Re: Leisure Suit Larry 1 Reloaded
Verfasst: 26.04.2013, 20:50
Jup... ist wirklich ein heisser Kandidat fürs hässlichste Cover 2013
https://www.replaygamesinc.com/index/get-game?gameId=13
Was im Retail daraus wird liegt nicht in der Hand von Replay Games.
Josh hat sich zu der ganzen Sache im Forum geäußert:
"Let me start by saying that I read *every single* message on this forum and every single comment on our Kickstarter page – the general comments as well as the comments that pour in after the updates (even on updates that I don’t write). If people claim that we only pay attention to the positive feedback and not to the negative feedback, then they haven’t been paying much attention themselves. It’s because of our attention to negative feedback that we’re doing things we hadn’t planned on initially, such as a Linux version, Achievements, and keeping certain deaths in the game that we’d initially designed out.
Secondly, I want to point out something that I guess I just need to keep hammering home: the budget. Every time we sat down to make a new Kickstarter collectible (and that’s EXACTLY what the box you’ve been looking at is: a COLLECTIBLE, *not* a marketing item), we had to ask ourselves how much time and work -- read that as: money -- we wanted to put into that item versus putting them into the game itself.
The box is not going to be used for marketing purposes. It may appear (at least, temporarily) in app stores, but as I said at the beginning of the thread, if there is going to be a retail version -- and I believe now that there will be -- this is absolutely NOT the box we’ll be going with.
Thirdly, I want to point out that the N-Fusion artist who created the artwork of Larry and Fawn you see on this box cover is the exact same artist who created our Larry and animated him in the game. While we would have loved to finesse this artwork even more, every minute we had him spending on this box was a minute we were taking him off the game itself.
Paul wanted to have the box made for free, using strictly volunteer work, and I was against this. (Not that we don’t have people offering us superb artwork on a consistent basis, but it’s one thing to design an isolated piece of artwork and quite another to make it work in the context of packaging.) With some knowledge of the work and expense that goes into creating good commercial art, I wanted to hire a professional. With extremely little money left, and being told that we needed the art yesterday, I paid (out of my own pocket) Andy Hoyos, one of the greatest of the “Golden Age of Sierra” artists, to develop the box art.
Well, you saw the reaction to his logo. So did we. It gave us many sleepless nights (we’ve had roughly 365 sleepless nights since the end of the Kickstarter). We actually went through many, many more iterations of the logo afterwards, some of which paid off the original pop-art “cut paper” style of the original 1987 box’s graphics, but the original started growing on us, and after weeks of back-and-forth, we ended up returning to it.
We also were dissatisfied with Andy’s interpretation of Larry and Fawn, which was an attempt to create a more artistic interpretation of the characters – something that straddled the line between painterly, movie poster-style characters (such as you see on classic posters like “Gone with the Wind”). At Sierra, this kind of experimentation was very, very typical; we’d see rough executions, pick and choose, go back, try again, refine, experiment some more, and so on, ‘til everyone was happy with the outcome.
We didn’t have nearly that luxury. That kind of experimentation and development – such as you see in the results of the Larry 7 retail box art – was totally out of the question on our budget and schedule.
We turned to Alex Kotkin to redo the Larry and Fawn aspect of the box. Since he did the actual characters you see in the game, we knew the box characters would at least be faithful to their in-game counterparts. As mentioned, though, every hour Alex got yanked off the game to work on the box was going to be to the detriment of the GAME. And when all was said and done, the GAME is by far the important thing here, not the collector’s box.
We ended up feeling that, while far from what we’d hoped for, we couldn’t afford to devote yet more time and money to it.
Making changes to the box at this point is simply not feasible. Blame me for the misdirection; box art isn’t my forte, and if the box *had* been meant for retail, you can be sure that I would have insisted that we turn the task over to somebody more qualified. But it ISN’T meant for retail.
The game’s the thing, and that’s where all our love and attention must be focused at this point. I’m disappointed that, as with the earlier flap over the logo, so many people are so focused on, and spending so much energy on, denigrating something so peripheral to the overall experience.
To those of you I’ve already offended somehow, somewhere in the above, I can only assure you that my goal wasn’t to offend. But I truly feel that this is a proverbial tempest in a teapot.
And I would challenge anyone to create what we’ve created – not JUST the game, of which we’re incredibly proud, but also these boxes, and condoms, and an unbelievably handsome art book, and casino chips, and playing cards, and stripper pens, and really sweet t-shirts, and breath spray, and shot glasses, and coasters, and CDs, and Larry postage stamps, and lithographs, and calendars -- and not have some items that look better than others."
Secondly, I want to point out something that I guess I just need to keep hammering home: the budget. Every time we sat down to make a new Kickstarter collectible (and that’s EXACTLY what the box you’ve been looking at is: a COLLECTIBLE, *not* a marketing item), we had to ask ourselves how much time and work -- read that as: money -- we wanted to put into that item versus putting them into the game itself.
