Graphic adventures demise rant

Before I start posting reviewes of graphic adventures, I find myself forced to write a state of the art, plus my opinion on the genre's slow death. Please, indulge me.

As you should know, in the 80s and early 90s, adventure games reigned supreme in the world of videogames. Their narrative had no equal, as did their ability to treat serious subjects and make people ponder about them. But, as the century approached its end, the genre lost its following and energy.
It is a recognized sport among adventure fans to look for culprits of this decline, and everyone has their favourite. I like to blame:

1. The lack of evolution in the genre.
2. The inability to properly embrace the new technologies and platforms (partially related to #1).
3. The resignation of players and critics, who in the end welcomed almost any new graphic adventure, without regards to actual quality, sinking the standard for the genre and scaring new players away.

Graphic adventures were built from three basic tasks: pick object (or person), use object (or person) and talk to person (or object), all of them poorly executed for decades. Pixel hunting, objects indistinguisible from the scenary, endless conversations of no interest to game progression, cumbersome inventory systems and outdated movement mechanisms were the rule.
From time to time, a developer would discover a way to improve one of these (Alone in the Dark hybridation, Myst's lack of inventory, Gabriel Knight 3's navigation), and implement it in a succesful game. But other designers would rarely include other's ideas into their new game. Copying was not well regarded and, if it were, modifying the engine a studio had used for several titles was not that easy and/or economically viable.

But this blaming is of little relevance in the real world. What is important is not answering "why did graphic adventures dissappear", but "why did most gamers not care at all". You see, people still bought games, even bad ones, by the millions, but adventures only got a waning portion of that cake, no matter how good or praised they were. How can you explain that?
What had made graphic adventures shine over other genres was a mix of their depth in story, characters and humour. Another feature was their relative simplicity, when compared to space shooters, platformers, etc. Anyone with minimum computer expertise could pick up a graphic adventure and click around the screen, select verbs, objects, people and laugh for a while. Puzzles also were part of the magic formula: solving them felt great, and telling your friends when they were stuck was even better.

But these advantadges slowly faded away via the magic of genre merging. Story telling in other genres was improving, so they could talk about something apart from alien invasions, or about alien invasions with actual characters and plot (well, not that often). And there were also puzzles all around; usually the simplest possible puzzles, just fetch quests or box pushing, but that was what most graphic adventures were about, in the end. Controls also went through a standardization process, so more people were able to play the latest shooter without reading a 50 pages manual.
To this point, graphic adventures should still stand the fight in equal terms, right? So all games had simple puzzles and some kind of story; the other genres's action was compensated with graphic adventures' deeper stories and rewarding puzzles. What kept them behind?
There was, unfortunately, another thing adventures did that most other genres did not dare to: annoy players to no end with weird puzzles, which stopped all progress until the solution was found. One single puzzle of this nature would make a huge percentage of the players leave the game and the genre after 30 minutes of desperation. The joys of achieving something were simply not worth that much effort, even more when a similar feeling could be obtained in easier games.
Of course, this has ended being a problem too in other genres, as their fandom developed and games started targeting only that population. Operation Flashpoint, for example, was too much for most shooter fans. But Flashpoint was a niche inside the so-called FPS family; there were nicer or easier options out there. But graphic adventures, after decades of limited evolution, were done by and for the hardcore fans, automatically alienating anyone who did not know and accept the rules.

Thus, players looked for their puzzle solving joys in games which actually provided them. They avoided a great deal of frustration, sacrificing some depth, but adding strategy, action or whatever. Only the most stubborn remained, and although some steps were taken to stop the leak, the graphic adventure boat still sunk slowly.

There are signs of recovery, however, coming from independent and old school developers, which I hope will bring the genre back to a respectable position. But developers, reviewers and gamers must make sure they keep a quality threshold below which noone goes. The only way the genre will remain viable is by getting new players into good graphic adventures.