Ok, this whole talk about Das Schwarze Auge/The Dark Eye, due to the release of Blackguards -- and, as far as I'm concerned, a more interesting giveaway of Chains Of Satinav -- got me thinking on how the only The Dark Eye that I know about is this amazing point & click adventure game developed by Inscape and published by Time Warner back in 1995, based on some Edgar Allan Poe short stories, poems and general feeling and ambiance.

I'm a huge point & click adventure game junkie, and it's really sad, to me, that such a niche thing as pen & papers and their video game RPGs are all of a sudden considered "geeky cool", but point & click games -- unless it's any post-Walking Dead Telltale game, obviously... -- are always the "boring", "illogical" games that no one wants to play. I know this. But I'm also aware that, fortunately, there's a pretty decent point & click gaming community here on GOG, and I was wondering whether we could help, to the extent of our capabilities, get The Dark Eye published over here. For those who want to know more about the game, here is a link to the Home of The Underdogs' page on it.

It is a very experimental game, one of those games people angrily argue "it's not a game at all". But for those who like great literature (it even features the quirky voice talent of the late and great William S. Burroughs!), nice animation and some clever dialogue and search puzzles -- used to move the story along --, know it doesn't get much better than what The Dark Eye gives you.

So, if you want to see this gem available on GOG, start by heading to it's Community Wishlist game request page (currently with only 388 underwhelming votes), and click that vote button.

I'm also completely unaware of the legal status of the game, or whether GOG has publishing deals with any of its rights' holders, but I guess someone will enlighten us in a response to this thread. :P

Ha, when Chains of Satinav came out I assumed it was some kind of sequel to this game. I had no idea at the time it was based on a popular pen & paper RPG of the same name.

If there are any legal issues in reissuing the original Dark Eye I assume it would have to do with its namesake. With all these Dark Eye games just coming out of the woodwork as of late reissuing this one would probably cause confusion and perhaps some legal clashes. I dunno, I definitely would like to see this game reissued too though!

I always got confused on this as well. When I first saw that GOG had a game called The Dark Eye, I was excited. Then I was disappointed. Then I got excited again when I realized it was still my kind of game. =P

Same here. I hadn't heard about the German "The Dark Eye" before joining GOG, and even here I first thought people were talking about that adventure game. "Das Schwarze Auge"... sounds like some European gay pr0n flick to me.

The Dark Eye adventure game has a special meaning to me, because over a decade ago I had read so good things about it and wanted it so bad that I went ahead to buy it overseas, from US Ebay (I couldn't find it anymore in any local stores here, even though I remembered seeing it on some store shelves).

The thing is, I won the auction and ordered it in early September, 2001. The WTC hits occurred just after the seller had mailed the game to me, so naturally it got stuck in the US mail system (I think everything was halted then in US). It was of course a bit hard for me to question the person about the game considering what had happened in NYC. I was wondering whether I'd ever get the game, so I was considering pulling back the credit card payment.

Anyway, the game eventually arrived to me without a scratch. It was even shrink-wrapped, I think the person had many mint copies of it and was selling them one by one (he started another bid for the same game after I got mine, maybe it was some store inventory).

The real kicker is that I haven't even installed, let alone played, the game yet. It is still there, just waiting for its turn. Some day...

What are you talking about? The overwhelming success of Tim Schafer's point-and-click kickstarter campaign preceded any attempts to reinstate (semi-)turn-based pen-and-paper RPGs. And the company who's created this specific niche RPG grew by making and selling widely acclaimed point-and-click adventures. Actually, the first thing they did with the P&P franchise was to turn it into a P&C series (Satinav, Memoria). IMO, neither pen & paper RPGs nor point-and-click adventures are "the new cool", they have always had their fanbases. For a huge P&C adventure game junkie, your view seems pretty limited, apparantly ignoring the success of Daedalic, Wadjet Eye and every other adventure game company just so you can make a derisive comment about Telltale's approach.

That being said, I liked the Dark Eye adventure game based on Poe's works, too, and would welcome its release on GOG!

I also am a fan of the point and click adventure and like the quality of games available here on GOG. I would like to see others but understand the licensing issues. Rihanna:Curse of the four Branches is one I would love to see here.

Keep pointing and clicking!

You could say that, and you'd be somewhat right. But I'm still entitled to my opinion. As much as Double Fine Adventure/Broken Age was hugely successful and arguably "kickstarted" Kickstarter for video games, you shouldn't forget it is a Tim Schafer game. The man who created Full Throttle, Grim Fandango and Psychonauts and more great games surely has enough nostalgia power with different generations of people to get away with funding a game. Besides, I actually don't see it being talked about non-stop in video game sites or forums, despite the positive reviews it got and the huge community support it apparently had. I fail to see what was it that I said that made you go on this "righteous quest" of correcting me... I never said anything about Daedalic or Wadjet Eye... if I were to say something, it would be "thank you for making/publishing some of my favourite point & click titles of the last decade". I also have nothing against RPGs, in fact, I own several classic CRPGs, whether on disc or in their digital GOG format, and I don't feel "betrayed" by Daedalic for making a tactical RPG out of a franchise that started out as a pen & paper RPG in the first place. I just happen to prefer point & click adventure games over RPGs.

