Sell the adventure
We’re back on the sizzle today following a discussion about Scott Adams. Not the creator of Dilbert but the designer of video games from the early days.
Scott created adventure games, most memorable (to my retro mind) of which was the Quest Probe series. As I looked up at the games on the shelves of Games Workshop and W H Smith I remember marvelling at the packaging which promised so much, well, adventure. Designed to look like comic book covers they were everything I could ever want. Escape into a world of Hulk rampaging through a city? Yes please. The thought of Hulk’s wrecking ball fists swinging to my whim was a powerful lure. Could this be the game to send me into such a world?
No.
Of course not. These were the days of colour clash and loading times. This was before SID let alone Sam and Max. Reaching into the earth shattering world of Hulk would take a while longer.
All that didn’t matter; not to a young boy being sold the dream of high adventure. The cover was enough and some might argue it was too much. After all, there was no way the game could deliver on such a promise. Yet there was no feeling of disappointment, no sense of being cheated. The game told a story, illustrated by some simple images. And as any writer of radio plays will tell you: storytelling isn’t dependant upon technology. These stories were incredible.
The cover was just the beginning.
These days (and forgive me for sounding old) many game marketing companies don’t feel they have to sell the sizzle anymore (see, I didn’t say “all” – I’m not that old). What’s in the game is good enough. leave your imaginations at the door and step into our world they say.
The dream gets forgotten as we wake into a world of processing power and special effects.
And all this isn’t to undermine the games. Stepping into a fantasy town, onto an alien shore or even a football pitch, well that experience really is better, more real than anything that has gone before. Our imaginations are both simulated and stimulated.
It’s just that you generally wouldn’t know that from the cover. Games are a world into the imagination, not a technological demo. So when it comes to packaging we should be aiming to inspire, to sell the dream and encourage the consumer to bring themselves fully into the fantasy. Many now tell us exactly what to expect. If that happened way back when then Hulk’s impact would have been tiny.
Nice post. Hulk was a bit before my time, but I used to love the covers for the first two Monkey Islands. When you look at them, they seem at odds with the games themselves, with a vary serious and realistic style, but I think having the image of such a creepy, tough pirate world on the front of the box made my little mind project some of that scale and epic feel onto the simple backgrounds and text only dialogue.
Looking to the future of adventure games and RPGs, I think the continuing trend for character customisation and multiple narrative paths will require a bigger focus on dramatising the locations and settings/themes in the game.
As an example, I’ve recently been playing Mass Effect, which is a great game of space based adventuring and comes in a case with a picture of the hero looking suitable heroic in front of robots and planets etc.
The trouble was, when I finished the story, I looked back at the box, and suddenly I felt like the image didn’t represent the game I had just played. In theory it makes perfect sense to focus on the noble hero of the piece, in fact most games do this, but what bugged me was that this wasn’t the character I had spent time with. The box was telling me I should have been a noble, dark haired symbol of justice, when really I was a blond renegade who punched reporters in the face for asking difficult questions.
Now, it could be argued that I had already bought the game, so the box’s work was done, but in this age of downloadable content and yearly sequels, having a box on your consumer’s shelf that reminds them of their exciting times in space is surely the cheapest and easiest way to keep them interested in the story until the next batch of content arrives.
So, I guess the point I’ve danced around is this, when the player now expects to have the power to shape and change the main character beyond all recognition, is it the themes, the settings and the tasks that they can use their character in that’s the biggest draw? In this age of Avatars, Miis and customisation, is promotional material that expresses the personality of the main character merely limiting the imagination of the gamer, rather than fueling their excitement?
I remember reading an article about Nintendo looking to license the Island from Wii Sports Resort, like they would with Mario and Zelda. They obviously feel a landscape can have as much commercial appeal as a set and scripted character, so it’ll be interesting to watch how these initiatives develop in the next few years.
Deus Ex is still a benchmark for me in a game involving you within the storyline and your actions and decisions were part of the development of your character and the plot. This felt far more immersive and imaginative than other FPS games.
There was something good about the imagination needed back in the days of 1mhz processors and 4 colour screens. Would I trade back though? Not a chance.