Leisure Suit Larry's Maker On Wedgies v. Bullets 270
simoniker writes "Al Lowe, the creator of lounge lizard Leisure Suit Larry, has been talking about his comeback game with new developer iBase Studios, Sam Suede, asking why games nowadays are too violent, and revealing of his new title: "there's going to be guards, but instead of slitting their throats, you'll give them a wedgie." He also asks: 'Let me put this way, the shelf is full of racing games and shooters, RPGs and action games. Where are the comedies?' Well, where are they?"
No Funny Games (Score:2, Insightful)
Leisure Suit Larry games were never funny, mildly titilating if you're a 13 year old maybe, but funny? No. So I'm not sure how qualified he is to talk about making funny games.
Total agreement about the violence. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems like blatently dangerous and illegal activity is endorsed by the industry (shooting people; blowing things up; etc) - while perfectly legal stuff (wasn't the sex in the GTA mod consentual?) ends up being shunned and forbidden.
What kind of lesson is that?
If I were making the rules; game rating should he based on the illegality of the activities in the game -- if there's murder or similar - keep it away from my kids. If it's minor misdemeanors (like this new game sounds like) that's better.
Brevity is the soul of wit (Score:5, Insightful)
Comedy is hard.
Comedy is... (Score:5, Insightful)
blowing shit up is (relatively) easy.
It gets old (Score:4, Insightful)
I miss Larry (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know (Score:4, Insightful)
The whole "quest to get laid" was fantastic, and the censored bar moving up and down was pretty damn clever.
Sure, some of the jokes were a bit hacky, but all in all I thought the game was clever and the whole meta-commentary ("it's hard to find the right girl, and when you do she steals all your money") was pretty clever as well.
Comedy? Depends on what makes you laugh... (Score:4, Insightful)
...but maybe that says more about me than it does about the game...
Re:Total agreement about the violence. (Score:1, Insightful)
In case if you still didn't get it, it's your job to keep that stuff away from your kid. And now stop getting in my way of blowing shit up.
Save us from kiddie "comedy" (Score:4, Insightful)
If the definition of "comedy" being used is "includes wedgies", I think I'd rather not have any "comedy games", thanks.
Now, a game that aimed at a grown-up audience and had a sophisticated sense of humor, that I could get into. But "sophisticated" is not the first word that jumps to mind when I think of Lowe's portfolio, so that's probably too much to hope for.
Comedies went away when the market got too big (Score:4, Insightful)
Those Sierra adventure games were and still are my favourite games.
Replay value (Score:5, Insightful)
BRING BACK SAM & MAX (Score:4, Insightful)
Full Throttle?
Maniac Mansion/Day of the Tentacle?
Monkey Island?
Lucas isn't good for much any more, but he's got this IP in his vault and isn't doing a fucking thing with it. Instead he's producing uber-violent, xenophobic, pornomythic rubbish for the big screen and grubbing for tie-ins.
Re:Total agreement about the violence. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it was consentual and legal...as long as you don't consider prostitution to be illegal and believe that prostitutes aren't effectively coerced into prostitution because of other circumstances in their life.
If I were making the rules; game rating should he based on the illegality of the activities in the game -- if there's murder or similar - keep it away from my kids.
You're a parent. It's your job to make sure that your kids are only exposed to things you find appropriate. That's why you should paying attention to what your children watch, play and listen to. And it's also not a bad idea to keep up with what they're learning from their friends and in school to make sure it matches your belief system. <tinfoil>And you should feel free to speak out if you don't like the idea that your kids are learning to be submissive to all form of authority while not learning to actually think for themselves</tinfoil> (yeah, I think that's the case, but it's pretty tinfoil hat-ish).
If you rely on the government or some industry or another to monitor what your kids learn and see, I'd wager your going to be VERY disappointed someday.
Re:Save us from kiddie "comedy" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Total agreement about the violence. (Score:3, Insightful)
And also, his/her choice of material wouldn't stop you from blowing stuff up. Virtually or otherwise, so no idea why you'd construe this as getting in your way.
I didn't intend to post a reply to your comment (which is pretty much flamebait) but felt compelled as the other reply which clarified the issue a little got modded Flamebait.
Re:Total agreement about the violence. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No Funny Games (Score:3, Insightful)
Bah.
Re:Total agreement about the violence. (Score:4, Insightful)
"Here is the pulse. And here is your finger, far from the pulse, shoved straight up your ass. Want a pretzel?" Okay so that's a loose quote...
But the point is that we have a SERIOUS problem with YOUTH violence, AND a serious problem with adult violence for that matter. It's much more serious than any sex problem, because sex only involves the participants but violence has a tendency to spill over and bother the neighbors. Just today one of my coworkers came in and told us a story about someone doing a drive-by on her house because they thought she was involved with a man that the other woman isn't even with any more. These women are all in their twenties and I can't think of a time when a drive-by has ever occurred in this county. The cops are totally flustered by it, because it never happens.
Personally, I was quite aware of and interested in pursuing sex as a teenager, but never even had any opportunity. What I did get was constant physical harassment... the daily ass-kicking. Well, it was seldom serious, but every day after school I had to be concerned that I would be attacked. On the other hand, I never had to be concerned that I would be fucked.
I do not think you know what you are talking about. I think you have been contaminated by puritan ideals.
