From the IGN interview

I'm sold. Or rather, the game's sold. To me. As in, I love it. As do you. Because you should.

-Fred

That's a great interview. So true what they said about Grim Fandango. Probably one of the greatest adventure games ever produced, but was a huge failure in terms of sales; basically meaning that if something like that would fail commercially then the genre was well and truly dying or dead.

-Cub. =o)

In all honesty though, had you heard of Grim Fandango before or upon its release? Do we know if they had released demos of the game? Because I found it by accident for a ridiculous price (with even an additional sale applied at the cashier) only a few months after its release, and I had no idea what it was. All I knew was it looked real slick and was by Lucasart.

The only argument I've ever heard against the game too were people not getting past the controls and inventory system. everyone who's enjoyed it (and over the years there has been many, mouth to ear and all) love it to death. Executives refusing to back up a possible new release based on this "failure" truly has no balls.

But then again, there hasn't been anyone with balls in the film or game industry in decades. What Aaron said about no one taking risks anymore echoes what a friend in the movie business said times and times again.

Spineless cowards I tellz ya!

Sorry, but Grim Fandango did well enough in sales for Lucas Arts to make Escape from Monkey Island.

It was the failure of Escape from Monkey Island that sealed the fate of Adventure Games with Lucas Arts.

Grim Fandango did ok in sales, but it wasn't the big seller they hoped it would be. The real problem with Adventure Games is that for the most part they've been stuck to the PC world and in the PC world right now a game that sells 300K to 400K units is considered a success while in the console world it takes 1M units to be considered a success.

The thing is that Adventure Games haven't really been released at all on the Console, and the last one "Escape From Monkey Island," was considered a failure (about 300,000 copies).

This past summer I had the opportunity to go back and play a lot of old games. The Adventure Genre doesn't hold up very well with the classic games. The old Sierra games for instance are pretty bad in the story category with the exception of the Gabriel Knight games. The vast number of BAD FMV games was astounding. For every decent to well done FMV there were 10 really bad ones. The market was flooded with bad FMV adventure games. One was even produced by Robert Dinero and he had A list talent act in the game. The game though sucked.

Then throw in the MYST phenom. MYST was a stunning game with an amazing look and feel. Part of its feel was due to the fact that the guys behind the game couldn't code their way out of a paper bag. These guys weren't code slingers but really bad code crunchers. The game was written with HYPERCARD, which is kind of like coding it in HTML. There was one main reason you could only carry one item at a time: their coding skills. However the STORY, plus the amazing look of the world combined with well designed "worlds," ended up shocking the industry.

Then you had all the MYST wannabe games. They flooded the market at the same time that FMV titles were flooding the market. It was awful. The market was overdone with horrible games. At the same time RTS and FPS were really coming of age. A bad FPS at the time was using an already established FPS engine with bad level designs. At least in a bad FPS you still got to shoot things. Bad Adventure games were just BAD with nothing going for it.

All of this combined is to me the reason the Genre got overlooked. For one RISK. It's a lot less risky to make an FPS or RTS. When even GOOD Adventure Games aren't making good money you have a problem.

I'm convinced though that some games were just ahead of their time. The truth is that at some point someone is going to make a new Adventure Game and it's going to sell in truckloads and we'll be flooded with more bad games trying to capture its magic.

Two other things.

1) Grim Fandango was released in an era where piracy was coming into it's own right, and more people have played GF than ever bought it.

2) Escape From Monkey Island blew donkey. It's not canon and should be excluded from the history of mankind as it is the most notable failure ever produced. Next to Crazy Frog.

-Fred

Three Cards looks awesome. When do I get to buy a copy?

he truth is that at some point someone is going to make a new Adventure Game and it's going to sell in truckloads and we'll be flooded with more bad games trying to capture its magic.

See also: Baldur's Gate for the rpg genre. After the overflow of maze RPG's in the 80's, most of them terrible, the genre was pretty much gone until Baldur's Gate came out and made a statement. We owe the survival and re-birth of this style in great part to this game.

We can also think of the strategy genre that was created completely from scratch and became huge thanks to one or two titles.

