The grand adventure: Making a comeback

_{Check out the first part of the feature, here!}

The last few years have been an interesting time for the adventure game genre. After a decade of disappointment, fans finally started to see more and more titles appear and most importantly, become successes. Big changes in the industry, such as the rise of digital distribution and the popularity of episodic content created a more favorable environment to craft these games in. More opportunities for indie developers started to appear as well.

In this, the second part of the feature, I’ll be taking a look at what impact these changes have had on the developers and their games as well as what we might be able to expect in the future (hoverboards, hoverboards, hoverboards.) Providing us with words of wisdom are: Al Lowe, creator of Leisure Suit Larry; Dan Connors, CEO of Telltale Games; Dave Gilbert, creator of the Blackwell series and founder of developer/publisher, Wadjet Eye Games; and Josh Nuernberger, creator of Gemini Rue.

I was something of a late adopter when it came to digital distribution. I clung to my boxes and physical media for as long as the world let me. Everybody has a price, though. It turned out that my price was the complete Space Quest collection on Steam. Imagine my surprise when I noticed that it was far from the only example of a classic adventure game on the platform, indeed, there were plenty of new ones as well. Steam already had a massive user base and it offered a great space for promotion. 

Telltale Games is no stranger to digital distribution; its games can be found on all manner of digital platforms, including those of the console variety. CEO Dan Connors explained, “Digital distribution allows independent publishers to reach the customers without taking on the costs associated with building and marketing a retail title.” Telltale sells directly to their customers via their own site, as well. “We’re going to be relaunching that soon, because we’ve learned a ton and we’re really going to start making that a big part of our mission again, to get a community there and get people excited and offering them things they can’t get in other places. It’s a way you can test experiences, try new things, message however you want, position product however you want, provide information on products, and let people participate.”

Along with Steam, indie bundles have been a massive boon to smaller adventure game developers. The first three titles in the Blackwell series and Gemini Rue were both featured in indie bundles, last year. Those games were the work of Dave Gilbert and Josh Nuernberger, respectively. Dave told me, “It was like launching the games all over again. I think more people have played Blackwell in the [week since it featured on the bundle] than they have in the last five years. My inbox and forums have exploded since the Indie Royale launch, and the association also gave Blackwell the final push it needed for Steam to accept it. We’ve been trying to get the series on Steam for two years but they always said no. So we’re very grateful for that.”

One of the largest problems for adventure game developers in the years since the golden age of the genre was publishers’ lack of faith in the products. When they were willing to invest in such a game, it was lazily marketed and rarely got the support it needed. With promotion and direct access to players, developers have been able to show that there’s a healthy audience out there, which will hopefully lead to more publishers investing in these types of titles.

Better tools have also made it easier for small developers to make a finished product. Adventure game studio (AGS) is a free development kit inspired by Sierra’s interface for its adventure titles and it’s been used to create a vast number of games, including many commercial ones. Most of Wadjet Eye’s catalog used AGS. “The creation of third-party tools like AGS enable idiots like me to make these games, so more of them are being made every day.” Although AGS games frequently favor a retro aesthetic, that’s a design choice rather than limitations imposed by the software. Dave explained, “It’s a big misconception that AGS can only handle low-res games. It can actually go as high as you want, just most people prefer not to. So the decision to use AGS has nothing to do with aesthetic choice, but it has everything to do with money and time. Right out of the box, it has everything you need to make a point-and-click adventure game. Not having the experience or knowledge to make an engine of my own, it was the most logical choice.”

Dave’s own games have a distinctly retro look and thematically they are similar to the much-beloved Gabriel Knight series. Playing the Blackwell series instantly transported me back in time to the days when Sierra were still blowing my mind with new adventures. It’s a wonderful feeling. “Blackwell is very much me trying to do Gabriel Knight. The story of Joe Gould and Joseph Mitchell was my Jensenian attempt at merging real-life historical people with supernatural events.”

