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Sam & Max Sequel Canceled
Posted by
simoniker
on Wed Mar 03, 2004 04:16 PM
from the hit-the-roadkill dept.
from the hit-the-roadkill dept.
Pluvius writes "A terse press release from LucasArts, the creator of classic adventure games such as Grim Fandango and the Monkey Island series, reveals that development on Sam & Max: Freelance Police, the planned sequel to Sam & Max Hit the Road, has stopped. Says LucasArts exec Mike Nelson, 'After careful evaluation of current market place realities and underlying economic considerations, we've decided that this was not the appropriate time to launch a graphic adventure on the PC.'" The International House Of Mojo fansite has some editorial comments [original URL] on this move, the second Sam & Max game cancellation in recent years, lamenting: "LucasArts has made a gigantic mistake."
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Sam & Max Sequel Canceled
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Mike's a dead man (Score:5, Funny)
You got to be kidding me (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Sunday July 29, @06:59PM)
Silly lucasarts. Well, I'm off to write them a letter I suggest you do the same.
Re:You got to be kidding me (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a good example of everything that's wrong with letting corporate market-trend watchers make the decisions for an entertainment company.
It's always a good time to release a good game (by "good," I mean fun to play and judged by many to be worth their hard-earned money), no matter what the style or genre, or how many similar games might have failed recently. It's also never a good time to release a crappy game that nobody will want to play, no matter how hot the market for games if its ilk might be.
Re:You got to be kidding me (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.izyk.net/)
This may not really be the trend watchers. Its always worth remembering that 'corporate media drones' would employ the same wording if the real problem was that 'It was total trash and we killed it before this embarassment cost us any more money.'
I am not saying the game was trash - just pointing out that a press release is generally not a source of facts, just spin.
nevertheless I agree with you entirely. It is always a good time to release a good game. It is never a good time to release Deer Hunter 9.
Re:You got to be kidding me (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.bgb.cc/garrett/)
I've never played the original, so I don't know how hard it would be to squeeze it onto a console's interface.
Re:You got to be kidding me (Score:5, Insightful)
That being said, I don't think Escape from Monkey Island did too well in the console market. It wasn't advertised very heavily, and almost everyone who remembered the old Monkey Island games still owns a computer, and would prefer to play it on a computer. I bought my copy for the PC, and despite how much I want to support the franchise, I didn't buy a second copy for my console.
(I did recently buy it *again* for the PC though, if only to get the Mega Monkey bundle that comes with Monkey Island 1-4).
Re:You got to be kidding me (Score:5, Informative)
They even have the sounds working correctly on some of the games.
And, if I remember correctly, the Lucas Arts collection (Greatest hits, whatever it's called) have been updated to run under WinXP without any tweaking.
Calmiche,
Re:You got to be kidding me (Score:5, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Re:You got to be kidding me (Score:5, Funny)
Coming Soon: Star Wars Jedi Knight Armageddon Command and Conquer Delta Force!
I disagree. (Score:5, Interesting)
I strongly disagree. A lot of good games get BURIED at Christmas time when the market is too saturated with new releases, and you can also kill a game by releasing it too closely to a similar product.
Mythica recently got cancelled for the same reasons. Probably nothing wrong with it, just that there are too many MMORPGs. It may have been the best game ever, but UO, EQ and AC got there first, and the risk of getting buried underneath them was too great.
The PC adventure market is mostly dead. No reason to go into reasons why, but who in their right mind would fund a game in a dead market? Sometimes a game comes along that can surprise everybody, but not that often.
Re:You got to be kidding me (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.supergameworld.com/)
"Instead, in theme with everything George Lucas has written since Empire Strikes Back, we've decided to launch a digitally-enhanced text-adventure game featuring that beloved of beloved characters, Jar Jar Binks."
You wake up, alive but disoriented. You are in a dark cave. Your torch flickers wildly.
>strangle self
You can't strangle yourself.
