Written by The TAG Team
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| Which way should we go? |
The Adventurer’s Guild started nearly 13 years ago, lovingly inspired by another blog, the CRPG Addict. Over the years, both blogs have been covering a loose timeline of games in their respective genres.
So when Chet, the chief bottlewasher at CRPG, started to have concerns over the pace of his blog lately, it made us take a look at ourselves as well.
We started the gaming year of 1993 over eight years ago, and haven’t really finished it. Even though we’ve started a few games from 1994, it is unlikely that we will even start 1995 in the next decade, at the pace we’re playing. For those of us who read Trickster’s review of The Secret of Monkey Island 11 years ago, wouldn’t it be nice to come full-circle and read the reviews of the Telltale episode games and the Ron Gilbert reboot from a couple of years ago? At the current rate, we will never get there in our natural lifespans.
Some of us would like to see a broader selection of games. It’s not helping that many of our past reviewers have had changes in their real-life situations that have interfered with their prior commitments to the blog. We have been just as dissatisfied as the readers with the slow pace of posts over the last handful of months.
So, we have a few ideas. None of these are set in stone, we want your feedback and other ideas. Because we love this blog, and don’t want it to fail. Right now, it’s having a little bit of trouble.
One idea that has been suggested before is an emulation of the “BRIEF” at CRPG. A single post for a game, where a reviewer installs the game, plays it for a little bit, researches past reviews of the games, and posts a comprehensive account. No score issued, but the game gets the attention. This would be great for some of the “lesser” titles that often get relegated to "Missed Classic" status, but also would be an option for some of the games on our playlist that no one is rushing to volunteer to play.
Are there still readers out there who might be interested in writing these smaller, less comprehensive posts?
This would also be great for some of the disregarded or borderline titles. Someone paid CAPs to force someone to review MTVs Club Dead, for example, but no one wants to play it. Given how little time some of our reviewers have, is this really a good use of their time?
Chet also suggested limiting the number of games per year, and cycling back through the years later to catch up with the ones that are missed. While it may be too late to do that for 1994, it’s a thought. Cover most of the mainline games, but only some of the borderline/disregarded titles. A lot of those titles have bogged down the blog over the years, in the opinions of some, and based on the comment activity on the posts, they are sometimes less favorably received.
Should we make our review posts less detailed? Most of our posts now are narrated walkthroughs, but that wasn’t always the case. Back in the early days, Trickster left out a lot of details, and most games were finished in about two gameplay posts.
Even the comments on Chet’s post brings up some interesting points. We’re quoting a few because we’d like some feedback. Are these valid thoughts about our own blog?
“To be honest it has been a while since you played a game I found really interesting. Sure, it is sort of interesting what kind of rather unknown games are out there, but a lot of them are just not that interesting.”
“I'd also suggest that it makes even more sense to focus on 'particularly notable, fun, or important'”
“Being mechanical about covering every obscurity in order would just mean missing out on more recent obscurities in favor of older ones”
Should we tighten the standards for the games we play? We’ve sometimes become very loose, for example, with games without an English-language release. Do people enjoy reading the entries where the entire game has to be translated for them?
Maybe some of these ideas can help solve the problem of reviewers not having enough time to blog through enough games each year.
Please, please comment below with any ideas or suggestions you have, or thoughts about the ideas above.
There's some very good food for thought here. As much as I love the way the blog currently does things, I am forced to agree that it's probably causing things to move slower than many of us would prefer.
ReplyDeleteI've been wanting to find a way to contribute for a long while now, but the thought of blogging a completed, detailed playthrough has always felt beyond me. However, I love the thought of writing much shorter "BRIEFs", they sound like a good idea. I would, however, want to be able to give my own thoughts on the game rather than just relying on what other reviewers have said.
There is probably some logic in reducing the games per year to focus on the more notable or important ones. I do, however, really enjoy the slightly more offbeat things too. As we get into the mid-'90s these do become more prevalent, with the delightfully silly FMV interactive movies and the like which pop up. These may of course be prime candidates for the BRIEF format, but I wouldn't want thing to be TOO glossed over.
