GameTap isn't just a distribution partner on the game - they helped fund it, and they really like it. That's why it's debuting on their service.And, regardless of how Darwinia was/is promoted on Steam, GameTap is doing a good job of promoting Sam & Max.
Happy to oblige! I really hate it when people write extremely authoritatively and angrily on Slashdot when stating things which are patently false. It makes me grumbly. I am frequently grumbly when reading Slashdot.:) No personal harm intended though.
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.
If the first episode they released is any indication, the Bone series is definitely "all ages," aimed at being approachable by anyone.
The Sam & Max games, though, I'd imagine will be aimed more at the hardcore gaming audience who grew up with the insane puzzle-driven adventures of the 90s.
I don't think this remark should have been marked as low as it was, because he makes a good point. This entire news submission was 100% structured around plugging this guy's new music site while looking like he was raising an interesting question.
LucasArts never owned the rights to Sam & Max - the characters/world/etc are owned by their creator Steve Purcell. He'd licensed the rights to Lucas to make the game, but that license expired in May and Purcell took the characters to Telltale.
It's funny that the iPod nano finally has the size, feature set, and price point that Slashdotters were bemoaning the original iPod for lacking when it launched (when it was predicted to be a failure), and now that they've got it, well, nothing's changed of course.
Considering Apple has stayed in business for the past 30 years as an innovator (versus leveraging off of someone elses hype and innovations) I don't think they're lousy businessmen at all.
They make profit, they drive the market (and open new markets & massively expand existing small ones - iPod, consumer video), and seem generally content with their size.
If by "where they should be" you mean "Apple should have 95% of the marketshare like Microsoft," then I think you should go back and re-think some details. Apple is in a pretty good place, and has been so for quite a few years at this point. To varying degrees, Apple has been doing pretty well since their first return to decent profitability with the 2nd generation G3 desktops, followed by the generally steady climb up starting with the iMac (dotcom bust notwithstanding) and going through to their current situation with the iPods, Mac mini's, and current iMacs. I don't think they're in a bad place.
For a while now I've pictured David Thewlis as a decent Dirk Gently... at least if he's got brilliant comedic timing, and would put on a tad of weight.
They didn't try to fit the whole series into one movie, they just did the first book worth of story. Just like the first book, the film ends before they even get to Milliways - in fact, much like the book, it ends with Zaphod telling everyone that's their next stop, as the ship shoots off into space.
MJ Simpson went out of his way to make the list of "missing stuff" as long and offensive as possible. Listen to yourself. You say "We all knew they couldnt fit the whole series in one movie," and then you lament the loss of a bunch of story points which only appear in the later books. Hm? Maybe they were planning it with sequels in mind.
Even though MJ Simpson has a lot of experience with Adams and H2G2 I think it's pretty weak that his angry anyry fanboy review got frontpage on/..
Re:Sam and Max 2 not officially back from the dead
on
Sam and Max 2: Reloaded
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Thanks for saying that. Even if it is true that Telltale is working on a Sam & Max title, we have no way of knowing that. The article never says so, it never even directly hints it. In the Q&A, the Telltale guy even mentions Sam & Max along with other LucasArts things they're not in contact with. I wish/. stories wouldn't jump the gun so badly.
Yes everyone would be pleased as punch if when they reveal their game, it is in fact a Sam & Max title, but talk about creating false hope and false hype!
Reading the writeup on Gamespot, nowhere does it say that VU is going to block HL2 on Steam... I didn't even see that implied by the author of the story at Gamespot. It said that VU was upset with Steam's existence yadda yadda, but nothing resembling the slant taken by the author of the frontpage writeup on Slashdot.
Maybe I missed something, but it seems like the author of that post read between the lines a lot, and wrote it up as fact, or at least very decent speculation.
Mirror of the International House of Mojo editoria
on
Sam & Max Sequel Canceled
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· Score: 5, Informative
Our server is far too weak to be linked twice from a Slashdot post, but thanks:) Here's what the update said which is now unreadable due to you guys owning our server:
LucasArts Cancels Sam & Max Freelance Police, Resigns Self to Mediocrity
Yep, they've done it. LucasArts has just announced that they've stopped work on Sam & Max 2, saying "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."
