> When a PnCA was too easy, you could see the ending after a few hours and when it was to difficult you''d not see it ever.

Is there no room for balance? And what is the optimal length?

For example, I point to two of my favorite PnCAs: "Sam and Max Hit the Road" (which is on PC Gamer''s *latest* top 50 list -- god I hate those), and "Full Throttle." Both were by LucasArts, both were in the glory days of 256-color VGA and 16-bit FM sound. Both used iterations of the classic SCUMM engine.

When I first played Sam and Max, I thought it was freaking great. I loved every second of it. Laughed out loud much of the time. Fantastic.

Now, when I play it, I realize how *long* the damn thing was. Particularly since I have an odd bug where the pointer turns into unintelligible mush on saved games after the system reboots between the session where I saved the game and the session where I loaded it. So, I pretty much would have to do it in one sitting. I try, and try, but can''t.

Full Throttle was awesome, and I remember really enjoying it, but the first time through, I thought it was way too short. I got through it in 8 hours, only resorting to the hints to get gasoline. (The only really tough puzzle in the game.)

Nowadays, that''s just about the right amount of time for mee -- a nice 8 hour game, done in three or four short sittings, feels good.

And what''s to prevent this from happening in other genres? Very, very little ... Except that in storyless gaming (Q3A, UT, etc.), all you need is multiplayer, a good community and great maps, thereby creating unlimited replay value.

I''m really digging American McGee''s Alice right now. I read an interview, where he talked about the non-value in replayability -- that Alice isn''t the kind of game you finish and say, "I wanna go again, I wanna go again!" Instead, you put it away, and maybe a few months or a year down the road, you remember how cool it was, and you pop it back in. Like a good book.

Why is it that Millionaire and Roller Coaster Tycoon each sell more than Quake 3? The non-core gamer. (For the record, I really dug RCT.) I think that we can do more for non-core gamers by starting to make our games more like a good book, and less like the current crop.

I, personally, am working on doing so.

I don''t think there are really any genre''s that are truly "dead", but insted they have spawned new and diffrent genres more applicable to the hardware of today.

Just think, would infocomm have settled for text only if graphics were availible? Would Kings quest have been done in cga color if 800x600x32bit color was availible? Probably not.

I do believe that the true gaming experience from mass market games has gone down over the past decade. SNES games are still some of my favotite titles, enduring, fun, and provide the most basic of interfaces so the gameplay is simple and intuative.

I thinnk there are alot of casual gamers out there that have a hankering for the old stlye games not for the cheezy graphics and simple sounds, but for the interface simplicity and depth of storytelling.