Hmm i wouldn't call a few years of steady improvements convulsions.
I really am beginning to love Deck13. They come the closest to what LucasArts once was standing for. I don't know how well their dubs are in english but they are so well done in german with great speakers. A nice style, they properly use 3d (but sometimes with weird camera perspectives), nice story, good characters, good puzzles, non episodic and they are improving from game to game.
TTG will provide episodic games for the future because it's a cashcow for them and after some time they'll dare to introduce some own intellectual property but compared to Deck13 they don't even have inventory puzzles whilst having people like Grossman or Ferguson on board till today. Let's wait if they dare more after they wanted to reintroduce adventures to the masses with season 1.
And then we have all the other small adventure developers which did not exist a few years ago, like Bill Tiller's company with AVS. This really doesn't look like convulsions to me, especially not in germany were a lot of the younger adventure developers are coming from.
Anyway if you have hopes for the Wii then i don't know if you'll get what you're after and are missing on the pc as the Wii is almost completely about casual gaming. The controller could enable a nice analog mouse like steering if it's accurate enough but all the marketing goes into a different direction. Guess what? TTG will be there, so feel free to enjoy Sam&Max on the Wii in a not so distant future.
I think the sales have proofen that there is a market for adventures and so there also is a market for very good aventures. I see this independent of the platform as you can already sale a lot on the pc. But it also wouldn't hurt and with tools like Unity (win, osx, wii) or XNA Game Studio Express (win and xbox360) there do exist affordable to almost free solutions for small companies as well. Well, at least on the Wii you'll have to get the licecne issues still sorted out but this shouldn't be the biggest obstacle if you're serious about it and you already can offer the win and osx versions without any troubles.
You also have to take into account were this consoles are. The USA are almost completely console driven, europe isn't and especially in germany there does exist a strong relationship to adventures and the computer platform. And once a reasonable 3d engine is available for Blitzmax you might even can use that for doing 3d adventures on different platforms.
The next three adventures which are in production, should be released in 2007 and i'm gonna play (if there is time to) are Sam&Max Season2, A Vampyre Story and Ankh 3 and i bet none of these ones will suck. I couldn't have said such things a few years ago and this in my eyes is a big improvement!
And as we're talking about it Sam&Max Season2 Trailer is online: http://www.telltalegames.com/samandmaxseasontwo/
I really am beginning to love Deck13. They come the closest to what LucasArts once was standing for. I don't know how well their dubs are in english but they are so well done in german with great speakers. A nice style, they properly use 3d (but sometimes with weird camera perspectives), nice story, good characters, good puzzles, non episodic and they are improving from game to game.
TTG will provide episodic games for the future because it's a cashcow for them and after some time they'll dare to introduce some own intellectual property but compared to Deck13 they don't even have inventory puzzles whilst having people like Grossman or Ferguson on board till today. Let's wait if they dare more after they wanted to reintroduce adventures to the masses with season 1.
And then we have all the other small adventure developers which did not exist a few years ago, like Bill Tiller's company with AVS. This really doesn't look like convulsions to me, especially not in germany were a lot of the younger adventure developers are coming from.
Anyway if you have hopes for the Wii then i don't know if you'll get what you're after and are missing on the pc as the Wii is almost completely about casual gaming. The controller could enable a nice analog mouse like steering if it's accurate enough but all the marketing goes into a different direction. Guess what? TTG will be there, so feel free to enjoy Sam&Max on the Wii in a not so distant future.
I think the sales have proofen that there is a market for adventures and so there also is a market for very good aventures. I see this independent of the platform as you can already sale a lot on the pc. But it also wouldn't hurt and with tools like Unity (win, osx, wii) or XNA Game Studio Express (win and xbox360) there do exist affordable to almost free solutions for small companies as well. Well, at least on the Wii you'll have to get the licecne issues still sorted out but this shouldn't be the biggest obstacle if you're serious about it and you already can offer the win and osx versions without any troubles.
You also have to take into account were this consoles are. The USA are almost completely console driven, europe isn't and especially in germany there does exist a strong relationship to adventures and the computer platform. And once a reasonable 3d engine is available for Blitzmax you might even can use that for doing 3d adventures on different platforms.
The next three adventures which are in production, should be released in 2007 and i'm gonna play (if there is time to) are Sam&Max Season2, A Vampyre Story and Ankh 3 and i bet none of these ones will suck. I couldn't have said such things a few years ago and this in my eyes is a big improvement!
And as we're talking about it Sam&Max Season2 Trailer is online: http://www.telltalegames.com/samandmaxseasontwo/