Wirdschowerdn
Ph.D. in World Saving
As long as there's still Unavowed and Technobabylon 2 on the horizon, I'll be happy.
The problem with the fragmentation of the market for indie games is that you hugely reduce the likelihood of that kind of engagement. It's not just that developers may not make enough money to make games full time, they may not get enough attention to justify making them at all. Releasing a game (like posting on a forum!) is a public performance; but if there's no audience, it may be hard to bother to perform at all.
There were a couple years (2012-2013) when Daedalic put out some genuinely great adventure games. They haven't done anything better than mediocre since then, and have been shifting away from the genre, so I'm not sure if I'd agree with still calling them the best.Daedalic is probably the today best and most important Adventure gaming publisher (sadly).
It was not. It had the striking quality of being a serious adventure game, and a serious multimedia fantasy story, at a time when both of those things were in vanishingly small supply. It also had strong visuals and overall production value. It's by no means terrible (unlike Dreamfall), but as an adventure game it's not "really good." The puzzles are bad and -- worse -- are not remotely integrated into the narrative, and are even hostile to the narrative.even if Ragnar's one game was really good
Or maybe Telltale realized they were oversaturing the market with their own games? They were making like, what, 5 different episodic series at the same time? Considering other developers have already started making Telltale clones (e.g. Life is Strange, which sold millions despite not being based on a licensed property like Telltale's games), I think this particular brand of 'adventure games' is here to stay, sadly.It is worth noting that Tell Tale, a "successful" adventure game company just laid off 25% of their work force. It's hard to make a business of adventure games these days, for sure.
Didn't they once shift all but like 5 people from the last 2 episodes of Tales from the Borderlands after it under-performed? Maybe they have just figured out they don't need as many people to pump out games?It is worth noting that Tell Tale, a "successful" adventure game company just laid off 25% of their work force. It's hard to make a business of adventure games these days, for sure.
Bt
I just recently interviewed MRY / Wormwood Studios, and this topic of the current state of adventure games, as well as adjacent topics (recent complications of using Adventure Game Studio, AGS vs. Unity) were explored, especially near the beginning. Some echoes from this forum thread, but also some further insight, I think.