Legendary games designer Al Lowe, best known for creating the infamous Leisure Suit Larry franchise, has unveiled details about his new company iBase Entertainment, as well as their first game, called Sam Suede: Undercover Exposure.
Speaking to Gamasutra, Lowe slams what he refers to as the game industry's "copy rut" – the tendency for publishers to copy a successful game until the lowest quality copied version of it stops making money. SPOnG refers to this as the GTA-effect.
As he eloquently puts it: “It’s the same way the movie studios were back in the old days before the independent studios came up and actually showed Hollywood that they could do things that weren't the same old movie over and over again… I do believe that you can't continue to manufacture games on an assembly line, and expect them to become better just because you spend multiples of millions of dollars on them. It doesn't work that way. There's more to a game than that.”
Lowe feels that iBase's new 'action comedy' title, Sam Suede: Undercover Exposure breaks this mould by using humour instead of violence – giving the example of taking out guards by giving them wedgies, instead of shooting them up with huge automatic weaponry. Check out the iBase teaser trailer here:
XviD (5.3MB)
Windows Media (1.7MB)
It all sounds promising, although SPOnG is unsure how ‘hilarious’ it would be to take out a guard via the wedgie method if you are doing it for the 500th time. But this is a minor concern. It’s just good to see that the Leisure Suit Larry man is back in town.
Lowe tells Gamasutra: “Essentially we're trying to not do Leisure Suit Larry again, because that was done. I did it to death, and then someone else tried to do it after death. Well, maybe that's a little harsh. But I mean, it was done and it's been done and I'm not interested in doing that again. But I still am that same kind of funny guy and I still have the sense of humor that I’m stuck with. So I think that the humor part will not be too far from what you've seen in the past, in the old days. What I'm excited about is the fact that it's not an adventure game. It's not the same old game. It's not a game of the 90s, but rather an action based game, with all the controls and ideas and things that people are used to playing today on consoles.”
Ideally we’d love to see our favourite comedy translated into games – but the fact remains that the genius of SPOnG’s favourite TV comedies (such as Fawlty Towers, Father Ted, Alan Partridge, Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry Sanders …we could go on) lies in the script, the timing and the characterisation. So, by extension, improving the scriptwriting, characterisation and character interaction in ‘comedy’ games would be the first job for anyone looking to develop a genuinely funny videogame.
There has been the odd comedy videogaming gem over the last few years – Conker’s Bad Fur Day springs immediately to mind – but all too few of them. We also have the ‘gentle but respectful spoof’ genre – a glowing example being the superb Lego Star Wars – a genre which SPOnG would like to see developed, as the potential there is huge.
Let us know your thoughts in the forum. Sam Suede is penned in for a 2007 release on all current and next gen consoles, PC and PSP.
Speaking to Gamasutra, Lowe slams what he refers to as the game industry's "copy rut" – the tendency for publishers to copy a successful game until the lowest quality copied version of it stops making money. SPOnG refers to this as the GTA-effect.
As he eloquently puts it: “It’s the same way the movie studios were back in the old days before the independent studios came up and actually showed Hollywood that they could do things that weren't the same old movie over and over again… I do believe that you can't continue to manufacture games on an assembly line, and expect them to become better just because you spend multiples of millions of dollars on them. It doesn't work that way. There's more to a game than that.”
Lowe feels that iBase's new 'action comedy' title, Sam Suede: Undercover Exposure breaks this mould by using humour instead of violence – giving the example of taking out guards by giving them wedgies, instead of shooting them up with huge automatic weaponry. Check out the iBase teaser trailer here:
XviD (5.3MB)
Windows Media (1.7MB)
It all sounds promising, although SPOnG is unsure how ‘hilarious’ it would be to take out a guard via the wedgie method if you are doing it for the 500th time. But this is a minor concern. It’s just good to see that the Leisure Suit Larry man is back in town.
Lowe tells Gamasutra: “Essentially we're trying to not do Leisure Suit Larry again, because that was done. I did it to death, and then someone else tried to do it after death. Well, maybe that's a little harsh. But I mean, it was done and it's been done and I'm not interested in doing that again. But I still am that same kind of funny guy and I still have the sense of humor that I’m stuck with. So I think that the humor part will not be too far from what you've seen in the past, in the old days. What I'm excited about is the fact that it's not an adventure game. It's not the same old game. It's not a game of the 90s, but rather an action based game, with all the controls and ideas and things that people are used to playing today on consoles.”
Ideally we’d love to see our favourite comedy translated into games – but the fact remains that the genius of SPOnG’s favourite TV comedies (such as Fawlty Towers, Father Ted, Alan Partridge, Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry Sanders …we could go on) lies in the script, the timing and the characterisation. So, by extension, improving the scriptwriting, characterisation and character interaction in ‘comedy’ games would be the first job for anyone looking to develop a genuinely funny videogame.
There has been the odd comedy videogaming gem over the last few years – Conker’s Bad Fur Day springs immediately to mind – but all too few of them. We also have the ‘gentle but respectful spoof’ genre – a glowing example being the superb Lego Star Wars – a genre which SPOnG would like to see developed, as the potential there is huge.
Let us know your thoughts in the forum. Sam Suede is penned in for a 2007 release on all current and next gen consoles, PC and PSP.
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