Adventure games past present and future - Charles Cecil

This talk by Charles Cecil was more inspiring and a great insight into the new industry! I loved his enthusiasm for narrative driven adventure games, a game genre type I'm interested in experimenting myself . 

Charles talk started off with a brief history of adventure games which was highly educational. From text adventures to free-to-plays. Detailing his beginnings, Adventure B being his first game inspired heavily by Indiana Jones which had just come out and become very popular. This exposed how cesil saw potential in releasing games coded with popular relevance at the time, this is also seen within his game 'beneath a steel sky' a reflection of society under Maggie thatchers rule. 

Lure of the tempress was his first game at Revolution. An example of how the style f the game was dictated by limited amounts of resolution. Cesil highlighted the depiction of women within this game. They originally didn't include a female, however the publishers rewrote the game so it suited the tropes in society, thus came the birth of a female, coded for erotic impact. Highlighting how it's not always the game developers fault for depicting women in such a way, if the people who are going to publish your game want to add something , your at their mercy essentially, and all the publishers care about is that your game can make money. Most effective way of making money ? Suiting to the needs of the commercial industry. 

He highlighted the importance of hiring animators to work with and working with those from different disciplines. 

Cecil then highlighted the time when publishers were refusing to publish games that weren't 3D, which was damaging for broken sword. Things became increasingly more poly thanks to the play station which pushed out PC gaming. And now to iPhone apps, the 'infinite storefront' of the app stores as Cecil put it. Cecil exposed the mass industry that is the free-to-play gaming industry, the bizarre element of a matter of minutes selling 4mill downloads of a game. 

And so revolution teamed up with apple to create the broken swords 5 app. For this the team used crowdfunding in kickstarter, for which Cecil gave some key important points on making a successful game. In his campaign video he showed himself green screened into his adventure game world, acting as a cut to the game due to no funding. Thus he exposed the jeopardy of what would happen with no crowdfunding, making people more more likely to donate to his campaign, an effective method.  

Keep points from talk

- free to play is where money is on mobile devices 

- establish a relationship with audience 

- drawing story and narrative into gameplay 

- telling a story interactively