Is "Investigative" the right word?

[grandexperiment]

There has been a lot of discussion about investigative games recently and their pitfalls. However, after some thought, I find myself beginning to wonder if "investigative" is the right word, in the sense that is the "investigation" is actually the core of the problem

Comments

[mashugenah]

I think that's a nice and valuable distinction Luke, between "exploring" and "investigating".

I think though that there's a small step missing: which is that investigation often doesn't yield anything interesting. One of the major irritations I've had during investigative games is spending 10 minutes talking to an intractable NPC who doesn't tell me anything useful, and wasn't fun to simply interact with. I also get frustrated with having to painstakingly describe how I'm searching an area without a useful result.

The problem isn't, as you say, the act of investigating. It's the stone wall you often find in some or other form when investigation is called for.

[grandexperiment]

I think it also helps when approaching a scenario, even more so that "making failure fun". Present the scenario as a problem to be explored and resolved, not one to be solved in any specific fashion.