As Al Lowe reminded me, these smaller teams using AGS are a lot like the teams that developed adventure games in the ’80s and early ’90s. “I think that’s great because it brings back the small team concept of one or two people working closely together on a project and actually putting their own personalities into it. I think that so much of what we see that’s wrong with games today, that there is no key personality that comes through.”

While cost is obviously a concern, I do think that there’s a tendency for adventure game fans and developers to be incredibly nostalgic and thus gravitate more towards retro design. I’m guilty of this, myself. My love of the genre classics means that I’m immediately more interested in titles which are inspired by those particular art styles or certain mechanics. In Telltale’s case, Dan defends nostalgia, believing that older franchises still have much to offer. “Well I think that for us, with having Sam & Max as our flagship, we looked at the content as being so rich and relevant in the modern day… [It] needed to be brought up now. Having Sam & Max in 2004, and 2010 and all the times we’ve been able to use them as characters … I mean they’re just great characters and it’s a great franchise. So for us introducing that content to a new audience was a huge thing.”

Expanding into new markets such as consoles and handhelds has also increased the userbase. Adventure games used to be pretty much a PC only affair, with the occasional shoddy console port. While PC is still the focal platform, titles like Phoenix Wright, Ghost Trick, and 999 made the DS a must for lovers of strange adventures and interactive stories. PSN and XBLA have also seen their share of adventure ports, most of Telltale’s games can be found there, for instance. Fans of the genre can even get their adventure on with their phone or tablet. Machinarium on iOS is fantastic and might be even better than it was on PC, thanks to it becoming a more tactile experience.

Dan seemed to be willing to embrace new platforms and technology. “It can bring more imagination to how you interact with the characters in the world and how you experience the story.” He acknowledges the risk of doing that when it comes to traditionalist fans, though. “It moves away from traditional stuff and is a bit risky. So you have to be pure adventure game or you’re in this vanguard story game type of place.”

When I recall playing most of my favorite adventure games, I remember pouring countless hours into them. Getting stuck on a puzzle meant that I was going to be doing a lot of trial-and-error experimentation, exploring loads of areas, doing a lot of pixel hunting and then finally leaving the computer to go and contemplate it elsewhere — maybe in a dojo or on top of a mountain. Failing that, I’d pester my friends.

Now there’s a strong temptation to just go online and find a walkthrough, even if you’ve only just been stuck for a couple of minutes. It can ruin the pacing of the game and rob the player of their satisfaction at being able to think of a solution. In an effort to keep gamers immersed, or at the very least to stop them alt-tabing every time they get stumped, many modern adventures contain an in game hint system or simply less taxing puzzles. This can certainly frustrate old fashioned players, like myself, but one cannot deny it has lowered the bar for entry and possibly increased the genre’s fanbase.

Dave doesn’t think this is really anything new, however. “You often hear that gamers are less patient these days. I’m not sure if that’s true. Back in the ’80s, I would spend several months playing the latest Infocom game and never think of ordering the hint book unless I was desperate. But then I got the game Enchanter, which mysteriously shipped with the hint book. I finished that game in less than a week. If I got stuck for maybe ten minutes I’d reach for the hint book, because it was so accessible. The only thing that has changed since those days is that we all have instant access to that hint book via Google. There’s no reason to force hard puzzles on people, because everyone can solve them. So the trend has moved away from difficult puzzles and more towards making the experience of playing an adventure game more enjoyable. It’s a very hard balance to strike.”

The importance of story in adventure games cannot be overstated. It’s what drives the exploration forward and it’s the motivation for completing the puzzles. One of the positive aspects on these titles not relying merely on head-scratchers is that there’s even more effort put into the narrative. Josh Nuernberger’s Gemini Rue contains one of my favorite stories in the genre of late. It’s a tale of loss and identity set in a bleak neo-noir future. Even though it’s an understated adventure built using AGS, it’s gained a lot of attention and you’d be crazy for not checking it out. 