>axe self in the head
You don't have an axe.
>KILL SELF!!!!
You don't see a self.
>Fucking game
Kiss your mother with that mouth?
>burn meesa with torch
As you drop the torch on yourself in your comical, clumsy, stupid, moronic way that isn't particularly funny, it goes out on your flame retardant outfit. Darkness envelops you.
>ARGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
I'm afraid I don't understand that.
>Get ye flask
You can't get ye flask.
>quit
Mwuhahahaha! You can't quit! Welcome to hell. You are Jar Jar. No, wait. You are eaten by a grue.
Re:You got to be kidding me (Score:5, Insightful)
SAMNMAX, the original game, was possibly the funniest game I've ever played in my life. LucasArts needs to tap into that old funny-as-hell adventure game vibe they used to make:
Maniac Mansion
Day of the Tentacle
Sam n Max Hit the Road
Grim Fandango
Monkey Island & Sequels
Every one of those games was money well spent. What the hell happened to adventure games, anyway? I mean, everyone SWORE they were dead years ago, but then we saw the latest Monkey Island and Grim Fandango prove EVERYONE wrong.
Hell, these games are so damn good that third parties have written game engines to play them on modern systems (see: scummvm)
Now, for the quotes:
Sam: "That's an awfully big rasp on that keychain"
Max: "Out of toilet paper?"
Max: "What about our car?"
Sam: "Wait for it"
*car drops out of the sky*
Max: "Why don't I get any inventory?"
Sam: "Where would you keep it?"
Max: "That's none of your damn business, Sam."
Sam (to the siamese-twin circus owners): "So, who makes your clothes, anyway?"
Twin 1: "We don't wear clothes"
Twin 2: "Our skin is green and naturally vinyl-like"
Max: "Good Lord! He-e's buck naked!"
Sam: "So are you"
Max: "Yea, but I'm cute, and marketable!"
LEC doesn't see that... (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.jory.org/)
Grim was fantastically received by the critics, but didn't sell very well.
This is the problem LEC always claims is keeping them from making adventure games: fantastic critical acclaim, little monetary recovery.
Personally, I don't understand it, apart from knowing that an adventure game is probably not likely to sell as many copies as KotoR, but it's still worthwhile.
I wish Sierra Online was still making Al Lowe adventures and the like.
That sucks! (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://users.rcn.com/jonathan02/)
Maybe they could cut costs by releasing it as a console game instead?
Jon Acheson
LucasArts Executive Says... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://dredwerkz.com/)
Re:LucasArts Executive Says... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's more risk in doing something original, but more upside, too.
No marketing executive would ever suggest releasing a Beach Volleyball game incorporated into the a Japanese dating sim as the sequel to a pvp fighting game, but "Dead or Alive: Extreme Beach Volleyball", love it or hate it, was a massive hit with X-Box owners, and fairly cheap to put together (since the DOA3 engine could be adapted to handle the gameplay & animation, and they could steal the code-base from any of a hundred "H" games to handle the relationship management part.) Thankfully, the lead geeks at Team Ninja have earned a fair ammount of creative freedom from the success of their various other works, so a game like DOAX was possible.
Re:LucasArts Executive Says... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday March 07 2007, @09:12PM)
Personally, I think it is a goo decision (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.mindchild.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday November 29 2005, @10:16AM)
I don't think the market is unwilling to accept another graphic adventure, but rather, unwilling to put up with a boring game.
Re:First Full Throttle, now this.... (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Monday June 05 2006, @05:03PM)
It also sold dismally. LucasArts lost their shirt on GF. And that was BEFORE the huge slump in per-title PC sales.
It's possible that gamers really are 'hungry for' this kind of title, but given how most titles are selling these days, that's an awfully big risk to take. They've been burned badly a number of times in providing exactly what gamers are asking for. We may want these things, but apparently there aren't enough of us that want them to make the projects profitable. LucasArts is literally cutting their losses.
