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Leisure Suit Larry's Maker On Wedgies v. Bullets
simoniker writes "Al Lowe, the creator of lounge lizard Leisure Suit Larry, has been talking about his comeback game with new developer iBase Studios, Sam Suede, asking why games nowadays are too violent, and revealing of his new title: "there's going to be guards, but instead of slitting their throats, you'll give them a wedgie." He also asks: 'Let me put this way, the shelf is full of racing games and shooters, RPGs and action games. Where are the comedies?' Well, where are they?"
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Last genuinely funny games I played were the Monkey Island series of games. So this guy is certainly speaking a lot of truth.
Leisure Suit Larry games were never funny, mildly titilating if you're a 13 year old maybe, but funny? No. So I'm not sure how qualified he is to talk about making funny games.
I think many nerds will think this game is offensive. I mean, they are the main victims of wedgies...
Seems like blatently dangerous and illegal activity is endorsed by the industry (shooting people; blowing things up; etc) - while perfectly legal stuff (wasn't the sex in the GTA mod consentual?) ends up being shunned and forbidden.
What kind of lesson is that?
If I were making the rules; game rating should he based on the illegality of the activities in the game -- if there's murder or similar - keep it away from my kids. If it's minor misdemeanors (like this new game sounds like) that's better.
Funny Games
Metal Arms - Glitch in the System
Conker's Bad Fur Day
The Bard's Tale (PS2, XBox, PC)
Metal Gear 3 - Snake Eater (very comical commentary, involving a box)
These are just off the top of my head.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
Comedy is hard.
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
Comedy is hard,
blowing shit up is (relatively) easy.
A joke is only really funny the first couple times you hear it, but often killing the enemy gets even more fun the more times you do it. So naturally they make the games you'll play over and over.
I remember playing LSL on my Apple//c many years ago. While it was not exactly a wholesome game I'd give to my kids, it is a stark contrast to modern day, Grand Theft Auto's Hot Coffee. LSL was almost a clean dirty.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
The whole "quest to get laid" was fantastic, and the censored bar moving up and down was pretty damn clever.
Sure, some of the jokes were a bit hacky, but all in all I thought the game was clever and the whole meta-commentary ("it's hard to find the right girl, and when you do she steals all your money") was pretty clever as well.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
...but maybe that says more about me than it does about the game...
Corporate Jenga: You take a blockhead from the bottom and you put him on top...
If the definition of "comedy" being used is "includes wedgies", I think I'd rather not have any "comedy games", thanks.
Now, a game that aimed at a grown-up audience and had a sophisticated sense of humor, that I could get into. But "sophisticated" is not the first word that jumps to mind when I think of Lowe's portfolio, so that's probably too much to hope for.
Read my blog.
The LSL games were big hits if they sold 20,000 units. Games today have to sell millions to be considered sucessful. Targetting the larger market means they aim for the lowest common denominator.
Those Sierra adventure games were and still are my favourite games.
In *my* idea of a cool James Bond game, you would be faced with all the same sorts of adventure-game intrigue and scenarios that you would expect. However, as the player, you had a choice of solutions to each problem, and you would select from different famous portrayals of James Bond to use them. You could pick any Bond actor you wanted for any problem, but the methods used would be quite different depending on that choice.
Wine and dine and charm the lady? Of course, everyone would pick Sean Connery's Bond for that one. But maybe you could detonate the truck as you jumped over it with a motorcycle, so switch to the action/adventure Timothy Dalton. If you could just gain computer access through the use of a one-liner retort that's crisper than a tux and dryer than a martini, well, Pierce Brosnan seems more adept at that sort of thing. And if you want to see how clumsy buffoonery and cheap cable-crane stunts can serve Her Magesty's international showdowns, we all know that's the only way Roger Moore won't disappoint.
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The first person that makes a game geared toward the middle school crowd that involves roaming around the school (of course, the usual stereotypes involved) and doing stuff like that to teachers,students, and staff members will make a fortune.
Destroy All Humans, violent? yes, but still funny.