And yes, it may be worthwhile to reduce the detail of the main posts. I'm not sure we need beat-by-beat narrated walkthroughs (although don't get me wrong, the writing of them all here is wonderful and the authors are doing fantastic jobs which I enjoy reading). An abridged playthrough, with detail given to notable events and puzzles may be more sensible. Could getting every game wrapped up in 2-3 posts be a happy compromise? (Depending on the game length, of course.)
yeah, things slowed down a lot in the last years I think. You need to open up, is there a discord community ? ours have thousands of members for example (different theme).
ReplyDeleteHaving brief reviews, or just, played the first 20 minutes post seems like the worst idea. Covering such little of a game, and then basing the rest on other reviews will put me off completely, what's the point ? I can do that myself by watching a youtube video and fast forward a walkthough to get a very quick impression. The idea is to have people with almost no knowledge of classic adventure games try to get through, document the struggles and have a good idea of when a game slows down, when it picks up, what were good ideas, what didn't work, etc.
Having said that, some posts have too many jokes or gags (even internal gags) and links to random youtube videos or random music videos or random wikipedia articles, that people from other places (like myself) won't get the reference like 90% of the time. Sorry, but I understand that those must be very famous in your home country, but not anywhere else. Those are a slog and bring down the enjoyment of the games a lot. I want to see your impressions on the game, not read tvtropes articles within articles. If you keep the posts game-centered, they will be fewer posts, and games can be finished in a month (not a year as it happened with some games)
Obscure games are also a great inclusion, I hope you don't reduce those since it's in some cases the only way to experience in full weird obscure games forgotten by history.
Again, the main problem is having the blog be treated as a closed sect. That probably worked in 2005 or so, but not anymore.
Prior to my involvement with the blog, they discussed the possibility of a Discord, but wasn't interested at the time. We could revisit that, but the argument was that the comments here would serve as the message board.
DeleteAdmittedly, my writing style is both praised and condemned -- you can't win them all -- but some of the references I make are what make writing the posts fun to me. I know I'm not the only one, because both myself and Vetinari (who lives an ocean away from me) both referenced the same film in posts written over the summer.
Again, the main problem is having the blog be treated as a closed sect.
I'm not sure I follow. We want outsiders to get involved. Over the years, there have been a handful of posts that remind people that reviewers are desperately needed. Am I misunderstanding what you mean?
yeah, so the message is not really clear then, if you want more reviewers and collaborators, you need to think of opening up in more ways. Just posting a message (a long post) is never enough, you need to actively seek people, join communities or create your own.
DeleteI, for example, tried to communicate with people from here, trying to find "experts" for a specific adventure game / an adventure game project and could not find any, or my post was just lost in the mid of a ton of other messages. Not effective at all.
I subscribe to the RSS feed for the comments, which is separate from the posts feed, so I see all the comments; but I wonder how many people out there are doing the same? If they don't, then yes it's quite easy for a comment on a post even one or two back from the current one not to ever be seen.
DeleteI also am subscribed to the comments RSS feed.
DeleteTo hopefully get more reviewers, we could advertise the blog more on the net. The "Year That Was" post for 1993 would be a good excuse to make posts on forums and social media. With enough new readers, a few could have enough motivation and time to join as reviewers.
The instructions on how to become a reviewer are in the Rookie Companion post. I guess it might sound a bit off-putting because it emphasizes that reviewers need to be really serious. On the other hand, it's good to be somewhat selective because it would suck even more to have half-abandoned series. Maybe it would make sense to allow some guest posts/pre-written series? Pre-writing the series might remove a little of the appeal of CAPs (and potentially skew the PISSED score, but that's an issue anyway when there's more than one person), but might be a lower barrier of entry.
DeleteI'd love to contribute once my schedule frees up a little bit in November for sure.
The best choice seems to be reducing the amount of detail in the posts (especially when the reviewer isn't particularly interested in a game). I dislike the proposed brief playthroughs; I want real attempts to play the games to completion, and summarising games' critical receptions is done by other sites like Metacritic and Wikipedia already.
