Just got this note in my inbox from Sam & Max's creator, Steve Purcell. He said I could share it so here's the note in its entirety:
LucasArts' sudden decision to stop production on Sam & Max is mystifying. ?Sam & Max was on schedule and coming together beautifully.If you haven't yet, as before we're encouraging everyone to send LucasArts a letter letting them know how you feel (please limit swearing to around 10% of your letter so they might actually read it).
I couldn't have been more pleased with the quality of the writing, gameplay, hilarious animation and the gorgeous 3D world that Mike Stemmle's team has created. The rug has been pulled out from under this brilliant team who've so expertly retooled Sam & Max for the 21st century.
I'm extremely frustrated and disappointed especially for the team who have devoted so much effort and creativity to Sam & Max. It's a shame to think that their accomplishments, as well as the goodwill that has been growing in the gaming press toward this project, will all go to waste due to this shortsighted decision.
Thanks everyone, for continuing to make your feelings known.
--Steve Purcell
Though unrelated, its worth noting that on Gamespot today, Freelance Police is listed as number nine on the list of top 10 most popular games of the day (at the bottom of the page). On the Gamespot PC page, they're number four.
we should get a team together of about 2000 kids and storm them with letters and orders... that should loosen lucasarts up and convince them to continue with production...
reply me to slovenia
bye
Dear LucasArts,
Incase you hadn't guessed I am writing to express my complete
dissatisfaction with the decision to cease all production on the sequel to
one of the 1990's greatest games. I know the world of business is a strange
and wonderful place not unlike a mystery vortex, but sometimes you just have
to shove a separated hand (complete with magnet) in to the worlds largest
ball of twine and see if you grab that mood ring.
If you do then you have succeeded in your quest to retrieve the ring, and
you could make a whole load of dollars showing off your prize. This could
have happened with Sam and Max 2, from the hype and previews of the game it
looked truly inspired and original, but you've decided not to attach the
magnet to the hand, hence the ring is still lost in the ball of twine, you
have done this with Sam and Max, by locking it away from the public, in the
depths of Lucasville. Please let the mood ring glow and make Uncle Shavoole
(The Public) happy by reuniting him with his greatest asset (being, you
guessed it! Sam and Max 2).
Holy Cripes on toast, please reconsider other random acts of senseless
violence will not only be Max's forte!
A Disgruntled Fan,
Graeme Chicken
LucasArts will be at GDC 2004. Come visit us at Booth #1941
Anybody going who would be willing to voice our objections?
What if this game becomes the martyr for what brings back adventures. If they are seriously getting swamped with an uproar and others notice it, they may try it themselves, you know, without the cancelling.
I either want to work at LucasArts so I can help run it right, or you know, stay away from a vampire company, who sucks the creativity from their underlings and leave them there to convulse.
Change the name to Sam & Max: Star Wars Police!
thanke you from germany.
I've been hoping for the last few days now that would change their minds, but who am I kidding? Myself.
so there is a slight chance Lucas Arts might uncancel the excfellent game which is Sam & Max: Freelance Police. ( i just cry when i write the title *sniff*)
*picks up egg cartons*
who's with me on this? These have been sitting by the furnace for a long time for just the occasion.
I am no longer a "LucasFan" and I am certainly no longer going to be checking their website for new games. If they showed the slightest bit of competence I'd change my mind. But they haven't. For several years now. And this is the last straw.
SCREW YOU, LUCASARTS
Now, let's go see what Valve, Revolution, Squaresoft, Lionhead, Double Fine and Ion Storm are up to.
And lucasarts still sucks, i removed them off my favorites list, and cancelled any subscriptions with them! Bah to them i say! BAH!
LucasArts looks to outscource more creativity!
To Mike Stemmle, Steve Purcell and their team: The game look wonderful, good job, boys ;)
To LucasArts: I like Star Wars, but I like Star Wars MODERATELY. If you release every year 100 games of Star Wars i'm going to HATE Star Wars forever. I want Sam & Max 2 or I will not buy games of Star Wars.
