This isn't why I'm collecting the games in thier original boxes (I'm like Quez, I love the official merchandise and only the original releases have the cool stuff inside) but does anyone reckon that this LEC stuff might be worth something someday? I mean, original edition books and movies are fetching shedloads, and computer games are definately on the rise, market wise. I read somewhere that computer games outsold books in the USA in 1999. In 50 years or something, maybe games will be considered an art form (some already think that they are becoming that, games like Black & White which aren't all about killing etc.)
In any case, there is going to be a huge (HUGE!!) market for computer games in the future, and maybe when people realise that graphics aren't everything (not that LEC games aren't, just that they're...well, outdated) and that gameplay is what its all about, surely there's gonna be a market for this stuff.
We could be the first generation of collectors of the next big thing. Or not...
Lemme know what ya think, friends.

The only thing I'd see potentially being worth anything at some time or other, would be Star Wars related stuff. I sorta doubt it tho, seeing that those already sell a lot of copies.

Dunno. Whenever "Wing Commander Kilrathi Saga" turns up on Ebay, it goes for over $100. Maybe the older LucasArts games do/will have a similar effect. It depends how "worth something" you mean. :)

This is kinda off-topic but relevant to something LucasTones said.

I think that games are still a long way off becoming an art form (yes i know, now-a-days you can call a light-switch, a matress, or a pyramidal dog poo art, but i mean REAl art). So far, the closest thing it has come to becoming such a thing, in my opinion, is when they are successfully cinematic or engaging, when you really feel a bond with characters who arn't even very special (dunno if anyone played Omikron:Nomad Soul but that's an excellent example).

There is another school of thought that reckons games have gone paast the artistic event horizon and that they will never now really be seen on that level. I don't think i agree with that, i think if a project falls into the right hands it could be something special. it would neede to be the right kind of project tho.

I have no ideas myself, but i feel this lack of artistic expression in games is largely due to the consumers themselves. The majority of people don't buy escapism in the form of interactive entertainment just so they can sit and think. But this kind of inhibitive opinion won't do the industry any favours.

Relatively speaking (compared with other medias) computers, and games particularly, are very much still in their infancy. It will be a long time, i think, before we see them starting to mature, which i'm sure they will. That said, i dont think it's unreasonable to say that the audience will need to mature too.

When something becomes rare it will increase in value. Take the 'Wing Commander Kilrathi Saga' for example. It was published in a small amount of copies. When you want to buy this rare package on Ebay you're going to pay over $200 for it!

Maybe someday, when we're all longing to revive our old adventure days and it's hard to find a copy of 'Sam and Max' or 'Leisure Suit Larry' we'll be paying big bucks for them.

--Erwin

I think a game that came close to being art in my opinion is Little Bige Adventure 2: Twinsens Oddyssey. Over the course of playing the game, you become really involved in the whole world of Twinsun, and regreted the time when you finish it.
I know what you mean about the consumers, Lemon Head. This winds me up on a regular basis. If people stopped buying games for graphics alone, the gamers market would be a better one. It makes me think of the whole essence of adventure games. They have evolved from a time when there was no graphics; the parser text based games like 'the Hobbit' that you used to play on a ZX spectrum, into the style Sierra Online set thier stall on, through to the LucasArts classics. These games were only released on the PC because (a)PC's have a lot of memory, and (b)in the early days PC's had awful graphics. PC gamers couldn't play racing games, or shoot-em-ups, because they looked awful. Instead they played Kings Quest, and Maniac Mansion. Then, as PC's became more powerful, the games became more advanced - an example is Castle Wolfenstein-->Doom-->Final Doom-->Quake-->Quake III-->Return to castle Wolfenstein.
The average PC gamer buys a game based on what the back of the box shows him. If this is fantastic graphics he'll want it. If it is a 2d adventure where you have to (heaven forbid) talk to people and solve puzzles, he aint gonna buy it. This explains the demise in the genre - between about 1996-2000 (4 years is a lot in this industry.) LucasArts made few adventure games, Sierra ceased making them altogether (though they dd re-release thier older titles in special edition packages - a nice touch, LucasArts would to well to the same) and the rest that were made were largely under-bought.
It was because of this that games like Grim Fandango came about - finally, a way to make adventure games appeal to the mass market again. (This is why people who say 'I liked the old way' annoy me. I did too, but they aren't gonna make games for the mixnmojo forum users, are they.) It worked, and EMI was made. Now, it could be the dawn of a new era of adventure games. Maybe. It all depends on the MASS MARKET. But, it seems that they prefer 'bang-bang-bang, kill-kill-kill, explosion-explosion-explosion' at the moment. And what we all have to remember is that the games manufacturers, including LucasArts, are in this for the MONEY (hence, STAR WARS GAMES. Star Wars is popular, you do the rest of the math.) They need to cater to the mass markets tastes to make money. So occasionally, a new genre will crop up, and if the mass market like it we'll move in a new direction, like with Metal gear Solid on the Playstation. Lets hope this new market is the old market, so to speak.

