dropping the "game". This wasn't a thing 20, 30 years ago, as far as I know.
It would seem an outgrowth of the ubiquity of gaming, and computers in general, such that staring at screens hitting buttons all the time is not something you get swirlied for, but everyone from prom queens to jocks to successful businessmen/women and even novelists and filmmakers do to exist in modern civilization. (William Gibson would call it the "eversion of cyberspace").
It's not Warner Brothers, Marvel, the President or the Pope who has the most subscribers, the guy with 10 billion views is Pewdiepie, a guy who makes his living letting other people watch him play games.
So you have this mass migration to the world of games, where all the eyeballs and the billions (what is it, a hundred billion industry worldwide?) and it's only natural that a large percentage of these are people who are not into "gameplay" but love story, are writers and directors, and want to push games in that direction. So we get a lot of focus on story, story, story.
How can we tell a better story? How can we develop believable characters? Why don't certain games make me care about the characters?
I honestly couldn't have given less of a shit, and I'm guessing most people don't either, about the story of Super Mario. Fantastic game. I don't need to know how Mario is a down-on-his-luck Italian plumber who always dreamt of opening a spaghetti place, has a crush on a high town WASP debutante who loves pink, and is on a journey of self discovery in the sewers after being laid off during the Reaganomics-era downsizing. I jump on the angry vampire-mushroom thingies and throw turtle shells at Little-Shop-Of-Horrors plants and all that other Jap-Gonzo-shit that goes on in Mario because the *gameplay* is fun as hell. I don't need to care why the characters are doing the things they are doing because it is just fun to do the things. This is a turn-key argument for a whole lot of games.
Now, I say all this being a writer, as well as a game-maker. I love stories. I enter that story competition thing on the AGS forums every chance I get. I am a recovering sci-fi writer-holic.
I don't want games to not take story seriously, at all. I chose adventure games and AGS in particular, BECAUSE it lends itself to storytelling, and the audience seems more literate than the average genre. I loved every single Wadjet Eye game I can get my hands on, and can only hope to aspire to that level of quality storytelling in a game some day.
Still, I understand where the point-and-click adventure naysayers and complainers are coming from.
It's possible to just start calling all of these games "interactive visual novels", or "interactive films", but there's a reason we don't, and I think it has at least something to do with the branding that the term "game" still carries. Like you want to move products on Steam, and Steam sells "games". People type into Google and look for hashtags with "games", "adventure games", "point and click adventure games". PC Gamer and Rock-Paper-Shotgun reviews "games".
The branding, and the baggage. Like that multi-millionairess widower aunt that is a real controlling bitch who criticizes your silly indie films but who you need to butter up and beg for funding every time. Gaming is a cruel mistress.
This is getting really long, so I will now stop.
Thanks for the great podcast and good luck with Shardlight, etc!
