Adventure Gamers - Forums

jhetfield21 - 30 May 2012 06:55 PM

also @zane….you mean the background right?

no, i mean the thing around his neck that was cut out, and then they used a tool to make those spots the same color as his shirt. Deliberate and shady.
At best it shows horrible design decisions.
And at the least it shows a willingness to make some strange misleading alterations.

I wouldn’t go with the “scam” route, since Al has apparently given some sort of “blessing” to this. I guess he wasn’t expecting to be used in such a prominent way though; looking at the project you’d think Lowe is heading the whole operation, which is misleading.

Btw, anyone else find this response odd? Steve really thinks that even despite this initial backlash (assuming the project gets funded) he’ll “work with Al Lowe”? I can’t imagine Trowe is pulling stuff like this out of thin air.

In a way I’m ‘glad’ this got a bad rep from the start, since I’m broke (Kickstarter-wise) anyway, so I don’t feel bad about missing out on another resurrection (I’ll sure feel bad about passing on Autumn Moon, so Tiller better wait a good half a year… or else!). Even if they’re clear on the legal side of things, it just doesn’t feel right. So, rejoice, trusty wallet, You’re safe this time!

While I like the gameplay concept described for Sam Suede the whole presentation seems very amateurish. I doubt I’ll be funding this - but then again I haven’t funded anything either yet besides from DFA.

Jackal updated the news item on the main site.

Note: This story originally stated (as the Kickstarter campaign implies) that Lowe himself is still involved in Sam Suede, but he is no longer actively participating in the game’s development.

Wisecrack posted this on their Kickstarter an hour ago:

From Everyone at Wisecrack Games to the Kickstarter Community:

For those of you that have been questioning and speculating about the news today, Wisecrack Games does have a current agreement with Al Lowe for this Sam Suede Kickstarter campaign and has received approval from him for our launch, including our representations of this project. Anything stated to the contrary is patently false.

In addition, any claim of copyright infringement is entirely baseless. If you want to investigate on your own, you can check with the U.S. Patent and Trademark and U.S. Copyright Offices online to see who is the true holder of any trademarks or copyrights.

Kickstarter is fostering a community of developers and gamers who collaborate and support each other to create content that the fans want, and everyone at Wisecrack Games is overjoyed to be part of this community! The real question is, Kickstarter fans, why would anyone try to derail this project after a decade of considerable investment in this property by honest, hard-working people?

The plot thickens…

MoP - 30 May 2012 07:25 PM

I can’t imagine Trowe is pulling stuff like this out of thin air.

Maybe he just meant that Al had had one too many shandies?

zane - 30 May 2012 07:24 PM

i mean the thing around his neck that was cut out

I believe they call it a “lanyard”, it looks as though the photo was taken at a gaming expo or something.

Relying so heavily on Al Lowe’s image not only seems a little disingenuous and desperate, but also a pretty sloppy tactic considering 14,000 people just gave money to the “real deal”. There’s no way they will reach $500,000.

The campaign video was awful…“DO YOU REMEMBER BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL!?”. Then straight away a “melons” joke, in what looked like prototype footage from 10 years ago.

The whole publisher pitch sketch was unoriginal and not funny in the slightest, so why would I trust them to make a funny game?

Y’know, sometimes there’s a valid reason for publishers not wanting to pick up games.

orient - 30 May 2012 10:30 PM

The campaign video was awful…“DO YOU REMEMBER BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL!?”. Then straight away a “melons” joke, in what looked like prototype footage from 10 years ago.

I agree!

First I thought it could be interesting to see a Steve Ince and Al Lowe collaboration, but now forget it. Having this new opportunity to crowd-fund your game doesn’t mean you can take your audience for retards. Keeping things honest and simple makes a difference for me anyway.

This Ken fellow keeps talking about having a contract with Al. He should post it.

Most probably Wisecrack had some old contract with Al saying that if they ever get funding then they will work together on it. They should clarify on what exactly his involvement is going to be and whether there will be future involvement.

One of the reasons I didn’t pledge to the LSL project was that I found their campaign to be misleading and vague as well (eg: “Prying the rights from big evil corporation - DONE”, only to learn much later that they only have remake rights for the first one). So bottom line is that I dont trust either of them.

Apparently not. This was posted a little over half an hour ago on the Sam Suede kickstarter comments section.

To further clarify for the Kickstarter community:

iBase Entertainment was formed when Ken Wegrzyn brought Al Lowe out of retirement. As equal partners of iBase Entertainment, they designed Sam Suede together. Al and Ken’s studio spent years on preproduction, engine development, and prototyping for Sam Suede for PC/Xbox, as well as converting for Xbox360, per Microsoft’s request, thus tripling their budget. This extensive work resulted in early gameplay prototypes and a detailed Game Design Document. Together, Al and Ken created an absolutely brilliant game design that has humorous gameplay that has yet to be seen. The game design is extensive enough to create several games if we choose to do so, as it is stipulated in our current contract with Al Lowe.

Ken has attempted to stay with property over the past six years, even during an announcement in 2010 that did not include Al, which Ken did not move forward with. Ken recently formed his new company, Wisecrack Games, based on a new agreement with Al Lowe. Furthermore, Wisecrack’s agreement with Al pre-dates the Leisure Suit Larry Kickstarter announcement. When Wisecrack subsequently learned of the Leisure Suit Larry Kickstarter from Al, Wisecrack agreed to delay the Sam Suede Kickstarter to allow Leisure Suit Larry to go first.

Al and Ken both agreed to the opening title and the statements made, since this is their design that is being Kickstarted to raise funds for completion. As we agreed with Al, we are staying true to the original design as we move into production, as it should be anyhow for a properly managed development project. We have made the public statement that Al is working on Leisure Suit Larry, since his design work on Sam Suede is complete, and we are ready to start production immediately.

Finally, this Sam Suede project is based on a relationship between Al Lowe and Wisecrack Games and has nothing to do with Replay Games.

Eurogamer has an article on this: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-05-31-leisure-suit-larry-creator-sues-sam-suede-kickstarter

What’s hilarious is how oblivious Ken Wegrzyn seems to be to the root of the problem.

orient - 30 May 2012 10:30 PM

The campaign video was awful…“DO YOU REMEMBER BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL!?”. Then straight away a “melons” joke, in what looked like prototype footage from 10 years ago.

That’s what I thought 5 years ago, when the game was first announced by Al himself

inm8#2 - 31 May 2012 04:11 AM

Eurogamer has an article on this: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-05-31-leisure-suit-larry-creator-sues-sam-suede-kickstarter

What’s hilarious is how oblivious Ken Wegrzyn seems to be to the root of the problem.

I’d be more inclined to think it is Paul Trowe, rather than this Wegrzyn fellow. As Jatsie said on the first page, Trowe has shown himself to be pretty immature at times, and it’s just absurd to make the claims about copyright infringement that are made.

But the whole thing is that silly, that maybe it is just a publicity stunt?

Lord knows they need some stunts too. I’m surprised how naive a lot of developers seem to be, simply because of the success of Double Fine. Seriously, 500K? Even Tex Murphy will be lucky to see that much cash. And Tex is much beloved. On that note, how come this game got a news item on AG and Tex didn’t? I know he did when the Kickstarter ANNOUNCEMENT was made, but not when the project actually started.

It was my understanding that the original statement made by Wegrzyn / Wisecrack was after consulting a lawyer themselves.