Whenever someone says the market isn't favorable all I can think of is how the entire cake could go to the one guy who decides to tackle the market anyway.

Fred Buer wrote:Two other things.

1) Grim Fandango was released in an era where piracy was coming into it's own right, and more people have played GF than ever bought it.

2) Escape From Monkey Island blew donkey. It's not canon and should be excluded from the history of mankind as it is the most notable failure ever produced. Next to Crazy Frog.

-Fred

I beg to differ on 1. Piracy was at its peak in around 92. That was the point where they claimed for every game bought there was 3 to 4 that were pirated. The only game to ever "officially," sell more copies of the hint book than the game (by a landslide too) was "Leisure Suit Larry," a game from what 88 or 89?

Piracy however had caught up to the "CDs are too big," problem by the time Grim Fandango came out. So there were likely more copies of this pirated than say MYST which benefited from a time when 56k modems couldn't distribute the data fast enough. I've never heard Grim Fandango mentioned in the "wow that game sure was pirated," category like LSL and Doom have been discussed.

Lucas Arts also does a good job of protecting their copyrights. They go after torrent people all the time.

Escape From Monkey Island isn't Canon? Why? I admit it wasn't as good as previous installments, but looking back those previous installments don't hold up that well either. I think the problem was that games like TM, GK, and GF raised the bar on the genre. We started expecting complex stories vs simplistic stories with puzzles.

Which reinforces the fact that the genre is tougher to produce for. It's the drama of the game world. It's hard to make a successful drama at the theater, it's hard to make an adventure game for the PC.

Or the drama of the movies. Many claim only the independent scene can produce a good intelligent drama because mainstream has failed so many times at it. Then The Dark Knight came around and all of a sudden people think it's absolutely amazing. How many times have some of us stated that anyone who can bring a balance between story and fast-paced action would conquer Hollywood? There we have a movie with great acting from every single actor, a solid story, some pure drama and yet very entertaining action that has made so far over 900 millions worldwide and isn't even out of the theaters yet.

Does this balance ring a bell with the point we've been making for years about adventure games, or games in general? How anyone who greenlights projects can't see this is beyond me.

It's not canon as far as I'm concerned. For my part, Monkey Island was complete with the end of the trilogy when they got married and sailed off into the sunset

But that's just me

-Fred

Sorry when I said theater I meant movies. My bad.

Yes, combine a good story with a good brand image and good action set pieces and you have success. I think the Bourne movies have shown success for that reason as well. The last Bond movie did alright, and it will be interesting to see how the new one does.

I can't think of a game in the last 8 years that had a good story. I mean a REALLY good story. I can think of some that had alright stories, but nothing that made me go "wow."

I can. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. And for that matter, Bioshock, Fahrenheit (or Indigo Prophecy), Mafia and Max Payne 2. Albeit the last one was more a matter of 'how' than 'what'.

I replayed Bioshock not long ago. I like it, it feels... solid. Tangible. A great story in a great setting told with great detail. Great atmosphere, great graphics (the water is especially good) and great voicecasting. And it's a stand-alone game. No cliffhanger for a sequel, no trying to make a trilogy out of it. It's a single, great game. And that's a rare thing in this day and age.

I don't even think of it as a FPS game. Even that is, what it is.

Now we have Three Cards to Midnight to look forward to. More great story. Can't wait!

-Fred

And KOTOR, Bioshock, Payne, Mafia, Deus Ex, and so on and so forth, they were all solid success. I can't stress enough how a good adventure with a serious engine update and a killer story could do well. It's just ridiculous to think otherwise.

Ditto on the movies you've named as well. Bond was nearly drowned thanks to poor story-telling until Paul Gross got on board for Royale and seriously refreshed the franchise, the way Goldeneye saved them after the catastrophic Dalton era. Reboots are always possible if the effort is put into it. Everyone thought Batman gone forever until a bunch of loonies believed in the Begins project and put their top guns on to it. They gave it all the chances for success and look what happened. The following installment earned a spot on the top 3 of IMDB's best movies ever according to popular votes.

So bring it forward damnit, I believe in Harvey Dent, and I believe in Tex Murphy!

...Yeah. Nice slogan there, Harvey.

-Fred