Immaturity and Innovation

After I read this article at Gamespot by Brenden Sinclair who interviewed Al Lowe, the creator of the controversially loved or disliked Leisure Suit Larry series, I’ve been thinking about gaming maturity and immaturity this week as well as the opportunities for gaming innovation.

I loved Al Lowe created Leisure Suit Larry (LSL) games from my first play though. I had a late introduction to the series and played LSL 3 before going back to play LSL 1 & 2. And let me say to those of you who have played them and know about the many secrets hidden in the games - remember those? Yeah, for game three I got all but one secret the first play through. Matter of fact within a range of five “secrets’ not found to perfect I scored VERY high on all the games. What does that say about me or how I might think? Mmmm, we’ll talk about that in another post….maybe. :D

Al Lowe was interviewed about the success of his games and asked to share his thoughts about the newer re-imagined Leisure Suit games that have been largely vilified by critics and players alike. There are two points in this article that have stuck with me: The first regards his comment that in terms of sex and entertainment within videogames, the industry as a whole has regressed.

This probably reads hypocritical coming from the creator of a game where the sole purpose was to help a “loser” get laid (every game). But if you’ve played any of the Leisure Suit games, you may agree that Al might have a point. Larry had immature jokes…impossible if not improbable situations. The women Larry wanted were always hot and often busty. And the means in which Larry would set out to seduce them (with your help) were always meant to be entertaining and challenging. The humor was largely innuendo and meant to be fun without becoming base. Sex was a huge part of the games but even the “graphic depictions’ were largely tongue in cheek (except perhaps for LSL"Love for Sail"). Adversely, the more recent games the humor and graphics have reportedly become more…revealing. For the most part Al Lowe LSL games stopped just short of being explicit.

Are the Al Lowe created LSL games misogynistic? Oh yeah. Are they silly? Definitely. Sexist? Yes, without a doubt. But as Al stated in the article, “…they were always showing people that was the wrong way as opposed to the ideal way [to behave]." You could laugh at Larry for a million reasons…like the fact he was still rocking polyester leisure suits like they were couture. Or that he was so out of his league with his pixilated companions yet it never stopped him reaching out to (or for) them anyway. Mostly, I think players laughed and cheered his persistence, which sometimes wore down his conquests to acquiescence by his determination and desire if they didn’t suddenly decide he was cute. To me LSL games were on par with the funny antics of Benny Hill only in computer form. They were titillating and both hooked up with women they likely never could have scored acting up as they did on the show (or in the game) in real life. The lesson was inherent.

Compare the old LSL to the most recent LSL games that by all accounts are repetitive and really base – either the developers don’t really understand the teasing humor of the original LSLs – or more likely they do not care. I suspect in their research supports that the target market (usually males 16 – 34) will likely buy and want whatever they offer…whichl leads to my point number two.

Point two regards game publisher’s response to Al’s attempt to reenter the world of game creation while he was working with gaming studio Ibase to create a new, different sort of game. He did receive positive feedback, but no one would support the effort:

“Lowe said that when iBase shopped the project to publishers, it received an abundance of positive feedback. However, every publisher wanted to know about comparables--previously released games like it that could be used to help create sales projections. "When we said we didn't have any comparables because there are no other games quite like this, they all said, 'We can't publish it then. We can only look at things that sold well and try and do the same thing again,'" Lowe said. "I think part of it goes back to the big corporate mentality where the people who are making the decisions really are afraid of what's going to happen if they make a mistake."

This is only one man’s journey so I don’t think it qualifies as the poster child for all unmade or rejected games, but it does touch on one of my concerns about modern day game publishing: a lack of innovative games and a discouragement to those who present something that isn’t a sure-fire sell from sharing their vision. I’m not without some business savvy. The nature of a successful business is to make money and many efficiency models encourage businesses to find the elements that make products or systems work then repeat and emulate them – I get that.

What I’m worried about is that innovation and creativity are suppressed for known formulas and “sure things.” How many games do you (or I) play that are variations of the same basic game or only in easily classified genres? To me, part of what made games fun in the earlier days, particularly when the graphics weren’t as sexy as now was the innovation in gameplay, stories or concept – the creativity involved in problem-solving and how the player, the controller and the game interacted. We were genuinely surprised.

I’m not trying to knock modern games, as some are very sexy, fun and I definitely play them as I am a progressive woman. Nor do I think every person who has an idea for a new game has thought of something innovative or good – some games need not be published. I don’t completely knock base games or humor, because I have that sort of sense of humor too. I just miss the sense that I have more alternatives.

I note that every once in a while in a controlled manner, something new is able to breakthrough the sea of games that appear to dominate the current scene. If it does well variations will follow some better, some worse. If it doesn’t do well, then the game may never be seen again. That is just and fair as far as player’s interest and willingness to buy should dictate game success – but I still wonder about the games that could be amazing to players but are held back because marketing can’t figure out how to sell it, or the returns would qualify it as successful but not a million or billion dollar “blockbuster.”

The spontaneity of a game showing up on the market with some marketing push so you know it exists then just rocking your socks seems a bit lacking from a lot of the big publishers to me. I think the best bet to discover new gaming experiences is to check out player created content. Not all of them are winners for sure, but I am always looking for diamonds in the rough.

If you look at the comments of the article many people whom I suspect are too young to have played the original LSLs when they released are offended at Al’s wording of immature. I can’t blame them. If I hadn’t grown up among the changes I have and seen the differences, I’d think Al was some old, irrelevant, blowhard too. But that’s the cool part of being an older gamer. You’ve seen the patterns and you know the differences. It makes me wonder in another 20 years if these naysayers will be here at 2O2P lamenting the lack of depth and creativity in the games released compared to the one’s released in their youth.

I’m looking forward to watching that.

Am I totally off base and there are PLENTY of innovative games around right now (other than Portal and Beautiful Katamari)? Do you agree or disagree with Al’s thoughts on the maturity of modern games? Do you think the target audience age range should be raised by game publishers as we older gamers have more spendable cash? Have you played the newer Leisure Suit Games and believe they are good games? Are you still wondering what kind of dirty-minded woman I must be to have scored so high on all those LSL games (without hints – thank you). Let me know!

And thanks for looking!