If you ask Ron Gilbert–as Eurogamer recently did in an interview--adventure games never really died per se. But if they did, who pulled the trigger? Why, Doom of course. Well, not Doom exactly…more of what Doom introduced to the market and the type of audience it courted. On the subject, he says:
"[Adventure games] kept selling the same number of units that they've always sold. The problem is that everything else was selling more units. They reached more of this stagnation rather than a dip."
"I blame Doom, because before Doom came out, games were a lot slower paced and people were a lot more interested in thinking and strategy."
"And then Doom came out… it was visceral, and it was fast, and you shot stuff, and gibs flew off of everything. And it just kind of flipped a lot of people's thinking a little bit, and also attracted a much bigger audience into games. With the adventure game people stayed, they never left. But there were all these other people that kind of came and things like Doom just sort of started to dominate."
A fascinating theory, which makes you wonder why the masses preferred fast-paced games over thinking-man ones. Its easy to assume its because the public doesn't care about intelligent media, but I find that difficult to accept.
Whatever the reason, its a tragedy when certain material gets lost in favor of the fast, flashy stuff. Why can't we have a little of both? Thankfully, adventure games are having somewhat of a resurgence right now. There's probably not as many being developed as there are shooters that have come out of Doom's legacy, but still: they're not dead yet!
