The Long History Of The Adventure Game Revival

So, I’m sitting here, and the hour is growing later here on the East Coast of the United States. This is when my mind starts to get away from me – as if it almost floats two feet to the left of my head, and takes a look back at the man sitting at the keyboard.

I spent a good amount of time this evening recovering information from my old hard-drive from a dead-desktop computer. I found a lot of old IA/IQ materials – almost 10 years worth. I’d been transfering it from computer to computer for almost 10 years…. ideas, concepts… so much work that the public hasn’t seen. Anyone who’s been a member of Infamous Adventures or Infamous Quests can testify to the vast amount of stuff that haunts our forums and servers. It’s a bit of living history, for me – tracking that time.

People have been talking about the re-birth of adventure games this year. Which is true, in a way – but for people like us – people like me – this happened a long, long time ago… 10 years ago – when Tierra/AGDI, Hero 6, Phoenix Online and eventually IA were carrying the torch of the adventure game genre. This was before “social media” took off, and our social media was our forums. We lived in them – we communicated in almost real time in them. We’d have threads with ungodly amounts of posts – and there was the usual cast of characters that haunted the forums. Names I haven’t seen in a long time used to be regulars – many of them very young at the time. For instance, Broomie was merely 14 in the early days! But we were tight knit, despite the occasional flamewar for no reason…. we loved these games. And we loved that other people did too. It was kind of like finding an oasis in the desert. And we worked hard to foster that – the community was strong. But, times change – people grow up, and away, and the world moved on in a way – yet new people came in to take up the mantles in fan forums, and we kept making games. I definitely miss some of the regulars from the early days at the Tierra/AGDI forums, the AGS forums, The KQIX forums, the Hero6 forums. It was a special time…. so when people talk about this resurgence like it subtly happened, there’s part of me that cries “We were here the WHOLE time!!!”

I’m glad there’s more new attention on the scene, and somehow it’s managed to coax our old heros and mascots out of their comfort zones to return to making adventure games. But I do miss some of the people who were there early on, and didn’t hang on like some of us did. Some came back for the Kickstarters – and I reconnected with a lot of people from the old days – which was awesome.

I guess this is just a sign of how much this community, and the people, have had an impact on me – no matter how small you think you are, or maybe you think no one’s read your posts – I’m pretty sure I have. Heh.

Anway… it’s 2013, and I’m still here. So are a lot of my mates – and we may be relative “newbies” compared to some designers, but I promise you – we’re working our asses off to make a great new-old game for ya!

This is for the fans. This is for the scene. This is for all those crazy posts we used to pile on when we dared to dream.

This is Infamous Quests.