Why are there so few 1st person non-horror puzzlers?

Miss the Old Days thread
Now that we established the lack of these games, any ideas as to why?
Are they too difficult to make - given the puzzles and environments?
Is it an overall lack of adventure market that is squeezing this niche even tighter?
Is there a perception that Casual IHOGs fill the void?
Are these games viewed as old fashioned and a step backwards for adventures?

The last probably has something to do with it, though I don't know why. The graphics and puzzles in games like Lost Souls and Scratches were cutting edge, I thought.

Though those were horror adventures, no reason those technologies can't be translated to other 1st person games.

I'm more excited for Cradle than any game I can recall. It's exactly the kind of game I'd write if I could. I hope it delivers.

My guess would be because of the market, or lack of a market any more.

When the oldies first appeared they were new, something most hadn't seen. And there was a market. But as time passed, peoples' tastes changed and they started buying different games. So where one area increased, another one decreased. Why make games in one area when there aren't any profits. It makes marketing sense to pursue the active market and cut back, or stop production, in the other.

We have to remember developers are trying to make a living making these games. And they have to stay with the active market to do so. Like any other business, if it won't sell they aren't going to carry it or make it anymore.

Fair enough, but even independent and freebie games are pretty much all 3rd person.

I don't quite agree with what Homer6 posted. It's not so much that the adventure game audience has shrunk (or that adventure gamers in general moved over to playing action-oriented games instead) as that more people were able to afford computers that were capable of displaying action-oriented games -- so that people who'd never had any interest in playing adventure games (or turn-based RPG's and strategy games for that matter) were now able to play action-oriented games that were more to their tastes. Meanwhile the market for adventure games remained static. People who'd never heard of adventure games discovered them, while long time adventure gamers grew bored or found they no longer had the free time to play any long games. And some people continued playing adventures as well as sampling other genres.

But the audience for action-adventures grew while the audience for adventures remained constant, so the percentage of adventure gamers compared to the entirety of computer gamers has decreased, though not the numbers -- and of course the big companies went after the money. Of course there are problems with that strategy. Remember Gordon Aplin's article from 2002 -- ***In the Shadow of the Monster*** -- which discusses how big game companies were completely neglecting nearly everyone while focusing on a specific type of gamer. Now the tide seems to have turned with the number of casual gamers far outnumbering the audience for big action games. And it's kind of amusing to read posts from action gamers complaining about how casual games are taking over while there are fewer great games of the genres they prefer being made.

Getting back to why there seem to be more 3rd person games released recently, I think dtp Entertainment played a big part in the predominance of 3rd person games because of their preference for and promotion of 3rd person games. As far as free games go, it's apparently easier to create 3rd person games in AGS (Adventure Game Studio) as opposed to 1st person games. It also takes a different kind of creativity to make good puzzles and integrate them into a game as opposed to coming up with a good story and interesting characters. Maybe the people who have that type of creativity aren't usually the same ones who want to create games.

Many people find horror games to be scarier in 1st person, which makes 1st person a natural choice for them (even if the games themselves are more story-oriented than puzzle-oriented). That may be why most first person adventure games we see are horror-oriented.

It's a complicated issue.
Fads and trends and the like, PLUS big companies chasing the money, all contribute to the mysteries of the "supply and demand" equation

But I feel that aspects of games, like so many things, come and go "in and out of fashion" and I can easily imagine that a resurgence of 1st Person Mode WILL happen some time in the future

First person, non-horror, not cartoon-like graphics, emphasis on puzzles, released in 2010 or later

I went to the Pagoda Game Database and wrote down some recently released adventure games that are first person, non-horror, naturalistic(ish) graphics and have an emphasis on puzzles. Here's what I found (I probably missed one or two -- I always seem to.)


Otherworldly Exploration

RHEM 4
Slip Space
J.U.L.I.A. -- would this be considered first person?

Detectives

CSI games
Carol Reed games
Nancy Drew games

Adventure-lite

Dream Chronicles series
Pahelika series
Fall Trilogy

Still thinking about what it means, but I thought listing a few games might help with the analysis.

EDIT: It has occurred to me that if you eliminate the series that were well established prior to 2010, you are down to Slip Space, J.U.L.I.A., and the adventure-lite games.

Interesting question. The non-horror 1st person adventure is probably my favorite type of game style.

I don't know the answer, but I know a lot of them aren't very well known. Yoomurjak's Ring and The Filmmaker are good recent ones, and also the AGON series. A Quiet Weekend in Capri and Anacapri are a bit older but still fit the category. Even older are Celtica, Obsidian and Timelapse, Riddle of the Sphinx series, Outcry and the more popular Sherlock Holmes series. So the games are out there. Horror just seems to be more popular, and it works so very well in first person.

If you go back to the 1990's, there were all sorts of different 1st person puzzlers being made. Horror certainly didn't dominate the way it does today.