Don't believe that its possible? Here's the official announcement from LucasArts.com. Our best wishes go out to everyone on the Sam & Max 2 team, who are apprently all still going to be kept on at LucasArts.
To us, the decision seems completely absurd, and not just because "we love adventure games," or something. Surely Sam & Max's production was plagued with troubles, but from the sounds of it so is every game project. Everything that came out about Sam & Max seemed golden. The press was drooling over the game. It looked like they had a sequel going on that, unlike some other recent sequels, was actually going ot get it right. But now, out of the blue, its gone. Which really really makes all of us wonder...
"What the Hell is Wrong With LucasArts?" an editorial by the staff of Mixnmojo
LucasArts has made a gigantic mistake.
There, we've said it. Everyone else is already thinking it, and other people have probably already said it, but now we've said it too. The official Mixnmojo stance on Sam & Max 2 being cancelled is that LucasArts has seriously screwed up, just about as much as possible.
Production has stopped on the last original game --and the only game really-- anyone around here was genuinely interested in seeing. Cancelled. Why? From the sounds of it, the people in the Sales department spent the last three months winding themselves up about how impossible it would be for them to sell a quirky adventure game, eventually just snapped, and cancelled the title. Is that screwed up? Yes, that is screwed up.
LucasArts has made a lot of really bad moves in the last year. RTX Red Rock was allowed to ship. It tanked hard. Who really thought RTX would be marketable, would sell well, would really catch the attention of gamers? Full Throttle 2, despite a constant stream of negative to lukewarm receptions from magazines and fans, was allowed to live on in production far longer than anyone really wanted.
Armed & Dangerous, one of the few truly original gems LucasArts has dealt with in the last five or six years, was rushed out early by the suits, in hopes of grabbing some Christmas shoppers. This was decided despite Christmas being notorious for huge A-list titles like Lord of the Rings hogging the coverage and hype, and for mothers who know nothing about games being the ones doing the shopping. Not surprisingly, Armed & Dangerous had a poor holiday season. Who knows what might have happened if they'd let Planet Moon refine the game for a few months, and released A&D it in the nearly empty February, after everyone had exhausted their Christmas games and was looking for something new?
Recently, they shipped Wrath Unleashed. For more on Wrath, see RTX a few paragraphs up. And finally, today we receive word that Sam & Max Freelance Police has been axed.
Notice a trend here? Correct. Not one of the recent LucasArts bungles mentioned above contained the two magic words, Star Wars. If you give the suits at LucasArts a Star Wars game, they can sell it. Why? Because they don't have to try! No cleverness is needed. That's not to say it doesn't take any work, but for the most part you just need to get the screenshots out, buy a few ads on Gamespot, and tell the press "yep, it's
"It's actually that business-centric attitude which has ensured that EA is the only major third party publisher that's still around from the 80s."
LucasArts is still around, for the same reason you cite for EA. LucasArts just did a far worse job at it than EA did.
I wouldnt be very pleased if I returned from a vacation to find that my neighbor's house went and burned mine to the ground as well because he decided he would opt-out of 911 service, and emergency services didn't get there in time. Yes, he'd probably end up being declared responsible, but it would still result in losses for everyone nearby.
I wasn't around for those really:) From the start all I heard was "a site where people can host mods and fangames"... I think you guys were the only thing that made them consider changing their plans around:)
Yes, LFN is a group of fans. LFN is not LucasArts.
Still shady, but its probably better that six fans who dont give a crap about "owning" your idea now "own" it instead of it being owned by LucasArts.
JK and JKII have lots of crossover staff, but for the most part the sites in LFNetwork's sites are all run by different people. There is some crossover but its not 30 sites run by the same 5 people.
The catch to that is, much like AtomFilms hosting your Star Wars fanfilm, you must agree to the agreement/disclaimer thing, and it will probably go through a quality screening process by us, a pack of judgemental fans:)
Yeah that was a joke. Placeholder copy I wrote, and everyone seemed to like it so it stuck. Apparently a similar thing happened while writing the beginning of Monkey 1.
Slashdot Mirror
GameTap isn't just a distribution partner on the game - they helped fund it, and they really like it. That's why it's debuting on their service.And, regardless of how Darwinia was/is promoted on Steam, GameTap is doing a good job of promoting Sam & Max.
