If you've played Larry, you know me

March 18, 2015 1:19 AM

I'm Al Lowe and I created a series of games called Leisure Suit Larry for Sierra back in the '80s and '90s along with another 20 games and titles back in that period. I was with Sierra from 1982 until 1998 when it -- well, it was the poor victim of a hostile takeover by criminals. How about that for an opening?

The creator of Leisure Suit Larry interviewed.
posted by MartinWisse (45 comments total)

If you have any questions about it, Google "Cendant verdict Forbes trial." Something like that.
No Leniency For Walter Forbes
Walter Forbes Connecticut Mansion Sells for $7 Million
posted by pracowity at 2:11 AM on March 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

Great interview. Had no idea of what happened with Sierra.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 3:13 AM on March 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

That was indeed very interesting. I remember playing a bunch of Sierra games when I was a kid, and then the company just kind of evaporating when I was a teenager. Now I know why.
posted by Alex404 at 3:17 AM on March 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

If you have any questions about it, Google "Cendant verdict Forbes trial."

I like the bit where Forbes and his lawyers managed to delay the process for so long that Enron happened, which quite possibly resulted in him getting a harsher verdict.
posted by effbot at 3:53 AM on March 18, 2015 [3 favorites]

Wow - I played Leisure Suit Larry.
Great series of games. Hilariously ridiculous games.
posted by Flood at 4:07 AM on March 18, 2015

If you've played Larry, you know me

Or maybe it's Charlie Benton you know, the guy who designed the text-only predecessor Softporn Adventure, which was remade as the first version of LSL: "In the game, the player (playing a down-on-his-luck party animal) searches for certain items that will allow him to win the affections of three beautiful (and sometimes not-so-beautiful) women. Benton claimed that parts of the game were based on his own life."

(that game is perhaps best known these days for the cover photo...)
posted by effbot at 4:35 AM on March 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

I played so many Sierra games as a kid. Sad to hear what happened to the company -- I had no idea! He's right that there really isn't much similar out there that keeps that storytelling function alive -- I just haven't been able to get into games since the golden age of Sierra and Cyan.
posted by peacheater at 4:40 AM on March 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

My dad let me play Leisure Suit Larry games starting when I was, oh, about 9 years old. Maybe not the best of decisions - there was a lot of, "Uh, this next scene, you have to cover your eyes for." He would play through the more racy parts, and then let me take over again.

Obviously I would go back in secretly on my own when my dad wasn't around, and play through the raciest parts with the most pixelated of boobs.
posted by rachaelfaith at 5:06 AM on March 18, 2015 [6 favorites]

If you tried to end a command with "bitch" like "kiss the frog, bitch" in Perils of Rosella, it would say "You're not playing Leisure Suit Larry". I know Roberta Williams was on the picture in the hot tub for Leisure Suit Larry and her picture was on the back of the Perils of Rosella box which was (and is) one of my favorite games. We hated her because her (super pixelated) picture would appear every time we died (stupid troll, stupid STUPID spiral staircases) but it was also very excited to see a woman -- a pretty, feminine woman, despite the super eighties hair -- on the back of my game box. Thanks for this post -- it's nice to hear more about what happened!
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 5:28 AM on March 18, 2015 [11 favorites]

I loved all the Sierra games, especially King's Quest IV and the Hoyle card games (where you could actually play against Al Lowe! He was the best/toughest cribbage opponent.) I still don't understand why my parents let me play the Leisure Suit Larry games but I loved those too. Thanks for this post!
posted by leesh at 5:28 AM on March 18, 2015 [3 favorites]

Huh. I always thought Sierra was taken down by the crash of the adventure game genre, which they partially helped engineer by putting out a thousand of them where progress was exclusively made by picking up every random object one encountered and rubbing them on every other object.
posted by Mitrovarr at 5:38 AM on March 18, 2015 [8 favorites]

I never had any Leisure Suit Larry games, but one of my friends did, and we played after school in the high school library. I don't think any of the staff realized what the game was. Nerds clustered around the sole library computer was something they had come to expect in 1988.

The only scene I really remember is the one where Larry is in a drug store buying a condom and the clerk gives him a series of binary choices, something like "Do you want striped or polka-dotted? Strawberry or chocolate flavored?" No matter what you picked she was always aghast at your choices. "You want a polka-dotted strawberry-flavored condom? What a pervert!"

The game was well designed for keeping the attention (and fueling the imagination) of fifteen year old boys.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 5:42 AM on March 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

A lot of other companies were founded by guys who knew games and as long as they were in charge, it seemed like things were better. But when gradually their companies hired professional management -- professional managers love spreadsheets and they loved evidence, because they didn't have gut feelings that said, "Yeah, that's a great idea! Yeah, that'll sell! People will love that! Look at that!" Instead, they would say, "Well, what are the numbers here? How do we compare this? What are your comparables?”
posted by foot at 5:44 AM on March 18, 2015 [5 favorites]

King's Quest was a blast to play.
posted by marxchivist at 5:47 AM on March 18, 2015 [6 favorites]

This was fascinating. Thanks for posting it.