When it comes to "cool geeks" being portrayed in film or TV shows, pen & paper RPGs and their video game counterparts are definitely part of their supposed culture, and point & click games are not. Since, in many ways, "geek is the new cool", and you have stuff like Geek Week and Geek Pride, pen & paper and video game RPGs are, indeed, part of the "new cool", whereas point & click games aren't. It's as simple as that. I also speak from experience, mind you, as when I was a kid -- and being a geek was most certainly not cool, back then -- my "true" geek friends were very protective of what was "theirs", and they never let me play any Baldur's Gate or Planescape: Torment, just because I was "that guy who played point & click games" and, thus, I wasn't "nerd enough" to play their games. I grew up listening to a lot of crap out of my fondness for point & click titles, how people miss the point in them, how they aren't "really games, just some sort of interactive novel", how the puzzles seem so illogical and far-fetched, how playing a point & click adventure is so boring, and so forth.

Regarding Telltale, you're probably right, I took at jab at them and I shouldn't, but it's just that... they annoy me. I like The Walking Dead series by them just fine, but is it the best point & click adventure out there, right now? Absolutely not. Like you said, Wadjet Eye, Daedalic and a few others have developed and published point & click games that are way better than The Walking Dead. I think most of the success Telltale got from that series had more to do with people jumping in the zombie/Walking Dead franchise bandwagon than anything regarding the games' (undeniable) quality. And what annoys me is that they now are seen as the saviours and the pinnacle of point & click game development. That could be a good thing, sure, that could mean people would gain interest in point & click games, but the fact is they don't, unless it's made by Telltale. They'll gobble anything Telltale throws in their plate because -- hey! -- it's the guys that made The Walking Dead, "the best point & click adventure game EVER", while the Daedalics, the Wadjet Eyes and the Double Fines of this world keep releasing critically acclaimed games that no one plays, just because they're not Telltale.

Well, I'm not expecting to change anyone's perspective, I just wanted to clarify those things you pointed out. Now that I'm done, I hope we can focus more on Inscape's The Dark Eye and less on criticizing people for their points of view.

The RPG kickstarters profit from the same kind of nostalgia and big names though as Tim Schafer's (e.g. Brian Fargo, Chris Avellone, PS:T, Fallout, Baldur's Gate, and even The Dark Eye has a cult following because of Realms of Arkania and Drakensang). And who knows, the overwhelming popularity of The Walking Dead might be due to it being based on a popular comic and the existence of a popular TV series about it, all of which have "the new cool" zombie survival in it, not necessarily because of Telltale and their adventure game design.

Anyway, it just sounded like you were about to propose an opposition between "cool" niche RPGs and neglected P&C adventures and I felt like challenging that opposition as a subjective construction. Apparantly my criticism was a bit blown out of proportion and in written communication words can easily appear more aggressive than they were actually meant. I certainly didn't mean to attack you personally, and I didn't even mean to say you're not supposed to take a jab at Telltale, as I myself don't like them very much either, although partly for different reasons. So if it came across as a "righteous quest" then I'm guilty of the very thing I intented to criticize and I apologize. Desculpas!

Obviously your personal experience with the genres is quite different than mine, therefor it stands to reason that our perspectives would be different. Personally, I think it's a good thing that P&C adventures are not considered as "geeky", because I don't trust labels and IMO the media aren't becoming more friendly towards niche cultures but are just discovering them as a rich source for new clichés and wacky fashion ideas. And I think P&C adventures don't fit their label that well precisely because they are more accessible and less complicated than P&P RPGs (which doesn't mean less interesting at all!), and because their fans might be less vocal and elitist about their genre of choice. (As a side note, I've always thought the idea of an "exclusive geek or nerd club" excluding people who are not "geeky or nerdy" enough quite silly.)

To make a long story short and get back on topic, The Dark Eye (1995) can and should be played by everyone, not just by "cool P&C geeks"! :)

I remember this one fondly, I loved the claymation - I still got it somewhere.

Regarding it coming to GOG - well, both Home of The Underdogs and Wikipedia list Time Warner Interactive as the publisher, but Moby Games lists Expert Software, Inc. as the publisher of The Dark Eye. Also according to Moby Games, Expert Software was acquired by Activision in 1999.

So, there's hope?


Sources:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dark-eye
http://www.mobygames.com/company/expert-software-inc