Interviews

JA SPEAKS WITH THE DESIGNERS OF
LSL: MAGNA CUM LAUDE

Interview
by Randy Sluganski

Leisure
Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude is the return of one
of adventuredom’s
most beloved characters – Larry Laffer – after an absence of
almost 7 years. While there is an abundance of websites devoted to
the Leisure Suit Larry phenomenon, the best place to start is at
the home of Larry’s creator Al
Lowe and then
to learn more of Larry’s newest incarnation, visit the official
site of his newest game.

As we had already interviewed
the stars of the game,
we thought it might be fun to go behind the scenes and talk to the
people who are responsible for bringing Larry and his nephew -Larry
Lovage – to life.

The following questions
were answered by Tom Smith, Design Director and the two designers
who wrote the dialogue for the game, Ed Kuehnel
and Matt Entin. As you will discover, they seem to be the perfect
choice to continue to uphold Larry’s high standards of quality
and. . . oh, who are we kidding?! These guys have lost more screws
than Heidi Fleiss (and we mean that in a good way)!

• Whose idea
  was it to develop a new Larry game? Did Vivendi approach High
  Voltage or did High Voltage approach Vivendi?
  
  • Tom: A bit of
    both. We heard from some friends at Vivendi that they were
    interested
    in doing a new one, so we put together a pitch
    filled with sex and bad jokes. I think we impressed
    them with out eagerness – I know I’m a huge fan
    of the originals, and I’ve been wanting to see more
    boobies in games, so it’s
    a perfect fit.
  • Matt: Tom found
    out which hotel the bigwigs at Vivendi were at during E3
    two year ago and sent some strippers to their rooms. We
    helped pick them out of a catalog.
  • Ed: I liked the
    fat one.

  

• What was it
  in your previous pedigree – that consisted
  mostly of sports games and Disney’s Haunted
  Mansion – that
  suggested to Vivendi that you were the right group to resurrect
  the beloved Larry franchise?
  
  • Tom: Amateur porn.
    But seriously folks, Haunted Mansion may not sound like a
    similar game,
    but if you play it and ignore the license,
    the gameplay has a number of similar elements – discrete
    game experiences linked with exploration framing elements.
    And actually,
    the sports games are more useful than you’d expect – you
    have to do a lot of complex things to voice recordings and
    sound to get a sports game to feel like a TV show. So it’s
    more of a natural continuation of our previous titles than
    it may seem at
    first.
  • Ed: Amateur porn.
  • Matt: Amateur
    porn.
• How difficult
  is it to be continually funny?
  • Ed: Keep reading.
• Are you only
  showing the game internally or are there external testers providing
  feedback?
  • Tom: We do bring
    random people in every so often to make sure we’re
    not heading in the wrong directions. As game design becomes
    more of an established genre, I think you’re going to
    see that this is standard operating procedure for any quality
    game. And we’ve
    done a couple of very detailed focus tests that provided a
    lot of valuable feedback. For the record, this is usually friends
    and family
    and co-workers, not big official Beta tests, so please don’t
    flood our email with requests to test.
• A few recent
  big-name adventure productions from Lucas Arts were cancelled
  for various reasons? Is there any possibility
  that Magna Cum Laude may meet the same fate?
  • Tom: Nope. Honestly,
    I’m as befuddled as everyone else about
    Sam and Max. I was really looking forward to that game. It
    is a hard sell these days – there haven’t been
    blockbuster-selling adventure games for a while. But I’m
    confident that people will respond well to good writing and
    fun gameplay. And we seem to
    have convinced Vivendi of it, too – they’re entirely
    on-board, so I don’t expect the same problems to crop
    up.

• Are you shooting
  for sophisticated humor or the Adam Sandler level?
  • Tom: Yes. We mix all
    types of humor into the game. For example, the opening cinema
    ranges from obscure pop culture references to
    safes falling on people’s heads. Our goal has been to aim
    for a Simpsons-like range – throw enough different types
    of jokes that something is bound to stick.
  • Matt: I prefer the
    work of Dick Gregory.
  • Ed: Farts are hilarious,
    so is Gallagher.
• There have
  been rumors surfacing of full-frontal nudity and vulgar humor
  in MCL, will you be able to stay within the boundaries
  required to receive a ‘M’ rating?
  • Tom: Yes. People
    aren’t really aware of how far the M rating
    is allowed to go, since no one has really tried that hard before.
    In our talks with the ESRB, they’ve been very helpful
    and supportive with defining the limits of what we can and
    can’t do. So far,
    there has been very little that we want to do that isn’t
    still planned for the final product. The license helps a lot – thankfully,
    Larry isn’t about hardcore pornography.
  • Ed: I am though.
    And thankfully the Galaxy Adult Bookstore is just a short
    drive from
    the office. That’s 1665 Mannheim Road,
    Stone Park, IL. (708) 344-3336. Tell em’ Ed sent ya.
• Are you expecting
  any backlash to the sexual content of the game, especially as there
  is still a mainstream perception that
  mostly children are playing games?
  • Tom: A little.
    But I think in the post-GTA3 world that we live in, the majority
    of people
    have figured out that it’s not just
    wee tykes that play games. But America has weird hang-ups about
    sex, so I expect some backlash. Personally, if my son grows
    up and starts
    shooting people, I’ll be concerned. But if he grows up
    and starts having sex, I’ll be elated.
  • Matt: As will
    I.
  • Ed: Here! Here!
• ·Can
  you give us a rundown of the plot?
  