ReplyDeleteOverall, I think the least radical options should be tried first, and implement more if deemed necessary.
A brief is usually done with games who are either not really the right genre (in CRPG's case a shooter with some minor RPG elements that don't really qualify as an RPG) or a game that is somehow so broken as to render it unplayable or nearly impossible to finish. It filters out some of the games that make it into a list without really fitting the criteria or just frustrates the reviewer more than it makes him enjoy the experience.
DeleteThe BRIEF allows the blog to still cover these games but without forcing some-one to spend 3 months trying to finish something that he doesn't enjoy writing about and few enjoy reading about. If it can cut back on frustrations it might also help the reviewers write more often and stick better to their commitments.
The main problem seems to be the amount of time it takes a player to complete a game. For exemple, Gabriel Knight 1 was started in December 2024, and only completed in August 2025. Alone in the Dark two started in March and still isn't finished. I used to read every post during the Trickster era. Nowadays I just look at the final ratings. Why does it take so long the review games that generally take no more than 5 hours to beat? Do the players get stuck? Do they have to little time to play? Or is it the writing of the post that take so much time? Maybe shorter post would help.
ReplyDeleteGregory
After I took over the gameplay of Gabriel Knight, I played it rather quickly. But if I had posted as quickly, we would have had weeks without content.
DeleteI have been stretching out the posts in order to keep us posting regularly. Donkey Island and Dragonsphere are both completed, and I have written posts for the next games on my list. I want to post them sooner, but I cannot until other reviewers have more free time.
During the summer, I had some time when my job slowed down, and I created a backlog of posts. We're using them now. If I had posted them twice a week (like we did last year) there would be no posts right now at all.
For me, it takes about 2 hours to prepare and write a post for a one hour gameplay session. But that's me. As for the other reviewers, I can only speculate it's similar. And many of the past reviewers have had real life interfere with the promises they made to the readers of this blog. As a reader, it is incredibly frustrating to me, but as a human, I understand that this unpaid, volunteer project isn't a priority in that situation.
Part of me wants to suggest adding banner ads to generate an income for the writers as an incentive to honor their commitments, but that would change the flavor of the site way too much.
Writing a post definitely takes a lot longer than playing it. As does sorting through screenshots and checking notes. I appreciate I've taken a long while to get through AitD2. Some of the sections involve a lot of trial and error, and so I tend to play in bursts and write 2 or 3 posts at a time. I am also probably guilty of being to verbose... but it can be difficult to both write about a thing and cut it down too much, or you can lose nuance and detail that might be interesting.
DeleteAfter I took over the gameplay of Gabriel Knight, I played it rather quickly. But if I had posted as quickly, we would have had weeks without content.
DeleteI have been stretching out the posts in order to keep us posting regularly.<.em>
I feel like, don't, then? Nobody's being paid here (I lost track of the comment that suggested ads and, yikes, hard no on that one) and it's not like a TV show where you gotta have an episode per week Or Else. Having a gap in between posts even some weeks long really isn't a big deal imo. I would rather get through any individual game with a decent momentum. I'm not sure if I agree with the anon(?) who said "go back to doing only one at a time" but I do kinda get where they're coming from, that multiple overlapping games when they're often stretched out for months or more starts to feel tiring and confusing.
awww dangit. HTML fail.
DeleteI read these for the detail and analysis. I am not reading them for the ratings to decide which 30-year-old game to play next.
ReplyDeleteI think you should not focus on completionism. Play the "whales"--whether that's sales, historical importance, general consensus of quality, or some combination thereof--and reserve some number for, IDK, put up a list of 50 "maybe I'll do them" games for a given year and review the ten that get the most votes from the readership, something like that.
I like the idea of BRIEFs, so that games are at least mentioned (I like discovering new games, and also read on games I might not be interested in playing but that could be interesting). And if someone later feels strongly, they can do a full review.
ReplyDeleteThis appears to be the most polarizing suggestion -- and it wasn't mine. Someone else suggested it back when we did a previous post about the blog.
