The history of adventure games started in the 1970s. The first adventure game was the colossal cave adventure game known as Zork, designed by Will Crowther in 1976. Will worked in BBN as a programmer and developed the assembly language program that was used to develop Arpanet. Additionally, he developed the colossal cave adventure game from the experience he had gained in the mammoth cave in Kentucky, where he worked as a caver. The version of the game was based on the real cave but contained fantasy features such as magic bridge and axe-throwing dwarf to add excitement. Will Crowther developed the idea of creating the game after the caving work in the mammoth caves ended. He had also divorced with his wife in 1975; hence, he missed his two daughters. The creation of the game would help in recreating his caving fantasy and be a game for the kids especially his two daughters (Digital Game Museum 2011). The original version of the colossal cave adventure game had no complex commands because it involved natural language inputs to direct the player.
The video game appealed to many people and was easily installable in the wee hours of the nights without referring to computer staff, and this enhanced its rapid spread. The dynamic modeling group embraced the idea of the game and added commander parser and improved its design. Additional sections of the map and puzzles occurred to improve the game between 1977 and 1979. The development of the game occurred when the incorporation of Infocom occurred in 1979as the game’s commercial venture. To allow the game operational in personal computers, Marc Blanc and Joel Berez developed virtual machines such as Z- machine interpreter and Zork Implementation Language (Digital Game Museum 2011). Infocon for many years dominated the market due to its imaginative characters and plots because it depended on best graphic processors. Majority of the computer owners disregarded games that required much reading giving zork an added advantage.
The first 3D adventure game was developed by Sierra from King’s Quest 1, a game that was developed by Robert Williams and his wife. Sierra developed the 3D by adding animated graphics to the game making characters movable in front and behind the objects. Sierra became a success and producing long series and improving on the game. Sierra produced more franchises such as Police Quest and Quest for glory. A competing company called Lucas film games also produced similar games outdoing the sierra version. The company produced popular adventure games including secret monkey of Monkey Island, day of the tentacle and maniac mansion. Lucas films were the first to develop the first adventure game without typing text allowing point and click interface. Sierra and Lucas films by 1990s had different philosophies in adventure gaming. Sierra games were unwinnable because they involved many abrupt unexpected death disasters that were difficult to skip. In Lucas films games, losing was impossible because hazards were easily predictable.
Lucasfilm merged with lucasArts entertainment in 1993 to form lucasArts. They produced their first 3D adventure game called Grim Fandango in 1998. The game won the Game Sports game of the year among other awards. Despite the movie receiving excellent positive reviews, it faced a commercial drawback because its sales deteriorated. With the continuous loss, sierra and lucarArts left development games and changed their market. Niche franchises survived the fading games development of 199 to 2006 and managed fluent production until 2004 when adventure games release faded in the United States.
References
Digital Game Museum (2011). The Rise and Fall of Adventure Games. Digital Game Museum.Retrieved from http://www.digitalgamemuseum.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-adventure-games
