Ermac wrote:

Syd Lexia wrote: Ermac wrote: Leisure Suit Larry,King's Quest and Space Quest were all PC games that were geared towards the typical PC audience of the late 80's and early 90's but dont work today. That format died with the advent of games like Half-Life and other FPS that changed the face of PC gaming. There's about a million things wrong with that statement, but I'm headed off to work so I can't currently address them. But I will. please explain

First off, King's Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, and Space Quest weren't geared towards the "typical" PC audience because there was no "typical audience".

PC games are rarely advertised outside of trade magazines and the internet today, and it was like that back then too, minus the internet. Because neither the PC programming languages nor the PC media formats are proprietary, virtually any one with even minor talent could make a PC game. And thus, the PC market of the late 80s and early 90s was much like Atari 2600 market of the early 80's. There were a lot of games being produced, and there were very few outlets reviewing any of them. What this meant was that there was no quality control, and no easy way for the average consumer to tell what games were good and which ones were trash. Games became successful one of two ways, either by word of mouth, or by releasing shareware demos that were also spread by word of mouth. The Sierra games didn't capitalize on an existing market, they created a market that competitors such as Interplay and LucasArts would eventually try and weasel in on.

Secondly, King's Quest/Space Quest/Leisure Suit Larry were all geared towards different audiences. Space Quest was geared mostly towards Trekkies and other such science fiction fans, primarily young boys. Leisure Suit Larry was much more risque than most Sierra games and was geared towards adult males. There was no ESRB when the first LSL games came out, but the boxes clearly warned that the games were not for kids. And then there's King's Quest. King's Quest was far and away Sierra's most popular franchise, for two reasons. First off, it was the series that Roberta Williams was most directly involved in, and she did her best to make the games as clever and beautiful as possible, with King's Quest 5-7 being crowning achievements in this regard. Secondly, they had the most universal appeal. These were games filled with puzzles and literary/mythological references that kids and adults alike could appreciate. They were simply great games.

Thirdly, Half-Life did NOT kill point-and-click adventuring, and why you would choose to cite that instead of Doom, Wolfenstein, or Duke Nukem, which are the holy trinity of the FPS boom, is beyond me. And while the rise of the FPS did hurt Sierra, so did the oversaturation of the point-and-click market. The genre was working, and everyone jumped onboard and ran the genre into the ground. The same thing has happened to the FPS market. I am sick of FPS games. Unless they offer some interesting twist like Metroid Prime, XIII, Thief, or Timesplitters 2, I'm not interested. For all I know, Doom 3 could be the best FPS ever. But I've played so many Doom rip-offs since the original Doom came out that I just can't muster up enough interest in Doom 3 to even watch SOMEONE ELSE play it.

Fourthly, the FPS did not change the face of PC gaming. The business model remains the same: wait for someone else to strike gold, then shamelessly copy them. If you're the one who initially struck gold, then keep cranking out expansions and sequels until no one buys them anymore. One could argue that Blizzard has been so successful because they don't do this. The notoriously long waits they make their fans endure between sequels usually pay off for them in a big way. June 2010 will mark the 10th anniversary of Diablo 2, and there's still no release date for Diablo 3. When it finally does drop, it'll sell like gangbusters.

Okay, so that's four points, not a million. Sue me.

If people are stil talking about the game 13 years later, chances are it was either really good or epically bad. There are dozens upon dozens of mediocre RPGs that no one remembers. Like Blake Stone. Or one of the Terminator ones.

Has anyone said Black & White yet? That game was total crap.