Delete** What follows is my own opinion and not necessarily that of other blog admins: ** Personally, I don't think we should do them, but I think we should be stricter in our criteria. No more text games. No more foreign language games. No more disregarded games, although it was an interesting way to get people to spend CAPs. (That said, my next game is a disregarded game).
But I know that at least two other admins would disagree with me, because I am complaining about their favorite pet projects. But as a reader, I cannot lie, I find myself skipping those posts.
Raising the CAP prices for games would be an option. Perhaps with even higher cost for foreign-language games and such. That way fewer games would be bought, but companions could still theoretically buy interesting but barely eligible games.
DeleteI think it's the opposite problem, not enough points given to frequent commenters, commenting is not really rewarding as years ago, which makes it look like a closed group more and more. Raise the prices for the only thing you can use your points on, and then you tighten the circle even more
Deletejust as a quick example, I've been commenting on this blog, for the past 7-8 years. I could only buy one exotic game, and probably have points for one more, and that's it. The rewards system is just too expensive at the moment
DeleteHmm. I've never done any of the three things that earn one the most points -- review, play along, or correctly guess the final score (I've never even attempted that last one, except for Donkey Island) -- but I haven't ever felt I was being shorted on them by the number I slowly built up through commenting. Maybe I'm just more unconcerned about it as I have never really been earning them for the purpose of spending them, they're just sort of a side perk in my mind... but are you maybe suggesting something like "participation points", e.g. even if you don't get any of the "awards" for a particularly interesting comment, you still get say, 5 or 10 points for commenting at all?
DeleteIn my score for Gabriel Knight, I tried to have fun giving out points. But had I gone any further, it would have been like "participation trophies" for Gen-Z kids.
DeleteThe experiment we tried in the 1994 post was to cut the prices in half for the purchases, if people would step up and play them themselves. The experiment failed -- we got no new reviewers. That is our most serious problem right now.
But I don't really think the problem is not enough points given out; the problem is we took so darn long to get through 1993 that too many of the previous commenters who earned points aren't here anymore. So many points are lying dormant in the accounts of TAG readers of the past. Much like pennies in coin jars on people's nightstands.
Again, it comes down to the argument -- half the people want the disregarded/borderline games, half do not. The first group wants lower prices on the games, and the second thinks they are too low.
Yeah, I was really surprised when I appeared on the leaderboard in the sidebar, not because I have a lot of points (I don't, especially not compared to CAPs Georg, I mean Laukku) but because there are so few people ahead of me who have also earned any within the past 2 years, which I think is really a fairly generous span of time.
DeleteYou should go back to posting the same game consecutive, instead of bouncing from game to game
ReplyDeleteWell, two problems to this:
Delete1. Consecutive posts means if a game you don't like is being played, you have much longer to wait for a post you'll enjoy.
2. The reviewers would have to work at a faster place or let the posts pile up until they have most of the game played and written. May not be realistic.
Truthfully, I also preferred it that way as a reader, but I don't think it's realistic right now.
I'm still reading up chronologically through the blog's history and it's true that alternating posts on multiple ongoing games become hard to follow and so to me as reader the playthrough descriptions of individual games lose some momentum.
DeleteMaybe a compromise could be to only alternate two mainline games at a time and insert anything else - like Missed Classics, BRIEFs/SHORTs, 'What's your story's, interviews, previews of current games and any other general thematic posts not about ongoing games - only once coverage on one of the games has ended and before starting the next.
If this were combined with making fewer (less detailed) posts about each game, both issues mentioned by you would at least be mitigated (less time to wait for readers not interested in a specific game, less amount to write for reviewers, though playing through may still need a certain pace).
Less intensive detail per game, fewer posts per game overall, would be my vote. It doesn't really need to be a minute-by-minute kind of thing as the posts sometimes have been. Especially when a post is laden with screenshots, I start skimming. But I wouldn't be a fan of "brief" ones that are not based on a complete playthrough (or at least a serious attempt at one). There doesn't seem to be a lot of point in just rounding up others' pre-existing reviews. I want "pure" new original opinions/experiences, if that makes sense.
ReplyDeleteI have no objection to a Discord, but only as an additional social space for chat, especially on things not directly related to the content of a specific blog post, which is maybe a bit more tractable than blog comments. It should definitely not be treated as a replacement.
