In retrospect, it's hard to imagine how anybody thought this kind of game would be fun or enjoyable.
Everybody in the game industry got so caught up in the fact that they could produce video-heavy titles that they never stopped to consider the fact that... almost literally nobody enjoyed playing these things.
All I can think is that...
1. Myst's massive success showed that there was a market for this kind of, uh, cinematic non-real-time puzzle game?
2. There was a notion that this sort of game would appeal to "regular folks", who outnumbered "hardcore gamers" by roughly a zillion to one.
3. Perhaps everybody involved knew that these games weren't very fun, but there was a sense that they had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get in on the ground floor of what might have been "the next big thing," akin to getting in on the ground floor of Hollywood in the 1920s or somesuch. In other words, that these primitive early titles were a necessary stepping stone to producing something better.
One very minor thing I'll say in defense of these FMV games is that they were generally played on small (think: 13-17") CRTs. The small screen size masked some of the terrible video qualities, relative to viewing them today on our giant 1080p/4K screens. But they still looked pretty bad back in the day. It was quite obvious that most/all of these titles were shot by amateurs in front of a green screen.
I was 13 in 1996. Friends of my parents' asked me if & which computer game would I want as a birthday present.
I said yes, and that I wanted Command & Conquer. We went through a couple iterations where they brought some FMV point & click adventure game and asked if I would like that one or if they should go to the shop to replace it with another game.
After a few tries (every time I said "no, I want a game called Command & Conquer") I despaired and accepted their latest attempt.
Everybody in the game industry got so caught up in the fact that they could produce video-heavy titles that they never stopped to consider the fact that... almost literally nobody enjoyed playing these things.
All I can think is that...
1. Myst's massive success showed that there was a market for this kind of, uh, cinematic non-real-time puzzle game?
2. There was a notion that this sort of game would appeal to "regular folks", who outnumbered "hardcore gamers" by roughly a zillion to one.
3. Perhaps everybody involved knew that these games weren't very fun, but there was a sense that they had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get in on the ground floor of what might have been "the next big thing," akin to getting in on the ground floor of Hollywood in the 1920s or somesuch. In other words, that these primitive early titles were a necessary stepping stone to producing something better.
One very minor thing I'll say in defense of these FMV games is that they were generally played on small (think: 13-17") CRTs. The small screen size masked some of the terrible video qualities, relative to viewing them today on our giant 1080p/4K screens. But they still looked pretty bad back in the day. It was quite obvious that most/all of these titles were shot by amateurs in front of a green screen.