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ADVENTURE - THE GENRE THAT DOES SELL

Click here for year-end 2003 sales figures. The usual disclaimers apply - figures are tabulated by PC Data and do not include online sales or sales from some brick-and-mortar outlets like Electronics Boutique that do not subscribe to the service. Still, these figures are an excellent barometer by which to gauge adventure sales. JC stands for jewel case and is a game that is sold at a reduced cost without a box.

L(UCAS) A(RTS) - THE L.A. IS FOR LOST ADVENTURES

As you may know by now, Lucas Arts has cancelled Sam & Max 2. What is so upsetting about this is not that the game was cancelled, but that Lucas Arts touch is so out-of -touch with the gaming public.

You have to wonder what led Lucas Arts to this decision. As far as I am aware they never once contacted Just Adventure or any of the other numerous adventure sites to offer information on the game in an attempt to build some grassroots support. Instead, they refuse to respond to email requests and don’t return phone calls. That is their idea of supporting the adventure community. This is their idea of public relations - don’t call us, we’ll call you.

Recently, they ran a poll on their corporate site asking readers their opinions of adventure games. Did you see the poll; did you vote; did you even know the poll existed? Don’t feel bad if you didn’t because once again Lucas Arts went out of their way to not support the adventure community. It would have been a simple matter to approach a site like Just Adventure and ask for help to lead readers to the poll, but that would be beneath Lucas Arts. You can be sure though that a goodly amount of Star Wars fans who visit their site religiously let their dislike of adventure games be heard loud and clear.

But please, don’t believe for a moment the brief press releases that were issued regarding the cancellation of Sam & Max 2 and earlier, Full Throttle 2. These cancellations had nothing to do with game quality, action elements or the adventure community. There are three, and only three, reasons why Sam & Max 2 was cancelled. Listen closely:

Money
Money
& Money

The truth is that regardless of how many copies of Sam & Max 2 would have been sold, sales still would not have reached the level of their worst selling Star Wars game. Would Lucas Arts have made money from Sam & Max 2, especially considering that development costs were probably in the two million dollar range? Of course they would have, but - and this is what is most important - they would not have made enough money. Adventure games are ‘evergreen’ products, which means they have a long shelf live and continue to sell throughout the year. Unfortunately, today’s marketplace dictates that a game must be a hit out of the starting gate as shelf space is precious.

Adventure games - regardless of what Lucas Arts will have you believe - are a hot commodity again, yet companies like Lucas Arts are so out of touch that they honestly believe that a new adventure game must be a big-budget, multi-media extravaganza to be successful and this is what is killing the games.

So now we can add Sam & Max 2 to a sad list that also includes Uru Live & Full Throttle 2 and our sources tell us that the axe may soon fall on some other highly anticipated titles.

In the meantime, don’t waste your time firing off emails to Lucas Arts or sending them letters, they really don’t give a damn. Place a flower on their grave and move on. Instead of bitching about games we don’t have, spend your time productively by supporting the games we do have. Purchase a copy of Got Game Entertainment’s A Quiet Weekend in Capri or Microid’s Syberia II or The Adventure Company’s Jack the Ripper for these are the people who are truly supporting the adventure community.

IT WILL BE THE FIRST TIME YOU CAN WHACK OFF A MOBSTER AND YOURSELF IN THE SAME GAME

Vivendi/Univeral, nee Sierra, really did adventure gamers proud with their announcement of a new Leisure Suit Larry game. For the record, as of this writing Leisure Suit Larry Magna Cum Laude does not feature Leisure Suit Larry (instead it is his nephew); the gameplay, according to the developer diaries, is inspired by the controversy of Grand Theft Auto and the vulgar humor of American Pie and series creator Al Lowe is not involved. Is this a company that knows what an adventure gamer wants or what? Any questions as to why Vivendi is hemorrhaging money and laying-off employees? Does anyone think this game will meet the same fate as Full Throttle 2 and Sam & Max 2?

IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT (AND I FEEL FINE)

In our past few articles, we’ve pointed out the similarity in numerous reviews of adventure games that all begin with some variation of ‘the adventure game is dead’ cliché. Some were so chock full of misinformation and bias that they were actually humorous .

Over the course of the past three months there have been over 20 reviews of adventure games in CGW, PC Gamer & Computer Games Magazine. The Black Mirror, Uru, Broken Sword, Conspiracies and more have all been featured in recent issues. Every review has covered the negatives and positives of the game and not one of the reviews - not a single, solitary one - mentions the death of the adventure genre! What a novel concept, reviewing a game based on the gameplay itself and not based on a negative preconception of the genre. I wonder where they got that idea?

Best of all though was good friend Marc Saltzman’s opening line in his PC Gamer review of Mysterious Journey II:

As a rule, you won’t find us knocking adventure games with the now-cliched intro about a disappearing/dead/due-for-a-comeback genre. “A good game is a good game” is our mantra, regardless of genre, platform origins or inspiration.

Thank you PC Gamer for finally listening!

Gee, now what am I going to bitch about every month? Wait, I know….

WHY THE MAINSTREAM THINKS HARDCORE GAMERS ARE IDIOTS - PART 1

G4 television. Pure & simple. For months I harassed my local cable company to add this 24-hours a day games network. To invoke a cliché, be careful what you wish for. Quite frankly, G4 is an insult to any gamer with a brain. Not once in the month since I’ve had access to this station have I seen or heard a solitary mention of any adventure game. In fact Tommy Tallarico, a noted industry composer and co-host of Judgment Day - the only show on the entire network that offers any critical analysis - complained that Silent Hill 3 could have been improved if the player had been forced to fight every monster instead of possessing the ability to run away and also - after praising Sony’s Primal - then concluded that it could have been a much better game had it included more fighting and less puzzles.

Every ‘man-in-the-street’ interview is similar. In response to “What is your favorite game?” some t-shirt garbed, knit-capped wearing gang-banger either screams “I can kick everyone’s ass at (insert name of any fighting game here)” or they flash some idiotic sign with their fingers and yell, “Grand Theft Auto rulz!” God forbid they show a normally dressed, calm individual who admits to enjoying slow-moving, plot-driven games with puzzles.

Is it no wonder that the mainstream press lumps all gamers together as blood-thirsty idiots? As for me, I’ve already cancelled my digital cable and returned to basic cable which is free of G4 and its bombastic programming.

WHY THE MAINSTREAM THINKS HARDCORE GAMERS ARE IDIOTS - PART 2

Gamers have mostly become immune to the constantly poor quality of writing and dialogue in games. So for a reviewer to actually point-out specific dialogue in a game it must be really bad. Which brings us to Traitor’s Gate 2. Ray Ivey, in his Just Adventure review, complained. “It gets worse when the main character opens his mouth. Every single thing he says is terrible.” Cindy Yans’ review in Computer Games Magazine found fault with a “humdrum story with equally icky dialogue.” Gamespot’s Scott Osbourne noted that “every great once in a while (the main character) will make a stupid observation, like when he spots a serpent statue and says, “Whoa, Sir Hiss I presume.” Believe me, there are many other similar quotes available.

Every year at this time I receive ballots from numerous companies asking for my votes for Best Game of the Year, Best Music, Best Graphics and so on. This year included on the ballot of the yearly NAVGTR (National Academy of Video Game Testers and Reviewer’s Corp.) nominations for Best Game Dialogue was, yep you guessed it, Traitor’s Gate 2.

GO AHEAD - MAKE MY DAY

A recent issue of the nationally syndicated newspaper insert, USA Weekend, featured an excellent interview with famed actor/director Clint Eastwood. One of the questions posed by the interviewer was:

"Unforgiven" and "Mystic River" are intended to get audiences to think about the consequences of violence, instead of taking voyeuristic pleasure in it. But while your work has matured, Hollywood has taken more of a video-game approach, with the "Kill Bills" and "Terminator" movies. Do you find this troubling?

