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Sam & Max Sequel Canceled
Pluvius writes "A terse press release from LucasArts, the creator of classic adventure games such as Grim Fandango and the Monkey Island series, reveals that development on Sam & Max: Freelance Police, the planned sequel to Sam & Max Hit the Road, has stopped. Says LucasArts exec Mike Nelson, 'After careful evaluation of current market place realities and underlying economic considerations, we've decided that this was not the appropriate time to launch a graphic adventure on the PC.'" The International House Of Mojo fansite has some editorial comments [original URL] on this move, the second Sam & Max game cancellation in recent years, lamenting: "LucasArts has made a gigantic mistake."
This is a good example of everything that's wrong with letting corporate market-trend watchers make the decisions for an entertainment company.
It's always a good time to release a good game (by "good," I mean fun to play and judged by many to be worth their hard-earned money), no matter what the style or genre, or how many similar games might have failed recently. It's also never a good time to release a crappy game that nobody will want to play, no matter how hot the market for games if its ilk might be.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I'm here at work and I actually said "NOOOO" fairly loudly upon reading the headline.
SAMNMAX, the original game, was possibly the funniest game I've ever played in my life. LucasArts needs to tap into that old funny-as-hell adventure game vibe they used to make:
Maniac Mansion
Day of the Tentacle
Sam n Max Hit the Road
Grim Fandango
Monkey Island & Sequels
Every one of those games was money well spent. What the hell happened to adventure games, anyway? I mean, everyone SWORE they were dead years ago, but then we saw the latest Monkey Island and Grim Fandango prove EVERYONE wrong.
Hell, these games are so damn good that third parties have written game engines to play them on modern systems (see: scummvm)
Now, for the quotes:
Sam: "That's an awfully big rasp on that keychain"
Max: "Out of toilet paper?"
Max: "What about our car?"
Sam: "Wait for it"
*car drops out of the sky*
Max: "Why don't I get any inventory?"
Sam: "Where would you keep it?"
Max: "That's none of your damn business, Sam."
Sam (to the siamese-twin circus owners): "So, who makes your clothes, anyway?"
Twin 1: "We don't wear clothes"
Twin 2: "Our skin is green and naturally vinyl-like"
Max: "Good Lord! He-e's buck naked!"
Sam: "So are you"
Max: "Yea, but I'm cute, and marketable!"
this was not the appropriate time to launch a graphic adventure on the PC.
If not this, then what?!?
The genre is dying. And not as much because of less players, but because of less titles released. Young players don't know the tastes, humor, puzzles of Monkey Island style games, they would love them if they saw them - with gfx reaching nowadays standards (at least resolution), but there's no such games. The market is dying.
One thing that could save it would be a few daring, great titles that would shake the game world, attract people, revive the genre, bring profit to the authors. S&M could be one of them.
But it seems, it won't be the case. The time may be actually not appropriate - too late. And it won't be appropriate ever - the genre will die, because "nobody produces because nobody would buy", "nobody buys because nobody knows", "nobody knows because nobody sells or produces".
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After careful evaluation of current market place realities and underlying economic considerations, we've decided that this was not the appropriate time to launch a graphic adventure on the PC.
This may not really be the trend watchers. Its always worth remembering that 'corporate media drones' would employ the same wording if the real problem was that 'It was total trash and we killed it before this embarassment cost us any more money.'
I am not saying the game was trash - just pointing out that a press release is generally not a source of facts, just spin.
nevertheless I agree with you entirely. It is always a good time to release a good game. It is never a good time to release Deer Hunter 9.
- sarcasm is just one more service we offer -
There's more risk in doing something original, but more upside, too.
No marketing executive would ever suggest releasing a Beach Volleyball game incorporated into the a Japanese dating sim as the sequel to a pvp fighting game, but "Dead or Alive: Extreme Beach Volleyball", love it or hate it, was a massive hit with X-Box owners, and fairly cheap to put together (since the DOA3 engine could be adapted to handle the gameplay & animation, and they could steal the code-base from any of a hundred "H" games to handle the relationship management part.) Thankfully, the lead geeks at Team Ninja have earned a fair ammount of creative freedom from the success of their various other works, so a game like DOAX was possible.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Maybe you can read a little higher up there (assuming you sort on points) where it says "it's always a good time to release a good game, and never a good time to release a bad one." High Priced Marketing Teams are far from infallable, and the BS they're spewing on this one doesn't really sound like it makes any sense. Unless this game was turning out to be a complete turkey, there is no reason they shouldn't have released it. From the screenshots etc, I'd be hard pressed to expect it to suck. I'm with a lot of other people here who were waiting with open wallets to pay whatever they were gonna charge to get this as soon as it came out. Stupid Lucas Arts for ignoring that; this is a property that has more anticipation for it than just about anything else they could release as a game, and for a market segment they've ignored for a long time now. It's not like the same people are waiting anxiously for yet another star wars game.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
This is a huge disappointment, my favorite games have always been adventure games and the Lucasarts ones have always been the cream of the crop. To see this genre fail and falter wounds me. Doubly so, to see the razor sharp barbed wit of Steve Purcell swept under the carpet yet again. Sam & Max is the funniest comic/cartoon/game I've ever read/watched/played and I was waiting, wallet all a-quiver, to buy this one when it hit. Based on the latest stream of crap pouring from the Lucas media group's outlets, I can only presume George has fallen to the Dark Side, and is even now hatching a plan to slip Ewoks into Ep3.
I don't like this heavy trend Lucasarts has made towards console-based game design and development only. Some games were meant to be PC-only - the goofy controls in the latest Monkey Island installment should prove that. Mouse/kb > gamepad for these kind of games. And don't even get me started on FPS and RTS, both are tailor-made for mice. But going for the largest market is the corporately correct thing to do, so I guess us PC gamers will shiver in the cold winter of sterile gaming, brewing up our own indie adventure games like peasants boiling shoes for soup.
At least Syberia seems to have survived to breed another, even if it had to sell it's soul to the art world to do so. I personally found the game beautiful, aesthetically pleasing, and mind-numbingly boring. A sequel I think of with much the same enthusiasm I would have for a new coffee-table book of log-cabin paintings.
Bring back adventure games! Interactive Storytelling is not dead, it's just been forgotten in the back of the Entertainment Media toy chest, along with Reading Books and Playing Board Games. Email Lucasarts(webjedi@lucasarts.com) and rage against the dying of this light with me. Or just flame them. Or whatever, just make a stir to help make this country safe for domesticated animal crimefighters to thrive in once again.
"Not all who wander are lost" -- JRR Tolkien