Spyder
I think comedy games lost ground partly due to the development of those trigger-happy genres, which are in turn becoming more complex and diverse to survive (well, some FPS/action games are, others are still bang-bang run-run festivals.) It seems to be about the same as traditional Adventure games, look at what happened to the classics like King's Quest; they tried a 3rd-person hack-and-slash and it flopped. Maybe they need to do what the game in the article is doing, well, at least the idea (wedgies just aren't hip anymore, though maybe more subtle humor will round it out.)
There is an interesting point in the article, which I never considered since I never really played the Leisure Suit games, but he says something about using hints of sex as a way of getting people to try the game. Thinking about it, at least there was a believeable expectation for something like that in the game, at least more than most game advertising these days (box cover + sexy woman + car = never appears in the game.)
The reason why there are no comedy games on the shelf is simple, IMHO. It's because they offer 0 replay value. When was the last time you picked up Leisure Suit Larry for an additional play-through, or any other game that does its best to be funny? Now, when was the last time you decided to go through the Halo campaign again, on another difficulty level perhaps? Granted, Monkey Island has a lot of replayability - but that's because it's such a superbly made action adventure game that it's impossible not to enjoy it another time. But it's not for the humor. The nature of comedy is such that it gets old quickly, and innovation is everything. Racing games and FPS's don't suffer from these problems.
I'll tell you where. In your pants! It's a fucking joke down there!
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
Where are the new Sam'n'Max games?
Full Throttle?
Maniac Mansion/Day of the Tentacle?
Monkey Island?
Lucas isn't good for much any more, but he's got this IP in his vault and isn't doing a fucking thing with it. Instead he's producing uber-violent, xenophobic, pornomythic rubbish for the big screen and grubbing for tie-ins.
I know they're aimed at kids, but I thought the Spy Fox series by Humongous Entertainment was very funny, nice spoof on spy movies. "A spy without gadgets is like a shopping cart without a broken wheel," or words to that effect.
In the Megazeux GCS community, comedy games are a pretty big deal. Not only are they easy to make, they're also deeply satisfying for players of all genres and fandoms. This is because no matter what kind of game you prefer to play - FPS, RPG, RTS - there's one genre everyone can relate to - WTF.
Case in point: Inmate 2993's 'Cans' series - nearing its tenth birthday - is one of the most popular and widely known games to ever be made for Megazeux. These games, especially 'Cans' and 'Cans Episode One: Special Edition' are considered must-haves, alongside the other classics of Megazeux such as Adlo - an exceptionally well done platformer - and Bernard the Bard - an RPG considered to be the 'best game of all of Megazeux'. Guess what genre the 'Cans' series falls into?
Comedy.
Comedy games don't get much attention these days outside of their little niche. That's because they rarely feature the adrenaline-pumping action and pretty colors that are required to achieve any semblance of popularity in today's gamer culture, and forget getting the game published and sold in stores without a big name like 'Leisure Suit Larry' behind it. That doesn't mean comedy gaming is irrelevant, it's just underrated. I personally like a game I can both enjoy playing and get a good laugh out of, and if spending time with the Megazeux community has taught me anything, it's that I'm hardly alone.
Anyone remember Planetfall? Or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Hilarous through-and-through, but many other of Infocom's interactive fiction games had particularly funny moments. Of course, interactive fiction lends itself to humor more than most types of games.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Most of the enemies in SIN Episodes die in extremely funny ways, yelling stuff like: Aargh my legs! or: it burns, it burns!
If you score a headshot in GTA vice city the head disappears and the victim walks on squirting blood, hilarious!
In Carmagueddon you can chase grannys and score "style" bonuses if you made nice streaks of blood on the tarmac very inventive!
In Half Life 2 you can learn about physics by playing around with a sawn trough corpse hanging from a tree; both fun and educational!
Like how he'd get sick and turn colors (eventually plaid) and die if you slept with the hooker and didn't use a rubber. That was funny.
Not only was this scene funny, but playing as a 13-year-old it really helped drive home the point that condom use was a good idea.
I'm not saying it is the duty of video games to teach sex ed, nor am I one of those "video games are the root of child violence" people, however, I certainly see value in this sort of thing. Speaking for myself, I have learned stuff from all sorts of goofy sources, and more often than not, entirely accidentally.
barack to the future?
