Adventure games are "hot" in Germany right now. The genre still reigns supreme in Europe it seems with certain titles selling hundreds of thousands of units(Runaway, Syberia, etc). However, your game is doing remarkably well, overall, in the rankings when compared with most adventures. Some of the more well known, much larger budget titles get horridly low scores. For example, "The Moment of Silence" scored I believe a 25% or maybe a 15% in PC Gamer US. I recall X-Play on G4 tearing it a new one, too. I own the game, and it does have issues, but it does not warrant such a score. It's a C+, maybe B- title.
Gamespot seems to have a reputation for being an adventure game hating Mecca, however I once did a quick search of scores for some of the "big boys" and here's what I found:
Quote:
The Longest Journey - 9.3
Dreamfall: The Longest Journey - 8.1
Grim Fandango - 9.3
Curse of Monkey Island(part 3) - 9.0
Escape from Monkey Island(part 4) - 8.1
Syberia - 9.1
Syberia II - 7.8
Runaway: A Road Adventure - 7.5
Myst - 8.9
Riven - 7.8
Myst III - 8.7
Myst IV - 8.5
Myst V - 7.9
Myst Uru - 7.8
The Last Express - 7.9
Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy - 8.4
The Moment of Silence - 6.4
Daemonica - 4.8
It all comes down to who reviews the game. I can't recall the game, but there was one review on there that was so bad and had so many opinions stated against the genre that it was readily apparent that the author absolutely hated the genre as a whole regardless of title. They did everything short of coming out and saying "I hate adventure games and here is my review." Hell, I think they did, and I think I even posted about it here. I know Adventure Gamer's forum users had a field day with it.
Is Daemonica selling well? Are you satisfied and do your returns warrant a new game? If you are allowed to, you should submit your statistics to the guy who runs http://www.gameproducer.net/ It features a very cool Sales Statistics section, and he is always on the lookout for new entries. A postmortem would be something to think about, as well.
Anyway, it's trendy to throw some hate at the genre because of a bandwagon effect created by young, uneducated(in regards to their experience with the genre...gaming started with Half-Life for some of these clowns) reviewers. However, it's "cool" and "hip" to love on classics like Grim Fandango, Curse of Monkey Island, Syberia, The Last Express, and The Longest Journey. They certainly deserve to be loved, but some of that love is as phoney as TUSC on a good day.