I agree with arcanetrivia here, not interested in briefs, but probably the best way would be to have less detailed posts that wrap up in 2-3 sessions. (And I know that I have been guilty of rambling nad/or going into too much detail during my posts as Alex Romanov said, but that's just my writing style preference).
DeleteAs per the debate between playing and writing, I confirm that writing the posts is the most time-consuming activity. For Dragonsphere, I finished the game quickly at the beginning of June when I had some free time, but, looking at my Google Drive, after that the posts writing stretched out up to mid-July.
My 2 cents:
ReplyDelete- Fewer, less detailed posts per game?: Yes, I think that would help, without that meaning I don't appreciate the details and writing so far. Less time needed for the write-up, games don't take so long to be completed from the readers' perspective that in-between you forget what happened before. Focus on interesting points, subjective experience. If someone wants every little detail, for well-known games there are walkthroughs and video playthroughs out there.
Having said that, I understand it's difficult to condense a write-up without losing too much nuance or personal style as current reviewers have said here in the discussion. It's a challenging balance to find, but would be worth trying, in my view.
- Cover fewer games (per year) e.g. by tightening criteria (whether through CAPs, language or other aspects)? To me that depends on how it's done and is connected both to the previous and the following point. It indeed reminds me of the similar recurring discussions on the CRPGAddict blog about "Just play the highlights, unknown games are unknown for a reason, they're neither fun to play & write nor read about and just hold us back moving forward to what we want next" vs "Unknown games are the reason (or an essential one of them) I read this blog, you can find coverage of the 'whales' everywhere by the dozen and in-depth, but some games may only be written about here which helps discover them to some of us and makes the blog important, interesting and unique."
Both opinions have some truth in them to me, also applying them to TAG, and from my perspective the solution Chet has now opted for - limit the number per year to a mix of known relevant ones and random input - goes in the right direction, though I personally would favour a stronger focus on games without (much) existing coverage among the second group.
So my suggestion would be to yes, limit the number of games per year, but don't just reduce it to a collection of "Best of [insert year]" with the 127th playthrough/article of/about LucasArts game X and the 95th on [insert your favourite here]. I understand it's nice to relive and exchange impressions and stories about landmark games many here played themselves back in the day and the comments section reflects this.
Nevertheless, I also find it interesting to alternate this with discovering new (old) games that haven't been done to death yet and from what I see, others share this view, too. If you eliminate something, it could be the 'meh' middle-of-the-road stuff, i.e. games that are not unknown, but based on existing coverage (and/or prior experience of community members) don't bring anything great or otherwise quite interesting to the table (plus the known really weak ones).
Sorry, needed to split in two:
ReplyDelete- Shorter coverage of some games outside the mainline ones (like the CRPGAddict's BRIEFs)? Based on what I said about the two previous points, especially the last one, I would be in favour of using these selectively for the unknown / lesser-known games, for several reasons:
-> A full coverage of the game in question through several posts might be attractive for fewer people because of its nature (specific gameplay quirks, subject, type of adventure game, language, ...).
-> However, these very elements may just be what part of the readers find interesting about such game and this way they at least get to discover it.
-> Just being a collection of 'best-of's would make TAG less distinctive. What some people more critical of the idea have said, that you might as well go look at a walkthrough or playthrough video instead, may apply to well-known games, but for lesser-known or unknown ones these might not even exist yet or not in English (and at least to me a written article is different from and preferrable to a video in some instances).
-> Same as Left-Handed Matt, I think it could provide an incentive, an easier entrance for potential new reviewers to start with or to limit themselves to such a format for reasons of time and work required as well as not having to provide follow-up in a relatively fixed schedule of several gameplay posts. If fewer readers would indeed be interested in such entries, that is not ideal. But between a blog with fewer readers on some posts and a blog lacking reviewers/writers to provide posts in the first place, the former - if true - would still seem preferrable to me.
-> For the same reason, it makes sense to allow reviewers - within certain boundaries - to write about what they personally are interested in. Again, what's better - a blog where some reviewers (also) have pet projects, even if their enthusiasm is not shared by all, or a blog without (enough) reviewers?