Your decision to stop the production of Sam & Max 2 is but the worst that has happend so far this year. I mean, how can you? First Full Throttle and now this; dispite the fact that Steve Purcell said the game was developing just fine. I can't belive I get games like "Armed and Dangerous" but not Full Throttle 2 och Sam & Max 2. I'm disapointed.
No wait. I'm not just disapointed; I'm VERY disapointed and due to this I will not buy any of your crappy Star Wars-games this year. I will go back and play your old classics like Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, Sam & Max, Monkey Island a.s.o. Back in those days you still knew how to make a game that was entertaining, unique, had charracters which we players allways will love AND that was not based on the Star Wars-license. I hope you find it to make such games again in the future. Perhaps when people have got tired of the endless stream of Star Wars games and you realize just how populare your other licenses are.
"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."
Bullshit! Give us some adventure games before the genre dies completly. NOW is the time. Give us some great stories Lucas Arts!
TO THE TEAM: I can understand that you are angry and disapointed right know. I just want to say that the game looked perfect and I would have bought it and I know many of my friends also would have. Keep up the spirit and the good work in the future to!
PS. Sorry for the spelling
// Daniel Bagge, 20, Sweden
I've been reading about the game, and how cool it was going to be. Man, it's unbearable.
Greetings,
Lucasart's recent cancellation of what was surely going to be the best game of 2004 is a puzzling move, to me and many others.
I can only ask, is Lucasarts of 2004 the same company that brought us the Monkey Island games, Full Throttle, Sam & Max Hit The Road, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and The Dig?
Is Lucasarts now finally putting the final nail in the coffin of the genre that made Lucasarts great: The Adventure Game? Has the adventure game genre truly been abandoned forever because some marketers thought there wasn't enough of a market for it?
As one who has purchased your classic adventure games (and games like the TIE Fighter series) several times over the years, I cannot quite grasp the reasoning behind the decision to cancel Sam and Max: Freelance Police. After all, Lucasarts was the company that I used to equate with pure quality and class. A company that dared to try new things, that didn't play it safe.
In Europe, Adventure games are coming up at a high rate, Runaway, Westerner, Tony Tough, Black Mirror, Syberia,... they all sell very well! Ok, maybe independent developers are better into creating adventure games than large big studios, but still... 'the game was on schedule'... two months from completion... this makes me mad!
Here is the letter I sent...
Okay, by now you have probably received a ton of mail about the cancellation of Sam and Max 2 ranging from a polite "what were you thinking?" to "die #$(*@#& die!." So I'll simply leave it at this...
Major pr mistake.
The ill will from this manuever will attract an enormous amount of negative press and will diminish the LucasArts brand (not that RedRock didn't do that already). It also sends the message that LucasArts is only interested in targeting the teen market with console oriented material leveraging the Star Wars license, or with shooters such as "Armed and Dangerous." The cancellation of several adventure titles based on older i.p. indicates a general disdain for older players who perhaps cut their teeth on LucasArts adventure games 10 or more years ago. Since older players are statistically less likely to purchase as many titles as younger ones, I guess cancelling Sam and Max 2 makes sense from a "current marketplace realities" standpoint.
I at least hope someone is considering an alternative way to get the game published, such as co-publishing it with another party, selling it outright to another publisher, or letting the team possibly complete the game on their own time and re-evaluating it at a later date.
And as for those younger players, just how attached to Star Wars are they? The new trilogy doesn't seem to be netting anywhere near the same amount of money from merchandising and tie-ins. I guess that explains the rush to release so many games based around the old trilogy with a few bits of the prequels thrown in for good marketing measure. What will LucasArts do when Star Wars games stop selling and a public conditioned to expect only Star Wars material refuses to pony up for anything new? In movies it's called type casting. In videogames it's called Nintendo. Don't take it for granted that older properties will always sell. Building goodwill in the community and constantly testing (and maintaining) i.p. is an absolute necessity. Monkey Island is well known because it got 4 sequels and no one had to wait 10 years just to have the rug pulled out from under them. Sam and Max could have done a great deal to enhance the LucasArts brand. True it may never have sold as well as another Star Wars shooter, but it would have expanded the LucasArts brand, earned a great deal of goodwill from older fans, and possibly generated additional licensing opportunities for toys and such.
