Video game design employment outlook

Weekly Poll Discussion

Ive decided to conduct a weekly poll from now on, with the only exception being polls I feel should really run for more time. You can expect polls to end on Fridays and new ones to start on the same day.

Last week’s question was “what setting do you prefer your adventure games to take place in?” The results are below:

Detective / Mystery                             2 votes (3%)
Horror                                                4 votes (7%)
Medieval / Fantasy                              9 votes (15%)
Sci-Fi / Futuristic                                12 votes (21%)
Don’t care as long as it’s good             30 votes (52%)

OK, so that was perhaps a bit predictable. In hindsight it would have been better to not have “Don’t care, as long as it’s good” as an option and instead force people to choose a genre. Anyway, it does suggest that the majority of readers don’t restrict themselves to any particular setting, which I see as a positive. It also might suggest that more people will enjoy playing Space Quest than Tex Murphy (or Mortville Manor for that matter), but the looseness of the poll doesn’t really give a clear picture. I’ll try to be more specific with future polls and not give too many “capture all” style answers.

This week’s poll is the first of what I assume will be many based around whether or not a particular game should be considered an adventure game. As I’m making my way through the agreed list of games for 1987, I’ve already started looking ahead to 1988. I’ve got a preliminary list of games to discuss shortly, but the one big question mark sits over a game called Captain Blood. It sure sounds like an interesting game and appears under numerous genres on various sites. I’m putting it to the readers to see whether I should play the game or not. Please be aware that for me not to play the game, option 2 will need to outnumber options 1 and 3 combined. This may result in me playing more games than not, but I don’t have a major issue with that. Please use this post to discuss the game’s merit / genre and use the poll when you’ve made your choice.

Just remember…my destiny…is in your hands!