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Leisure Suit Larry in "gimme your money"

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Well, I'm super-excited about the Jane Jensen kickstarter and super NOT excited about the LSL one, so this is a no-brainer for me.

2nd paragraph of her Kickstarter pitch:

"Jane is known for games with complex, dark plotlines ala Dan Brown."

Oh dear.;(

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2nd paragraph of her Kickstarter pitch:

"Jane is known for games with complex, dark plotlines ala Dan Brown."

Oh dear.;(

If you watch the video, they make a joke about that.

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I think I will hold on to my money to see what projects are announced next week.

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Frankly, as much as I love Al Lowe, I'd have to choose Jane Jansen over Al.

Why are worried about the Dan Brown comment? Isn't The Da Vince Code the plot for every 90's adventure game ever?:mock:

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I thought The Da Vince Code was based on Broken Sword 1

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I wish I didn't have to keep spending $100 for the package I want. :(

I love Gabriel Knight games so much more than LSL, so this sounds nice. I didn't play Gray Matter or any of her casual games outside of Betrapped. I've heard everything recently has been either average or above average, so I wonder if she still has it? A new studio where she has direct control sounds like it might make a big difference.

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I wish I didn't have to keep spending $100 for the package I want. :(.

My thoughts exactly, if I buy any other package it doesn't seem worth it, I want the physical version, dammit! Which doesn't make sense since I buy all my PC games on Steam. :erm:

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If you watch the video, they make a joke about that.

Yeah, sorry about that, I wasn't super forgiving and thorough:/ I was reading the text as the video was buffering and lost all interest after reading that bit and going through a few of the unconvincing anthics in the video. I stopped at

the magic circle in the barn.

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I've been funding a lot/most of the Kickstarters that have been popping up, but I've only been pledging $15 for each one now. For me at this point I'm just buying games that just happen to not be on steam/exist yet.

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Yeah, it's kinda ridiculous spending all this money on game we won't play for maybe a whole year or more!:eek:

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But think about it, by the time they come out it'll feel like your getting something for free because it'll be so long from now!

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I loved the Leisure Suit Larry games when I was younger, but.. do they hold up now? Not sure if I'll find them as hilarious as I did when I was younger.

Jane Jensen, on the other hand.. I might have to buy into that one. Argh, I need to stop blowing all of my cash on these Kickstarters. :shifty:

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http://adventuregamers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=605968&postcount=38

You guys announced this back in October. Why are you asking for the funds now?

This must be the #1 question asked all over the internet today! We announced in October that we secured the development and publishing rights to the original Leisure Suit Larry franchise (series) of games. We showed a 1-room "proof of concept" that helped us secure the rights, so we showed those images in our press release at the time. We originally planned on getting VC (venture capital) funding so we can re-make the entire franchise from scratch for all the new platforms with the best graphics style, voice overs, orchestrated sound, etc. The response we received shocked us. This is what they literally told us "we like your company but we want nothing to do with Leisure Suit Larry since it will tarnish our good name". So it took us a few months to re-think our strategy and when we went to DICE to do the interview with Spike TV, we saw what amazing success our friends at Double Fine had and Tim convinced us to do the same.

How come it's costing you $500,000 to do a re-make of Leisure Suit Larry and it only cost Double Fine $400,000 for a brand new game?

This was another really popular question today. I (Paul) just got off the phone with Greg, the producer over at Double Fine and asked him how it was possible to make a full fledged adventure game for $400k when it's costing us $500k to re-make Leisure Suit Larry. He told me that they initially only planned on making a small iOS game with 3 people on the entire team: 1 artist, 1 programmer, and 1 producer. That, plus they already had a game engine they spent millions of dollars making for a previous game whereas we're using the Unity engine and we're starting with the PC English version, which is a huge, huge difference!! The only thing we can re-use is the original design. Everything else we need to create from scratch: characters, environments, animations, engineering, and even sound effects.

