Game Design: Theory & Practice- P14: My earliest recollection of playing a computer game was when I stumbled upon a half-height Space Invaders at a tiny Mexican restaurant in my hometown. I was perhaps six, and Space Invaders was certainly the most marvelous thing I had ever seen, at least next to LegoLand. | Chapter 18 Interview Jordan Mechner 368 very good the story lines were kind of arbitrary and contrived the characters and the plot just didn t stand up in terms of the kind of story that I would want to see in a movie or a novel. So with Last Express I wanted to do a game that would have what I saw as the qualities that were missing from most of the adventure games that were out there. So as a player I guess I have to assume my share of the guilt for not supporting the adventure game market. I think I underestimated the degree to which the games market had been stratified by the different genres. You had people out there who saw themselves as action game players as strategy game players as role-playing game players or as adventure game players. I never shopped for games that way but I guess over a period of a few years there in the early 90s even computer game publications started to stratify games according to genre. So did publishers so did shops and I guess I didn t see that coming. So you don t have any ideas about why the adventure game market dried up Well I can only look at my own experience as a player. I enjoyed playing adventure games back in the Scott Adams days and then I kind of got bored with them. I think adventure game makers need to stop asking Where did the market go I think the question is Why do people no longer find these games fun to play Maybe it s something about the games themselves. Your first two games Karateka and Prince of Persia were both solo efforts where you did all of the designing writing programming and even drew the art. How do you compare working with a large team on Last Express to working by yourself It s a lot more exciting and rewarding than working alone because you have the chance to work collaboratively with a large team of talented people who are really dedicated and who excel in their own specialties. It was one of the most thrilling experiences of my Karateka Team-Fly Chapter 18 Interview Jordan Mechner 369 .
