Dear reader, I’m tired. A couple of months ago, I read a couple of articles, both academic and journalistic, that talked about the “death of adventure games”, more than 20 years since it supposedly happened. I expressed my frustration on Twitter, and the popularity of the post reminds me that I’m not alone in my frustration. Here’s the long version of why the phrase “death of adventure games” pushes my buttons.

Adventure games are a genre very dear to my heart – I wrote my dissertation on them, and I learned the ropes of game development making them. I had never heard of the “death of adventure games” until I came to study in the US, because in Europe adventure games kept being made and played by audiences well after the 1990s. Why do people mean when they say they died?

Most people refer to Erik Wolpaws’ article, which eviscerated one particular puzzle in Gabriel Knight 3, and identified it as the death toll of the genre. I’d say the article is a symptom of what happened in the North American industry, as well as the tendency that journalism and certain fans have to oversimplify game history.

What happened back then is that two of the largest companies making adventure games, Sierra On-Line and Lucasarts stopped developing them at the end of the 90s while continuing working on other genres. Why did they close down their adventure game divisions? We can probably guess some of the reasons, but my theory is that they probably have to do with mounting development costs, derived from projects that aspired to be interactive movies either using FMV or 3D spaces, as well as the market becoming larger and opening up to wider audiences. More importantly – and here’s a key difference between North America and Europe – game consoles were taking up a larger part of the US market, and the point-and-click interface was quite burdensome to control with console controllers, which limited the market to PC desktop machines. While the PC market remained relatively strong in Europe during the 2000s, it does not seem it was the case in North America. The profit margins were getting narrower, and investors will always take their money to whatever will give them the largest return of investment. There are probably other reasons, which may have to do with how good or bad the games were, for example, but my hunch is that it’s always money.

The adventure games of Sierra OnLine and LucasArts have been tremendously influential in the design and storytelling of games for the last two decades, including adventure games that were still being released after the supposed demise of the genre. Adventure games were not AAA blockbusters any more, they missed the “mainstream” train that would have allowed them to maintain ballooning development and publicity costs and reach larger audiences. On the other hand, they kept being developed by smaller teams, which in certain cases has allowed them a creative freedom that has kept adventure games fresh, as well as given way to a myriad subgenres, and reached smaller and underserved markets of players.

The “death of adventure games” is part of a narrative created by journalists, fans and even some developers, who revel in self-pity or want to feel special instead of celebrating the variety of games that have been appearing in the last 20 years.

Genres keep dying and reviving constantly, as Víctor Navarro-Remesal mentions – once everyone had had their share of playing with plastic guitars, music games were apparently done for. Never mind that series like Dance Dance Revolution has just turned 20, or Beat Saber (2019) was one of the runaway hits on VR headsets, and Just Dance just announced its next title. Music games had their moment where they millions of living rooms and tech offices, but although they are not as visible and omnipresent they have not gone away either, particularly outside the US. In contrast, there is no such discourse around flight simulators, which had a similar trajectory as adventure games – a relatively popular genre that did well in home computers, but which requires streamlined controls to play well in consoles. LucasArts, which was also famed for their fantastic flight simulators designed by Lawrence Holland, stopped making flight simulators a few years after closing off on adventure games. In comparison, the volume of flight simulators released in the last couple of decades has been much lower than that of adventure games, and yet the genre is celebrated with the release of certain titles, such as the latest Microsoft Flight Simulator or Star Wars: Squadrons.

And while flight simulators may have experienced a modest revival, there is hardly any acknowledgement that adventure games still remain a popular genre, even if they do not rack up the millions of AAA games. In comparison with flight simulators, we have a long list of games developed during the supposed “death” of adventure games: The Longest Journey (1999), and its sequel Dreamfall (2006), Syberia (2002), a couple of dozen titles in the Nancy Drew game series, and half of the games in the Blackwell series. These games, released during the first decade of our century, are key referents of the genre. But perhaps having women as protagonists, all of them investigators of one kind or another, independent and adventurous, may not have been in agreement with certain parts of the videogames discourse. They were plenty other titles released during that period: the Runaway series (2003-2009), as well as a good bunch of Frogwares’ Sherlock Holmes titles; both Quantic Dreams and Telltale Games rose to fame in those years. Mind how many of the titles listed are game series, which fostered enough interest to allow developers to release multiple titles and having loyal groups of players in spite of being titles of varying quality.