It's a shame... I imagine for this kind of game to really see a renaissance, it'll have to be developed in a low-cost country, which would allow them to sell, say, 25K copies and still be profitable.
Cynical me (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.grub.net/blog/index.html | Last Journal: Wednesday June 27, @08:48AM)
After careful evaluation of current market place realities and underlying economic considerations, we've decided that this was not the appropriate time to launch a graphic adventure on the PC.
Read: "George thinks he'll make enough money off of Episode III and the upcoming Star Wars DVD Set. We'll reconsider when he doesn't have pizza grease dribbling down his shirt."
and here I was..... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.indeterminism.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday May 05 2004, @10:46AM)
i don't think that was healthy for me at that age.
*kicks off high heels*
-m.
Where are... (Score:5, Interesting)
LucasArts is making a huge blunder in canceling this project. Is there no way to convince them that what they are doing is a mistake?
Re:Where are... (Score:5, Funny)
A history of this (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
LucasArts also cancelled the sequel to their first Full Throttle game: "Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels", which pissed me off. I was looking forward to that one.
Anymore, if the publisher is LucasArts, I end up thinking, "Nomatter when I buy it, I can guarantee I'm getting soaked. Nevermind."
Noooooo! (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.dynamicmedical.ca/)
Sam and Max Hit The Road was a great adventure, with excellent writing and production. It's too bad we'll miss out on a sequel so that another Pod Racer game or somesuch will see the light of day, and our beloved Max won't have a chance to disembowel anyone for our entertainment pleasure.
graphic adventure, you say? (Score:5, Funny)
Instead, we plan on releasing a text adventure game for the XBox to really confuse some folks. We're sure you'll love the instuction manual on how to type text using your game pad.
Hello Egg! (Score:5, Insightful)
People may not play these type of games because they don't exist anymore. People perhaps aren't playing adventure games like Full Throttle that are years old but they also aren't playing FPSs that are years old (let me boot up DOOM II again).
It's a chicken and egg situation. People aren't buying because these games don't exist any more due to the shift in popularity (but mostly hype) to FPSs, RPGs, and sports titles. But knowing that many gamers are older and enjoy games that harken back to earlier times, this game could have been a hit. Could have, but now won't since *POOF* it doesn't exist any more.
Re:Hello Egg! (Score:5, Interesting)
My rebuttal? They need to re-evaluate their audience. Many would-be adventure gamers are likely older (both the kind of folks who played classic Lucasarts games and Myst, and also people who are just too whooped by twitch-and-shoot games), and are gravitating toward consoles since they aren't hard-core.
Monkey Island did get ported to PS2, of course, but I'm not aware of any real marketing push to non-mainstream gamers.
Re:Hello Egg! (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Sunday July 29, @06:59PM)
Sam and Max, Day of the Tentacle, et all were hillarious, they're still funny today. The graphics aren't all that great now, but they don't need to be.
They could use ye old Scumm engine, or just update it to be higher resolution, release a real honest to goodness Sam and Max or Monkey Island title and I'd be happy. Ecstatically happy. I think the move to 3D really hurt a lot of the older franchises.
Not that they're going to listen to me or anything.
Re:Is the press release in piggish (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.dynamicmedical.ca/)
If the focal selling point of a game is that it's in 3D, then that game shouldn't be made. Gameplay and entertainment value are why games should be made.
The silver lining here is... (Score:4, Funny)
Monkey Island was a GOOD GAME! (Score:4, Funny)
(Last Journal: Friday June 11 2004, @12:41PM)
Sam & Max Visit Monkey Island.
Now THERE'S a game I would buy!
My dream game would be Lucas & Sierra teaming up and releasing a new Kings Quest series. Hey, if banks can merge why not Video Game makers? (Oh wait, they are merging, just not the right talent I guess.)
translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Tuesday May 16 2006, @10:41PM)
disclaimer: I didn't read the article. I have never played S&M (the video game anyway). Big fan of Monkey Island series though.