"I was a hardcore -- oh, not a hardcore gamer. I was teaching at the time. I didn't have 10 hours a day to play, but in the evenings I loved to play games and I spent a lot of time playing. So much so that I went to some shows and I said, "Gosh, I think I could do better software than that." I had been hacking. Literally taught myself to program. You gotta understand, this was the late '70s and the early '80s. There were no classes you could take. There was no such thing as game design. You couldn't buy a book anywhere that taught game design. There were no classes available. At least none that I ever found.

There were books about programming and I bought a lot of those. But, yeah. It was a completely different time. But when I saw some educational software -- I was a teacher, of course. That was my background. I had spent 15 years in the teaching profession. I saw a lot of the educational software that was out and I said, "Gosh, I could do as good as that." And so I wrote some educational games and when Sierra saw them, they were ready to start an educational division and said, "Hey, come on board and write educational games for us." So that's how I got into it. I literally produced some games in my living room. I sold them by myself and ended up selling the whole thing to Sierra, so they brought out a line of educational software, and I think I was three of the four games that they brought out in the first batch."

posted by zarq at 6:12 AM on March 18, 2015 [3 favorites]

This is a really interesting coincidence, as this weekend I purchased Contraption Maker, the resurrection of The Incredible Machine by none other than Jeff Tunnell himself. There have been a few attempts to make new TIM games by whatever entity now owns that trademark, but none of them rang true. Playing Contraption Maker, on the other hand, is like living again in the golden age of Sierra games. Plus some great additions that bring it up to date, like the ability to mod the game with Javascript!

I guess the moral of the story is that the creative vision of the game's original authors really does matter, as much as companies like EA et al. think they can just buy the property name and hand it to anyone to churn out a sequel. See also: SimCity.
posted by overeducated_alligator at 6:22 AM on March 18, 2015 [4 favorites]

there really isn't much similar out there that keeps that storytelling function alive

Telltale is doing great things but it's just not the same.
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:42 AM on March 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

This interview is great! We're in the midst of a mini adventure game renaissance at the moment (via indie developers, old developers Kickstarting new projects, and new developers updating old properties), and it's very interesting to see that my favorite games, then and now, were produced the same way: in relatively small teams, led by people with strong individual visions.

I'm bummed to hear that Roberta Williams essentially disappeared after Sierra was taken over by goons. I don't blame her--I was poking around the wiki page for King's Quest 8, and apparently the corporate meddling was so bad that at one point there was a parallel team making a different version of the same game, all because management didn't trust the choices she was making. That's some real fourth-season-of-Community shit.

Maybe they exist already, but I'd be interested in reading interviews/oral histories of the final games in each of the Sierra adventure game series, just to see how much was creator choice and how much was corporate interference. That shift into cartoon-style for KQ7, Space Quest 6, and the last Leisure Suit Larry: was that just a natural progression of their graphical styles, or was it an intentional shift made by management? Whose idea was it to make Gabriel Knight 3 using that ugly 3D? Did the Coles really want Quest for Glory 5 to have such an emphasis on action?
posted by brookedel at 6:44 AM on March 18, 2015 [8 favorites]

Thanks for posting this. I came of age with Sierra games. The first PC game I ever played was KQII, followed by Space Quest, Police Quest, and Leisure Suit Larry. I still love them, with all their flaws, and this was an enlightening interview. Seems like the rise and fall of Sierra would make for a good documentary, or maybe someone could do an oral history. I'd definitely read it.
posted by dortmunder at 7:20 AM on March 18, 2015

There's a new King's Quest in the works now, developed by The Odd Gentlemen, who previously made The Adventures of P.B. Winterbottom, and distributed by ... Sierra!? (Actually Activision using the Sierra name.)
posted by murphy slaw at 7:32 AM on March 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

there really isn't much similar out there that keeps that storytelling function alive

Have I raved on Metafilter about how much I loved The Talos Principle yet? Obviously an entirely different ballpark from LSL and adventure games in general, but I was very pleasantly surprised by the non-puzzle elements of the game. The story is really discovered or narrated, not acted out, but for me it worked very well. The Mefi consensus might not take the philosophical/metaphysical ideas very seriously, but it is definitely a solid hit in the "game as storytelling" category.
posted by Dr Dracator at 7:33 AM on March 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

Really interesting to hear him talk about old Sierra, really interesting to hear him talk about how the Kickstarter went. I recall that brief period of optimism about putting out more Larry games, or even a new Larry game, before the sales reception made it clear that there wouldn't be more. Out of all the Kickstarter's I have backed, that one and Wasteland 2 have probably done the best job delivering on their promises.
posted by teh_boy at 7:35 AM on March 18, 2015