  • Tom: A little.
    Larry is a lovable loser who decides to turn his life around
    with the help of a reality TV dating show and the inspiration
    of his uncle, the original Leisure Suit Larry. To get on the show,
    Larry has to show that he can woo the hotties and score with some
    chicks. Hilarity ensues.
• Can
  you tell us a little about Larry’s
  nephew and his relationship with his uncle?
  • Tom: Our Larry has
    always idolized his Uncle, since he’s
    only heard his Uncle’s side of all his stories. If he’d
    been able to actually play the games, he might think twice about
    it, but Uncle tends to emphasize the positive parts of his wacky
    hi-jinks and downplay the humiliation and incompetence.

• Can you tell
  us a little about the different types of puzzles and subgames?
  • Tom: Sure.
    We’re
    going to ship with way more types of games than is really healthy.
    The conversation game is the one we’re
    the most proud of, but everyone talks about that one, so instead
    I’ll say that one of my personal favorites is the spanking
    game. The gameplay is simple but gripping, and the visuals are
    beyond compare. I predict that all games will start coming out
    with a “spank
    the hot chick” mode very soon.
• How
  closely have you adhered to the LSL formula?
  • Tom: Close in some
    ways, radically different in others. We’ve
    really worked hard to maintain the tone of the original Larry games.
    The comedy is still the core of the experience, and even with the
    switch to the nephew, the character is still basically the same.
    There are definitely some familiar elements of exploration and
    examining things and so on. The biggest changes have been the
    gameplay, as
    we move into the console generation with more action and less complex
    puzzle solving.
• Would
  it be fair to make comparisons between Magna Cum Laude and
  Rodney Dangerfield’s Back to School.
  • Ed: Rodney who? Back to
    what? We don’t watch educational films.
  • Matt: We only watch movies
    with the word “bikini” in
    the title.
• Will MCL contain any references or Easter Eggs to the previous Larry
  games?
  • Tom: No. (wink) Never.
    (nudge nudge) What gave you that idea? (wink)
  • Matt: Seriously?
    Tom, you said we were gonna have those!
  • Ed: What the #@$%!!
    I worked on those Easter Eggs for six months you #@$%!! You can
    kiss my ass, Tom! Don’t worry about firing
    me: I quit!
• Will there
  be any differences between the Xbox, PS2 & PC
  versions?
  • Tom: No huge
    differences. They’re all basically the same
    game.
  • Matt: The PC version
    smells faintly of urine.

• Now
  that Larry will be in 3D, how much more glorious will his ‘attributes’ be
  or will we finally see firsthand his shortcomings?
  • Tom: I think the
    ESRB said we could show some sausage if we really wanted
    to, but I’ve seen it and trust me, you really don’t
    want that. Really. Unless you just want to feel better about your
    own.
• What
  audience are you going after – the veteran adventure
  gamer who has played all of the previous Larry games or the younger
  console gamer who is just looking for some risqué entertainment
  (and how do you reconcile the two?).
  • Tom: Ideally,
    we’d like to reconcile the two. We’ve
    been very aware of both audiences from the beginning. We’ve
    put in a number of intense, twitchy challenges for the action gamer,
    but we’ve also put in a lot of ways for calmer, more story-focused
    gamers to skip past those parts if that’s the game they want
    to play. It’s been our goal from day one that anyone who picks
    up the game can see all the funny parts, even if that means skipping
    most of the gameplay. Funny comes first.
• We
  would be remiss if we did not ask about Al Lowe – other
  than being an inspiration, has he had any input to the creative
  process?
  • Tom: While Al’s
    work with the previous titles was certainly an inspiration,
    he has not been involved in this project.
• What kind of
  budget was allotted to MCL?
  • Tom: I was told
    that there was no budget, and that’s why
    I’m being paid in circus peanuts. Did someone tell you something
    different?
  • Matt: I like
    peanut brittle.
  • Ed: Too peanutty.