Histoire formelle du jeu d’aventure sur ordinateur (le cas de l’Amérique du Nord de 1976-1999)
This dissertation examines the formal evolution of adventure games from 1976 to 1999. It aims at understanding the genre’s emergence, its institution and transformations. The research is based on the parallel analysis of computer game magazine discourse and a large corpus of games. One of its main theses is that adventure games’ generic identity is founded on a relatively stable gameplay experience despite important formal variations. This experience is maintained by the reproduction of a general game design architecture initiated by Adventure in 1977. Specific historical models of the adventure game are the product of a negociation between developers’ efforts to adapt to changes in computer game ecology and the resistance of an established ludic architecture.  In the first chapter, the research project is justified considering the current state of knowledge pertaining to digital game history in general and adventure games in particular. The theoretical framework, methodology and source materials are also detailed. The second chapter offers a fresh look at Crowther and Woods’Adventure (1976; 1977) in terms of the network of cultural practices in which it was developed. This analysis helps mapping the outlines of the game’s videoludic architecture. The third chapter describes the genre’s « narrative turn » taking place in the early 1980s. It describes the various historical factors pushing the genre as a narrative vehicle by embedding structured pre-written stories. The context of adventure games’ transition from a textual to a visual representation – and its experiential consequences – is the subject of the fourth chapter on the genre’s « graphical turn ». The « ergonomical turn » described in the fifth chapter relates the institution of the « point & click » model to contemporary advances in human-computer interaction as well as to the maturation of video game design as an autonomous practice. The last chapter gives an account of adventure games’ heyday on the onset of the multimedia revolution through the interactive film and “Myst-like” forms, followed by the slowdown – or even standstill – of its formal evolution.
genre design Adventure game video game history computing Ludic architecture aesthetic experience