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I know that Aelon.net isn’t a news site so much as a place for comments, editorials, reviews that sort of thing, but today, a monumental thing happened. TellTale games acquired the game rights for Sam and Max and will be working together with Steve Purcell to make a new series of episodic adventure games with the license. This isn’t just good news, it’s the best news I’ve heard since I heard that LucasArts were making a Sam and Max sequel in 2003. They cancelled that and revealed finally how much they had gone over to the Darkside.
And with that I stopped playing LucasArts games. I haven’t bought or played anything they’ve done since, and I won’t. It’s not even like I’m missing out on much. Sure occasionally one of their Star Wars games is great, but I’ve as much interest in playing another Star Wars game as I do in playing another World War 2 shooter. Been there and done that over and over again. Not going to waste hours of my life doing it again however iteratively better it might be.
But the triumphant news today could well be the first time an internet petition achieved something.
Everyone jokes about internet petitions achieving nothing, but less than two months ago Purcell said this in an interview over on gamasutra:
“While at Pixar I was consulting on Sam & Max 2 after hours. I got word that it was cancelled from the team but the subsequent fan backlash was an unexpected side effect. Thirty thousand people signed the online petition protesting the decision. I had no idea there had been that level of anticipation for the game.”
With the rights back in his hands TellTale games, was the obvious place to take the game, made up as it was largely from the fired Sam and Max 2 team, who had previously worked on Grim Fandago and Escape from Monkey Island.
TellTale are a small company going the self publishing via the internet route. The episodic one isn’t a brand new idea, but it’s one that seems to be coming back into vogue. To see such beloved heroes as Sam and Max helping reestablish the self publishing model is one of those things crying out to be turned into a political cartoon.
After all, the ‘Freelance Police’ shouldn’t be tied into a contract with a corporate giant like LucasArts. Given what the corporate way of looking at games did to Sam and Max, it’s only right that they should join the fight against the over commercialisation of the medium.
If I were LucasArts I’d be peeing my pants.
That is if they’re wearing any.
16th September | Reply
Why are you making LA the villain here. They cancelled a game that would likely cost them more to make and market than it was going to bring in. I’m really happy that Sam and Max is coming back to the PC but LA isn’t the villain. It’s not their fault that nobody buys games from them that don’t have Star Wars in the name. Armed and Dangerous was hilairious, made me laugh aloud, and was a really good 3rd person shooter and I read somewhere that it’s total sales Xbox and PC were like 190,000 copies. Star Wars battelfront sold 1.5 million. Do the math, which do you approve the star wars game or the funny original one?
I’m excited as heck to see Sam and Max return to my PC but their is no need for this to be a good guy-bad guy situation. That is something best reserved for a Long time ago in a galaxy far far away and not the real world.
16th September | Reply
LucasArts cancelled it with just a few months to go. It was a business decision and nothing more, I know that. LucasArts *used* to be a risk taking house of creativity, that one move showed that those days were gone for good and that all they cared about was money. Obviously, when they greenlit the game they thought there was enough of a market, and if they were being overly optimistic who’s fault was it that they got everyone’s hopes up? Their’s and no one else’s. They got cold feet, instead of finishing the title it never got a chance, and LucasArts showed that they had no interest in anything but money. Remember the LucasArts that went over a decade without making a StarWars game and was still a financial success? I do, but I don’t think they do.
16th September | Reply
They used to live in a different world than the one we live in today plain and simple. I mean it sucks that it was cancelled but it was a good bussiness move. They’d released like 4 or 5 non-Star Wars titles in 2003 and they all bombed pretty badly even Indiana Jones and they decided to cut their losses. Meanwhile KOTOR is one of the best games of all time, and sold huge numbers upwards of a million copies. I’ts simple math–doing it isn’t a bad thing. Do you really think Sam and Max’s sales were going to even approach the magic number these days of 1 Million? I sure don’t but i’m going to buy it.
16th September | Reply
This is indeed good news.
I wasn’t too happy when Sam and Max 2 got cancelled, esoecially since it was apparantly around 90% complete.
The gaming world need s more adventure games.
At least my part of it does.
17th September | Reply
I’ve actually never played Sam and Max. However, Sam & Max have become icons of greatness past in the PC gaming front. Perhaps I will see if I can track down their first title.
17th September | Reply
That’s the thing though, their Star Wars games failed, so they cancelled a game that wasn’t Star Wars? As a consumer, I’m going to buy the games I like and support the companies out there that aren’t *just* trying to make money. I’m not foolish enough to think that a company isn’t in it for the money, but I do honestly believe that companies like Ubisoft aren’t *just* trying to make money.
18th September | Reply
What part of non-Star Wars titles=Star Wars titles. Indiana Jones, Armed and Dangerous, Secret Weapons Over Normandy, Wrath Unleashed. Not Exactly a list of big selling titles. Battlefront, Rogue Squadron KOTOR, Jedi Knight series all did pretty good numbers. It doesn’t take an MBA to see what you should approve and what you should cancel.
19th September | Reply
i misread your post about the games from 2003, but Sam and Max was cancelled in 2005. anyway, i’ve never argued that the numbers indicate they’d have probably lost money on the title, just that in cancelling a game for purely financial reasons, LucasArts showed that they were only in it for the money. the game was never given a chance. it might have failed, it might have been a success. at the end of the day, an accountant and market analyst decided it shouldn’t get a chance. it wasn’t any thing to do with the quality of the title. if accountants and market analysts are in charge of what projects live and die, you’d never have gotten the sims, or shadow of the colossus. they don’t have to take risks that they think will cost me money, but i don’t have to bite my tongue when they make cynical moves either. to put it another way, how many games do you know of that were cancelled by a company in no financial trouble, merely months before release, for totally financial motives? i don’t know of any others, (though i wouldn’t be surprised if their were) and i don’t think it’s the sort of thing that should be encouraged. risky games often come out of nowhere and make stacks of money. no one can say whether or not sam and max would have made money, but it’s fair to say that a lot of people were pissed off by the cancellation of the game. enough to make it a success? hard to say. hard to say.
19th September | Reply
blah it was 2004. my brain isn’t so good this morning. rest of my post stands though.
19th September | Reply
Heh, did you fellas know that the revival of Sam and Max was actually based on an online petition? One of the project leads for TellTale said he saw an online petition that had 30,000 signatures on it and it really made him take perspective on just how many people wanted this game made.
Crazy eh?
19th September | Reply
Holliday, i have that quote in the piece above! And it is crazy to think that an internet petition might have actually done something.