Al Lowe: Gaming has immatured

[Collector]

This was posted on the Janitorial Times.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6208025.ht ... es;title;3

[Tawmis]

Interesting read, but not surprising.

[Datadog]

You know something's wrong when it's even too low-brow for the guy who made wiping Larry's ass an option in LSL6.

But of course, he's right. I never really noticed it before, but the old games rarely ever glamorize Larry's sleazy lifestyle. Even any of Larry's happy endings were met with disaster at the beginning of the next game.

[Rudy]

Thanks for the link Collector. And yes, not surprising... Nice to see a veteran like Al Lowe give an interview though, it's been a while. You can tell by the comments on the article that people appreciate his work far more than whatever they made of Larry in the latest 2 releases.

[Fender_178]

Im not surprised either. Nobody knows LSL better than Al Lowe. It has been proven since LSL 1-7 have been a very successful series. and these 2 recent renditions to the LSL series have been bombs. If I were in Al Lowe shoes I would have bought the right to LSL from sierra before the selling of Sierra. So Al could have an opportunity to Finish were he started with LSL8.

[Rath Darkblade]

I don't think that it's an option for Al, unfortunately (buying the rights for the LSL games from Sierra, that is). I'm sure that Sierra would simply say that the rights for the LSL games are not for sale and continue driving the LSL franchise into the ground.

As for Al's main point - he's right, of course. I'm not sure why, but I've noticed this kind of anti-intellectualism in games too; this isn't a recent phenomenon, it's been happening for the past few years at least. I don't know why, but more and more computer games are aimed at juveniles (somewhere between 10 and 18 years old) - and Box Office Bust is a good case in point. It's the same market that reality TV, Paris Hilton, Christina Aguilera etc. are aimed at, and this market is a vast one (although without much spending power).

The two Larry Lovage games, if I understand things rightly, exploit this tendency for toilet humour and so on that marks shows like South Park, Big Brother and so on, as well as any of the Adam Sandler films. If the two Larry Lovage games are designed to appeal to young and juvenile minds without much sophistication, they succeed quite brilliantly. However, they are certainly not Leisure Suit Larry games.

Thoughts?

[Rudy]

Well, first off it's rather contradictional to create games which aim at an audience between 10-18 while slapping an M-rating on the box. Something tells me that's not exactly the way to achieve good sales.
Secondly, they can't continue driving the LSL franchise into the ground. They drilled it so deep now that, if they'd drill any further, it would pop up again on the surface at the other side of the planet.
And thirdly, BOB is even below the level of juveniles. Imagine that...

[DeadPoolX]

Well, first off it's rather contradictional to create games which aim at an audience between 10-18 while slapping an M-rating on the box. Something tells me that's not exactly the way to achieve good sales.
Secondly, they can't continue driving the LSL franchise into the ground. They drilled it so deep now that, if they'd drill any further, it would pop up again on the surface at the other side of the planet.
And thirdly, BOB is even below the level of juveniles. Imagine that...

I think they're using the M-rating as a way to "entice" younger gamers. Since very few game stores bother checking the purchaser's age, I'm sure Activision feels sales won't be hurt. Even if a parent was needed, it seems parents are woefully uninformed and can easily be "played" by the child to get what he wants. That explains how some parents can buy a GTA game for their 5th grader and find the content surprising later on.

They can -- and probably will -- continue down this path with LSL. If it gets sales (which BOB probably will somehow) then the overall quality of the game is irrelevant. Sales are what matters.

Many gamers are "below the level of juvenile." The possibility of getting digital women into bed is simply too good for some individuals.