Ron Gilbert: Modern Gamers Want to be "Constantly Engaged"
It's time to evolve the adventure game genre once again.
Ron Gilbert, the creator of Monkey Island, is working on downloadable adventure game The Cave right now at Double Fine. And in an interview with SPOnG, suggested that the genre has to evolve once again to capture the attention of modern gamers.
The developer recounted the evolution of adventure games - from pure text interfaces to point and click mechanics - before noting that differences in gamer behaviour has led to some key formula changes in The Cave.
"With The Cave, it was really just about us wanting to look at where the genre needs to go next, and assessing what gamers are like today," Gilbert exclusively told SPOnG. "I mean, gamers today are not like the gamers of 20 years ago. There’s a much broader audience now... everybody plays games, it’s no longer a niche.
"One of the things that I think gamers today really want is a fun ‘moment-by-moment’ experience. What am I doing this second? What am I going to be doing the next second? That keeps modern gamers much more engaged, right? It’s not that they have low attention spans or anything. They just want to constantly be engaged."
The Cave introduces a light platforming element that Gilbert says allows players to "disengage" from the puzzles they are trying to actively solve and to "always give them something to be doing" while their subconscious works on the brain-teasers.
"That was a nice, unintended consequence," he added. "We found that, when people are trying to solve a puzzle, that it's often useful to give them something else to do... The simple act of running, jumping, climbing on ropes [engages] that part of their brain, while allowing the puzzle-solving part of the brain to have just a little more freedom to work things out."
The full interview will be published on SPOnG shortly.
The developer recounted the evolution of adventure games - from pure text interfaces to point and click mechanics - before noting that differences in gamer behaviour has led to some key formula changes in The Cave.
"With The Cave, it was really just about us wanting to look at where the genre needs to go next, and assessing what gamers are like today," Gilbert exclusively told SPOnG. "I mean, gamers today are not like the gamers of 20 years ago. There’s a much broader audience now... everybody plays games, it’s no longer a niche.
"One of the things that I think gamers today really want is a fun ‘moment-by-moment’ experience. What am I doing this second? What am I going to be doing the next second? That keeps modern gamers much more engaged, right? It’s not that they have low attention spans or anything. They just want to constantly be engaged."
The Cave introduces a light platforming element that Gilbert says allows players to "disengage" from the puzzles they are trying to actively solve and to "always give them something to be doing" while their subconscious works on the brain-teasers.
"That was a nice, unintended consequence," he added. "We found that, when people are trying to solve a puzzle, that it's often useful to give them something else to do... The simple act of running, jumping, climbing on ropes [engages] that part of their brain, while allowing the puzzle-solving part of the brain to have just a little more freedom to work things out."
The full interview will be published on SPOnG shortly.
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