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Sam and Max Hit the GameTap
Gamespot reports that the episodic sequels to the original Sam and Max title will be available on GameTap starting next month. Sam & Max Episode 1: Culture Shock will be available starting on October 17th for subscribers to the PC-download service. Non-subscribers will be able to download the game at some future point. From the article: "Just under a year ago, indie studio Telltale Games acquired the rights to make games based on the underground comic Sam & Max: Freelance Police. The news was a godsend to many old-school gamers who loved the first game the comic inspired, 1993's Sam & Max Hit the Road, and lamented the 2004 cancellation of its sequel, Sam & Max: Freelance Police." Update: 09/08 19:24 GMT by Z : Jake Rodkin from TellTale wrote to make sure we pointed out the copious details that didn't make it into the Gamespot piece. For those of us without GameTap, we can look forward to the non-subscription release on November 1st.
I would love to play the new Sam & Max, however, is the GameTap service worth its cost? Is their current library of games decent?
[Sam hangs up the phone]
Max: Another confused census taker?
Sam: Actually, it was the Commissioner with another idiotic and baffling assignment.
Max: Does it involve wanton destruction?
Sam: We can only hope.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Sam: I think I've got something in my eye.
/really/ wanted to play this game. Alas. Thwarted again.
Max: Try digging it out with a fork. That always works for me.
Why why why! *sob *sniff.
Oh terrible horror. I
|plastic....or gasoline?|
Why is the new business model to turn products into services?
With a product you pay once. With a service you pay over and over.
Future business models will involve you paying over and over, and also having to become an employee.
Future future business models will involve you paying over and over, being an employee, and requiring your children to do the same.
The future is feudalism.
From the faq:
TFA says that the title will be exclusive on GameTap for an unknown length of time. Looking quickly at Telltale's site shows that the game will be downloadable from the developer's site starting November 1st.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
Also there's a little error in that Gamespot article - they say GameTap's exclusivity is for an undisclosed period. It's actually 15 days (hence the release on Telltale's site Nov. 1). Also the article says the games will only be available through digital distribution... this is true initially, but there will most likely be a box set of Season 1 for sale once all the episodes are out.
More info here.
Hello to you, sir! I think you ought to read this:
Slippery Slope
I dunno...if i read your link i'll have to read other people's links, and then the links from those pages; eventually i'll have to read everything on the internet, and i just don't have time.
Telltale "bought the rights to the name 'Sam and Max'?"
Actually, no. Telltale is working on these Sam & Max games with Steve Purcell, the guy who created Sam & Max as comic book characters in the 80s and brought them to LucasArts in the first place. Sam & Max aren't LucasArts' characters, they're Purcell's, and Purcell is working with Telltale on this game. The team at Telltale worked with Purcell at LucasArts on Sam & Max Freelance Police, which was cancelled. The Freelance Police team left LucasArts and started their own studio. Purcell trusted them enough with his characters that came to Telltale and asked to work with them on making the next Sam & Max game.
Also, as far as "untrustworthy" goes, yeah Telltale's website is a bit crusty right now, but they've released four games in the last two years - a casual game, two independently developed episodic titles, and a full retail game for Ubisoft - which is something that very few, uh, "untrustworhty looking startups" can claim. Telltale also employs Dave Grossman, one of the writers and game designers behind Monkey Island 1 and 2 as well as Day of the Tentacle, as their senior writer and designer.
Basically, despite all your smarm and textual smirking, you have no idea what you're talking about.
Why in the hell didn't they go with Steam? When smaller releases like Darwinia get so much press, a Sam and Max game should be a slam dunk.
Without regulation, it would be lawful to trade copies of any software, period. For that matter, without regulation it would not be illegal for me to take a dump on your front lawn. And it would not be illegal for you to kill me for it. Or for looking at you funny, for that matter. Very few people argue for no laws whatsoever. It then becomes very like the apocryphal story about Mark Twain, who supposedly met a woman and asked if she would sleep with him for $10,000, to which she responded certainly. Then he asked if she would sleep with him for $10, to which she responded "What kind of a woman do you think I am?" and he said, "My dear, we've already established that. Now we're just haggling over the price." Well, we're just haggling over how much regulation is good.
I'm familiar with all the counter arguments involving natural rights and intiation of force. Going on to someone else's property is not intitiation of force. Fencing that property off in the first place, in order to mix your labor with it and claim some kind of 'natural right' to keep it is initiation of force. That kind of justification is tantamount to saying that the bicycle I "found" parked on the street and then painted a new color is mine because I mixed my labor with it.
Microsoft is not the only company to use unfair practices such as leveraging monopoly power to game the free market, and there have been plenty of cases (such as the railroads, or the canals before them) where (for instance) the high marginal cost of entry into a market provides that power, rather than the regulation of intellectual property. And as I pointed out, the regulation of real property is no less coercive than the regulation of intellectual property. The free market also has other weaknesses and failure modes which can be gamed in a similar fashion to provide unfair advantage and lock out real competition.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton