This blog post is less of a thesis with a conclusion and more like a cry for help. What in the world is an “action-adventure game?” We’ve talked so much about genres in this class that I’m almost upset at myself for not having brought this up in-person. We talk about genres as being blurry, and of being only important in the ways that they can be useful to us. But is action-adventure useful to us at all? Is it really? “Okay, so this game has action, and it has adventure.” This could be Super Mario Galaxy, or it could be Grand Theft Auto. Why? Who does this serve? It honestly feels like more of a marketing gimmick than an actual genre—”people like action, and people like adventure, so let’s really sell that there’s some action and adventure in this game.” And who ever sets out to create an action-adventure game, really? People set out to make puzzle games, open world games, survival games, and story-driven games—but action-adventure?
I suppose that in some sense action-adventure games could fall almost in the same category as how we think of, for example, summer blockbusters. Most of them try to be broadly appealing, exciting, and relatively accessible story/gameplay-wise. But whereas it’s easy to see how Mad Max: Fury Road and Terminator fall into some kind of continuum, how about Portal and Legend of Zelda? Undertale has action and adventure, is it just like Assassin’s Creed? I feel almost as though the category of “AAA” games is better defined than action-adventure, since at least it denotes a certain size with regard to the development team and budget.
Anyhow, all this is to say is that I don’t think action adventure games should be added to next year’s syllabus. Though really, maybe this whole quarter has been action-adventure games. Cookie Clicker…A Short Hike…Galatea…Could these not all have to do with action and adventure? Critical Action-Adventure Game Studies. Lovely quarter and happy finals, everyone!