Mirror of the International House of Mojo editoria (Score:5, Informative)
LucasArts Cancels Sam & Max Freelance Police, Resigns Self to Mediocrity
Yep, they've done it. LucasArts has just announced that they've stopped work on Sam & Max 2, saying "After careful evaluation of current market place realities and underlying economic considerations, we've decided that this was not the appropriate time to launch a graphic adventure on the PC."
Don't believe that its possible? Here's the official announcement [lucasarts.com] from LucasArts.com. Our best wishes go out to everyone on the Sam & Max 2 team, who are apprently all still going to be kept on at LucasArts.
To us, the decision seems completely absurd, and not just because "we love adventure games," or something. Surely Sam & Max's production was plagued with troubles, but from the sounds of it so is every game project. Everything that came out about Sam & Max seemed golden. The press was drooling over the game. It looked like they had a sequel going on that, unlike some other recent sequels, was actually going ot get it right. But now, out of the blue, its gone. Which really really makes all of us wonder...
"What the Hell is Wrong With LucasArts?"
an editorial by the staff of Mixnmojo
LucasArts has made a gigantic mistake.
There, we've said it. Everyone else is already thinking it, and other people have probably already said it, but now we've said it too. The official Mixnmojo stance on Sam & Max 2 being cancelled is that LucasArts has seriously screwed up, just about as much as possible.
Production has stopped on the last original game --and the only game really-- anyone around here was genuinely interested in seeing. Cancelled. Why? From the sounds of it, the people in the Sales department spent the last three months winding themselves up about how impossible it would be for them to sell a quirky adventure game, eventually just snapped, and cancelled the title. Is that screwed up? Yes, that is screwed up.
LucasArts has made a lot of really bad moves in the last year. RTX Red Rock was allowed to ship. It tanked hard. Who really thought RTX would be marketable, would sell well, would really catch the attention of gamers? Full Throttle 2, despite a constant stream of negative to lukewarm receptions from magazines and fans, was allowed to live on in production far longer than anyone really wanted.
Armed & Dangerous, one of the few truly original gems LucasArts has dealt with in the last five or six years, was rushed out early by the suits, in hopes of grabbing some Christmas shoppers. This was decided despite Christmas being notorious for huge A-list titles like Lord of the Rings hogging the coverage and hype, and for mothers who know nothing about games being the ones doing the shopping. Not surprisingly, Armed & Dangerous had a poor holiday season. Who knows what might have happened if they'd let Planet Moon refine the game for a few months, and released A&D it in the nearly empty February, after everyone had exhausted their Christmas games and was looking for something new?
Recently, they shipped Wrath Unleashed. For more on Wrath, see RTX a few paragraphs up. And finally, today we receive word that Sam & Max Freelance Police has been axed.
Notice a trend here? Correct. Not one of the recent LucasArts bungles mentioned above contained the two magic words, Star Wars. If you give the suits at LucasArts a Star Wars game, they can sell it. Why? Because they don't have to try! No cleverness is needed. That's not to say it doesn't take any work, but for the most part you just need to get the screenshots out, buy a few ads on Gamespot, and tell the press "yep, it's
appropriate time (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://sharpy.xox.pl/ | Last Journal: Wednesday September 14 2005, @02:12PM)
If not this, then what?!?
The genre is dying. And not as much because of less players, but because of less titles released. Young players don't know the tastes, humor, puzzles of Monkey Island style games, they would love them if they saw them - with gfx reaching nowadays standards (at least resolution), but there's no such games. The market is dying.
One thing that could save it would be a few daring, great titles that would shake the game world, attract people, revive the genre, bring profit to the authors. S&M could be one of them.
But it seems, it won't be the case. The time may be actually not appropriate - too late. And it won't be appropriate ever - the genre will die, because "nobody produces because nobody would buy", "nobody buys because nobody knows", "nobody knows because nobody sells or produces".