During this period, many people who started as “hobbyists” in the interactive fiction and adventure game communities have become comercial game developers of some of the most interesting narrative games released in the last 15 years: Emily Short (Failbetter Games), Jon Ingold (Inkle Studios), Sam Barlow (Half Mermaid) , Dave Gilbert (Wadjet Eye Games), and Francisco Gonzalez (Grundislav Games), to name but a few.

The influence of adventure games is also more than obvious in escape the room games. Originally, they were web games that took the lock-and-key mechanics of adventure games and turned them into their core gameplay. The became their own digital game form, to then inspire the thousands of escape the room spaces that are available all over the world.

The consequences of the US-centric, money-centric discourse on adventure games, which also extends to other genres, is that smaller game communities tend to be overlooked, as well as left out of funding resources because they’re not perceived as popular blockbusters. I already complained about how mid-budget games are becoming rare – when a narrative game makes a lot of money, investors considered an exception; if a narrative game by a “proven” team doesn’t make back its money in a month (even if it recoup costs in a few months), it’s supposed to be the norm. This bias derives from the way journalists, fans, developers as well academics talk about the games, not based on analyzing data, looking at the history, or finding the communities that love playing and making these games.

Veteran game designer Jane Jensen, creator of the Gabriel Knight series as well as a slew of other adventure games, has set videogames aside to become a prolific author of erotic novels. She has written novels before, but this time she seems to have found her audience and a good creative space. I’m happy to hear she’s found a rewarding avenue for her creative energy–making a living out of your art is hard, people. And she’s successful and has a following–what is not to like?

Well, I for one don’t like that the games industry loses someone with her extensive experience as a game designer, especially when there’s such a dearth of women designers. The article that covers her career pivot explains in detail the tribulations of developing and releasing Gray Matter (2010) and Moebius (2014). Jensen’s heartbreaking conclusion is that “There’s not much opportunity in adventure games anymore.”

The article linked above encapsulates the dilemma of being a creator in games and trying to get the financial support to make new games in the following passage.

“The very particular path Jensen had to carve out for herself is revealing of how the industry treats its superstars. There’s no real opportunity for an independent writer-director to lead a large budget work without either submitting to employment within a massive corporate structure or building a corporate structure of their own. The industry does not give any one person power and independence at once, especially not at the scale Jensen once enjoyed.”

The budget of adventure games is far, far from that of AAA games with filmic aspirations, which are made by hundreds of people over several years, to be released to thunderous PR in all platforms. Why wouldn’t publishers or investors give a chance to someone with the track record of Jane Jensen? Compared to the millions and millions that big companies spend in their games, making a story-driven game for a devoted fanbase should be a sure bet–may not make a fortune, but probably could get recoup costs and then some if they can reach their audience. Part of the struggle of creating the games Jensen wanted was that she and her husband were spending their own money to make the game, which adds to the stress and raises the stakes of making an independent game; when the budget is also tight, it can also stretch the development of a project over years because developers end up working on commercial projects to make ends meet.

One of the reasons why publishers and investors are reluctant to give money to make classical adventure games is the trite and untrue phrase that “adventure games are dead,” which the article linked above perhaps inadvertently contributes to. Publishers and investors tend to seek not only sure bets, but projects that have the potential to make obscene amounts of money–something that most adventure games are unlikely to do. And when there is a successful story-driven game, be it an adventure game, walking simulator, or something of that ilk, it is always taken as an anomaly, an exception. The money people just want more of the same.