Clint Eastwood’s response to this question is not important, what is important is how the phrase “video-game approach” has become synonymous with mindless violence. Thanks in a large part to companies like Rockstar and industry spokespersons who constantly defend video-game violence as mature content, instead of decrying it for what it actually is - a tawdry attempt to line their pocketbooks at the expense of impressionable youngsters.

WHO’S MORE FULL OF YOU-KNOW-WHAT, THE ELEPHANTS OR 1UP?

1Up is a site that functions as an umbrella for Computer Gaming World, Electronic Gaming Monthly and a handful of other Ziff Davis publications. Recently they posted a press release announcing the delay of Arxel Tribe’s next project Hannibal, an action/first-person shooter based on the Hannibal Lechter character from Silence of the Lambs. They even ran screenshots from the game.

Problem is that this hardcore site that serves as a source of information for the gaming community seems to not have looked at the screenshots or read Arxel’s description for 1Up describes Hannibal as, “The upcoming historical strategy (set, of course, during the Punic Wars between Carthage and Rome).” Even better though is their headline announcing the delay, “Presumably he’s stuck in the Alps with those elephants.”

Btw, emails to 1Up informing them of their mistake have gone unanswered and apparently ignored.

IT DOES, IT DOESN’T, IT DOES, IT….AW, WHO CARES

Let’s see, last year at the E3, I sat in a room and heard Ragnar Tørnquist, the creator of The Longest Journey, state that Static, the sequel (now titled Dreamfall) would contain action-like elements.

Then he claimed he was misunderstood (similar to when New York Yankees pitcher David Wells claimed he was ‘misquoted’ in his own autobiography).

Now, he freely admits that Dreamfall will have action elements and, surprisingly, the response from the adventure community seems to be, “ho hum, here we go again.”

But what is most bothersome is that Funcom seems to be bypassing the adventure community in favor of the ‘big boys.’ They seem to get starry-eyed over any mention on IGN or Gamespot and have stated that they have promised exclusives to the gaming magazines that for years made a hobby out of bashing the adventure genre.

So what happens when a traditional adventure game incorporates action elements and decides to appeal to the mainstream without first building grass roots support in the adventure community? You get Full Throttle 2, Sam & Max 2 and Uru Live that’s what happens. Oops! We didn’t get those three games did we?

MATCHMAKER, MATCHMAKER MAKE ME A MATCH

Well, I’ve been called many things, but matchmaker? There have already been a few instances of couples meeting on the JA Forum and falling in love. Now I’m proud to announce our most historic match: Just Adventure webmistress Valerie Davis and Panayotis Pantazis (known on the forums as Aya). But there was one small hitch to their budding relationship, Val lived in the United States while Aya resided in Greece.

Problem solved as Panayotis Pantazis - after a lengthy wait - was granted a Visa and has since relocated to the United States and now a little birdie tells me we will soon be celebrating a big, fat Greek wedding!

FLYING HIGH WITH NANCY DREW

The next time you’re flying Alaska Airlines and you need something to warm the cockles of your heart, take a moment to thumb through the in-house magazine nestled beside your seat. Just in case you won’t be flying to Alaska anytime soon, we’ve provided the article for you.

RED HERRINGS

• We hope you enjoyed our special Syberia 2 week. Just Adventure is proud to be the only adventure site to offer not only downloads of the Syberia 2 demo and trailer, but also a hands-on preview.
• If you haven’t visited our Independent Developers section yet, well you should! These folks do a great job and we’re thrilled that two of our Independent Developers games have signed publishing agreements (and we hear there might be more on the way!).
• Speaking of our Independent Developers, towards the end of March we will spotlight one game each week to give you an opportunity to learn more about the games and the people behind them. And don’t forget to check out our really cool Independent Developers logo on the front page of JA.
• There’s still too many people in this industry whose idea of marketing an adventure game is to place advertisements in the gaming magazines and little more. Thankfully, Howard Horowitz of Got Game Entertainment is always looking for unusual ways to market his products and, in fact, his newest release - A Quite Weekend in Capri - will be featured in the April issue Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel Magazine - circulation 500,000. Now that’s how you market a unique game like Capri.