Hot on the heels of the announcement of the second season of the episodic adventure series Sam and Max, I sat down with Dan Connors, the CEO and founder of Telltale Games, and Dave Grossman, the series' design director.
Season Two of Sam and Max was just officially confirmed. Is there anything that you learned from the first season that is going to make you approach the second season differently?
DAVE: We learned a lot of small things in the first season. I mean, there's lots of little production issues, we got into trouble trying to bite off pieces that were too big and we didn't approach in the right way. So we're being smarter about that. Spending a little more time planning. But the model worked pretty well. Eventually we made all of our dates. It's not like we needed to make a lot of big changes or anything.
The biggest thing is we allotted more time up front to design the season as a whole. We really didn't have that much time last time. We sort of started a little late and had to sort of get right on the first thing and get all the assets built and just get the first episode out on time. Now it's sort of - we have Sam and Max, for one thing, so yeah. We spent a lot of time thinking out how the season is going to hold up. How we are going to keep the side characters interesting. We worked out a lot of that before we even sat down and wrote out the details.
When you started out the first season, did you anything to go off of or were you sort of coming up with the story episode by episode?
DAVE: There was a rough plan, to put it that way. This episode is going to be about this, this episode about that. We sort of sketched out the six before getting started. And there was a sort of hierarchy. There was a lot about the hypnosis and everything. But this time we actually went through the effort to think about what the acts of each episode are going to be, which roles are the supporting cast going to play in each episode, that was all stuff we did episode by episode the first season.
How do you feel about this process as opposed to how your other episodic game, Bone, works?
DAVE: Bone is kind of a different animal. For one thing, the story is written. We're just retelling the epic saga. Of course, we don't always follow exactly the same pieces of it. There's some stuff the author sort of glosses over where we say, "ooh, that would make some really cool gameplay". We spent some time on that and it's sort of interesting to explore. But basically, the broad structure is already laid out for us so we don't have to sit down and plan it all out.
There are plusses and minuses to each process. I mean, we get a big head start by working with an existing story, but then you're kind of bound by it and it usually throws up a few road blocks. One I always bring up is the Great Cow Race. There's this great big race, and you're building up to it, but when you actually play the race you have to lose. The story dictates that you have to lose. So to find a way to make the game still fun when you clearly have to lose the race is a challenge.
How does it feel to be working on a series like Sam and Max, where there is a pre-existing game in the same genre with a large fan base? Do you feel you have any expectations to live up to?
DAVE: I didn't. I'm sure some of the audience did, though. Certainly there were a lot of people on the forums who were vociferously in favor of a particular take on the license. We use Steve [Purcell, creator of the original Sam and Max comics] as our benchmark. Just as long as we're doing what he thinks is right and we're kind of aimed at the comic specifically, so we are doing things differently. I think maybe better, but certainly differently from the old LucasArts game or the animated series. Steve likes our approach just as much.
What is it like working with Steve Purcell?
DAVE: He's a peach. I actually worked with him on Secret of Monkey Island. Even working with his own characters here, he's very free and trusting of us. He was a little insecure at first, but we made a few preliminary mock-ups and he saw that things were going good. He does understand that it's not going to be precisely what he would have done, but as long as he likes it, he's fine. He'll come in and help you if you need it. He's always good for an idea or two.
DAN: Sam and Max is so much about anarchy in general, and Steve gets that. The general philosophy of Sam and Max isn't something you need to be controlling over. And he's not, which is great. And the license benefits from it because he gets all this talent, which brings out the best in people. They all want to create this great universe. Sam and Max has had all these great characters through the years. We're having so much fun building characters around them, creating a world for them to be in. Steve just set these two characters in motion, gave them their office, and let them go wherever. Other people are free to create that world around them. It's pretty cool.
DAVE: Everyone working on it is a fan. I knew Steve's comics before I met him. Also, he understands that it is an adaptation, and that the demands of an interactive form are a bit different and that because we're requiring the player to think their way the story, things have to make slightly more sense than they do in the comics. Since he's actually worked on games himself, he actually understands that.
