On the Topic of “Real Gamers”
“I dunno, it’s not even that big of a deal. It’s for, like, certain people. You probably wouldn’t want to play it.”
That’s what I always tell people, if they ask about the point-and-click adventure game I made back in 2012 — and re-released in 2016. (And, no, this article is not some ploy to get you to play my free shareware game.)
It was a fan game, set within LucasArts’s Maniac Mansion universe. Like, when I say this aloud to myself, yes, it sounds ridiculous: I, as a grown-ass person, basically made an adventure game fanfic.
As a kid learning how to read, though, I soaked up these point-and-click adventure games. I loved the storytelling, the puzzles, the humor, the characters. I learned how to navigate MS-DOS as a 5 year-old, just to enter that sweet
C:\>cd\sierra\kq4.exe
and hear my Soundblaster 16 sound card fire off that famous Sierra fanfare.
And, you can imagine, as a female gamer coming of age in the early Internet era, it wasn’t exactly an inclusive space for us. If I spoke to my (mostly male) peers about video games, my interests were not considered valid, unless they had a AAA studio attached, or fell into the category of “FPS” (First-Person Shooter) or “RTS” (Real-Time Strategy).
And if you’ve ever voice-chatted in a game lobby of any sort, it’s not uncommon for women (and otherwise underrepresented populations) to be belittled, patronized, verbally abused and sexually harassed.
I tried to withhold my interest in video games, otherwise I’d become fetishized as some “gamer girl” trope created for the male gaze.
Despite the implicit and explicit messaging around my validity as a “real gamer,” and even as my video game diversity branched outward, I still felt this awe and amazement whenever I allowed myself to play a really solid adventure game.
So, as a grown person, when I learned about Adventure Game Studio, and how approachable it was to script a game, I couldn’t wait to try it out and write my own story. It took me 3 years of off-and-on commitment to it, and finally, the game was released. I figured it was a very niche genre that no one would really “get” — maybe I’d get a couple of downloads (mostly courtesy downloads from my family). I’d move on to the next thing, because, hey, this wasn’t a real game, just some shameful point-and-click a̶b̶o̶m̶i̶n̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n thing I should abandon.
That is, until someone from Italy — Paolo, a super-fan within the Maniac Mansion space — approached me about translating the game. I thought he was pulling my leg, but he showed me a portfolio of the fangame translations he and his team had worked on. The game eventually earned light recognition from a European LucasArts fansite, and gained some sort of award, which I can’t remember the title of.
So, with 2 fans in the US, and now 10 more fans in Europe, I felt like the David Hasselhoff of free Maniac Mansion adventure games.
And that’s it.
That’s where the story ends, in some ways.
Paolo and I still send each other yearly holiday cards. However, my ability to devote time to coding outside of work absolutely plummeted as my career grew, and especially during the early childhood years with my two kids. My scarce free time was dedicated to silly conquests like “showering” and “eating.”
Now, as the kids get older, I find more time to get back into playing video games again for leisure. But, although the last 20 years has seen a lot of changes with respect to diversity and representation within the video game industry, I still find myself downplaying my interest in adventure games and puzzle games.
These types of games are usually considered more “casual,” or “not for real gamers,” or “too feminine.” But frankly, these gendered attitudes towards certain game genres completely devalues the demographic that enjoys them.
It wasn’t until last week that I discovered — and put a name to — my own personal hang-ups and internalized shame around my enjoyment of point-and-click adventure games. You see, YouTube knows I like speedruns, and decided to send me a little treat in my sidebar: this History of King’s Quest 5 Speedrunning.
I chuckled to myself and thought, Who the hell speedruns an adventure game?
And then I clicked on it. Duh.
And I found myself entranced. I moved on to the History of King’s Quest 6 Speedrunning.
With this particular game (KQ6), a new member (“UrQuan”) entered the community, and took KQ6 speedrunning to the next level. And folks were in awe of his skills. A streamer, JakiJo, shared her perspective, stating:
It was very humbling, as well. But also really exciting to have other runners for this game that I loved so much, and was so desperate for other people to run it, to finally have somebody really, kind of, like, take the reins and turn this from my “silly little point-and-click side hustle thing” into a very legitimate, skillful speedrun— UrQuan made the difference there. He made it real.
I was thrilled to see some female representation in these speedrun videos, but I was alarmed to hear that the language around point-and-click adventure games as a genre hasn’t changed much — even within the community itself.
Her words said more to me than just how good UrQuan’s speedrunning skills were. It also reflected to me how so many of us in this community tend to downplay our interest in this “silly little” genre. And, importantly, it illuminated how my own language around my beloved game genres needs to change.
For a while, in the early 2000s, adventure games were more of a dying art (for a lot of reasons). Now, with so many indie studios and reduced barriers to game publishing, there has been a wonderful resurgence, and I’m proud to say I’m excited to see where the genre goes.
At the end of the day, my journey through adventure games reminded me, once again, that language does matter: both the words that we direct outward, as well as the words we internalize.
But you don’t have to listen to me — I’m just a lady in Missouri who coded a free adventure game once.
