Haven't had time to read the article yet, but there's tons of new graphic adventures on the market today. It's one of the genres I play most these days, and I primarily play new games.

Graphic adventures have largely moved outside mainstream publishing, though, and sell relatively marginal amounts - which I think is Cook's point.

I don't agree. In the last year or so I've played graphic adventures published by THQ, Capcom and Nintendo, and if we move to smaller publishers, companies like Atari (at least their distribution arm), Ascaron, Paradox, JoWooD, CDV, Lighthouse and Empire are all involved in relatively recent or coming adventures. These are smaller companies, but they're all "mainstream" publishers (even though some of them focus on genres that are more common on the PC than the consoles).

I could also mention companies like dtp (Anaconda), bhv (Xider), Focus Home Interactive, Micro Application and Nobilis, but although they're not small, they do mostly concentrate on mainland Europe.

Maybe the situation is different in the US, but over here, the genre haven't been as well represented in the marketplace since the mid nineties.

My point with the list of publishers (and I forgot Deep Silver and Ubisoft), btw, is that these aren't companies that are known for adventures or have a history of publishing them. They're just normal publishers who have understood that there's money to be made here.

For a while we pretty much only had companies like TAC publishing adventures. This situation has changed dramatically over the last few years.

Cook is only using the data up to 2003 for the adventure analysis, so any recent Renaissance is going to be absent. Likewise, he only takes a snapshot of the action/platformer up to 1999.

Though his life cycle patterns make sense, his data would have been more interesting, I think, if his charts had kept a consistent temporal frame of reference.

For the developer, though, the life cycle is like the infamous Laffer Curve - even if it is a good analysis, the real trick is identifying where you are on the curve. Are you at the peak? Just before the peak? In a genre freefall? How can you tell?

And even if you can tell, there will always be rooms at the margins for superior examples of "dead" genres; Microsoft still sells flight sims and we've even had an excellent subsim series in the last three years. A developer beat the cycle but will a publisher take a chance.

Good comments.

I still think there is good money to be made at pretty much every stage of the life cycle. There are numerous strategies that can be applied during the niche stage that result in profitable products. Some of the low cost production efforts in the indie scene are obvious, but rereleases or rethinking the genre to broaden the appeal are also successful techniques.

It would be nice to have a complete set of life cycle curves for all genres starting from the beginning of the industry. There's a Phd in there if someone wants to gather the data. :-)

I too have noticed that adventure games seem to be seeing a bit of a resurgence. In almost all cases they are due to platform shifts. Each also tends to have its sub-genre feel.
- Flash-based 'puzzle' games.
- DS-based adventure games

I expect we'll see some adventure games on the Wii as well. However, the mainstream PC market will likely never see adventure games return to their glory days. The market has moved on.

take care
Danc.

This guy obviously doesn't know what he's talking about. There were more than 3 adventure games released in 2002, and there are dozens of tried and true traditional point and click adventure games released every year. The genre has been enjoying a nice comeback in the past couple years, and it's beginning to feel like the early to mid 90s again. Jane Jensen is back where she belows with Grey Matter, and the recently completed Season One of Sam and Max was a bonafide hit both financially and critically (esp. the last 3 episodes). The DVD release of the game, with extras is coming out next month, so it will be opened up to a much larger audience.

Adventures still sell when they're good. Syberia sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and Dreamfall and Fahrenheit did well, too. One of the best looking titles coming out next year is A Vampyre Story which is being made by a lot of ex-Lucaarts employees who worked on many of the greatest adventures ever made.

The first adv for the Wii just got announced (a pirate themed game), and there are a few on the DS and more to come.

The genre never died, it's as strong as ever, and it's getting stronger by the month.