We seem to be thinking along the same lines. You're right, LBA2 is an excellent example of the type of game that made a leap forward in an attempt to become something artistic, though really it could only be called an attempt.

It was a simple game and pretty much one of the only real action/adventures. Indy 5 was called an action/adventure when that's obviously not true because the only vaguely adventuristic part of it was the use-objects-around-a-level-to-advance strategy, whereas LBA 2 actually required you to talk to people and thus gain information on how to complete a certain puzzle. Mind you, at least half of those puzzles were concerned with lateral thinking rather than deduction but that, combined with the combat, is why i feel it is one of the only true action/adventures.

That point you made about the advancement in graphics is one i totally agree with and have said so before. The emerging of consoles into todays market means that they will only be successful if they look buttock-clenchingly good to start with because they can't be upgraded. Therefore, if a successful console game is released with such splendid graphics it is seen as the norm for any other good game, and one found without true 3d-spinny-roundy-o-vision is instantly deemed not worthy. Thus the forefront of publishers minds tends to linger around how good their game is going to look because they rarely give a flamingo's kidney about any other aspect of it. Today, people are reading up less and less on the quality of games before they buy them. They base their judgements on ads, gossip, and such like without asking for a professional opinion. This kind of thinking invariabley will lead the mass gaming community to see a terrible game as the pinnacle of the age simply because they dont know of anything better.

The point you made about gamers being more concerned with killing things is absolutely true but not really very surprising. Gamers enjoy games because they can escape and pretend to do things they would never be able to do in reality. They can become a highly trained operative, a gangster, a pilot, a general. Few people ever come close to being those things and it just happens that they all involve killing, something else that is usually frowned on in society today :) But they also want to feel as tho it's them that's doing it, not a character they're controlling. Now-a-days people are becoming less satisfied with an interactive story about someone else, as they are with actually being a private in WWII and seeing what the gritty truth fold out in front of them.

I know that adventures reach a very personal nerve in people like us because we play them and know how they should be played. The average gamer (probably) won't have so much time to spare for such petty rewards, and they look for the quick fix. Sad but true.

On the EMI-Grim issue... Grim worked. EMI, in my opinion, didn't. It's not the 3D, it's the EMI in 3D.
And games are, in themselves, a form of expression, and therefore a form of art. Take Half-Life, the game most used as an example in an argument of any kind. How can you not call it art? Sore, the plot sucks royal ass (incidentally, there's a lot more to the story than they let on), but why isn't creating good gameplay called art? You're put in a certain atmosphere, feel certain things. How is this any different from movies?

Lemon Head, we are definately singing from the same hymn sheet. I kinda agree with you too Darnn, but I just think we (as a gaming community, not the mojo lot) need to progress a little. There is no doubt that the media's verdict on computer games is that they are violent, and even dangerous to young people. I remember one documentary the BBC made that caused absolute fury among the readers of the UK PC-Gamer magazine, because it was completely biased. It made out that if you play games like Half-Life, you become distant and are more likely to go on a kill-crazy-rampage. I cannot see the world accepting computer games as art for as long as it is acceptable to apportion blame on computer games for things such as high school shootings in the USA.
What really needs to be done is for someone to make a documentary that doesn't try to make us hate computer games. Let some of the non-games-playing public hear a different song for a change.
I can appreciate the need for people to want to escape from daily life by imagening themselves as someone else; I'd be lying if I didn't admit to playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein online every other night, but I still respect the adventure game. It is the king of all genres, you can be transported to another place and time, and be thrown into a web of intrigue. Everyone loves movies, but I see adventure games in a similar light. Ok, so it aint YOU in the game, but you're the one who's solving the puzzles, contributing to the plot.
People need to hear that there's more to computer games than blood and gore.

I know a lot of old SW products are bringing in a lot of money at auction, but for the majority of items there is just so much of them that their value kinda goes down.

As for the old adventure games, i think these would bring more as they are not as popular as the all the SW related stuff and so become more valuable in most cases.

Eurgh, don't get me started on that guns-don't-kill-people-computer-games-kill-people debate. i, along with every other self respecting gamer am sick to the teeth of what the sensationalistic tabloids try to spread around the parenting community to give them an easily understandable alternative to the flaws within society itself.

