I'm still sad

I so much prefer full adventure games - on a disk

To support full adventure games on disk, buy lots of them, especially directly from the developer or the publisher.

To support full adventure games in general, the best way is probably to buy the download versions directly from the developer if you can -- that seems to be most efficient way to "vote" your preference for full adventure games and it gives them the most direct cash infusion.

Again, just my opinion based on what I'm seeing.

"To support full adventure games on disk, buy lots of them, especially directly from the developer or the publisher."

I've been doing just that (mostly) for over 15 years

And I certainly intend to carry on - for as long as disk versions remain available

15 years is a good long stretch! I've been buying them about that long too. And a lot has changed since we started doing that.

If there's a determined community buying full adventures, whatever the purchasing venue (I personally buy from all venues, including Big Fish and other online portals and online stores, the individual developers, and the brick and mortar stores), I'm convinced that developers will keep making them. One trick up our sleeve is that I think the developers enjoy creating them almost as much as we enjoy playing them.

"One trick up our sleeve is that I think the developers enjoy creating them almost as much as we enjoy playing them."

I read lot of different opinions here about our decision to do a casual game based on Dracula instead of a traditional adventure game. So, if I may I'll answer you.
There are different factors, and I’ll try to give you an overview from the inside.
Games are probably the less harmed digital industry as compared to music and movies that see their economy collapsing strongly; however we are expecting very hard times for the game industry.
The sales of PC games have decreased by 50% in the last five years. Today it's hard to have international release for an adventure game, as the sales are going down on many territories. Many games are just released in Germany, and not elsewhere, and when they come finally in UK or US or France, it's already late to do some marketing or noise around the game, and the publishers handling them don’t really believe the game can perform, therefore they don’t etc…
It has little to do with financial crisis, it's just one more crisis that video game industry knows, it's the second I live personally and I will hopefully know one more in few years ahead:)
The market value was build on a big share taken by the publishers, and retailers and the will of the last one is to sell a lot of units at cheap price, we saw that system doesn’t work anymore, because they need a critical mass of buyers to get the games, and PC games are easily accessible for free, few days before the official release sometimes… the attraction of the box and colored manual is not really big anymore, especially since we have DVD boxes for games… So the games are cheap (20 USD for a game like Sherlock Holmes versus Jack the Ripper is really underpaid) and go cheaper even faster than before, 9.99 or 4.99, etc…
When games are sold at those prices dev don’t get significant revenue from the publishers and today they don’t know anymore to sell a game at the right audience at the right price…
Consequently the publishers don’t want to take risks, do not invest in games, and many studios are forced to be independent, and it’s difficult to do, because game creation is not exact science, delays occurred, mistakes in productions happen, innovations doesn’t always lead you where you want…and money is still very inflexible.
Games price production drastically increased with new video cards, adventure games less than the others, because they are allowed to be “old-fashioned” technically, still we could do a game with 15 people in 2003 and sell twice more units than in 2009 with 50 people working on a game…
Frogwares doesn’t know too many those problems, we have strong brands and international release, but however the sales ratio decrease is applied to us as well.
As we all know Piracy is killing PC industry, as it kills major music companies (maybe it’s for a good) and doesn’t let live small ones, as it kills movie industry. We all know that for one game sold 10 are played. We thought for some time multiplayer mode would limit piracy but sites like http://www.g2play.net/store/ that sells games key they buy and resell with stolen credit cards and zombie PC kills the business and nobody cares about it. Worse, some players enjoy them and find good reasons to buy from thieves…

All games are touched and pirated the same ratio, Iphone apps at 0.79 USD (http://www.tuaw.com/2009/10/28/iphone-app-claims-95-piracy-rate/), Xbox games at 60 euros, NDS titles, Casual titles from BFG,… You can find all Frogwares games in torrent, with people seeding and leeching them.
COD6 had 3% of its “sales” made on PC, when you know that 10 million people played COD4 every day on PC, you can understand why the development studio don’t want to support PC players anymore with dedicated servers, but instead protect themselves with steam activation, secured accounts, and possibility to ban players…
Furthermore all analysts plans to see a decrease of video games sales (not only PC, console as well) of around 30% from now to 2012.
So now, back to our own little Dracula, and to make it casual, it’s a synthesis of all those factors, cheap sales price, piracy, lack of publishers in some territories, etc… and we have to make choices to stay stable in those hard times, We favor Sherlock Holmes games with a major release, and we'll try to innovate with a light adventure of Dracula Origin.

Hi thehood --

Thanks for giving us an inside view as to what has been going from the perspective of adventure game developers.

You've given me a lot to think about!

Hi thehood

Thank you so much for keeping in touch with us devotees - and for that dose of enlightenment, depressing though it is

It's hard for those of us who have played adventure games for many, many years (and always paid full price) to visualise a time when they might no longer be viable commodities and therefore no longer produced

I do fervently hope circumstances will allow Frogwares, at some time in the future, to once again give us their wonderful "full" adventure games

And a very sincere thank you from me for all you have given us already !!

Cheers.

Mad

Mad, we are not stopping anything, "The testament of Sherlock Holmes" is even bigger than "Sherlock Holmes versus Arsene Lupin".

I wanted to point out that the reasons to not do a full adventure of Dracula are not that we are lazy or that casual games pay better as I read here...

I really enjoyed Dracula Origin! I think the game was "almost casual" as I was able to figure out a lot on my own.

Maybe it will be "adventure light"? Regardless, I am eager to see it

**edited: I went to the website and I didn't see anywhere about the Dracula Origin sequel being a casual game. All I read was they are making a sequel and this time we will be playing as Dracula

Where did you see it posted as casual??

Wow !! Thank you SO much for explaining, thehood, you have absolutely made my day

So .... Another great Frogwares game to look forward to

I am really surprised that none of your games is on the Wii.
I know that second Sherlock is being ported to the Wii and that's great. I hope you find success on the Wii and port all of your games to the Wii.

As far as I know the DS version of Sherlock & The Mummy sold pretty well.

I agree with "20 USD for a game like Sherlock Holmes versus Jack the Ripper is really underpaid" and I also know because of the whole piracy thing that the game industry is under extreme pressure.

But let's go to the Euro-Zone and you'll see that these games are not as cheap as they are in the US.

For instance, "Sherlock" came out in the US in May and the current price is appr. 20 USD (or 13.46 EURO).
"Sherlock"'s german Version came out later (despite listed as released in March, which is not true, whatever) with the current price of 39 EURO (or 58 USD).

I think something is wrong.

It is not about that I want to pay less, I'm okay with 40 EUROs for a good game, but I think the US-Developers and Distributors should think about rearranging their prices.