My problem is that the tone of articles like these contribute to the insidious idea that there’s no money not only in adventure games, but in story-driven games that aim at being original and veer away from the cookie-cutter popular games , when it is patently not true. Surely, there is no AAA money to be earn, but there are plenty of people releasing so many exciting, original and refreshing games, and making a living out of it. Some of them make games evoking the style of 90s adventure games, and in some cases are directly inspired by Jensen’s work, others tell heartfelt stories with animals or mutants; some others retell works of literature from the point of view of women, there is an explosion of fantastic visual novels that tell LGBT+ stories, and a lot of the population that is wearily underrepresented in games. These developers, alongside many more, have managed to release fascinating works and find their audience, which is no mean feat. If we think about game development as an artistic career rather than software development, it becomes evident that the game developer life, particularly when one puts creativity over product, is really hard. That is why having the financial security and endorsement of publishers and investors helps being able to focus on one’s game and help developers find their audience through PR, and the final result is all the better for it.

There is a dearth of support to middle-sized games, in a similar way to how the middle-budget films disappeared for a while – think of the independent movies of the 1990s, for example. These are the kind of works that take a moderate investment, bring a gust of fresh air to the mediascape, and can recoup costs and occasionally provide a hit. This is where one can reach the myriad smaller markets, rather than one large mainstream; where we can find the works that are personal, political, innovative, quirky. As we say in Spanish, variety is where taste is. In film, this kind of works are now being produced by streaming services, which a loss for those of us who used to love watching movies in a dark theatre with other people before that was brought to a halt. Games have not quite found their equivalent yet, the space for these middle-sized games that need more than a Kickstarter, but much much less than Call of Duty. This is the budget size that Jane Jensen needed and couldn’t get. There are a few publishers who are aware that there are audiences who crave new, daring, original games, and are willing to bet on them, and work more as patrons of the arts rather than venture capitalist looking to hit the jackpot. But we need more.

I do not have enough information state with absolute confidence how the industry failed Jensen, particularly after she created her own company, Pinkerton Road, to make shorter, low budget games, which should have been the right move for her. The outsourcing of development, where she wrote the game design document for the team to work on seems to me a bit odd approach, since it may leave out the processes of playtesting and iteration that are also part of adventure games, albeit at times iterating based on player feedback can be a production challenge. Perhaps it was a matter of PR, and making sure that the game got to the right audience. Perhaps the games didn’t live up to Jensen’s ideas since she didn’t have access to the resources that she would have liked to have. Perhaps she needed better PR to get to her players–there are many wonderful games that get lost in the deluge of releases every week. I’m sad we couldn’t get Jane Jensen to stay making more games, and I hope one day the industry can lure her back to make the games she wants.

As promised, here’s a bit of story behind the game The Last Symphony, why we made it and what we came across. My goal is to let you in the creative process, but hopefully without spoiling the game or being pretentious about what the game really achieves. What the game means is mostly up to you, really.

The conceit of the The Last Symphony is that everything is hidden in plain sight: the objects, the stories, the people, the music. The challenge is to reveal what is hidden, and figure out what that may be. In the process, we invite players to do things that they’re not so used to doing, such as paying attention to the text, listening, and coming up with their own stories.

My lovely colleagues at the lab put together this fine video that explains the research and the game. This blogpost extends what is in here.

As I say in the video, the focus of the project was environmental storytelling. I had developed this concept, indexical storytelling, which refers to design techniques to construct stories in the environment by leaving traces or indications, and I wanted to put it to the test. You can read my paper on the concept, or watch one of the industry presentations that I have given on the topic online if you need more detail.

A hidden object game seemed to be the way to go. It was perfect for my purposes: related to adventure games, the genre I know best, it was not a particular technical challenge, and a scope was feasible in the length of the summer program (8 weeks!). Plus hidden object games are all about environment: you’re scouring the screen, finding items in the jumble. Hidden object games seemed to be in need of some environmental storytelling techniques, so that the story also happened in the screens that the player spends the most time at, not only the cutscenes. Although some of hidden object games are certainly trying hard to give relevance to the objects you seek, and are leaving behind the photoshop-the-hell-of-it technique, there was certainly room for improvement. Hello, research!

