The problem with Sam & Max 22 Aug, 2008 / Comments: 53
When do you stop making something that people enjoy? When they’ve had enough, when you've run out of inspiration, or simply when your creation is finished?
I don't know how you are, but whenever I go around to somebody's house for tea, a part of me is always panicking because I don’t know how long to stay for. Sometimes it seems that the line between staying too long, and not staying long enough, is too thin for conception. The problem applies all across the board: to television, to theatre, and to electronic entertainment.
The following article was formulated in seven hours worth of cold, dirty bath water.
Telltale must have upped the ante immeasurably for there to be so much goodwill here?
I think Season 2 is a significant improvement over Season 1 all around but in terms of how the characters are represented, I think Season 2 better captured the randomness and irreverence of the comics. I thought the humor in Season 1 was good, but was a bit too "clever" for Sam & Max I think. If overall though you despised Season 1 I can't imagine you liking this a ridiculous degree more. It's basically the same thing, but better.
I'm just hoping that Telltale are using this long gap between seasons to focus on how to make Season 3 as brilliant and fresh as possible.
Personally, my worries about the future focus on if there will be an Insecticide sequel. Well, I still haven't played Part II, so maybe I'll have enough after it, but probably not. And I want a bigger budget version - with car chases, airplane chases, and acid trip levels.
Even while commenting on this article everyone immediately started comparing Sam&Max license to Star Wars. Not what a sane Sam&Max fan would focus on, wouldn't you say?
Actually, I'm a big Star Wars fan myself (but mostly interested only in stuff in which George Lucas is heavily involved)
Well, I do realise that I'm quite unique in liking GL. The guy is greatly underrated.
I'm willing to say that the developers always seem to know more than their fans, just as Tim Schafer's enigmatic "Brütal Legend is fine" has been thrown out if only due to pressure. In that regard, Telltale probably knows infinitely more than we do, with all their odd hints and unofficial statements regarding XBOX Live Arcade and the general attitude that all your episodic bases are belong to... you know where I'm going with this.
To anyone who is even more anxious about this sort of thing as Gabez himself, there's a great xkcd quote that I do not feel like looking up. All it says is that patience and "time will tell" are good concepts to relax to.
And if we are talking about Telltale - the most prolific out of the ex-LA bunch, I'll go on record as saying that they will need to do something awful (very awful) to make me cease supporting them. I pay those guys out of sheer principle, as they're the only ones who seem to be doing anything sort of "different" with this whole "puzzle adventures" genre -and- prove to others that it can be profitable. I can't think of anyone else who proved that quality sells, as everything I associate with quality (ahem FALLOUT) is being RUINED right now (ahem FALLOUT 3 ahem) by developers who seem to wish to dumb down everything, starting from the gameplay and ending with the story. Telltale - shine on, you crazy crazy diamond.
I'm sure Telltale do know more than I do, but that doesn't help my anxiety. It's like there is a plan, someone does know how long something will go on for, but they won't tell me because they want to keep me quietly panicking. But that's as irrational as any other part of my fear!
LEC is kind of shortsighted though. They want profit, but only big, immediate profit. How else do you explain their adversity to episodic, digital distribution (the original idea for Freelance Police) or the factthat they don't sell their old games anymore, which could in the long term give them a tidy sum? LEC doesn't want gradual, longtime profits from their products - they something that will either hit or bomb right out the gate, because they have no vision.
Consider what might have happened if LEC has released Freelance Police. If it had made money, it probably would have been modest, and LEC would likely have just moved on from Sam & Max. Telltale understands the potential shelf life of a good story game - look at people like us who are still obsessed with Monkey Island. They recognize that Sam & Max is the kind of property you can keep selling forever. Let's say Freelance Police (six episodes) would have sold identically to Season 1 (also six episodes). LEC probably would have considered it barely successful, but because of the way Telltale built their engine, designed their release/distribution philosophy, and set their budget, Sam & Max is (with the right perspective) a golden goose for them. You think Culture Shock sold a billion units for Telltale on day one? Hell no, it's not that kind of game. But I bet it keeps selling, however gradually. What Telltale's doing is building a library of small, high quality games that they'll always be able to sell to people, because they're centered around humor and characters and story, things that will outlived their tech aspects. In a year, they sold, what, 500,000 copies of 11 episodes, right? Imagine what could happen with an indefinite amount of seasons, and a few years?
But the thing is, Telltale isn't approaching Sam & Max as a Star Wars license...because it isn't. They're not doing it because they're greedy, because Sam & Max doesn't lend itself to that kind of mentality. If Telltale didn't care about the characters, they wouldn't have forced themselves to find a way to make selling Sam & Max games work. And the way to make it work was unconventional distribution.
