Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Point & Click Here: Gilbert and Schafer's Insights



Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert have a rather in depth conversation about what they love about adventure games, how modern games/times have affected the adventure game platform of gaming, and how they would change adventure games to appeal to the modern gaming audience. The two most important aspects of adventure game play that arose out of their conversation was dialogue and puzzle play. These two aspects accelerate all the action within the game and make the game player feel like they are continuously interacting with the game itself, something both Schafer and Gilbert feel has been lost in modern games. After playing Schafer’s point & click game “Host Master and the Conquest of Humor” I whole-heartedly agree with the significance of the dialogue and puzzles. If not for the dialogue and the complexity of some of the puzzles I was fully engaged in the game. When I got stuck in the game it was the dialogue that enabled me to not get frustrated and reminded me that everything I can interact with is a tool in order to solve the puzzle.

This issue of getting stuck by a puzzle was another talking point discussed by Schafer and Gilbert. Each felt that it was an important aspect of how point & click or as they call it, adventure games, differ from modern games out today. In adventure games, if you got stuck you had to use your brain in order to figure it out, or take a step back and view the puzzle from another perspective but you were never just given the answered – you worked for your game progression. This quality can been seen again in Schafer’s game “Host Master...” when I got stuck on finding the last clue that would allow me to beat the game. After clicking around I was forced to walk away from the game (otherwise I would have thrown my netbook out the window) and once I got away from it I began to use my brain to figure out what I needed to do next. Unfortunately, I could not find the last clue and ended up using a gaming walkthrough for the game which showed the answer to the puzzle that I would never have figured out unless I did pixel searching with my mouse. Gilbert stated that this would be the only change he would make to point & click games – he likes the complexity of puzzles that force you look at the game from different angles and that also force you to take a step away in order to not get sucked into being frustrated by the game – but he would change the pixel hunting aspect of these games as it takes away from the puzzle itself.

My game play of “Host Master...” and the subsequent use of a walkthrough brings up another key point in Schafer’s and Gilbert’s discussion. They feel that with modern gaming not only have gamers and game creators moved away from engrossing dialogue that compliments the game play but that the access to walkthroughs and cheats have taken away from the game creators intentions and can actually take away the fun aspect of game playing – trial and error. With modern games the focus is more on making the game visually entertaining and making the game progression easy to follow. Modern times have allowed the control to shift from the game creators to the game player because a player doesn’t actually ever have to make an effort to figure out how to beat a game instead they just look it up online. I agree with both men that this aspect of modern game play has ruined the intentions of how the game creator wanted the game to be played which then negates the purpose of the game. Each of them bring up great points but after playing "Host Master..." then playing a modern game - modern games are still more fun, at least for me. 

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