Adventure games 101

Hi
Someone is going to offer me a job one day to lecture on Adventure Gaming, and how it enables insights into all sorts of social and human history.
I want to be ready, so thought you could all contribute to the syllabus. Which will hang off the taxonomy.
If the kingdom is adventure, the phylum might be graphic and text, then we would have the class etc. I don't know that you would get all 7 hierarchies but perhaps you would.
Once we sorted that out, we would then identify the games you would study to reflect the taxonomy.
Lets just have at it, and refine as we go. And please don't feel any pressure knowing my future rests on this

Is this a serious request ??

I don't think a biological classification system works well for games.
With biological classification, Kingdom is very high up -- plant vs animal vs fungi vs bacteria, etc. You don't naturally have combinations of plants and animals. For example, the zinnias in your garden don't cross with your cat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_(biology)

Hybrids could only exist naturally at genus, species or occasionally family level.

But there are games like Quest for Glory where people disagree if they are adventure or RPG or a hybrid adventure/rpg. You don't get that with biological kingdoms.

Biological classification seems to be by DNA or RNA or other stuff you don't see. The closest analog with games would be the underlying code.

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There are various ways you could classify adventure games, but they wouldn't be hierarchal.

For example

By interface
Point and click vs keyboard vs gamepad

By puzzle type
Inventory based vs mechanical vs standalone (not sure what they're called -- puzzles in Shivers, Jewels of the Oracle, or Safecracker as opposed to puzzles in Myst/RHEM) vs conversation puzzles vs other puzzle types

By dexterity
None required vs QTE vs other action vs timed vs timing vs aiming ability

By ratio of exploration vs story vs puzzles

By environment / literary genre
Fantasy vs sci-fi vs steampunk vs post-apocalyptic vs detective story vs ghost story etc. including combinations (Are the Myst games fantasy or steampunk? The linking books seem magical, but much of the environment and machines suggest steampunk)

By length or divisions
A game that takes 15 or 20 hours to complete has a different "feel" as opposed to one that takes 1 or 2 hours. A game that is split into chapters or "episodes" may never come together as a single game, even after all episodes are released.

By delivery method
Hard copy with various game-related stuff in the box vs disc in case vs download. Not really a choice anymore unless you collect old games, though Telltale had an "extras" box you could get along with their Tales of Monkey Island game (inside you got a cloth map, a coaster, a pin, a coin, some sort of card, and the crippled game in a DVD case).

I expected this would be a difficult task and having read your post, Jenny100, I am convinced it IS !!

Hi Mad
It was serious in the sense that I thought trying to devise a taxonomy would be interesting. I doubt though that someone will ask me to lecture
A nice first post Jenny - I will ponder and come back to you.

Well, flotsam, if push comes to shove, you could always deliver a lecture on the difficulties of devising a taxonomy !!

Oh, I love the idea! I think we can make a taxonomy system work. I have a bad habit of referring to different plants by their taxonomic names because I had it drilled into my head so thoroughly in my Plant Taxonomy course in college!

I just did 9 hours on the road coming home from NW Iowa, so my brain is dead, but I will think about this!

You might be right Jenny although I think some degree of hierarchy would be possible.
If you were teaching the subject, I don't think eg the delivery system would be relevant. You would refer to other attributes, like text vs graphic. You then of course get sucked into pure text, text with rudimentary pictures, then with verb icons and more elaborate graphics. Does it only stop being text once you just point and click? Or something else.
At some point you would cover first and third person, node to node as opposed to free movement, perhaps 2d v 3d, and FMV vs other things etc.
Maybe another way to tackle the issue would be to identify what game best (or first) represents a key set of criteria, sufficient to distinguish it from the other games. Obviously you couldn't cater for every nuance, andyou would acknowledge as the teacher that many games have elements of others, but that these games represent the "periodic table" or the taxonomy or (insert categorisation here) of adventure gaming
There is probably a joint PhD in here for us all!

Maybe the way to split things up would be a list of different styles:

- Visual Style (2D,3D,1st person, 3rd person)
- Interface Style (Text parser, verb list, verb coin, 2-click, 1-click)
- Communication /Dialogue Style (Text speech, voiced speech, icon-based)
- Genre (Sci-Fi, Detective, Paranormal, Horror, whatever)
- Tone (Serious, comedy, er.... )
etc


Or maybe not, probably not much different to Jenny's suggestion by just my 2p worth!

Nice Topic Flotsam,

I was a biologist and teacher and became an adventure gamer in 97 and at retirement I was going to start a plant nursery. I did a lot of taxonomic identification work with fish in a local river as research and later in retirement with plant identification. I am having trouble at the moment setting up a taxonomic scheme for adventure games. The only thing that comes to mind is the increasing complexity from text to very pixilated graphics to better graphics and realism. Sound would get more complex as well and much better. The developers are the force for change. I'll sleep on it tonight.

cheers,

Mr. Bill

I have no idea what you said.

While the idea of a hierarchical system seems like it could work, it is based on evolution, and some kind of root connection. While many games can be follow a linear evolutionary style, I think the adventure 'genres' we acknowledge today are more like pop up new species. Perhaps a Venn diagram system might be another way to visualize relationships, rather than a tree-like structure?

A venn might well work colpet. Or a series of venns. You then see whether you can fit them together.
I again wonder whether you could start with a game, and build the relationship backwards.
We would probably all agree that you would need a game like Monkey Island in the syllabus. Whether it was that game, or a recent incarnation like Thimbleweed Park is kind off moot - we aren't teaching the history of gaming, rather the genre itself. It is verb based, third person, animated and inventory based. We can all think of heaps of games that would be in that category. Sub-categories might pick up the more advanced animation (the rebooted versions), the icons rather than verbs, and perhaps some others. But the fundamental premise remains.
The more difficult part is defining and distinguishing that premise.

Hi all
I have replied to this so as not to repeat earlier input.
It is now a lot less hypothetical. As part of a post-graduate writing degree I am looking to perhaps produce a piece that in effect identified and explained Adventure 101.
Simplistically, I would be looking to identify the "types" of games that would make up the genre, and then (lets say) 3 games that refelected that type. That would allow for some variance within the type (including past and present versions), and also limit them in number.
I am happy for you to throw stones at things I might postulate, and also to take suggestions on what those postulations might be. We have some of the latter in the earlier posts.
Very simplistically, there would be a game like Myst in the final result. But I don't think you would identify every variant of such a game (eg locomotion variations, visual style, interface, etc). So Myst games would be a type, however described, and you could have the variations captured by the three games identified.
The tricky bit will be the dividing lines - when is a variant a different type.
Hoping you can help me, and I expect it will be an evolving and continuing discourse.

Not real "input" as regards this specific post but I remember how much I appreciated the options of "Wit", "Fists" or "Team" choices when I first played Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.

I thought they made such good sense !!

And "Wits" was considered to be slightly the more difficult of the three.
[A consideration with which I agree ]

Thanks Mad
Seems I jumped the gun and the units I thought I was doing aren't until the next Semester
I am putting it down to a late change in curriculum rather than I misread anything.
At least I didn't have to get up and leave a full lecture theatre when I discovered I was in the wrong place
Still keen to give this some thought though so will get back to you.

OK, flotsam !!

Interesting topic. Not sure I can contribute, but there should be adventure game classes at university.