Josh advocates the importance of telling the story through gameplay. “What I’d really like to see is games that make these complex stories your experience in the game — e.g. you are hunted by a mysterious oppressor, or you must face your alternate personality in physical form. Many games today are unfortunately sequences of simplified gameplay strung together by cut-scenes that provide context for your actions (see many first or third-person-shooters). Great games tell stories through their gameplay — you understand the world and the story by the way you interact with them as a player.”

Gemini Rue also has several action sequences: cover-based gun fights. “Although in adventure games you can’t always go the route of totally removing all cut-scenes, you can at least integrate other aspects of gameplay so they don’t just turn into quick time events. I knew when incorporating combat I wanted it to be meaningful and to work on its own as a mechanic. The ultimate goal is to give players a unique experience and a quick time event doesn’t really capture a gunfight in the same way that a developed combat system does.” I personally think that the integration of interesting mechanics is something the adventure genre desperately needed to continue expanding its audience and I think we’re starting to see a lot more of that.

A great example of a game that does this is Double Fine’s Stacking. It was built around the delightful premise of controlling a matryoshka doll and jumping inside larger ones to gain their abilities and overcome puzzles and obstacles. It was incredibly inventive and its unique gameplay mechanic really made it stand out. Double Fine seems to have had more success with the downloadable market than it did with Psychonauts or Brutal Legend. Their use of Kickstarter to fund their latest project seems to have paid off, as well, with fans almost throwing money at the company. It will be interesting to see the long-term impact of Kickstarter on independent developers as more start to use it to secure funding.

Along with shorter downloadable titles like Stacking, episodic adventures have become increasingly common in recent years. It has always struck me as a perfect fit for the genre. Most classic adventure games can be completed rather quickly if you know the solutions to the puzzles. The games’ lengths were augmented by the challenge of solving the puzzles yourself. It also meant that each episode could fund the next one, making it financially more viable. It’s far from an automatic route to success, however, according to Dave Gilbert. The Blackwell series has been going since 2006 and contains four games, but not all episodic series are so fortunate. “The most obvious thing that can go wrong is that the game flops. What then? Do you forge on ahead and finish the series, knowing that the first one didn’t do well? If you do, then you run a much greater risk of the sequel doing just as badly. If you don’t, then you lose a lot of faith and goodwill and that is hard to get back.”

Episodic games require a big investment from players as well as developers. Dave continues: “The main problem with episodic games is that isn’t a lot of faith in the format yet. Only Telltale has managed to pull it off successfully and gained the trust of the consumers. While opinions on their games vary, nobody doubts they will finish what they start. By this point, the gaming public probably has a bit more faith in my ability to deliver than most, but I still get a lot of emails from people saying they don’t want to get invested in Blackwell not knowing if it will ever be finished. I can totally understand that.”

It’s not just independent developers and publishers working to bring adventure games to a new audience, though. Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain, an interactive thriller that reminded me a lot of FMV titles from the ’90s, made some big waves a couple of years ago. While it enjoyed both commercial and critical success, it also got criticized for being more movie than videogame. Our own Jim Sterling is far from a fan. However, its success may lead more publishers to take risks on games with such a strong focus on story.

The now-defunct Team Bondi made quite the impression last year with their investigative adventure (and driving simulator,) L.A. Noire. It made an even bigger impression with its implosion, some might say. The game itself, if not the treatment of the people that worked on it, still deserves praise, however. Before the genre started to have problems, it was ahead of the curve when it came to animation, so it’s good to see so much effort being put into making believable game worlds and characters again. If you’d asked me, back in 2005, if I ever thought big studios would be designing AAA adventure games again, I would have laughed. Now it doesn’t seem nearly as absurd.

I’m not going to be dramatic and suggest that we’re seeing an adventure game renaissance. I wish I could, but it’s simply not true. We’re definitely seeing it making something of a comeback, though. There’s a lot more faith in them, both from publishers and players and that’s gone a long way to start bringing them back into the mainstream. The fact that the market is growing at all is a massive step forward and looking back just five or six years, we can see how far the genre has come. There are a lot of talented developers out there bringing us more and more experiences to enjoy. It might not be a renaissance yet, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.