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Sunday Comics: Dead Island When casting about for media to compare gaming to, most minds land on film. Action movies and action games still draw inspiration from each other, and when game budgets and incomes draw comparisons, it’s always to Hollywood.
We are, for the most part, limiting news of new games hitting the 700 and growing iPad gaming library to our enormous iPad guide. But Sam & Max deserve their own mention.
Telltale Games has been churning out the episodes of their Sam & Max and Strong Bad series; GameSetWatch talked to Mike Stemmle, LucasArts veteran and current Telltale writer and designer, about the Telltale design process, the veteran-friendly atmosphere (unsurprisingly, the Telltale ranks are full of other LucasArts veterans), and the potentials for non-licensed IP. On the inner workings of Telltale, Stemmle has this to say:
Ron Gilbert is probably best known for his work at LucasArts, where he worked on such favourites as Maniac Mansion, The Secret of Monkey Island, and Day Of The Tentacle. Most recently, he’s worked on Penny Arcade Adventures and has a forthcoming title called DeathSpank. Gamasutra sat down for a somewhat lengthy interview, discussing the episodic model, working within the current industry framework, and moving outside the current studio framework into a more ‘Hollywood’ type model. On this aspect (shifting to a more ‘team’ based approach where people come together to work on specific projects), he’s got this to say:
While Michael Abbott of the Brainy Gamer doesn’t have any new news on his history of RPGs class, he has penned an interesting little meditation on comedy, satire, the Marx Bros., and Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. It suffers from an overabundance of quotations, but has some interesting points:
It’s an interesting question. Telltale’s own Bone died before its time, SiN did likewise, and most full game sequels come around faster than Half-Life 2′s “episodes”. So why, the, does Sam & Max stand as the only successful episodic series to date?
The episodic adventure on a console thing? Great idea! Everything else? Not so great. Awful, even. Or maybe even worse than that. This might be the worst thing ever, I don’t know, I’ll have to dig through the archives and check.
No Sam & Max, PS3 owners? No sweat. Super-Ego Games have just announced the previously-strongly-hinted-at Rat Race, an upcoming adventure game series for the PS3. On paper, it does everything Sam & Max does: it’s an adventure game, it’s “comedic”, it will be available in episodes. Only difference I can see is that Sam & Max was, you know. Funny. And charming. The teaser released for this game back in August was not charming. Wasn’t funny, either. If the earlier rumours hold true, expect there to be four episodes, with each clocking in at around 3 hours and costing you $US 5 (or $US 14 for all four). Coming Soon Exclusively to the PS3 – Rat Race [PlayStation.Blog]
Best part of Sam & Max: the fact it proved episodic gaming can work. Get a game finished, get it out in a timely manner, make it cheap, people appreciate it. The fact it was an adventure game, starring Sam & Max, was the icing on the cake. All of that means there were a ot of you big on the series, so Telltale would like you to know the details for Season Two. It will commence on November 8 for GameTap subscribers, and will be available on November 9 on Telltale’s site. Following that, each episode will launch on the second Thursday of each month, first on GameTap then on Telltale’s site a day later. Except episode 2. It launches on January 10/11, and it’s after that the monthly schedule kicks in. The series will run until April, and include five games in all. Got all that? Oh, wonderful. It’s too nice a day here to go repeating press releases.