Why just go for one or the other when you can have both! I haven't played Postal2, but Postal was pretty darn funny
Are you a troll, or an idiot? Free Speech means the government is not allowed to censor you. It doesn't mean someone has to give you a soapbox.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Graphic adventure games were replaced by first person shooters because first person shooters were the summer blockbuster movies of the game universe. They don't need a compelling story, just a lot of explosions and special effects.
The other day I challenged my nephews to play and finish the old Monkey Island games. They have Game Cube and Playstation 2 consoles at home.
They got hooked immediately. 15 year old games with outdated VGA graphics got the attention of my nephews. They have now moved on to the Quest for Glory series. (Hooray for dosbox and scummvm)
There needs to be a graphic adventure game revival. The games don't need to be the summer blockbusters of the game industry. They will make enough money just by filling a gap that exists in the computer game section.
You've got it backwards. AGS is gratis (free as in beer), not libre (free as in speech).
By the way, there are also Free implementations of AGI and SCI available, as well as a development studio for making SCI games.
This poo is cold.
When the first Leisure Larry game was published, I was working as a programmer for a software house. The game was awesome, especially because it had EGA graphics. But the funniest thing about the game happened just after we got it, when we had a big opening of our new office and all our biggest clients were there. One of the most nerdy of my colleagues used the game to demonstrate the awesome powers of modern PCs to our clients, who were all huddling around his PC while he was explaining to them: "...so there is this hooker, see, who I want to fuck, but first I must get a condom..." No idea if this influenced future business.
Planned comedy is very hard to pull off unless you've already got a lot of skill in setting up jokes and comedic timing. Unfortunately, those aren't skills people acquire in the normal day-to-day of game development. You really need someone who developed their comedic skills on their own and also loves and understands games.
Can you imagine, with all the rushed art and programming that goes on in game development, how well humor would fare? Not well. You may have a joke that works well with the development team for some reason, but just completely falls flat on the audience. In the end, the publisher is going to want the game done and not really worry about whether it's funny or not.
The best example of a funny game recently is Psychonauts, by Double-fine. The dialog in that game was from Tim Schafer (Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle) and Erik Wolpaw (from Old Man Murray - http://www.oldmanmurray.com./ The game was often delayed and was even cut from Microsoft's lineup because Schafer was hard to work with. It was eventually released by Majesco and despite lot's of great reviews, it wasn't exactly a smash hit. The humor is top-notch, but in the end, if people don't like the game and it doesn't have a huge publisher backing it, it's not going to sell.
Like everyone else, I only discovered this game long after its re-release into the bargain bins. I didn't know it had a cult following, but I understand why - such a carefully constructed, subtle, humourous piece of work. If you like atmosphere and mystery, this game is a lot of fun. Go buy it for $5 or whatever it's going for these days, and be a travel agent in the Land of the Dead!
Don't forget No One Lives Forever, where the object is mostly to sneak around, since you're a spy, or dispose of the baddies quietly. It's worth it to sneak around too- the guards in various places have conversations to alert you to their presence and such. The conversations are hilarious.
Two of them inside one of the "evil hideous" discuss how one's brother has gone into the business of kitchen remodelling, and the other asks for the brother's number as his wife has been nagging him to have something done about theirs.
Another trio of baddies earlier in the game wax philosophic about how "there just aren't any truly evil organizations anymore", and of course, at some point, there's a discussion involving how they don't get any respect. "Do this, shoot that. I tell you..."
It was great. In almost any other game, you just shoot the guards and bad guys. But in NOLF, you actually kinda feel for them. They're just regular Joes, wondering about which HMO plan to sign up for, renovating their house, not really liking their job, etc. Well, except that they have guns and they'll kill you if they see you.
I know there's a sequel out..I hope it's as good as the first one.
Please help metamoderate.
There's an underlying assumption at work here that games that are comical are inherently non-violent. When asked how his new title, Sam Suede, will stack up against the "Grand Theft Autos" of the world, Lowe comments:
I think the easiest comparison would be that where action games today have violence as their currency, we have humor. So picture every place that you would shoot somebody or slice somebody open or something else. Instead, put in a laugh there. That's what we're going to do. So there's going to be guards, but instead of slitting their throats, you'll give them a wedgie. And instead of conversations with long cutscenes, we'll have humorous dialogue with conversation trees, which may be a carryover from the old adventure games and RPGs.
