What's up with King's Quest these days?

[Zeriel]

The more the Internet changes, the more it stays the same. This is why I love the RPGCodex--I don't know what it is about unrepentant douchebags, but they seem less inclined to go on administrative powertrips than the douchebags who are trying to hide the fact they are douchebags.

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

Mentioning abandonware and being banned. The worst about it is no communication between user and moderator. Just ding dong bannu and end of rhine. This only shows that even having such a small virtual power for some people, will make them think that they can be allowed to more things than others.

 

[Jaesun]

Mentioning abandonware and being banned. The worst about it is no communication between user and moderator. Just ding dong bannu and end of rhine. This only shows that even having such a small virtual power for some people, will make them think that they can be allowed to more things than others.

Piracy talk on these forums is always completely off-limits and can get you banned without warning. This offense absolutely also includes the most nebulous of allusions to "alternative sources".

http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6356

Their forum, their rules.

 

[Blackthorne]

Yeah, exactly. To be honest, though, heh - I didn't closely read the rules until I got banned. Though I thought my participation and character might have warranted a private warning.


Bt

 

[DalekFlay]

Their staff were actually super nice in a thread I got involved in over Puzzle Agent not working with my nVidia card. Some others had the same problem and we were all talked to in a way that wasn't for retards, then offered refunds if we didn't want to wait for a patch. Good experience for me.

Expecting an official company forum to be as unregulated as the 'dex is silly.

 

[Infinitron]

Yet they allow swearing, which is pretty unusual.

 

[oldmanpaco]

A very thick-skulled mod there named Jennifer banned me because talking about abandonware is "verboten".

Not that I'm trying to be sexist but doesn't is seem that the most hard-ass non-forgiving moderators are always women?

 

[Crooked Bee]

I dunno, that doesn't sound sexist, that sounds more like a compliment to me. But maybe that's your point.

 

[laclongquan]

Mods are just powertripped little personalities. That should be the default definition. You want it not applied to you, try hard to be the exception to the rules.

Codex mods, in that context, are indeed rare. I was forcefully reminded of that fact when I recently returned to a Vietnamese dictionary forum and get banned. Again. And permanently this time.

 

[laclongquan]

A very thick-skulled mod there named Jennifer banned me because talking about abandonware is "verboten".

Not that I'm trying to be sexist but doesn't is seem that the most hard-ass non-forgiving moderators are always women?

It's my experience also, once I bother enough to note the gender in the mod's profile.

 

[Sceptic]

The only real example I can think of in KQ6 is going into the labyrinth without the necessary items, but the guards give you a subtle clue if you don't have everything. They don't outright say "don't come in here" though.

Actually they do, and there's nothing subtle about it. First time you show up at labyrinth, if you have everything you get immediately whisked in, otherwise you CANNOT enter. IF you come back a 2nd time, THEN they will take you in and either give tha subtle quote or not, depending on if you have everything. Asking for them to outright tell you "don't come in" ON THE SECOND TIME is pure decline.

I've never gotten the best ending but I think you can screw that up by doing things improperly too.

There are a lot of little things that play into the ending. Going back and finding them all was a good part of the fun on my 2nd playthrough.

KQ7 is the only KQ without dead ends, I think.

Yeah, and it sucks. Not because of it, but eh.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Kings Quest: great concepts, shitty game design.

Fuck your cryptic zombie-death bullshit just because I ate the pie that was supposed to be for the Yeti.

 

[Aeschylus]

Kings Quest: great concepts, shitty game design.

Fuck your cryptic zombie-death bullshit just because I ate the pie that was supposed to be for the Yeti.

In any King's Quest game (or older Sierra adventure for that matter), if you did something that lost you an item and you didn't get points for it, odds are good that you screwed up. It's just how they made the games a challenge.

There were, however, some egregiously unfair puzzles in all Sierra games, designed mainly to force people to call their hint lines.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Kings Quest: great concepts, shitty game design.

Fuck your cryptic zombie-death bullshit just because I ate the pie that was supposed to be for the Yeti.

In any King's Quest game (or older Sierra adventure for that matter), if you did something that lost you an item and you didn't get points for it, odds are good that you screwed up. It's just how they made the games a challenge.

There were, however, some egregiously unfair puzzles in all Sierra games, designed mainly to force people to call their hint lines.

At least their DRM was more tolerable.

KQ 6 had an interesting one where you needed the manual to solve a puzzle. Wish more games did that: I miss those well written books... err... game manuals.

 

[jfrisby]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/05/17/telltale-on-weird-experiments-revisiting-comedy/

RPS: Oh, but speaking of more traditional sorts of games, you had King’s Quest there for a bit. Now you don’t. What happened? Did you just decide to not renew the license because you’re headed away from old-school-style adventures?

Bruner (Telltale): Yeah. And we’re still a little capacity-constrained. We are giant King’s Quest fans and I’m very sad that we’re not going to be able to work on it, but there are other giant King’s Quest fans in the world, and I think that King’s Quest is going to be in very good hands.
We have a new audience that we’re trying to serve. We’re trying to be very progressive about things. I think that it would be a disservice to King’s Quest to go out and reinvent it as something it’s not. It would be a disservice to a lot of what Telltale is doing right now to not try to do the kind of innovative things that we’re pushing boundaries with. I think King’s Quest is going to be in very good hands, though, and we’ll all be very happy with what we see from King’s Quest in the future.

Some level-headed thinking from TT. Sounds like something is happening somewhere with KQ, and they expect "happiness" to result.