I was lucky to get a fantastic team to work on the game, most of whom had not really played any hidden object games, but who also saw the potential for improvement after playing as many demos as they could. Since it was a game that was heavy on visual assets, I got the largest artist team of the program, plus the game designer is also an illustrator, and even the producer also had experience in animation. (Please note the wonderful team that made the game at the bottom of the page. They’re going to be big in the near future.)

The first step was common to all my previous games: paper prototyping. As with adventure games, the catch was that we had to have a story of the world which would shape the environment, and from that we wanted to have a set of mechanics that related to finding objects on a screen. Story and prototype had to go together.

With all the visual focus,it was ironic that that during brainstorming and prototyping, everyone’s favourite story was reconstructing the life of a music composer. This opened up the way to use music as another layer to tell the story, which I personally was very excited about (I love film soundtracks, and never miss the chance of using the music as a narrative element as well), and so was our audio designer. He has written his own blog post about the role of the music of the game, so go read it too.

In implementing the game, the main challenge was that every object on the screen had to be there for a reason. A lot of the weight of indexical storytelling fell on the illustrators, who had to negotiate constantly where things would go and why. Every object is part of a story, like a puzzle piece, it had to come from somewhere, and it had been left where it was for a narrative reason. (Well, at times there were technical reasons, like you don’t want to put small objects at the back of the room, because then players have to find a pixel). At times it is surprising to realize that, in order to improve games, you only have to think about what you’re doing, rather than going through the motions of what’s been done before. It takes a tad more time, but in the long run it does not become a problem for production, although it scheduling has to accomodate for it. It may seem obvious, but it bears repeating: innovation comes from putting a bit of thinking of where things come from.

What was still missing was how to make the objects meaningful. The events of the stories in the game have left a trace in the space, but how can the players also leave a trace? The first step was figuring out who the player was in the game: a museum curator seemed like a natural role, which would justify why one would go and look for objects in a house and take them away (detectives and thieves are trite at this point). Curators also have to construct a narrative based on objects. Based on that, we came up with a set of mechanics where, after finding the objects, the player had to select them based on which items may relate to each other and generate a narrative.

We still had one piece missing: how does the player know what the objects mean? How do we cover that gap? The cheap and fast solution was to attach texts to the objects themselves. That information could not be presented as the player found the objects, or making them into hotspots–this was a hidden object game, not an adventure game (I’d done that already). But what was the narrative premise for that? Our player character could give us some information on the objects, but we needed to reveal more. And that’s where our lovely Ruth Carmine appeared.

One of my demands for the game was that the protagonist of the game had to be female. There’s a dearth of female protagonists in games (although they are more common in hidden object games), and I was kinda embarrassed that only one of my three previous games featured a female protagonist. Our usher to the world, and the person who holds the key to the stories behind each object, is a lovely English old lady, endearing and absent-minded, who has more to her than just sipping her tea at 5 o’clock. We used Margaret Rutherford as a model to make our lady come to life.

The end result is a game where the player has not only to find objects but also figure out the story. Given our time constraints, the mechanics that give you feedback on how related the objects are not very complicated or have much depth. On the other hand, we hope we turned a bug into a feature: rather than us telling the story to the player straight out, the player must fill the gaps and come up with their own. It’s not the first time that I’ve encouraged this in games: Rosemary and Symon both thrive on leaving gaps. The difference is that we have turned those gaps into an essential part of gameplay, the goal of the game is to build the story through the objects.

While we were playtesting the game, asking people to tell us their version of the story was our part of the fun. At times people had outlandish versions that confirmed, yet once more, that players don’t read or pay attention to anything narrative. Others had very interesting takes. Others were right on, even when we had provided very little information. Players appropriated the objects and the story and made it theirs. A lot of players still want to know if they had got it right, see if they had guessed what the story is, and the end of the game probably does not give you enough information. We’re so used to winning and losing, to doing things a certain way, that most players cannot stand the uncertainty of what had actually happened. Although this game is not a David Lynch movie, it’s been a treat to see how people try to make sense of it.

In my previous blogpost I talked about how I struggled with whether to talk about the process or not. And what made me decide to write is was really the desire to hear more player stories. So if you made it this far, could you please play the game and tell me what the story is?