I love the game but I would pledge more if you guys made a brand new Leisure Suit Larry game instead of a re-make of LSL 1

We would LOVE to make a new version of Leisure Suit Larry!! We thought about making LSL 4 (the missing floppies) or 8, or even 69!! The problem is, Codemasters, the publisher that owns the rights to Leisure Suit Larry and sold them to us wants to see what we can do with the game first. They said if we do a good job at a re-make then we'll have total freedom to do what we want on the next game. So, we have to really kick major ass on this game and show Codemasters what we're capable of. Once we do that, and the game is a success, then we can talk about a new design for our good friend Larry. Trust us, nobody wants to see a newer version of Leisure Suit Larry than us, his biggest fans (yes, we too are fans of Larry Laffer).

So I saw this repost on some answers and this project just reeks of fish. They are misleading people completely.

1. They say on their Kickstarter page specifically this:

"Prying the Leisure Suit Larry license out of the hands of Big Software. DONE!"

Yet, it's obvious from the answers that there is still a publisher involved in saying what to do with the IP. The Kickstarter page fails to actually mention any of this, meaning they are outright lying to donaters. The point of all of these Kickstarters is to crowdsource funds WITHOUT the need of a publisher or people holding them back. This is obviously not the case here.

Why should we even give them money? Why isn't their publisher backing the funding for them? This is pure dishonesty.

2. They are misleading people about the cost of remaking. Double Fine is not using their *3D* engine to make this game. If I recall the video posted weeks ago said they were originally thinking of using an open source one, but now they are creating their own. You might as well remake LSL1 in AGS honestly. There is nothing amazing going on in that game, they don't actually need to make it from scratch. Why not mess with SCI as well? I don't understand.

Also, in another quote from Paul Trowe elsewhere, he says he has been having a hard time employing staff because everyone did not want to work over 8 hours a day. I'm sure in Austin that there is probably no one within the video game community that seriously expects a company is going to keep a strict 40 hours a week, so this means he is either going to be grossly underpaying people a salary that does not convert to a good hourly wage (maybe even bordering minimum, who knows?) or something just generally is not right about the general funding and what employees are willing to put in because of it.

3. Now Paul Trowe is announcing that he is getting the rights to Space Quest and calling up Scott Murphy. This is just getting to be too much, and he is taking on and getting people hyped about a ridiculous amount of Sierra stuff that mostly likely will not go through seeing how all they have for this LSL project are some extremly rough an amateur sketches and one area with animation NOT IN ENGINE. Good luck getting a good Space Quest license (definitely not rights) since if I recall they also have to colicense the brand from a children's museum.

This just stinks of Bad Brain Entertainment all over again.

Edited by syntheticgerbil

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You are forgiven, my child.

Ontopic, I agree with what you said. The way of speaking and the goings-on behind this Kickstarter seem a little off, if not mildly duplicitous.

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They BOUGHT the rights to make LSL, (they are NOT working for a publisher), and say as much in their video. I don't see any duplicity here unless they're receiving funding from the rights owner... But there's no reason to think they are. The fact that the series rights are owned by a publisher is completely irrelevant. They could have just as easily found themselves buying the rights from a studio or private party.

If they can't find people who want to work longer than eight hours a day, then it logically follows that they're being honest and upfront about the working conditions AND that they're paying for their time. Here in London it's frequently the opposite on both counts (every job I've had in nine years).

As for salary, why not check the wanted ads and sew for yourself? They must be around somewhere.

Finally, getting one detail wrong about Double Fine isn't a big deal. Originally it was essentially going to be a Flash game, according to the backer documentary, so who knows what Greg was referring to.

In other words, I don't really see any reason to panic just yet.

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They BOUGHT the rights to make LSL, (they are NOT working for a publisher), and say as much in their video. I don't see any duplicity here unless they're receiving funding from the rights owner... But there's no reason to think they are. The fact that the series rights are owned by a publisher is completely irrelevant. They could have just as easily found themselves buying the rights from a studio or private party.