Happy to oblige! I really hate it when people write extremely authoritatively and angrily on Slashdot when stating things which are patently false. It makes me grumbly. I am frequently grumbly when reading Slashdot. :) No personal harm intended though.
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.
If the first episode they released is any indication, the Bone series is definitely "all ages," aimed at being approachable by anyone.
The Sam & Max games, though, I'd imagine will be aimed more at the hardcore gaming audience who grew up with the insane puzzle-driven adventures of the 90s.
I don't think this remark should have been marked as low as it was, because he makes a good point. This entire news submission was 100% structured around plugging this guy's new music site while looking like he was raising an interesting question.
LucasArts never owned the rights to Sam & Max - the characters/world/etc are owned by their creator Steve Purcell. He'd licensed the rights to Lucas to make the game, but that license expired in May and Purcell took the characters to Telltale.
It's funny that the iPod nano finally has the size, feature set, and price point that Slashdotters were bemoaning the original iPod for lacking when it launched (when it was predicted to be a failure), and now that they've got it, well, nothing's changed of course.
So is it pronounced "Dream" or "De-Ream"? Both are probably accurate. :)
Considering Apple has stayed in business for the past 30 years as an innovator (versus leveraging off of someone elses hype and innovations) I don't think they're lousy businessmen at all.
They make profit, they drive the market (and open new markets & massively expand existing small ones - iPod, consumer video), and seem generally content with their size.
If by "where they should be" you mean "Apple should have 95% of the marketshare like Microsoft," then I think you should go back and re-think some details. Apple is in a pretty good place, and has been so for quite a few years at this point. To varying degrees, Apple has been doing pretty well since their first return to decent profitability with the 2nd generation G3 desktops, followed by the generally steady climb up starting with the iMac (dotcom bust notwithstanding) and going through to their current situation with the iPods, Mac mini's, and current iMacs. I don't think they're in a bad place.
For a while now I've pictured David Thewlis as a decent Dirk Gently... at least if he's got brilliant comedic timing, and would put on a tad of weight.
Hahaha, true ok fine. Slashdotting it seems more like rabble rousing than anything else, but I guess that's what /. is for. My mistake.
They didn't try to fit the whole series into one movie, they just did the first book worth of story. Just like the first book, the film ends before they even get to Milliways - in fact, much like the book, it ends with Zaphod telling everyone that's their next stop, as the ship shoots off into space.
/..
MJ Simpson went out of his way to make the list of "missing stuff" as long and offensive as possible. Listen to yourself. You say "We all knew they couldnt fit the whole series in one movie," and then you lament the loss of a bunch of story points which only appear in the later books. Hm? Maybe they were planning it with sequels in mind.
Even though MJ Simpson has a lot of experience with Adams and H2G2 I think it's pretty weak that his angry anyry fanboy review got frontpage on
Thanks for saying that. Even if it is true that Telltale is working on a Sam & Max title, we have no way of knowing that. The article never says so, it never even directly hints it. In the Q&A, the Telltale guy even mentions Sam & Max along with other LucasArts things they're not in contact with. I wish /. stories wouldn't jump the gun so badly.
Yes everyone would be pleased as punch if when they reveal their game, it is in fact a Sam & Max title, but talk about creating false hope and false hype!
Thanks. Placing foot in mouth.
Reading the writeup on Gamespot, nowhere does it say that VU is going to block HL2 on Steam... I didn't even see that implied by the author of the story at Gamespot. It said that VU was upset with Steam's existence yadda yadda, but nothing resembling the slant taken by the author of the frontpage writeup on Slashdot.
Maybe I missed something, but it seems like the author of that post read between the lines a lot, and wrote it up as fact, or at least very decent speculation.
Our server is far too weak to be linked twice from a Slashdot post, but thanks :) Here's what the update said which is now unreadable due to you guys owning our server:
LucasArts Cancels Sam & Max Freelance Police, Resigns Self to Mediocrity
Yep, they've done it. LucasArts has just announced that they've stopped work on Sam & Max 2, saying "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."