The box is not going to be used for marketing purposes. It may appear (at least, temporarily) in app stores, but as I said at the beginning of the thread, if there is going to be a retail version -- and I believe now that there will be -- this is absolutely NOT the box we’ll be going with.
Thirdly, I want to point out that the N-Fusion artist who created the artwork of Larry and Fawn you see on this box cover is the exact same artist who created our Larry and animated him in the game. While we would have loved to finesse this artwork even more, every minute we had him spending on this box was a minute we were taking him off the game itself.
Paul wanted to have the box made for free, using strictly volunteer work, and I was against this. (Not that we don’t have people offering us superb artwork on a consistent basis, but it’s one thing to design an isolated piece of artwork and quite another to make it work in the context of packaging.) With some knowledge of the work and expense that goes into creating good commercial art, I wanted to hire a professional. With extremely little money left, and being told that we needed the art yesterday, I paid (out of my own pocket) Andy Hoyos, one of the greatest of the “Golden Age of Sierra” artists, to develop the box art.
Well, you saw the reaction to his logo. So did we. It gave us many sleepless nights (we’ve had roughly 365 sleepless nights since the end of the Kickstarter). We actually went through many, many more iterations of the logo afterwards, some of which paid off the original pop-art “cut paper” style of the original 1987 box’s graphics, but the original started growing on us, and after weeks of back-and-forth, we ended up returning to it.
We also were dissatisfied with Andy’s interpretation of Larry and Fawn, which was an attempt to create a more artistic interpretation of the characters – something that straddled the line between painterly, movie poster-style characters (such as you see on classic posters like “Gone with the Wind”). At Sierra, this kind of experimentation was very, very typical; we’d see rough executions, pick and choose, go back, try again, refine, experiment some more, and so on, ‘til everyone was happy with the outcome.
We didn’t have nearly that luxury. That kind of experimentation and development – such as you see in the results of the Larry 7 retail box art – was totally out of the question on our budget and schedule.
We turned to Alex Kotkin to redo the Larry and Fawn aspect of the box. Since he did the actual characters you see in the game, we knew the box characters would at least be faithful to their in-game counterparts. As mentioned, though, every hour Alex got yanked off the game to work on the box was going to be to the detriment of the GAME. And when all was said and done, the GAME is by far the important thing here, not the collector’s box.
We ended up feeling that, while far from what we’d hoped for, we couldn’t afford to devote yet more time and money to it.
Making changes to the box at this point is simply not feasible. Blame me for the misdirection; box art isn’t my forte, and if the box *had* been meant for retail, you can be sure that I would have insisted that we turn the task over to somebody more qualified. But it ISN’T meant for retail.
The game’s the thing, and that’s where all our love and attention must be focused at this point. I’m disappointed that, as with the earlier flap over the logo, so many people are so focused on, and spending so much energy on, denigrating something so peripheral to the overall experience.
To those of you I’ve already offended somehow, somewhere in the above, I can only assure you that my goal wasn’t to offend. But I truly feel that this is a proverbial tempest in a teapot.
And I would challenge anyone to create what we’ve created – not JUST the game, of which we’re incredibly proud, but also these boxes, and condoms, and an unbelievably handsome art book, and casino chips, and playing cards, and stripper pens, and really sweet t-shirts, and breath spray, and shot glasses, and coasters, and CDs, and Larry postage stamps, and lithographs, and calendars -- and not have some items that look better than others."
" 1. Everybody on earth who owned a legitimate copy of a Sierra adventure game bought it at retail, in a box. Not one single (legitimate) customer downloaded the game. Of course the box was part of the experience! So were the manuals (which I adored writing). But LSLR's sales will be entirely online. Absolutely nobody will be able to buy it in a store in this box.
2. This box goes out to about 2,000 backers only.
3. Every single one of those 2,000 backers has already bought the game, so not a single one of them will decide not to buy the game because the box is unsatisfactory.
So, yes, TAHR, in today's market, with all sales being download-based, and this box only going out to a fraction of the backers, THIS box is most definitely peripheral.
Now, that said, we were greatly surprised and delighted by the recent news that the game WILL be available at retail. But it will not be in this box. I have no idea what the retail box will look like; we're not creating it. People with much bigger budgets than ours will be doing that.
Also, bear in mind that Sierra had a department devoted to marketing, with its own budget. Money to develop the box did NOT come out of the budget of the game itself. In our case, it DOES come out of the game itself."
2. This box goes out to about 2,000 backers only.
3. Every single one of those 2,000 backers has already bought the game, so not a single one of them will decide not to buy the game because the box is unsatisfactory.
So, yes, TAHR, in today's market, with all sales being download-based, and this box only going out to a fraction of the backers, THIS box is most definitely peripheral.
Now, that said, we were greatly surprised and delighted by the recent news that the game WILL be available at retail. But it will not be in this box. I have no idea what the retail box will look like; we're not creating it. People with much bigger budgets than ours will be doing that.
Also, bear in mind that Sierra had a department devoted to marketing, with its own budget. Money to develop the box did NOT come out of the budget of the game itself. In our case, it DOES come out of the game itself."