DAN: Yeah. Steve having made a game once in his life and his career - a couple, actually, Monkey Island and Sam and Max - makes him so much easier than someone where you're explaining to him why you're making the decisions every step of the way. That's like from networks to individuals to license holders that aren't in games that just don't get it, where Steve definitely gets it.
DAVE: He's been around. We used to include him in a lot of the design sessions.
Both Sam and Max and Bone are funny games, even if they are very
different styles of humor. Is working with comedy something you prefer
to do?
DAVE: Personally it's something I like to do, but you see we make the CSI series too, which isn't funny at all and which is equally compelling.
I like humor because I think it gives you a lot of leeway. People are forgiving as long as you are funny, and I find that relatively easy, whereas if you're doing serious drama you really have to put all the nails in place. People will really notice the one nail that really doesn't work. If you're doing something funny, instead what you do is you point a lot of arrows at the nail and go, "Look! We made this goofy thing that we know doesn't really make sense," but we just point it out and it makes it funny.
DAN: It's harder to do in Bone than in Sam and Max.
DAVE: True. Bone has comic relief, but at the center of it it's not really funny. It's an epic story. A towering saga of coming of age, I guess.
Do you feel that releasing games in an episodic format helps you in the development of your characters?
DAVE: It's terrific. I think that is one of those things that is going to pan out over time. We haven't even scratched the surface of that. I mean, look at The Simpsons and their gigantic cast of four hundred thousand characters. My favorite is Disco Stu. He just starts out as a one-line joke - it's an episode where they have a garage sale - but he comes back a bunch of different times.
DAN: Every creative idea can grow over time. It's totally something in the episodic realm that we don't have in other games. You might be able to build them from level to level but you don't have them the time to - James Brooks, I'm sure, or whoever wrote it, wasn't thinking about the history of Disco Stu when they brought Discu Stu in to do the yard sale thing. He just came in years later and made sense with the world.
You asked earlier what's different with season two. Everyone's working with a different palette now. It's subtle, but I think it's going to be a big difference in the end. People will notice it, they'll feel it, and by season three or four (if it continues in that direction) you will look at that character development and look at the side stories and they will have personalities. You won't have to explain a lot about the characters' motivations to the players; they'll know the characters. That's a real blending of media that I don't think has really happened in the game space yet.
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DAVE: It's nice we're finally getting the opportunity to explore some more aspects of the characters that we introduced last season. They were a little-bit one-note out of necessity. Because there are going to be more characters, some of them are being pushed to the forefront.
Do either of you have a favorite character or characters?
DAVE: I like Superball a lot, actually. For some reason, I'm just interested in that sort of pathological door addiction that he's got.
DAN: I like the cops, because they're so ridiculous. With their little ridiculous and yet perfectly situated, it's so easy to make fun of. We haven't really done it yet, but those characters are hilarious.
DAVE: Strangely, the Head of Lincoln has turned out to be pretty
hilarious. We hadn't intended to do that at the beginning. He was just
this robotic statue that would terrorize you in one episode and then
go away, but then it came around to designing the sixth episode and we
were all, "yeah, we should bring back the head." Suddenly it has all
these insecurities and stuff like that.
What are your favorite games, not counting those you have worked on?
DAVE: I've been playing a lot of Animal Crossing lately. I liked the Zelda that came out for the Super Nintendo, before it went 3D. Although I'm playing the Wii one now, and I'm enjoying it a lot. But there's something about that earlier one that showed an understanding of interactive drama that I really appreciate. It's like reading a page-turner; there's always something around the next corner for you. I could always see something I couldn't get to, and when I got that tool that let me get in there, I was like, "Yes! I can knock down all those posts now that I have the hammer!"
DAN: Guitar Hero is probably the biggest one right now. It's so different. It's so much fun to play with my wife. It's easy to do; I like that games are starting to come out that have completely new takes on things and that can involve more than just one person getting sucked in or multitudes of people shooting each other. So something like Guitar Hero is really cool because anyone can pick it up and play it and have fun immediately. I also like sports games. Right now those are the things I have time for, as opposed to getting pulled into anything huge.
I always loved the old LucasArts games back in the day. Day of the Tentacle is still one of my all-time favorite games [Dave, who worked on Day of the Tentacle, let out a loud "Woo-hoo!" at this point]. I still make that coffee joke.
