Category Archives: adventure games

25 Years Later, Why Adventure Games Suck

By Rubes | Published: July 21, 2014

A quarter of a century has come and gone since Ron Gilbert first wrote the article “Why Adventure Games Suck” in 1989.

I discovered this while flipping through some old posts on my blog, and I found one from six years ago that discussed this very article. Since my memory, generally speaking, sucks, I had to go back and read Ron’s article again, not to mention my own, as I could barely recall either. Note: I am not proud of this fact.

It was then that I realized that it’s the 25-year anniversary of that article. 25 years. That’s insane.

Ron reprinted it back in 2004, when a mere 15 years had passed, and at that time he declared that “adventure games are officially dead,” [More...] Read the rest

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Who Killed Adventure Games? Redux

By Rubes | Published: July 16, 2014

In the process of not doing work and scanning the interwebs, I came across a classic article on Old Man Murray from 14 years ago on “Who Killed Adventure Games?”

It was triggered by a Gamecenter article from a series that I believe was titled, “Dead And Buried: Five Vanishing Genres,” although it’s not entirely clear since the page doesn’t exist anymore. Through the magic of the Internet Wayback Machine, however, the body of the article can be read here, though I’m not even sure who wrote it. The classic long story short: simpleminded, casual gamers killed adventure gaming, and Myst made them do it. The editorial at the end by Cliff Hicks symbolically put the nail in the coffin of the adventure genre. [More...] Read the rest

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JET LAMP SLC: A few thoughts about the event…

By Rubes | Published: September 14, 2010

…in no particular order:

1. Loved it. The event went off without a hitch. Brewvies was a great place to have it, especially with the beer and food to go along with the big screen. I was a little worried at first, since it was a pretty large theater with 160 seats, not intuitively conducive to an informal screening and discussion. But seeing the film up on the large screen was very cool, and the post-movie discussion actually worked quite well.

2. This:

Impressive lineup

was exceptionally cool to see. Not sure why, but this probably made the night. That, and seeing Jason’s reaction to it.

3. Who knew? Taking photographs of a cinema marquee, no big deal. Taking photos of the lingerie and sex [More...] Read the rest

Also posted in interactive fiction, text in games | 1 Response

JET LAMP tour stopping in Salt Lake City

By Rubes | Published: September 6, 2010

Well, after taking the summer off from the blog, we’re now officially back in business. And what better way to start back in than with an excellent announcement about Jason Scott’s documentary film on the history of text adventure games, GET LAMP.

The Official GET LAMP SLC flier

Jason is making the rounds during the months of September and October to promote the movie, thanks to a special “all-you-can-jet” ticket through JetBlue airlines. Since JetBlue flies into Salt Lake City, I invited him to stop in for a screening, and he accepted.

The screening will take place at Brewvies Cinema Pub, a cool place in downtown SLC that serves beer and food with movies, so it should make for a great place to [More...] Read the rest

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“Get Lamp” Discount Deadline Approaches

By Rubes | Published: December 29, 2009

A gentle reminder for those interested enough in text adventures to be eagerly awaiting the arrival of Jason Scott’s sure-to-be-singular documentary on the matter, GET LAMP: the pre-order discount ends on January 1st.

According to Scott, the documentary will be priced at $40 for a 2-DVD set that will reportedly include additonal “wrap-ins” in the package, although no word yet as to what those are. It’s set to be released in March 2010, around the same time as the PAX East convention, where the movie will be premiered alongside (hopefully) a host of other interactive fiction-related panels and presentations, which is pretty neat.

But if you know you’re going to buy the documentary, you can pre-order it now for 25% off, or [More...] Read the rest

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