Sam & Max, Back From the Dead 48
simoniker writes "As you may have heard, Steve Purcell's beloved Sam & Max franchise is finally returning, thanks to TellTale Games. The new episodic PC game's designer Dave Grossman has been expounding on the new game, suggesting that having a fanboy niche is actually good: 'We work small enough that we don't need to have the license that's the biggest movie of the year... if we just have kind of a small devoted fanbase, we can make something that's kind of personal and fun.' The TellTale biz guys also comment on development team size. 'Actually it's about seven core people, and then the team grows to about fourteen for a couple months, but the production cycles are short, the teams aren't huge, our tools are very tailored to be efficient.' Maybe Sam & Max is finally getting done because it's been scaled correctly for its audience?"
Nice interview. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong. I love my first-person shooters like Battlefield 2 and Battlefront II; but sometimes I'm in the mood to go back and just laugh at the fun times with Guybrush (and of course Murray), the Tentacle, and Sam & Max. As long as Telltale can keep their focus and not try to make their games all things to all people, I think they'll do well and hopefully gain a larger fan base as a result.
man (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nice interview. (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe not for behemoths like EA, Ubi, or Eidos, but for a small start-up like Telltale, I'm sure that two million is nothing to shoo away like it's no big deal!
Actually, most of the costs would be for the first episode - 3D modeling, bitmapping, fine-tuning the graphics, developing the game engine, and so forth. After that, the rest if just using what tools have already been made available plus additional characters and graphics, possibly some engine tweaks as well. Plus is gives the company a bit of capital to work with to produce additional episodes.
It also gives the gamers the ability to say, "Hey, this is where we think you got it wrong" and let the company make the changes for the next game, if they feel that the changes are apporpriate, of course. And since episodes are almost always cheaper than a full-blown game, more people would be willing to plunk own the dollars to see if they're interested enough to continue the series.
The only problem that I see with episodic games is the length of the game. It's a very delicate balance between providing enough material that the customer feels that he got his money's worth and not so much material that the release is not cost effective. It's a bit of a gamble, but the feedback for Bone and Half-Life 2: Episode One would seem to sugest that episodic gaming is being accepted as a viable alternative.
What I liked so much about the first (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:1, Insightful)