What market reality made it obvious GTA III or Final Fantasy would sell? Sometimes it pays to not go for the quick buck.
Thank you.
Though I would wager this pr address is a tired webmaster's way of sending a flood of unwanted email down the rabbit hole, I still felt I should say something. Anyone wanting to write a letter but too pissed off to think straight is free to copy and paste whatever they like from this one as I am relatively sure I spelled most things correctly.
As for why they cancelled the game, I can only speculate.
Possibilities include (and I have seen all of these on different projects):
-Internal politics. Changes in management or team structure can produce new "priorities."
-Marketing input. I once watched a marketing team do a focus study to see how to position a game using a new license they acquired. The problem was they already paid for the license and felt they had to use it. So despite EVERY person saying the license would make them LESS likely to buy the game, they used it anyway...and the game bombed.
-Quarterly financial results. If you are a public company the pressure to produce strong quarterly results can be intense. One publisher I had to deal with ONLY cared about quarterly statements. They jerked us around, changing delivery dates and moving milestone payments constantly to massage the numbers. Eventually the developer I was working for had to cancel the project and fire 90% of the staff (including me).
-Management reluctance to innovate. Everybody knows this one. When something works (Star Wars), beat it into the ground. Tomb Raider, Street Fighter, you name it, most publishers do it.
Anyway, the bottom line is I think they seriously underestimated the affection this project was garnering and the resultant backlash over its cancellation.
Seems like someone's been promoted in an emergency, but it's a shame that someone is a pencil-pusher who probably thinks computer games don't sell unless they have the words Star and Wars in the title. Or are creative.
It's probably a safe bet the same guy thinks we're all rabid dorks who have fickle faith in the company. My answer to that would be that LucasArts has given us plenty of reasons to start losing faith for several years now, but in Cliche Land (a happy, whimsical place) this is the straw that broke the camel's back.
Also! How can a straw break a camel's back? I mean, that would have to be one weak camel. Or one excessively over-sized straw.
*Ring* Ok, class dismissed. Remember to read chapter eight-nine for next week.
You know, sometimes it's really a shame that a company can squat on intellectual property to the point that they basically take a dump all over it. You'd think that if the original, _creative_, developers had access to the rights, that they'd re-visit the story/game/whatever at various points during their career. Ah well...
Did Steve and Mike get the initial go-ahead when Simon was still at the helm?
Any chance of the game being given (sold) to another company to distribute?
Damn their so greedy.
----
To whom ever cares.
Yes I'm another upset Sam and Max fan, no I'm not going to threaten to kill you. But I will tell you how disappointed I am. When Full Throttle was canned I was a little gaffed, but with Sam and Max I'm starting to wonder about the company. You say its because of an evaluation of th current economic conditions? That just proves the company no longer cares about its loyal fans, the people that put you where you are today. It proves the company cares no more for innovating and about making good computer games. All it shows is greed. Yes greed. "the current economic condition?" So you decided to cancel a game because you were afraid it wasn't going to make enough money as a Star Wars game? If Lucasarts was a company that cared, even one percent about game making then the economy situation would be more reason to release a game like Sam and Max. But alas! Greed is the name of the game here. It seems the trend with anything that has George Lucas's name attached to it in the past few years. Gone are the days of quality and innovation. A company that was once a giant is now crumpled up piece of used toilet paper.
I do have one question, did you guys actually think that games like Wrath, Gladius, and RTX were good? Or were they just jokes? You know inside jokes that only you guys laughed about, you probably laughed at every dollar that rolled in because some poor kid spent his hard earned money on a coffee table coaster in a fancy box that ha tried to stick in his computer.
Thanks,
A now Lucasarts boycotting fan,
yes, I've even refuse to play any Lucasarts multi-player games on the net.
--------------
That's your problem.
LucasArts, you're a fool.