Top Ten Dying Game Genres
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1. Graphic Adventure
Examples: The Space Quest and King’s Quest games, Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island
In 1979, Ken and Roberta Williams invented the graphical adventure with Mystery House, an otherwise pedestrian text adventure with the added allure of simple black and white pictures that crudely depicted where you were supposed to be.
With time, the graphic adventure evolved into its own unique and diversified genre. Roberta Williams and the rest of Sierra On-Line produced seemingly hundreds of them and a good handful of the most popular ones, but other companies like LucasArts (Grim Fandango) certainly made some significant contributions as well.
And with the birth of CD-ROM, adventure games seemed poised to become better than ever, the extra space allowing for more expansive storylines and spoken dialogue. The CD-ROM version of King's Quest V was often used in kiosks to demonstrate the coolness of the new format. Games like Dynamix's Willy Beamish were even ported to the Sega CD, King's Quest V was so popular it was even ported to the NES.
Sierra, once best-known as the developer of the King’s Quest series, is now most recognized as the publisher of Half-Life.
So why are graphic adventures now seemingly a dead genre?
The downfall of Sierra was a factor. They had a little success with FMV adventure games, but never did quite figure out how to do 3D (see King's Quest: Mask of Eternity, it's not very good). They made the most popular adventure games and had the most beloved franchises, but now their days as a game developer are pretty much over.
But I think general changes in the gaming industry as a whole have more to do with it, PC gaming especially has changed a lot since the multimedia heyday of the early 90's. And many elements of adventure games have been integrated into other genres. Today's RPG's, for example, feature many of the same puzzles and situations you'd encounter in late-80's PC adventure games.
On the bright side, there's still hope for fans of a good treasure hunt. The Longest Journey, considered by some to be the best adventure game of all-time was released just three years ago, and just last year Syberia proved that occasionally a worthwhile adventure game will trickle out and get a little attention.
The video game industry is a constantly evolving animal. Genres are mixed and matched, new types of games are created, and older ones fall by the wayside. There was really nothing like Grand Theft Auto a few years ago, for example.
Maybe ten years from now first person shooters will enjoy the same level of popularity adventure games do today. Maybe today's controllers will be totally obsolete and we'll all control games using a combination of psychic energy waves, foot pedals, and Space Orb 360's.
Who knows. The only thing we know for sure is that -- no matter what -- there will be some dork out there bitching and moaning about how great games used to be, and how they don't make them like they used to.
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