Interviews

LAW & ORDER: JUSTICE IS SERVED
POST-MORTEM WITH PRODUCER CHRISTINA TAYLOR OLIVER

· Will you have anything to do with the L&O spin-offs or any of the other upcoming projects such as ER. Can you tell us anything about them?

I have been helping with the Criminal Intent story and casting, as we are just about to record voiceovers for that game, which will be coming out in April. Criminal Intent will be a third person adventure game with four separate murder cases to solve. Also, I’m producing a game based on Law & Order: Special Victim’s Unit, which will come out in Fall 2005. We’re working on the basic story structure now, which is a part of the development process I really enjoy. This one’s a sniper story, so there are multiple murders in this one, too! I haven’t been involved in the development of ER, but it’s a strategy/sim game using a brand new game engine. The team is hard at work, (it will ship in March ‘05), and I’m looking forward to getting a chance to play test it.

· What has been the feedback so far on the third chapter of the L&O series? Has it been as well received as the first two?

The feedback has been very positive, and the improvements we made over the first two have been very appreciated by our customers and reviewers. The main things people seem to like about it is the redesigned interface, the puzzles, and the longer gameplay. The improved graphics and resolution have also been noted quite a bit.

· Is Legacy interested in developing games based on any other crime/drama television shows other than Law & Order?

Yes! We are always looking for new shows that will translate well into games. Currently, we have multiple brands we are working on finalizing deals on, but none have been announced yet, so I am not at liberty to speak about them. But let me assure you, gamers will not be disappointed with Legacy’s upcoming slate of products!

One of our new, unannounced, games is based on a popular reality show, the other is a highly rated drama. The reality show will use our new strategy/sim engine and the game based on a TV drama will use our new third person adventure game engine, soon to be showcased in the upcoming Law & Order: Criminal Intent game.

We’ve spent a lot of time developing multiple engines that allow us to capture the intensity behind great brands and mix that with compelling gameplay. We’d love to extend that in the future.

· Do you think your competitor’s CSI series of games have hurt or help sales of the Law & Order games?

I think the success of the CSI games have helped add visibility to this area of the game market. Many so-called experts have written off the adventure game genre long ago, so the more successes in this genre, the higher the likelihood that adventure games will continue to be developed for years to come. If you can prove to publishers/distributors that there is a market for these games, then the genre will only continue to grow and allow us to continue making great new adventure games.

· Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, CSI, CSI Miami, Cold Case Files – can the game market continue to support this many different crime/drama games?

There certainly are no shortage of first-person shooters, driving games, sports games…and the list goes on and on…so why can’t there multiple be crime-themed adventure games? More than anything, the games have to stand on their own, with solid gameplay, good graphics and a well-written story. We do our best to continue to improve our games so that they are the best that they can be and never feel repetitive to the other games that are on the market.

· Legacy seems to be going all-out to market Justice is Served, what are some of the avenues you have explored this time around?

One of the great things about the Law & Order brand on PC is its broad appeal to many different audiences. We felt it was important to build a campaign that would reach these different segments. To reach the fans of the show we’ve done a campaign on NBC.com and had short bumper ads for the game featured after Law & Order episodes on NBC. To reach adventure gamers we have focused our PR efforts to target great adventure games sites (like Just Adventure!) and created a downloadable demo to give the game a try. And finally, to reach the broader mass market who this game might appeal to based on the brand, we have done an online advertising campaign on mass sites like Yahoo! and AOL.

· Is there anything specific from Justice is Served that you can build upon to improve the next game in the series?

There is always room for improvement! One thing we’ve talked about is limiting the items that the player can ask witnesses about to things they would logically know about, so the player doesn’t have to hear people say “I don’t know anything about that” so many times! We also want to make the psychiatric evaluations more central to the game play for Special Victim’s Unit, because the psychiatrist tends to play a bigger role in that series. We are trying to branch out so that there will be more interesting places the player gets to search for clues, more than just witness’ apartments and residences. With multiple victims in the sniper story, there are more possibilities and we are planning some things that we haven’t done before in previous games.

· It’s no secret that Ray Ivey of Just Adventure worked with Legacy as a puzzle consultant, what experience as an adventure gamer do you feel he brought to the table?

Ray was great to work with! He’s played almost every adventure game that’s been released, so he could remember lots of different types of puzzles that he both liked and didn’t like. We would then talk about what made those puzzles work or not work so we could be sure to create puzzles that would be fun and challenging rather than tedious and frustrating! He also is very active in the adventure game community, so he knows what types of puzzles adventure gamers typically hate (i.e. mazes and sliders, as well as timed puzzles), so he advised us to not overdo those.

We’re excited that Ray is also working on our upcoming Law & Order: Criminal Intent, due out in April, 2005.

· Justice is Served seems to be geared more towards the adventure gamer while the first game in the series was geared more towards the mainstream gamer who was a fan of the show. What were your intentions behind this shift; were the computer games not appealing to the fans of the television show?

We felt we did a good job with the first two in appealing to the fans of the show, but wanted to get the adventure game community more excited about these games. We did this by putting more energy into the puzzles, primarily, and by making sure the adventure game communities online knew the game was being released. We also knew that one of the main criticisms of the first two Law & Order games was that players wanted a longer gameplaying experience. Including more puzzles, and more options during interviews (being able to ask witnesses about inventory items) were some of the ways we tried to address this.

· What percentage of sales do you estimate are from fans of the show who don’t play many other games and what percentage is from the adventure community?

We unfortunately don’t have that data. I wish we did.

· Other than fans of the television series, is there a specific demographic that you have found is attracted to the Law & Order series?

Sure – your fans are our fans! Adventure gamers are a tough bunch to figure out, demographic wise, because they seem to be a broad range of people: all ages from all walks of life. That being said, outside of fans of the show, our other primary audience that we hope to reach with each of these games, are the adventure gamers. We hope the Law & Order games will attract them and feel that we have been pretty successful targeting a genre, rather than an age.

· How are sales of the game so far compared to the first two games in the series?

It’s a little early to say. This game didn’t get into retail at the same time as the first two. Check back with us in a few weeks.