If such an idea is implemented in any form, it should be called differently, though, to distinguish it from the CRPGAddict's BRIEFs. It could be e.g. SHORTs (Succinct Historic Overview and Ratingless Tale? Short Handful Of a Reasonable Take? I'm sure you'll think of something.).
What I like about these blog is to read about those games that i've played in the 80's and 90`s, or that I have not played but were games that were known to most players. And I like the step by step approach you take to cover this games. What I think has lost it's points is the missed classics, because almost every game that is covered maybe it is a missed one, but certainly it`s is not a classic. I think too much energy and time are wasted on obscured games that even has no real mertis at all. One thing is to cover an Infocom game, and another a japanese game made for some obscure platform that even doesn`t seem to be an adventure game. Don`t get me wrong, I am very gratefull of the amount of effort and time the reviewers put to these games, but of all the missed classics that will come in the future, the only ones that would grab my atention will be the Infocom`s ones. (and by this point, I wish Joe gets to finish this series at some time, although I also think that his project of writing about the books set in the Zork universe maybe isn`t that necessary).
ReplyDeleteI must be the odd man out in the room (I am in most rooms) as I see no problem with the course this blog is running. The golden age of the blog is long behind us now and really I just feel fortunate to have any new content wash up in my RSS reader.
ReplyDeleteThat said, sustaining a blogging practice on a long-term basis is challenging, and it seems that perhaps some of our original relief bloggers have dropped out of the race without many successors to pick up their baton and run with it.
I'm not sure what a solution to the situation is, because I don't like to tell people (especially volunteers) to do other than what they're already inclined to do, and I assume that the status quo we see here is what people are already inclined to do. But if someone who feels unfit for long-form blogging would be interested in writing BRIEFs, I don't think it could hurt to mix things up a bit. We could open a Discord without necessarily committing to it on a long-term basis. There are many things we could collectively do to try new things and attempt to reach new audiences -- I see lots of engagement on adventure game subjects on social media, perhaps we need a volunteer intern in that department. Maybe we have adventure game fans in our midst who would like to try streaming adventure game playthroughs on Twitch instead of blogging them, knocking games off over a couple of hours rather than over the gradual course of a season.
I would like to note that the lesser-known, poorly-reviewed, hybrid-genre and foreign-language adventures are among the topics of greatest interest to me: we've all played the mainstream classics and every other blog has already covered them, we don't have further discoveries to make there. (And of course a grognard of my vintage can never get enough Infocom content, so please don't pull the plug there!)
Maybe something bogging us down is the insistence on the chronological format? I know that Chester likes to track the evolution of the CRPG genre in a scientific way, noting the first emergence of specific gameplay features and how they are inherited by later games, but I don't see us doing a ton of that. We could probably open a 21st century bureau pretty safely and get someone writing up AGS adventures and Ren'Py visual novels and Bioware RPGs without being too swayed from our scientific historical mission, because we don't really have one. We just wound up working that way because the CRPGAddict did and Trickster didn't have any better ideas.
Delete(Has the time come for an Adventure Gamer podcast?)
Maybe we could feature posts by someone _making_ an adventure game and discussing tools and strategies. They could poll the commenters for NPC names and settings and plot beats. There is no shortage of alternate approaches to take if the blog wants for content.
A podcast is a fun thought!
DeleteI tend to skip the gameplay posts and just jump to the rating. If it's a game I think I might be interested in, I don't want to spoil it for myself, and if it's a game I already played, I don't really need the posts.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it makes sense to turn the blog more multimedia? Make a youtube channel where the authors can post their gameplay. Allow (and encourage) commentary, but the videos don't have to be high quality - simply turn the recorder on when playing and talk about what you're thinking as you go, and short sessions connected loosely are completely fine. Then make a page on the blog for the review.
Put me down as another for the 'shorter/less detailed gameplay posts'. As has been said, while I appreciate the effort that goes into the posts, they have become illustrated walkthroughs rather than playthroughs with impressions/review. Keeping the posts less comprehensive would allow them to be written faster and then we'd have fewer posts per game and could hopefully get through more.