 

[Aeschylus]

I can think of only three possible good results for the KQ license:
- It goes to Infamous Quests. Unlikely, as they are -- although awesome -- still unproven commercially.
- It goes to AGDI/Himalaya. Unlikely for the same reason as IQ.
- It somehow goes to a super-team of Josh Mandel and Jane Jensen. Unlikely because they're at separate places.

 

[Jaesun]

As long as Telltale are NOT involved it is a good thing..... hopefully.

 

[Blackthorne]

I can tell you, honestly, it's not us. We never pursued the King's Quest license commercially, and honestly, we're so good, they'd have to come to us with a check the size of Rhode Island and say "PLEASE. MAKE THIS GAME FOR US."

And, of course, we'd grant their wish. But, sadly, that hasn't happened yet!!!!


Bt

 

[gromit]

they'd have to come to us with a check the size of Rhode Island

I reckon it would be worth every shilling.

 

[taxalot]

What appeals does that license even have? Sure they are nice games, but the universe is just generic fanatsy fairy tale land. Graham, Alexander and people like are very BLAND characters. Is it just about the name?

 

[Blackthorne]

What appeals does that license even have? Sure they are nice games, but the universe is just generic fanatsy fairy tale la,d. Is it just about the name?

Yeah, mostly. Name brand recognition does amazing things. Like, honestly, someone could box up a piece of shit, put the name King's Quest on it, and at least several hundred thousand sycophants would by it - and many would praise it for its "nutty" texture.

Sure, you'd get the people that would say "Are you crazy? It's a piece of shit!" and then they'd get the backlash of "At least they gave us a new King's Quest! Oh Thank you Activision, for making all my dreams come true!!!"


Bt

 

[Redlands]

What appeals does that license even have? Sure they are nice games, but the universe is just generic fanatsy fairy tale la,d. Is it just about the name?

Yeah, mostly. Name brand recognition does amazing things. Like, honestly, someone could box up a piece of shit, put the name King's Quest on it, and at least several hundred thousand sycophants would by it - and many would praise it for its "nutty" texture.

Sure, you'd get the people that would say "Are you crazy? It's a piece of shit!" and then they'd get the backlash of "At least they gave us a new King's Quest! Oh Thank you Activision, for making all my dreams come true!!!"


Bt

This would explain why people are actually fans of The Silver Lining then.

But anyway, to answer taxalot's question, yes part of it's going to be nostalgia and brand recognition. A lot of people (myself included) have a lot of strong memories from playing King's Quest games and even if they're bland you grow attached to characters with whom you've shared possibly up to eight+ adventures' worth of frustration, etc. It's why Spoony and so many people got pissed off with what happened with Ultima, which is very similar to King's Quest in a lot of ways.

Part of it, though, is due to the fact it was very good at what it did... most of the time. Over half of the games had pretty open world for you to romp around in, trying to get as much treasure and solve all the puzzles you had as you could before getting more. The fact that it had blandish characters is kind of a strength: instead of being focused on stories - which is what adventure games turned into eventually, particularly after LucasArts started up - it was more focused on you, the player, doing things through Graham, etc.

Another reason for its appeal at the moment is that it's light-hearted, and while it's serious in-world it's not very serious. Grim realism, for characters and settings, at least, seem to be very popular and King's Quest is a very notable exception to this, and so will appeal to a lot of people who want something different.

 

[jfrisby]

Yeah, mostly. Name brand recognition does amazing things. Like, honestly, someone could box up a piece of shit, put the name King's Quest on it, and at least several hundred thousand sycophants would by it - and many would praise it for its "nutty" texture.

Sure, you'd get the people that would say "Are you crazy? It's a piece of shit!" and then they'd get the backlash of "At least they gave us a new King's Quest! Oh Thank you Activision, for making all my dreams come true!!!"

How did you manage to remake KQIII if you despise the games? Was it just a horrible experience?

I kind of think you can write off half the old Sierra games with that kind of "bland" description, if you want. I can't imagine taking the time to remake any of them, but there were good bits.

 

[Blackthorne]

J - I was being saucy and sarcastic - I love the classic Sierra King's Quest games. They're harmless, innocent fun. Really, they're fairy tales come to life - nothing so deep or life changing. The old Sierra games, at the time, were just creatively fun and different - I mean, I ran these games on Apple II's, and by PC XT 8088 - there wasn't any kind of notion of huge worlds or exploration at that time. They were fun, different, and full of many characters and surprises. We can look at them from this era, where pretty much any and everything can happen, and find them quaint - but there is a beauty in their simplicity and fun.

I do not despise them at all - making King's Quest III was one of the best experiences of my life, and I did half of it from a chair in dialysis - working on that silly game kept my spirits up, and I'll never forget that - nor will I forget being 10 years old, and getting the crap scared out of me when Manannan would appear and that little several note theme played!

My description was just poking fun of the simple fact that King's Quest fans are so deprived today, they'd buy the shit out of anything that had an "official" King's Quest name slapped on it, regardless of quality. I do hope whoever makes a continuation of the game makes a good game - a fun game. Something that we'd all enjoy - and not some piece of flaming shit that sells a shitload of copies and then disappears for years again because it sucked.

My personal opinion on the matter? Yeah - we could do an awesome King's Quest Game. It'd be fun, and it'd be more for us older players, but it would be accessible to some newer players - it'd look gloriously retro, and probably would only sell several hundred thousand copies - which, for a small group like us, would be amazing - but a major publisher like Activision wouldn't care. I'm really okay with that, because we're still making games with our own properties, but It would be cool to make a nice little retro style King's Quest game for fans. We could do this - so could AGDI/Himalaya or even PoS - and our games would probably be a lot of fun. I hope that whoever gets to do it would make game with as much love, reverence and respect as any of us would.

Bt