It's not a computer-only world anymore. (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday March 03 2004, @05:38PM)
Current market place realities (Score:5, Funny)
> underlying economic considerations,
LucasArts is nearly broke and it costs a wagons full of money to develop a current adventure, featuring stunning 2D-graphics and top-of-the-edge anti-aliased text-to-screen synthesisation and multi-single-player no-network support.
And what will we get? (Score:5, Funny)
Who do they think they are? Disney?
Not really cancelled... (Score:5, Funny)
"Where do you keep that gun, Max?"
"None of your damned business, Sam."
I'm guessing they needed the budget.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Lessons LucasArts has forgotten.... (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://rahga.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 18 2005, @05:15PM)
I do see one bit of logic in what LucasArts is doing, and it's because they probably don't believe that the new game would surpass the original. Just look at the Monkey Island 1 and 2 compared to the rest of the series. However, I believe those flopped largely because of the teams and writers.... Whereas with this Sam & Max, I believe that Michael Stemmle and Steve Purcell were involved in some way.
The Adventure is Dead, Long Live The Adventure! (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.worldcomm...o?teamId=855RSMBR9N1)
Perhaps commercially it is - but look how long the text adventure has been dead, and that's got a thriving fan/development community producing some outstanding stuff.. (To learn more about that google around for "Interactive Fiction", "Inform" or "TADS")
And as for graphical adventures - there's some really neat free graphical adventure development systems (SLUDGE [hungrysoftware.com] Adventure Game Studio [adventureg...udio.co.uk]) - and of course, if you just want to play the games, there's plenty of those two, including some very polished efforts, such as Out of Order [adventuredevelopers.com]
In short, don't wait for Lucasarts to make the next great adventure - get stuck in and do it yourself!
This sucks. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
I guess my old-timer market is getting dried up, and nobody wants to make games for me now that I have the money to buy them.
Why do they think people don't like adventures? Did no one pay attention to Myst?
Anyway, anybody got any obscure adventure game suggestions that I might not have played?
Sam & Max, Homeless Police (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't like this heavy trend Lucasarts has made towards console-based game design and development only. Some games were meant to be PC-only - the goofy controls in the latest Monkey Island installment should prove that. Mouse/kb > gamepad for these kind of games. And don't even get me started on FPS and RTS, both are tailor-made for mice. But going for the largest market is the corporately correct thing to do, so I guess us PC gamers will shiver in the cold winter of sterile gaming, brewing up our own indie adventure games like peasants boiling shoes for soup.
At least Syberia seems to have survived to breed another, even if it had to sell it's soul to the art world to do so. I personally found the game beautiful, aesthetically pleasing, and mind-numbingly boring. A sequel I think of with much the same enthusiasm I would have for a new coffee-table book of log-cabin paintings.
Bring back adventure games! Interactive Storytelling is not dead, it's just been forgotten in the back of the Entertainment Media toy chest, along with Reading Books and Playing Board Games. Email Lucasarts [mailto](webjedi@lucasarts.com) and rage against the dying of this light with me. Or just flame them. Or whatever, just make a stir to help make this country safe for domesticated animal crimefighters to thrive in once again.
A win-win idea for Lucasarts? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.jamesbrief.com/ | Last Journal: Monday March 10 2003, @05:26AM)
Possible explanation (Score:5, Interesting)
With multiplayer games, at least the CD-key is checked against a database of CD-keys before the player can play online. I have no doubt this is why Blizzard's battle.net and Half Life's WON systems have been so successful.
But what *is* reality? (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Monday December 20 2004, @01:32PM)
Sorry, but unless they have their own marketing data to back this up, it's just the opinion of someone who wanted a Sam and Max game.
