The problem with adventure games is that once you finish, you're done. At least for me, I don't like playing a game thrice or even twice once I've solved it all. There are a few exceptions, like Half-Life, where just getting through the game is somewhat of a challenge, but adventure games are usually slow paced with simple puzzles (simple meaning that once you've solved it, you can easily do so again).

If you could make one multiplayer, with people working against eachother or somesuch, you could probably bring them back fully. By working against eachother, I don't mean a time competition or anything liek that but rather that they get to make puzzles for eachother. It'd probably have to be realtime (in the sense that one person is solving puzzles at the same time others are building them, and not a two-step create-then-play process like making a map is in most games).

I _REALLY_ don't think MMO would be the proper solution (because MMOs stagnate until the developers make something new), but something like the online model used by starcraft, warcraft, diablo, etc would be very appropriate and allow players to easily get together to challenge eachother.

[edited by - Extrarius on May 19, 2004 10:39:33 AM]

In some industry rags and mags, electronic and otherwise, there is a lot of noise that the unfortunate Lucasarts cancelations of late were probably due to:

1. Low sales of adventure-genre titles

2. Pirates have a much easier go of pirating single-player games.

Now if there is a large piracy problem on a title projected not to sell more than 150k copies, its barely a break-even proposition for the distribution channels, whom then ask for a much larger cut form the publisher, which in turn can put the publisher in a bad place for making money (or even breaking even) on the title.

Apply this info to the conversation as you will.

[edited by - SteevR on May 20, 2004 4:45:46 AM]

I''m sure you''re right, but at the same time I seem to remember Monkey Island 4 and Grim Fandango topping the games charts for months on end when they were released, at least here in the UK. And if shoddy 3D adventure games like that can do well, I''m sure I high quality, old-style Point&Click could do even better.