DAVE: Oh yeah, that's a bit I just want to do again and again. It just makes so much sense to me. I also put The Sims and The Incredible Machine down as things I got really addicted to when they came out that I had to erase from my machine.
It makes sense, then, that you both love adventure games, a combination of storytelling and character development with puzzle-driven gameplay.
DAVE: Yep, it's true. You do what you like.
DAN: Have you tried Façade yet? It's a student project - actually, it's the professors at Georgia Tech - an experimental game. It's an interactive dinner party type thing. That's something that is pretty cool and fun to mess around with. It's kind of like The Sims meet adventure games.
DAVE: The interesting thing about it is that it is fairly freeform; the boundaries of what you can and can't do are not obvious.
Given your history of innovation and the recent announcement of Wii Ware, have you considered making anything for the Wii?
DAVE: Actually, our new CSI game is going to come out for the Wii, so yes.
DAN: CSI is moving to the Wii and we are big Wii fans in general. Our games appeal to a different type of person, a different type of thinker. The Wii is like the Apple of consoles, except for now it's out-selling the other two. But Nintendo has always been the Apple of console games, and we like that idea.
We really want to bring out stuff to the living room because I think Sam and Max should be played by three or four people sitting around. They should be solving puzzles together and they should be laughing and having their drink of choice and just having a good time with it. The potential's there for families to get together. Maybe they pass the controller around. We really consider ourselves a pretty entertaining experience. At this point, I think we would stand out next to a lot of television, from a writing standpoint and from a story standpoint, from a depth of content standpoint certainly. We want to get on that box and start interacting with people.
GameTap recently announced that they will be releasing a limited Mac-compatible version of their client. Do you have any plans to bring Telltale's games to OS X?
DAN: It's always something we talk about, and once we're over, everything will be over. We have serious Mac-heads in the studio, including the CTO. And he keeps saying he can do it in a weekend.
DAVE: He says that about everything.
DAN: But we've got to get him free for a weekend, too. And he's got lots to do, with the Wii and the Xbox - because CSI is coming over to the Wii and the Xbox. So the engine's getting moved over to those now.
Working on CSI, are you under any stricter content guidelines dealing with a big corporation as opposed to, say, being able to sit down and chat it up with Steve Purcell or Jeff Smith [creator of the Bone comic]?
DAN: They're not bad. They look at different things than what Steve looks at, but Ubisoft does a great job of managing it. You know,
Ubisoft's a corporate entity too. You don't get as much access to the
talent, from a writing and creative standpoint. You get access to the
actors. From a creative standpoint, having Steve or Jeff as part of
the team is really cool and interesting to us: seeing the license
holder as creative team member. It's great. Most licenses have gone
past that point, though. If we were doing a Matt Groening game, I
don't think he'd stop by the office.
At some point, would you like to work on an original property?
DAN: We're just getting started. The plan is to make the format work, use licenses as a way to let people know we're out there and get the word out that we exist, build a reputation for the company and then come in with originals with mature tools and mature designers who understand what we can accomplish and what we can't accomplish. We're probably two years off.
Is there anything else about Sam and Max you would like to share?
DAVE: Season two is going to be good. It's going to be good gradually. I'm hoping the things that are good about it are the things you won't necessarily notice until you're through it.
DAN: My hope is that it is something that will cause people to feel more engaged in it. They don't necessarily at the end of it say, "it was this or it was this or it was that," they are just even more intensely anticipating the next episode than the last one. And I think they will, because we've looked at things that worked really well and done more of it, and looked at things that didn't work and reduced it, and those are the kind of things that just show. Those are the details that seem little, but if you do a whole bunch of them, everything feels better. We removed some major annoyances, too, I think.
DAVE: A couple, yeah. The fans have spoken on a few points.
DAN: We're thinking of threatening people. If they complain about how long the episodes are because we've added a run feature, and they can just run past everything, we're going to remove the ability to run.
[At this point in the interview, Dave Grossman had to leave for another appointment, but Dan was willing to continue talking about the business side of Telltale]
Telltale Games has a very unique player-developer dynamic. How do you feel about this?
