What makes an Adventure Game an Adventure Game?

Is Limbo an Adventure Game or just a puzzle game?  Some people called L.A. Noir an Adventure Game but it lacks some of the basic components of an Adventure Game.  Or does it?

Why do we call them Adventure Games?  If you faithfully made Monkey Island into a movie, I doubt it would be called an Adventure Movie or even an Action/Adventure Movie.

I guess we call Adventure Games Adventure Games because the first one was call Adventure.  I see no other reason they are called Adventure Games.

Semantics aside, what makes an Adventure Game an Adventure Game?

Inventory?  Pointing?  Clicking?  Story?  Low Sales?

Certainly not Adventuring.

Here are a couple of fine pieces of concept art from the game I'm making with the amazing folks at Double Fine.  I'm so excited.  This is an idea that has been in my head for a long long long time.  It predates Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island.  It's a game that needed to be made.

These are two of the playable characters.  That's all I can say right now, but more will follow later.

Several years ago I had the great pleasure and privilege of meeting Steve Jobs.

I had a meeting at Pixar and I heard that Steve Jobs might be there.  First thing I did was ask a good friend of mine that knew Steve Jobs what he was like and was there any advice she could give me.

She said that Steve Jobs is an incredibly intelligent and passionate person and the one piece of advice she had for me was: don't argue with Steve Jobs and everything will go fine.  Argue with Steve Jobs?  He's probably one of the smartest people in the whole world and someone I have unequalled respect for, why would I ever argue with him?

I arrived at the meeting and went into the conference room. John Lasseter was there (who I casually knew from when Pixar was part of Lucasfilm) and we chit-chatted.

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The vertical slice is one of the dumbest things the game industry has ever come up with.  I threw this together to show how dumb it is.  Not sure why I was thinking about it today, but I was.  The publisher I'm working with now doesn't want a vertical slice, some don't, but there are quite a few that do.

It's just a dumb way to build a game and it results in wasted time and money and doesn't produce the best game possible.

A publisher handing a developer a big chunk of money to make a game should mean a carefully planned preproduction, and if it's risky from a game play or tech stand point, absolutely build a prototype (not just for them, but for you as well), but doing a vertical slice is just kowtowing to the uncreative.

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Once again, I tweeted something that some people are not understanding, due to no fault of theirs, it's just hard to get complex ideas out in 140 characters, so it warrants a full blog post.

Bottom line: Netflix streaming sucks and here's why.

I have tried this on several devices, so I know it's not the device.  I've streamed on my 360, my iPad, my Apple TV and directly on my TV (which has a LAN port and if that doesn't scare the crap of TV networks, nothing will) and I get the same crappy results.

I'll start watching the movie (in HD) and everything is more-or-less OK.  The movies are compressed more than I'm used to on iTunes, as I can see artifacts, but it's not so bad that it's a deal breaker.

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Wow, it's hard to believe this is the 7th year of Grumpy Gamer being 100% April Fools' Day free.  It's rare that I've ever done anything for seven strait years, so that should tell you how much I hate April Fools' Day.

I'd also like to add @grumpygamer to the list of things that are 100% April Fools' Days free.

That said, if LucasArts ever allows me to make another Monkey Island, I'm totally announcing it on April 1st, that way you'll know it's not a joke.

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