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.