All of us PC gamers over the age of 35 remember fondly the point & click adventure gaming genre, once the hottest gaming genre around, now nearly extinct. At its heyday, the point & clicker gained its most popularity in the LucasArts stable of titles. The Development House that Star Wars built churned out popular and best-selling point & click adventure game after point & click adventure game, from Day of the Tentacle to Mansion to the Monkey Island titles to Grim Fandango to the two most popular, Full Throttle and Sam & Max.

To the delight of many of us old schoolers circa 2003, it was announced that both Full Throttle and Sam & Max were being developed into all-new adventure titles. Just as quickly, though, after LucasArts teased fans with trailers of gameplay, the plug was pulled on both projects.

Fast-forward to 2006, and once again, a new Sam & Max title was announced. But this time, everybody’s favorite smart-alecky rabbit and dog detective team will actually make their long-awaited reappearance in the gaming world. Publisher Telltale Games brought Sam & Max’s creator/developer and most of the staff that worked on Sam & Max and other LucasArts point & click titles into its fold, and let them develop episodic titles, the new experiment in gaming development, based on Sam & Max.

The first episode of Sam & Max, titled Culture Shock, is available as of October 17 on GameTap, the subscription-fee gaming site, where you can pay-to-play hundreds of old-school titles. Starting November 1, Sam & Max: Culture Shock will be available for purchase through Telltale Games.

We were able to ask Telltale’s CEO Dan Connors and Sam & Max: Culture Shock Senior Designer Dave Grossman what it took to finally get a new Sam & Max game made after the point & click genre virtually disappeared and 3D gaming came to dominated gaming.

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Sam & Max: Culture Shock Q&A Conducted by Lee Cieniawa

First of all, please give your background and history working in gaming and with Sam & Max.

Dan Connors: I spent 11 years at LucasArts and worked as a tester, producer, designer and director. Aside from the work at Telltale, I am most proud of my work as QA supervisor at LucasArts from 95-97 because the quality of the games released by LucasArts at that time was incredibly high. My last role at Lucas was as producer on the Freelance Police title.

Dave Grossman: I started working in games in 1989 when I hired on at LucasArts. I wrote, designed, programmed, and eventually led graphic adventure projects there, including The Secret of Monkey Island, Monkey 2, and Day of the Tentacle. In 1994 I escaped and began doing writing and design on a freelance basis, working with companies like Humongous, Disney, Hulabee, Dreamworks, Nickelodeon, Fisher-Price, and so on. I did quite a few adventure games for kids during that period, including the Pajama Sam series, Moop and Dreadly, and a Freddi Fish title which might be the only underwater western ever written. I came on board as the senior designer at Telltale in the middle of 2005, led design on The Great Cow Race and am now primarily consumed writing and designing Sam & Max Season One. My history with Sam & Max dates back to sometime in the

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1980s when I discovered the comic books, so I was delighted to meet Steve Purcell on my first day at LucasArts. I was already quite busy with Day of the Tentacle when Sam & Max Hit the Road was made, but worked briefly with Steve on the design for a sequel which never got the green light. Season One is my first stab at writing for these characters, which is every bit as fun as I imagined it would be.

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When graphics were 2D and limited, and midi sound was the norm back when PC games first became popular, a game’s story was so much more important to how well received and enjoyed it was by gamers. Today, a weak story can hide behind pretty pictures and orchestrated music. Sam & Max: Culture Shock obviously has better graphics than the first Sam & Max title. How did the development team assure that the story, which Sam & Max fans would expect to be very good, once again would retain that same high level of quality (and accompanying humor) as before?

Dave: The offbeat humor behind Sam & Max is kind of tricky to capture, but it's easy to tell when you're not getting it right. Things that help include researching the characters thoroughly, taking several passes at it, and having plenty of experience with this sort of thing. We also have some access to Steve, who is very useful.

The point & click genre had a massive following in the earliest days of PC gaming. What will draw back older gamers to Sam & Max that fondly remember the first title and attract newer gamers that never even played a point & click PC game?

Dave: Quality! Keeping the bar high in terms of characters, humor, and story/puzzle design is what we always try to do. I think that last item is the one that a lot of point and click titles have executed poorly over the years, but they're all important.

Episodic games (with an expectation of a shorter amount of gameplay) are relatively new publisher offerings compared to the traditional full-price titles (with an expectation of a larger amount of gameplay). What are the benefits to both developers and gamers in regard to episodic gaming as well as possible negatives for each?

Dave: There's less risk on both sides. It's like going on a series of dates instead of getting married the day you meet. And a shorter game fits a bit better into the hectic lives so many of us lead these days. But my favorite part from a development perspective is that I don't have time to get tired of the game I'm working on before it's ready for release. ...

Dan: For gamers, first, they can get involved in the game at a much lower cost. Second, they can get a steady stream of content instead of waiting two years for the next game. As this continues to evolve, I think gamers will benefit from developers exploiting the things that are unique to the episodic model, like character development and the ability to evolve the player's experience over time. Episodic games can also be topical, with references to things going on in the news or other current events.

What amount of gameplay hours should gamers expect out of each episode of Sam & Max?

Dave: It's hard to predict because it depends on the player, but probably only a couple of hours for the average person.

Can gamers expect a low price tag for each episode leading up to a full season’s worth that add up to a full game price?

Dave: We're offering them for $8.95 an episode or $34.95 for the full season of six, which is actually less than you'd tend to pay for a full game.

The new Sam & Max: Culture Shock, in fact, seems to almost be geared to follow a premeditated timetable. With that in mind, is there really any scheduled frequency to when new episodes are planned to be released, or will it be that standard-issue “it’s done when it’s done”?

Dan: We feel like a predictable schedule is a critical piece in making it episodic. There's a two-month gap between the first and second episodes, and after that there will be a new episode released each month.

I’m sure the development team was excited when LucasArts greenlighted the new Sam & Max (and Full Throttle) as well as disappointed once both projects were unceremoniously canceled. Why did LucasArts seem to think it was time for the return for two of its more famous early franchises and then seem to think it was time to cancel them?

Dan: If you look at what was happening with LucasArts' original titles at the time Full Throttle 2 and Sam & Max were cancelled, you may gain some insight into their decision-making. Right before Sam & Max was cancelled, there was a major management change at the company and LucasArts became much more focused on Star Wars and the enormous console market.

After LucasArts dumped both games, was there any expectation that the development team would ever create another Sam & Max title?

Dan: Other people probably thought it was a pipe dream and would never happen, but at Telltale we have always believed there is enormous value and integrity to the license. We just needed to think a little differently to make it happen. GameTap also saw that value and has been a strong partner for us.

What was the development team’s reaction when someone (GameTap & Telltale Games) actually decided to support another Sam & Max game? And how relieved was the team that it actually was completed and ready to publish?

Dan: Telltale always intended on making Sam & Max, and once we signed the license, we built the team in order to do it. GameTap has been a great partner for doing this, but we always intended to get it done.

Looking back on how events unfolded as Sam & Max: Culture Shock was, does the development team see the LucasArts decision to cancel the game back in 2003 as sort of a blessing in disguise?

Dan: Freelance Police was really funny and there were great gags, so it’s a bummer we can’t use them, but I don’t look back. Telltale is in a really good place right now. Culture Shock has met our expectations and we are busy cranking out five more.

Dave: Not only would I not have gotten to do a Sam & Max game, there's a distinct possibility that Telltale might never have been founded if the LucasArts title hadn't been cancelled. I like it here, so for me personally it was a blessing not in disguise.

(November 2, 2006)


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