Live Magazine February Issue February 2014 | Page 34

al lowe said they loved it, the writing, they thought it was funny, they liked my games and I had a good track record. I got all these stories and when we finished the pitch, a lot of them said things like ‘well this is the first game I’ve seen in years that I would actually play myself’ which is kind of a scary for a guy who is running a game company. And yet, everyone of them would say ‘what are your comparables?’ and because there what they could find in the realm of action comedy and all they could find was ‘Psychonauts’, the Tim Schafer game. I mean it was a good game, but it had very off putting graphics and it didn’t really... it looked like a child’s game and yet it was anything but and so, they checked the sales figures and said ‘that only sold so many thousand copies, so that’s all we could fund your game for. You can’t do it for that price. We can’t been done? Where could we push the wall?’ and the attitude is totally different now. Finally, what advice would you give to any developer who is contemplating putting sexual content into a game? Be prepared for the consequences. I think that is the best advice I would give. I wouldn’t say don’t do it, but you should be ready to not only justify it, “..BUT YOU SHOULD BE READY TO NOT ONLY JUSTIFY IT, BUT ALSO TO PUT UP WITH A LOT OF HASSLE FROM A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO DON’T WANT YOU TO EXPRESS YOURSELF OR ARE WILLING TO MAKE YOUR LIFE MISERABLE BECAUSE OF IT. were no action comedies at that time, we would say ‘there really isn’t any comparables available - it’s unique property’ and that just shut the door right there. It was just the same as saying ‘please don’t give us your money’, because what they would do inevitably is go back and look at fund you’. In other words, you cant make money, because it won’t sell any differently than this other game. You just can’t fight that. In the 80’s, Sierra’s attitude, and I think most of publishers was, ‘What isn’t on the market? What hasn’t but also to put up with a lot of hassle from a lot of people who don’t want you to express yourself or are willing to make your life miserable because of it. I’m hoping that will one day go away, but I don’t see it being much less today than it was 25 years ago.