"LEC is kind of shortsighted though. They want profit, but only big, immediate profit. How else do you explain their adversity to episodic, digital distribution (the original idea for Freelance Police) or the factthat they don't sell their old games anymore, which could in the long term give them a tidy sum? LEC doesn't want gradual, longtime profits from their products - they something that will either hit or bomb right out the gate, because they have no vision."
In my opinion all big game companies think this way. Some projects just aren't big enough for them, even if they were to make lots of money in the long run. It's called EGO (not to be confused with LEGO).
What I find interesting is that the company behind Art of Murder (which I heard you know from personal experience) seems to have rather recently made a fortune by just selling in retail lots of very cheap, simply made games. Also, despite the generally poor to avarage reviews of Art of Murder they seem to have made quite a bit money with it and established an audience. They're currently turning it into a franchise.
Anyway, as far as I know Art of Murder is City Interactive's first adventure game, so it's a bit harsh generalising from that.
Telltale games also look like they're cheaply made, the sound quality of the dialogues is atrocious and most episodes reuse assets from previous ones. However, I wouldn't say they're sold cheaply or that cheap morons buy them.
Fair enough on the adventure game comment though, if it is indeed their first. I try to forget them as quickly as possible.
The difference between Art of Murder and Sam & Max is that Telltale actually know what they're doing.
The team that made Art of Murder isn't some random gang of soulless robots though. They're quite an established group of adventure games creators. Only, before AoM they have been making Myst-like games and not third person titles with inventory based puzzles. I think they'll improve with time.
Here's the thing about Sam & Max: like anything else, Telltale's going to keep making it until people stop buying it, plain and simple. The question is, is the point where people stop buying it the same point when the games stop being of good quality? And quality aside, is there a danger of there being too much of Sam & Max? Well, obviously, but there's a danger of there being too much anything. If they can make three seasons of Sam & Max before they run out of ideas, I'll be happy, because that would have been way more than I ever expected to see of that dog and rabbit. If they can make fifty before things get stale, I'll be happy with that too. I think what separates Sam & Max from, say, Star Wars, is that it's not really a license that anyone could ever fathom, at least at the moment, of saturating the market.
The thing about Telltale is they've found a way to make Sam & Max successful, but it doesn't change the fact that its audience is still kinda modest (relatively). Telltale can get away with making money off of such an audience due to their business model. Yeah, they're making Sam & Max episodes to make money, but it's not comparable to a HUGE license like SW, which was always a huge movie, whereas Sam & Max was always a cult thing...Telltale has simply figured out a way to make that cult thing profitable, because the budget and release strategy for the game reflects the size of the consumer base. Even if Telltale kept making Sam & Max games forever and kept making money off of them, I still don't ever see the characters reaching like, Harry Potter status or something. Sam & Max has a pretty consistent audience. Sure, you'll be able to attract new people to it, but it is what it is, and I don't see that ever changing dramatically.
I guess my bottom line is: don't worry about crossing that bridge until you get there. We've had two fantastic seasons of Sam & Max (Season 2 sits very comfortable with LEC's best adventure games in my opinion), and there's no reason to expect Season 3 to be any different. True, we're suddenly getting a whole lot of Sam & Max after a lengthy period of their being dormant, but until you see the quality of the license being compromised, there's no problem to be concerned about.
Sam and Max on the other hand has opened-up such a huge universe for itself that you could write hundreds of adventures and it wouldn't get stale. I've written a couple for practice and I shudder just thinking about the possibilities (one episode was about the Toy Mafia ordering a hit on the duo because they stole something they don't know about; the other was about a battalion of rats led by Two-Teeth taking over the city)*. Season Two was nothing like Season One, and I bet Season Three will be even better.
You're worrying too much Gabez. Bring on S3 Telltale!
*(Note: For some reason, Mojo makes me write like a 3 year old most of the time. I swear I'm better but for some reason I blunder at Mojo - I'm actually proud of my two scripts, for once.)
And why the hell are we comparing Star Wars and Sam & Max?!
Because they're comparable :P
THIS however is pushing it too far.
50 seasons is an astronomical figure that feeds my fear in a different way -- can you imagine 50 seasons to chose from? Yet that's where we're headed. I just read an Arthur C. Clarke novel set in the year 4,500, by which point humanity has produced so much art that it can't all be saved for memory (and political reasons) -- and all that's left is too much for anyone to go through anyway. That amount of creativity is a little terrifying. Where will it all go?
(And he was too optimistic about art - or humans - surviving that long, bless his dead heart.)