ReplyDeleteI'd also tighten the criteria for inclusion myself - I think there's too many super obscure titles that are being reviewed, but then we'd have to find something else for people to spend CAPS on if we wanted to maintain a CAP economy.
Mindlessly playing all games in release order was always a stupid idea.
ReplyDeleteTracking the evolution of adventure games is a major point of this site, even if there's less of an emphasis on it nowadays due to most of it having happened in the games Tickster played, and it being more difficult to compare all the games because of different reviewers playing different games.
Delete*sound of Renga in Blue sniffling in the distance*
DeleteFor what it's worth, I'm happy with the blog as it is. The format is what I signed up for both as a long-time reader and now as a contributor. Things were always going to get slower in the 90s anyway, the volume of games to cover is difficult and the amount of time each reviewer has is limited. I think everyone has done a great job since taking this on from Trickster. If anyone reading is keen to become a reviewer, there are opportunities available!
ReplyDeleteI did at one point think a discord would be a good idea, but recently I think that would just potentially pull conversations away from the comments and the posts, and I'd like the work here to get as much attention and conversation as possible.
I am extremely cautious about the need for changes, change too much and you might end up straying too far from the whole point of the blog in the first place. There's only really one thing I would suggest, and that's maybe if someone would like to volunteer to write the occasional gaming news type of post? There always seems to be new adventure games and other news about adventure games and their developers. It might help break things up a bit, and also provide a way for people to provide a bit of writing for this blog if they didn't want to commit to reviewing a game.
I like the idea of news posts about new adventure game releases. I try to keep up with them myself, and the genre is currently flourishing in the indie realm.
DeleteHi. Long time reader, first time writing. I'm from Poland where point and click adventure games use to be big, big, big and I love going true your page and reading walktrouths of some of my favorites or games I never got around to playing, so I'm not gonna like I'm here for longer articles going true entire game puzzle by puzzle.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I totaly get that it sometimes might get hard so if you are planing to skip so games (knowing you will return to them at some point) it feels fine.
Wish you all the best
Maciej Kur from Poland
Several commenters here say as a reader they don't want short formats and/or obscure games (or text adventures or games not in English etc.) and prefer full playthroughs of 'mainstream' content. Fair enough if those are your preferences and that was part of the questions. However, unless you already are or are volunteering to be(come) a regular reviewer, I'm not sure this will really help much to solve the existing issues.
ReplyDeleteThe way I understand it, the current main challenge is, as Michael mentions above, that more/new additional reviewers are needed. With the exception of Morpheus' posts on Sherlock Holmes and Dracula, the last of which was published in early June, the gameplay posts of the last six months were by three reviewers: Michael, Andy Panthro and Vetinari. Police Quest: Open Season (Alex) was "Won" in early March, no Final Rating yet. The last post on Pepper's Adventures in Time (Will) was in late November last year. Ilmari's final rating of his most recent game was published in late January and Joe announced his hiatus back in October.
Now, don't get me wrong, I don't mention this to criticize any of the reviewers who haven't been able to contribute to the blog lately, far from it. Reading up through the years, I'm amazed at the time and energy all of them and others have put into TAG over such a long time and I sincerely take my hat off to each and everyone of them and to the body of work they have created here.
However, the reality is, you can't expect this to go on for each reviewer continually and perpetually. Real life tends to get in the way here and there and at some point people also just may not be invested that much any more, other priorities and interests come to the forefront (as happened with Trickster already), all of which is absolutely normal and understandable.
Some are saying, well, that's just the way it is, let's keep plodding on with a low(er) publishing frequency. And unless there is another solution, it looks like that's happening indeed. Based on my experience reading other blogs, this in turn leads to fewer readers and comments, though, which can devolve into a downward spiral. And no one can guarantee the current reviewers will continue to be available and motivated indefinitely either.
So I think it's worth trying to find new reviewers, be it through fewer posts per game, new formats like BRIEFs/SHORTs or news, or reaching out through forums and social media. Or all of the above.