Re:Overlooked value of the Sierra-era (Score:5, Insightful)
Like how he'd get sick and turn colors (eventually plaid) and die if you slept with the hooker and didn't use a rubber. That was funny.
Not only was this scene funny, but playing as a 13-year-old it really helped drive home the point that condom use was a good idea.
I'm not saying it is the duty of video games to teach sex ed, nor am I one of those "video games are the root of child violence" people, however, I certainly see value in this sort of thing. Speaking for myself, I have learned stuff from all sorts of goofy sources, and more often than not, entirely accidentally.
Postal: Funny AND Violent (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:NOT OFFTOPIC (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you a troll, or an idiot? Free Speech means the government is not allowed to censor you. It doesn't mean someone has to give you a soapbox.
Re:Total agreement about the violence. (Score:5, Insightful)
And if we want people to use condoms, we should teach girls how to put them on for guys. Guys don't have a stake in the matter; they don't get pregnant. Therefore the decision should not be left to them.
Our treatment of sex is what causes problems. And at any rate, teen pregnancy is easily solved, unlike the products of violence.
Re:Total agreement about the violence. (Score:1, Insightful)
And when you find out your kids do that, you can (for some effective amount of time):
If your children know they can fight with you and win, you have failed as a parent. Period.
Your job is to convince your kids that they don't want to play those games. The threat of corporeal punishment is an effective way to do this for younger children -- with older children, a combination of reasoning and taking away privileges can be more effective. You can choose to turn a blind eye to certain behaviours, but once you confront your children, you must not lose.
Or, perhaps more importantly, it's your job as a parent to teach your kids, as early as possible, the difference between fact and fiction. Then, when your kids eventually *do* play these games (or watch "that" movie, or read "that" book, or are targeted for recruitment by "that" cult, etc) they will be immune to being influenced by them.
Comedy doesn't fit into the schedule (Score:3, Insightful)
Can you imagine, with all the rushed art and programming that goes on in game development, how well humor would fare? Not well. You may have a joke that works well with the development team for some reason, but just completely falls flat on the audience. In the end, the publisher is going to want the game done and not really worry about whether it's funny or not.
The best example of a funny game recently is Psychonauts, by Double-fine. The dialog in that game was from Tim Schafer (Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle) and Erik Wolpaw (from Old Man Murray - http://www.oldmanmurray.com./ [www.oldmanmurray.com] The game was often delayed and was even cut from Microsoft's lineup because Schafer was hard to work with. It was eventually released by Majesco and despite lot's of great reviews, it wasn't exactly a smash hit. The humor is top-notch, but in the end, if people don't like the game and it doesn't have a huge publisher backing it, it's not going to sell.
Re:Total agreement about the violence. (Score:3, Insightful)
Not wanting to do something and being afraid of punishment that will result from doing it are not at all the same thing.
Re:No Funny Games (Score:3, Insightful)
No One Lives Forever! (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't forget No One Lives Forever, where the object is mostly to sneak around, since you're a spy, or dispose of the baddies quietly. It's worth it to sneak around too- the guards in various places have conversations to alert you to their presence and such. The conversations are hilarious.
Two of them inside one of the "evil hideous" discuss how one's brother has gone into the business of kitchen remodelling, and the other asks for the brother's number as his wife has been nagging him to have something done about theirs.
Another trio of baddies earlier in the game wax philosophic about how "there just aren't any truly evil organizations anymore", and of course, at some point, there's a discussion involving how they don't get any respect. "Do this, shoot that. I tell you..."
It was great. In almost any other game, you just shoot the guards and bad guys. But in NOLF, you actually kinda feel for them. They're just regular Joes, wondering about which HMO plan to sign up for, renovating their house, not really liking their job, etc. Well, except that they have guns and they'll kill you if they see you.
I know there's a sequel out..I hope it's as good as the first one.
Re:Wow, please think again (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact is that teens 1) Wanna and 2) Gonna so we had better darn well make them 3) ready.
Our options are not stopping them from having sex or not, it's making them prepared for when they have it.
On the one hand you're arguing that teenagers are too immature to have sex. On the other hand, you're arguing that they should be mature enough to know not to have sex. Huh? They're KIDS. They're raging balls of insecurity glued together by drunken hormones and a throbbing fire in their loins. That's why they do incredibly stupid, dangerous, and mind-blowingly weird things. That's why they're not mature enough to have sex. That's why they're not mature enough to refrain from having sex. So that's why the way we protect them is by teaching them how to have sex responsibly, not to pretend that they won't until some point in the unknown future when they're magically "ready".
And women should be taught how to put a condom on a guy. Maybe the person they're with isn't mature enough to know how. And if they're not mature enough to know how to put on a condom, they're certainly not mature enough to exhibit the self-restraint to keep it in their pants. A girl should know how to put a condom on a guy every bit as much as a guy should know what schedule the girl is on for her birth control pills. And they should feel not just compelled but also responsible for the decision. At the risk of sounding corny, a condom isn't effective because it goes on one person, it's effective because it goes between two people. Sure, the guy should be responsible enough to put one on. And if they're not, the woman should put one on for him, while teaching him proper technique and taunting him for his inexperience and lack of maturity.
It doesn't matter whose fault it is. It doesn't matter what kids "should" and "shouldn't" do. Just be safe. And keep them safe. And teach them to be safe.