Don't believe that its possible? Here's the official announcement from LucasArts.com. Our best wishes go out to everyone on the Sam & Max 2 team, who are apprently all still going to be kept on at LucasArts.
To us, the decision seems completely absurd, and not just because "we love adventure games," or something. Surely Sam & Max's production was plagued with troubles, but from the sounds of it so is every game project. Everything that came out about Sam & Max seemed golden. The press was drooling over the game. It looked like they had a sequel going on that, unlike some other recent sequels, was actually going ot get it right. But now, out of the blue, its gone. Which really really makes all of us wonder...
"What the Hell is Wrong With LucasArts?"
an editorial by the staff of Mixnmojo
LucasArts has made a gigantic mistake.
There, we've said it. Everyone else is already thinking it, and other people have probably already said it, but now we've said it too. The official Mixnmojo stance on Sam & Max 2 being cancelled is that LucasArts has seriously screwed up, just about as much as possible.
Production has stopped on the last original game --and the only game really-- anyone around here was genuinely interested in seeing. Cancelled. Why? From the sounds of it, the people in the Sales department spent the last three months winding themselves up about how impossible it would be for them to sell a quirky adventure game, eventually just snapped, and cancelled the title. Is that screwed up? Yes, that is screwed up.
LucasArts has made a lot of really bad moves in the last year. RTX Red Rock was allowed to ship. It tanked hard. Who really thought RTX would be marketable, would sell well, would really catch the attention of gamers? Full Throttle 2, despite a constant stream of negative to lukewarm receptions from magazines and fans, was allowed to live on in production far longer than anyone really wanted.
Armed & Dangerous, one of the few truly original gems LucasArts has dealt with in the last five or six years, was rushed out early by the suits, in hopes of grabbing some Christmas shoppers. This was decided despite Christmas being notorious for huge A-list titles like Lord of the Rings hogging the coverage and hype, and for mothers who know nothing about games being the ones doing the shopping. Not surprisingly, Armed & Dangerous had a poor holiday season. Who knows what might have happened if they'd let Planet Moon refine the game for a few months, and released A&D it in the nearly empty February, after everyone had exhausted their Christmas games and was looking for something new?
Recently, they shipped Wrath Unleashed. For more on Wrath, see RTX a few paragraphs up. And finally, today we receive word that Sam & Max Freelance Police has been axed.
Notice a trend here? Correct. Not one of the recent LucasArts bungles mentioned above contained the two magic words, Star Wars. If you give the suits at LucasArts a Star Wars game, they can sell it. Why? Because they don't have to try! No cleverness is needed. That's not to say it doesn't take any work, but for the most part you just need to get the screenshots out, buy a few ads on Gamespot, and tell the press "yep, it's
"It's actually that business-centric attitude which has ensured that EA is the only major third party publisher that's still around from the 80s." LucasArts is still around, for the same reason you cite for EA. LucasArts just did a far worse job at it than EA did.
I wouldnt be very pleased if I returned from a vacation to find that my neighbor's house went and burned mine to the ground as well because he decided he would opt-out of 911 service, and emergency services didn't get there in time. Yes, he'd probably end up being declared responsible, but it would still result in losses for everyone nearby.
I wasn't around for those really :) From the start all I heard was "a site where people can host mods and fangames" ... I think you guys were the only thing that made them consider changing their plans around :)
Yes, LFN is a group of fans. LFN is not LucasArts. Still shady, but its probably better that six fans who dont give a crap about "owning" your idea now "own" it instead of it being owned by LucasArts.
Sites in the network's sites. Excellent writing there, me.
JK and JKII have lots of crossover staff, but for the most part the sites in LFNetwork's sites are all run by different people. There is some crossover but its not 30 sites run by the same 5 people.
LucasFiles *IS* run by the people who started JediKnight.net and JediKnightII.net - and the people who run Mixnmojo.com and their sites.
The catch to that is, much like AtomFilms hosting your Star Wars fanfilm, you must agree to the agreement/disclaimer thing, and it will probably go through a quality screening process by us, a pack of judgemental fans :)
Yeah that was a joke. Placeholder copy I wrote, and everyone seemed to like it so it stuck. Apparently a similar thing happened while writing the beginning of Monkey 1.