The fact is, humor is not mutually exclusive from violence. Anyone who has played the latest Tony Hawk Underground titles will note that while the story mode is often amusing and is driven by humor, there are still elements of violence at play. Granted - we're not talking about whipping out a Desert Eagle and carving a cranial canoe into the heads of opposing skaters, but mild physical violence and humiliation of opposing characters are certainly depicted in the story mode narrative. This is more or less what Lowe is talking about doing with his latest title - creating a compelling and funny action game with minimal violence.
But let's back up a second and talk about that "violence as currency" idea that Lowe establishes, and lets also look at Gamasutra's point of comparison - Grand Theft Auto.
The Grand Theft Auto series is arguably one of the most violent depictions of reality ever brought to gamers' living rooms. While there are other games that celebrate gratuitious violence in great detail (like Mortal Kombat), GTA celebrates gratuitous violence in situations of far greater magnitude (ie. killing 50 cops in 5 minutes will get you "Respect" from the locals, whereas the MK series rewards you for one intensely gross kill). GTA also presents a far more real world setting for most gamers than most violent games on the market (sorry kids, but most of you playing Medal of Honor/Halo/Unreal/Cool FPS of the week are not marines living in a combat zone). The setting is a city designed with realism in mind. While the actions of characters within the game's narrative may not appear realistic, San Andreas, Liberty City, Los Santos, etc. look very much like the urban and suburban areas of the U.S. they are intended to represent. The game depicts realistic violence at a high order of magnitude in realistic settings and places players in the role of the anti-hero who kills with reckless abandon and without reason. GTA continues to be a hot seller and have great replay value not just because of its story mode, but also because anyone can fire it up and run off on an instantly gratifying rampage on a whim. For comparison's sake, I'll offer up any of the "Free Skate" options available in the Tony Hawk series as a game of the "non-violent" variety that offers the same ability for instantly gratifying non-goal-driven gameplay.
So why are we not all in an uproar clamoring for the heads of the folks at Rockstar? (Yes, there are some people who have spoken out against GTA, but they have been largely ineffectual and often ill-supported or intentioned.)
BECAUSE IT'S FUNNY.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that the content within any of the GTA games is appropriate for the average 8 year old. I'm also not saying that GTA in any way breaks us away from damaging societal norms pertaining to race/class/gender/etc. But face it - the first time you put down the controller to look up the "All weapons" cheat and heard a "bag lady" walking by your character exclaim, "You ain't gettin' none of my welfare check!" you laughed. When you heard the ads on the radio or the cheesy 80's station's soundtrack, you laughed. GTA goes out of its way to be downright hilarious and its evident in the
...and this is where you missed the boat. What we need to accept, in reality, is that being 1) willing and 2) able does not make you 3) ready.
The fact is that teens 1) Wanna and 2) Gonna so we had better darn well make them 3) ready.
Our options are not stopping them from having sex or not, it's making them prepared for when they have it.
On the one hand you're arguing that teenagers are too immature to have sex. On the other hand, you're arguing that they should be mature enough to know not to have sex. Huh? They're KIDS. They're raging balls of insecurity glued together by drunken hormones and a throbbing fire in their loins. That's why they do incredibly stupid, dangerous, and mind-blowingly weird things. That's why they're not mature enough to have sex. That's why they're not mature enough to refrain from having sex. So that's why the way we protect them is by teaching them how to have sex responsibly, not to pretend that they won't until some point in the unknown future when they're magically "ready".
And women should be taught how to put a condom on a guy. Maybe the person they're with isn't mature enough to know how. And if they're not mature enough to know how to put on a condom, they're certainly not mature enough to exhibit the self-restraint to keep it in their pants. A girl should know how to put a condom on a guy every bit as much as a guy should know what schedule the girl is on for her birth control pills. And they should feel not just compelled but also responsible for the decision. At the risk of sounding corny, a condom isn't effective because it goes on one person, it's effective because it goes between two people. Sure, the guy should be responsible enough to put one on. And if they're not, the woman should put one on for him, while teaching him proper technique and taunting him for his inexperience and lack of maturity.
It doesn't matter whose fault it is. It doesn't matter what kids "should" and "shouldn't" do. Just be safe. And keep them safe. And teach them to be safe.
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