The most recent ridiculous examples of this are Microsoft's Flight Sim being used to train terrorists in the World Trade Center bombing, and an 8-year-old who shot his brother dead in an apparrent re-inactment of Operation Winback on the N64. these are simply more up to date versions of the old preposterous statement that some kid blew away his school because he played Doom to much. I mean really.

Anyone ever heard of a little country called Korea? right. Well that same country has a government which support gaming as a healthy past time outright. About 75-80% of the population are all involved in gaming and its not often you hear of bizzarre game-death-related goings on there. Games arouse emotions and sensations but so did Fight Club, doesn't mean I'm going to blast 10 city blocks to ash. I could go on, but i'm bored of it already.

Darnn, i love half-life, it has easily been the best FPS around until now, despite being 3 years old (though i feel it has been overtaken by Medal of Honor or, as some would say, AvP2) and it does incorporate a lot of gameplay and cinematic moments, thanks to scripting, that immerses you even further but i still couldn't really call it art. I feel immersed, and i have fun, and i appreciate the fantastic work done by the developers, but it won't bring out any other feelings. A real work of art in gaming would be something that could produce a whole gamet of emotions while i was playing. it would be something that would really be able to reach me. That's why i don't think all films are a work of art. I base films on how they affect me, Pearl Harbour may have had spectacular special effects but it's not worth two turds because it made me feel nothing but nausea. Dogma was funny, satirical and a brilliant film but i wouldn't call it art, just a great film. Now Saving Private Ryan and, more recently, Lord of the Rings were works of art, they both really threw me into a sea of mixed emotions and that's why i think they're great.

Half-Life, Medal of Honor, Grand Theft Auto, Monkey Island are all fabulous games but i could never really call them art. Grim Fandango was engaging for me but, even though it was so long ago, i can't remember feeling anything particularly deeply, it had it's moments, spectacular ones at that, but you see what i mean.

I just think that games are no way achieving nearly as much as they could be doing.

Man, just imagine what would happen if Parliament, or the President of the USA decided to make gaming an official past time... I'd be so happy... wait, that would bring lag... no nevermind what I just said altogether...

Those early Infocom games, such as the Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy and Planetfall, are about the only ones I have spent any time with that I would call art.
There was a certain subversive magic to those text-based adventures that all the 3D graphics in the world can never match.
I didn't own a computer back then, so I only got to play one of the copies floating around the school tech labs once in a while, and never got to finish any of them. I would KILL to have copies of all the games that company released.

I miss those days.

Edlib: Either search abandonware sites, or find any site which still sells the things, they're called Infocom Interactive Fiction Treasure Packs or something to that effect.
And Lemon, I think I see what you mean, but I just don't feel that way. And if anything's subjective, art is.

Or you could kill someone and steal their "Lost Treasures of Infocom" CD-ROM.

I'll look into it. :joy:

I know Douglas Adams was talking about making an online JAVA version of the HHGG game before he died, but I haven't seen anything else about it since. (But the truth is I was so depressed over it that I haven't been able to bring myself to visit his old site. Maybe it's finally time...)

Hey Lemon Head....I thought you wern't goin to get started about that whole debate!! ;)

Originally posted by edlib

I know Douglas Adams was talking about making an online JAVA version of the HHGG game before he died, but I haven't seen anything else about it since. (But the truth is I was so depressed over it that I haven't been able to bring myself to visit his old site. Maybe it's finally time...)
Yes, I would say it is. ;) The site had Java HHGG the last time I checked. Unfortunately though, you can't save.

It's not difficult to find a copy of the HHGG data file online, either, so you can play at your leisure. The hardest bit is finding and using the Infocom interpreter to go with it, which isn't particularly taxing. So good luck! :)

Whats the address to this Douglas Adams jobby?

http://www.douglasadams.com/)

You should be able to link to all his other pages from there.

A new 3D Hitch-Hikers game is in the works.

Verrry Interesting...

Originally posted by Tall Guy
Hey Lemon Head....I thought you wern't goin to get started about that whole debate!! ;) you're right, dammit! now i'm angry...grrrrrr

Just make him part of your collection too :rolleyes:

i think i'll use his kneecaps as maracas

Originally posted by LucasTones
This isn't why I'm collecting the games in thier original boxes (I'm like Quez, I love the official merchandise and only the original releases have the cool stuff inside) but does anyone reckon that this LEC stuff might be worth something someday?

(snip)

...surely there's gonna be a market for this stuff.
We could be the first generation of collectors of the next big thing. Or not...
Lemme know what ya think, friends.

My fine arts professor said it best "Art is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it"

That being said, I lost the boxes, but I still have the "bullitin board" poster, manual, and codesheet for Maniac Mansion and the codesheet, instruction/hintbook, and newspaper from Zak McKracken. As collectors, how much would these rare items be to you? Hehehehe