IGN Article on Adventure Games, no mention of Sierra

[dark-daventry]

The other day, IGN ran an article about adventure games, and they failed to mention Sierra in any way, shape or form. The majority of the article was about the resurgence of the genre in recent years, and also how it's changed. They mention LucasArts and several other studios, but no mention of the other big company, Sierra. That somewhat disturbs me. Sierra and LucasArts were the two main developers/publishers of the adventure genre back in the day, and they each released different types of adventure games. Sierra's games were generally harder by design and included deaths (hilarious deaths, btw), dead-ends, and very difficult puzzles, while LucasArts made more family friendly games that didn't have dead-ends or deaths, and the puzzles weren't too overly complicated. I liked both styles. I'm just bewildered how an article all about the adventure genre could avoid talking about Sierra or it's games in any way. Sierra and LucasArts both defined the genre. You can't talk about one without talking about the other, in my opinion. What does everyone else think? Am I just over-reacting (I could very well be, as I have a tendency to do that) or did IGN screw up by not mentioning Sierra?

[Rosella]

It does seem conspicuously absent to me, especially when you get into other types of games like The Longest Journey and Myst. It does seem like most current adventure games seem more based on the Lucasarts model, but when it starts with the text adventure...Yeah, I'd say it seems conspicuously absent. Maybe it was a stipulation of getting Ron Gilbert to interview.

[dark-daventry]

it could've been, but he doesn't seem like the type of guy that would do something like that (then again, i'm a horrible judge of character). it's a very good article, it's just the lack of acknowledgement of Sierra's part in the genre is very upsetting and disturbing to me. While I have nothing wrong with the LucasArts model, I do miss the Sierra model too. I mean, it made you actively try to die. I found myself actually trying to kill Roger Wilco in every conceivable way just for the laughs. No other genre could possibly make death so engaging and funny.

[Rosella]

It was just a joke. All of the Double Fine guys seem pretty genial.

[Bludshot]

The article wasn't really about the genre's history, so it may have been overkill to mention everyone involved in the old days.  If you we're going to pick one person though to reference, Ron Gilbert is definitely the best choice.

[darthkiwi]

The article barely mentioned the genre's history, except in very broad terms. It mentioned text adventures, but only as a sort of "adventure-game foundation myth", like saying "Think how old democracy is - it goes back to the Ancient Greeks!" or something. And while Lucasarts sort of permeated the article a little bit because it focused on Ron Gilbert, it was only explicitly mentioned at the very end when they referred to "the Lucasarts era in the early 90s".

I do think that's a bit strange, though. Because the early 90s was also the period in which Sierra made some of its best games: KQ6 and GK1 and 2 really stand out.

I think the reason this article thinks of the early 90s as the "Lucasarts era" is because people nowadays perceive Lucasarts games more favourably than Sierra games. And I think this is because Lucasarts' ideology (no deaths, no dead ends, often humourous) better fits people's ideas of an ideal adventure game than Sierra's ideology (hard, dead ends, deaths, less humourous).

I think this is largely because people want to put themselves into the character they're playing, or at least feel that by playing this game they're taking part in this grand or fun story. If you keep killing off your main character because he walks into the sea/doesn't use an item fast enough/ate the pie when he was meant to eat the meat then people feel frustrated and this breaks them out of the game. But if it's impossible to die or get stuck then people feel freer to be part of the story. Their experimentation will be either be rewarded with nothing (no progress) or more content (progress). But with Sierra your exploration tends to be rewarded either with more content (progress) or death (breaks your suspension of disbelief).

I guess what I'm saying that Lucasarts prompts the suspension of disbelief, because you're always within the fictional frame, whereas Sierra prompts metagaming, because part of the game is managing all your savegames. And I think most people nowadays want adventure games to let them be part of a story, without the risk of being reminded that they are only playing a game. It's not that the Lucasarts method is better (though I personally prefer it), it's that Sierra games prompt a very self-conscious kind of play which welcomes activity across the fourth wall (saving, loading, your character dying but you not), whereas Lucasarts tends to keep you immersed in the game world for the entirety of your play session, so that you only ever save or load when you reach a point where the fourth wall is broken anyway (like starting/ending a play session or realising your progress could be wiped if you don't save once an hour or so).