The problem is detailed here:

I love the game but I would pledge more if you guys made a brand new Leisure Suit Larry game instead of a re-make of LSL 1

We would LOVE to make a new version of Leisure Suit Larry!! We thought about making LSL 4 (the missing floppies) or 8, or even 69!! The problem is, Codemasters, the publisher that owns the rights to Leisure Suit Larry and sold them to us wants to see what we can do with the game first. They said if we do a good job at a re-make then we'll have total freedom to do what we want on the next game. So, we have to really kick major ass on this game and show Codemasters what we're capable of. Once we do that, and the game is a success, then we can talk about a new design for our good friend Larry. Trust us, nobody wants to see a newer version of Leisure Suit Larry than us, his biggest fans (yes, we too are fans of Larry Laffer).

Codemasters is still involved, they are still named the publisher and that they have some creative control. If Replay specifically own the rights, how is this possible? They should really specifically say that the franchise is being licensed out to them. If you notice on their Kickstarter page, however, they don't mention Codemasters until you open one of the questions, which specifically says they have "licensed" the game, yet one of the first sentences on the actual description says they have secured the rights.

It is incredibly important to be as up front as possible before everyone donates.

If they can't find people who want to work longer than eight hours a day, then it logically follows that they're being honest and upfront about the working conditions AND that they're paying for their time. Here in London it's frequently the opposite on both counts (every job I've had in nine years).

I understand they are being honest, but it's concerning they don't even have a full team yet even though the project was started last fall. It makes me think that what they have so far is just some middling contract work done for the sake of a promo video, since he admits no engine has yet to be started.

The problem is, the budget asked should be more than enough to remake Leisure Suit Larry 1, yet he's either too wide eyed with what he wants to do with the "reloaded " part or he's planning to get through by lowballing the employees(or contractors).

And another silly thing about him comparing the funding for the Double Fine project is that he's completely missing the point about California money vs. Texas money, as we also spoke of in the Double Fine thread.

A salary in Texas nearly doubles in California for the same job, yet he's asking $100,000 more than the Double Fine project on a very tiny adventure game. There's no talk of boxed copies outside of Kickstarter $100 donation and this will be released digitally otherwise.

A video game artist in Texas should make somewhere between $40-45k a year depending on what the job is and who it's for. An entry level artist might expect as low as $30k a year.

Let's assume Replay needs four entry level artists to work full time for a full year on this remake, which is very generous for this game. That's $120,000 right there. Let's say he also hires an unneeded amount of four programmers for a low entry level of $40k. So it's now $260k for a year of development on this, which is an unrealistic amount of time even if he secures only employees willing to work a lot of overtime for low pay.

So the last $240 is just a big question mark. Of course some goes to Paul Trowe, some to Al Lowe, and overhead, but then what? Just doesn't add up, especially that this is a publisher involved with this as an unknown. He's not very clear on what role all of these other Sierra designers are supposed to play either, and to me it seems like there's just no room for them in such a small game. He says on the Kickstarter page that he won't even add new gameplay (rooms or puzzles) until they pass the goal, so what kind of work is supposed to go into a game that you can beat in 20 minutes?

I'm just really annoyed. Apparently this guy has major stars in his eyes since his Kickstarter says in the questions that they are going to remake all 6 games and then they can somehow make Larry 8. When people dream this big and continuously count all of their chickens before they hatch, it's just trouble.

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Musicians? Actors? Office rent? Equipment? Office utility bills? There's plenty of things to fill that question mark.

As for their deal with Codemasters, it's true that it's not transparent, but I feel you're leaping to the worst conclusions. Perhaps someone could ask Lowe?

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Here's Al Lowe repeating what you've quoted. I think it's clear that Codemasters have refused to license sequel rights to Replay Games. They're hoping that this reboot will prove to CM that they're capable of creating a sequel that won't obliterate the franchise. There doesn't seem to be anything about them having to get approval. Happy to be proven wrong.

fF_yvZ5l0oI

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Seriously, at this point, if someone manages to destroy the Leisure Suit Larry franchise even further, they deserve some sort of award.

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If they make it any worse than the last one, it would be so humorously dreadful that it would a cult hit!:hah:

(Seriously, the last one was so terrible it was actually funny!)

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