MobyGames' All Time Best (Score:5, Interesting)
MobyGames, the reference site for everyone, either involved in the game industry, or just in love with games, has its Top Rated Games: All Time Best [mobygames.com] list, based on game rankings by registered users :
1 Grim Fandango 4.19 (234 votes)
I'm really impressed by the cluelessness of LucasArts' management.2 Curse of Monkey Island, The 4.14 (168 votes)
3 Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge 4.13 (203 votes)
4 Planescape: Torment 4.12 (189 votes)
5 Day of the Tentacle 4.11 (191 votes)
6 Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis 4.10 (231 votes)
7 Secret of Monkey Island, The 4.09 (285 votes)
8 Super Mario 64 4.08 (67 votes)
9 Fallout 4.08 (230 votes)
10 Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, The 4.07 (64 votes)
Dammit, two cancellations (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/ | Last Journal: Saturday April 29 2006, @04:33PM)
LucasArts also recently cancelled Full Throttle 2 [gamespot.com]. (Although good luck confirming it through official channels thanks to an incompetant web site at LucasArts [highprogrammer.com].)
LucasArts has consistently shipped some of the best adventure games ever. The worst adventure games from LucasArts are still fun. They sell at least tolerably well. The most recent Monkey Island game did, I understand, quite well when ported to the PS2, even though it had been available on PC for a year or two at that point. Full Throttle [lucasarts.com] and Sam & Max Hit the Road [mobygames.com] are two of the most creative adventure games ever; I know I wasn't the only person eagerly anticipating the sequels. (Sequels suck in general, yes, but LucasArts has proven that it's possible to buck the trend by releasing 4 great Monkey Island [lucasarts.com] games.) Adventure gamers have gone from being able to look forward to two great games to zero. Feh. At least we can look forward to Dreamfall [funcom.com] and Syberia 2 [syberia2.info].
The word you're looking for (Score:5, Insightful)
That's right. PUSSY.
These big-shit "executives" are such hot shit when they are laying off the division, or stuffing their pockets with a bonus, or making the "big presentation" in a phone commercial, with their wire rimmed glasses glinting in the flourescence.
But when it comes time to take a real risk, they fold like a pair of threes.
Business, as usual, is totally ass-backwards. The tiny companies, with little capital and even less time, are the ones who are REQUIRED to take risks, because the bloated, fat-assed pussy-staffed corporations won't. Business would NEVER move forward if it weren't for small business and entrepreneurs.
The big companies should be financing the risks, because they can AFFORD TO. That's what CAPITAL IS FOR. But no. Better to hoard the capital and starve the market for better ideas.
Guys who put up their shingle and bet it all on one product are the guys with the huevos to get the job done. Not some buffed-shoes, blow-dryed, acronym-dropping fuck who can't make a fucking decision unless there is someone to blame if it goes wrong.
So, instead of just putting the cards down and CALLING THE FUCKING BET, some bullshit committee has to turn this near sure thing into some half-assed editorial about graphic adventures on the PC.
Well guess what, uppity-fuck. Graphic adventures could buy and sell most other genres four times before Corn Flakes. The second-best selling PC game of all time is a graphic adventure, with over SIX MILLION UNIT SALES. This horseshit attitude is what tried to cancel the Sims and what delayed Everquest for three years while management built a little gazebo of "not my fault" around their ever-widening pock-marked asses. Of course, they were first in line to stuff their pockets when the tall dollars arrived.
They said the Sims wouldn't work. They said Everquest wouldn't work. They said Star Wars would fail. Again and again and again some "executive" says "it'll never work."
Well they were WRONG.
This kind of thing makes me shoe-puking sick.
Petitiononline Petition (Score:4, Informative)
If you want to help save Sam and Max 2 (if it's even possible at this point) or just let LucasArts know how big of a mistake they made, so it won't happen again next time:
Sign the online petition at PetitionOnline. http://www.petitiononline.com/LACOSAM/petition.htm l [petitiononline.com]
Also, send e-mail to LucasArts!
pr@lucasarts.comwebjedi@lucasarts.com
Sam n Max quote... (Score:3, Informative)
If you've never played the first one and never will... why not read the game read the game [fortunecity.com]?