A Casual Adventure in Gaming

markeres

Casual gamers are evolving thanks to the resurgence of the adventure game.

The Telltale part of the article, with choice quotes from Dave Grossman:

Another reason for the adventure genre's success in the casual space is its natural appeal to women, who make up the majority of the casual gaming audience.

"The lack of emphasis on the constant production of adrenaline in the audience [is something that makes this genre appeal to women.] Adventure games tend to use this sparingly, to accentuate the parts of the story experience where it seems appropriate, instead of as a baseline," said Dave Grossman, design director at Telltale Games. "They rely more on character drama, story and thinkiness[sic] to make them compelling. Adrenaline is all well and good, but I think the discerning woman tends to expect more from her entertainment before long, whereas we men basically have the brains of lizards and will be satisfied with a giant lollipop, so long as it is sufficiently giant."

Telltale, which is largely populated by LucasArts veterans, is attempting to bring the adventure genre back to consoles and the hardcore audience with remakes of classic adventure franchises including Tales of Monkey Island and Sam and Max. Telltale has been making these games successful by tweaking them to fit a new audience with changes in pacing and more accessibility, which are also hallmarks of many of the casual adventure games.

"I frustrate easily, and old adventure games have a tendency to be awkward, counterintuitive, or downright unfair at least some of the time," said Grossman. "I relentlessly ask myself and the other designers here questions like, 'how exactly do we expect the player to figure this puzzle out?' and 'Are we entertaining the player here, or ourselves?'"

While Grossman feels there's still a pretty distinct line between casual and hardcore games, he said TellTale is one of a number of studios that are using the adventure genre to reach a different, and more expansive audience.

"Studios (Telltale included) seem to be building more titles that occupy, or at least cover, some of the space that you might think of as being in the middle (or maybe off to the side). We're making a Back to the Future series, for example, and we want it to be an enjoyable experience for Back to the Future fans with differing gaming backgrounds and experience," he said. "Simple mechanics won't accomplish this, but character, story, mood, strong writing, and strong direction will. A lot of aspects besides play style make up the totality of an entertainment, and the smart studios are broadening their approach as games continue to evolve and grow as a medium, which is a good thing, right?"

Discuss.

jp-30

It's pretty much exactly what Telltale have been saying and doing since they started;

Trying to grow an audience by removing/fixing the bits that caused Adventure Games to wane in popularity in the first place.