DAN: That is part of the beauty of where we are now in everything. That's why the Internet works for anyone being creative. We're thinking of games just like any other creative endeavor - we are interacting with our fans, and the fans are giving input. It's great. You could never do this with a retail product; it just couldn't be done. By the time you go through all the hassle of getting it on the shelf, it'd be another eight months at the earliest before the next one comes out. You'd lose the continuity of staying with people and continuing to address them.
How tough was it to initially get investors to buy in on your new business model of all-digital distribution and episodic content?
DAN: That's what gets investors to buy into it. You have to come in and say, "We're going to do something no one's done before." You say, "We're going to be a game publisher," and you need sixty million to become a peer with the guys out there. Sixty million bucks in the game world isn't a ton of money, especially for retail distribution of triple-A titles. It is and isn't, but you're not going to be a major player. So the idea that you're looking at the new way a business can work, and going out and capturing that and becoming a leader in that is what investors are looking for. They're not interested in saying we're going to try to compete with the big guys or we're working for the big guys; there's no value in that. It's coming up with an idea that's thought through and has potential that hasn't been done.
How long was Telltale a conception in your head before you were able to start up the studio?
DAN: For me, with Telltale, I just wanted to do it in the way I knew would work. I saw a way that could work, thought it would make employees lives easier, thought it would allow us to do Sam and Max and Bone and content that was different and was sick of doing the same things over and over again that were yielding the same results - really long schedules, really different management processes. It's gotten to a point know where, from a creative standpoint, if you want to green light a process, there's a fourteen-process checklist the game needs to go through before the project gets greenlit.
From marketing, from distribution, from whoever. So if you're thinking of an extremely unique and creative idea, you throw that fourteen-page checklist in front of it and it is going to be squashed. It's not going to happen. So we really believe that there are so many opportunities right now to try new things and try different things, and if you're going to succeed and win, we have to do new things and do interesting things. It pushes the curve and it's an exciting place to be. The stuff's moving fast - you can see around you, wherever you go. It's working, and you look out and there's new devices and new networks. The world's changing, and it's fun to be part of it. Helping to define it, even. That's cool opportunity.
How do you feel about Hothead Games and their game Penny Arcade Adventures, some of your fellow fore-runners in the episodic game field, who have listed Telltale as a large source of inspiration?
DAN: We invited Hothead to come on with us [to the Comic-Con panel on episodic games and content earlier in the day]. We have a lot of respect for what they're trying to do with Penny Arcade. I just know we need more people interested in it that are willing to it, and if Telltale's the only one it's not necessarily going to work. It's nice to be up there with someone like Hothead who's coming from a similar place and doing a similar thing as we are and if some day there's a Penny Arcade channel and it's got Penny Arcade Adventures next to Sam and Max Adventures next to whatever next license we do next to whatever other company comes in - say some other group breaks off from Blizzard and sets up a company. You know, that would be pretty cool. It would be a pretty robust channel and we could share that audience.
That panel was made up of an audience. About half of them were interested in Penny Arcade and the other half in Telltale, and we got to introduce them to each other. That's all a good thing. It's tough in business to not feel competitive with people and to not believe that you have to squash all the competition, but there's definitely a theory of finding the right partners and raising the vote together and sharing the right information for something like this to work. Nothing can stand alone. It's going to be interesting to watch it evolve. I like it. I just like the idea that when Telltale gets together with Hothead and they want to talk about this, there's a lot of credibility.
And I also like when the fans realize it's a cool thing for them, not just a weird thing. For a while it seemed like, "Oh, why are they doing this? Why would they do that?" and now people get it and they seem like, "Okay, season two. Oh my god, I just finished Sam and Max and now there's already a season two coming out in two months?" As opposed to, you know, waiting thirteen years between games.
From what we've seen, Hothead is doing a good job. We really respect Penny Arcade, too. They talk about knowing how the Internet works, and how the community works, how to build a user base and allow users to participate. They know what they're doing. It's all these forward things that we want to incorporate into our product and working with people who are associated with that, or at least have a good relationship with them.
Thank you for your time!
DAN: Thanks!
This article was originally published at GameWorld Network on August 8, 2007.