I'd play the heck out of Quest Quest
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:41 AM on March 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

Here's hoping his other educational games taught math and science as accurately as Leisure Suit Larry taught us about dating and relationships.
posted by straight at 7:46 AM on March 18, 2015

Definitely needs a previously
posted by k5.user at 8:03 AM on March 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

there really isn't much similar out there that keeps that storytelling function alive

Well, that's not at all true, and it certainly isn't true that there was a flourishing of storytelling back then. If you go back and play those old Sierra games... they are terrible. Leisure Suit Larry was awful. They were important stepping stones and full of nostalgia for me, but the storytelling and ludonarrative technologies were entirely undeveloped. Even classics of the generation afterward, like the old Lucasarts adventures, contain flashes of brilliance but are crippled by horrible puzzles, sophomoric storytelling conceits, poor writing, and a lack of pacing. Games have gotten better. Indie designers have advanced.

Al Lowe recently released a new Kickstarted Leisure Suit Larry game on iOS. The Kickstarter but not the game is mentioned in this interview. It was not much different from the old games, and it was terrible. None of the jokes were funny and they were all outdated (there was a "joke" about how all those punch-out subscription cards fall out of a magazine when you shake it!), it was painfully slow, everything was kinda skeezy and unpleasant, and nothing was original. I'd rather play Portal, Gone Home, a Telltale game, The Talos Principle, or any of a thousand other indie games, thanks.
posted by painquale at 8:24 AM on March 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

Great interview. Thanks for posting, MartinWisse. I have so many fond memories of King's Quest and other early Sierra games.

One thing that Lowe mentions repeatedly in the interview is the lack of "story" in modern games, and that jumped out at me because I'm not sure that's really a problem in games today.

I play a lot of video/computer games, and honestly, story is everywhere, from the quirky indie titles to the big-budget blockbusters. Elaborate storylines are commonplace in popular games--think of the twisty plots of the Bioshocks, all the over-elaborate alt-history stuff in the Assassin's Creeds, the emotional journey of "The Last of Us," the slowly-pieced-together storylines of "Gone Home." Heck, I'm playing the latest Call of Duty game on the PS4 and even it is trying to tell me a story (even when I'd rather just shoot things). Even games heavy on randomization (FTL, Darkest Dungeons, etc.) are designed in such a way that a recognizable and meaningful story evolves dynamically throughout play.

Now, not all of those stories are interesting or amazingly told. But are these stories really that much worse than those of King's Quest or Leisure Suit Larry? The actual plots of the King's Quest games were often quite simple; by "story" is Lowe referring to something beyond the plot and characters, something interwoven with the gameplay? He suggests that inventory systems, game syntax, and puzzles all contribute to story, but those are all things I can find reasonably well-implemented in a lot of games today.

I would love to hear somebody like Lowe--who knew how to do it right back in the day, and who has certainly earned the right to speak authoritatively about this--talk more specifically about what he means by "story," and what specific elements of storytelling are being ignored in games today. Without more detail, it starts to feel less like a meaningful critique of games today, and more like (understandable) nostalgia for the days of gaming yore.
posted by Byzantine at 8:28 AM on March 18, 2015 [4 favorites]

That was a good interview, thanks for posting it.

I've been researching the structure of the games industry recently, and Lowe's first hand account backs up the ideas represented by some of the authors who study the economics of games production. Lowe's account of risk adversity in the higher levels of game production also bear through in research. As an example, Destiny cost somewhere on the order of $500 million to develop, refine, and then market.

In some ways, it's not surprising that AAA development is marked by lots of repetition, either in terms of sequels, or in terms of derivative game design that continually repeats a few rigid patterns.
posted by codacorolla at 9:56 AM on March 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: progress was exclusively made by picking up every random object one encountered and rubbing them on every other object.
posted by Renoroc at 11:49 AM on March 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

One thing that Lowe mentions repeatedly in the interview is the lack of "story" in modern games, and that jumped out at me because I'm not sure that's really a problem in games today.

My takeaway was he felt in today's games storylines are tacked-on after the fact, whereas with Sierra they would start with a story and build the game around it. I'm not sure I agree with him though. One example you mentioned for instance, Gone Home, definitely feels like the creators started with a story and built the game as a way to tell that story. I'd go as far to say that game in particular is more similar to the Sierra adventure games than not in many aspects.
posted by Dr-Baa at 12:06 PM on March 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

It's worth noting that he admittedly hasn't played games in recent years (apart from Candy Crush, apparently), and he's mostly talking about the AAA industry. Gone Home is certainly a game where the story is prevalent, but it's also from a three person indie team. Sierra, at the time, was a AAA studio with mainstream appeal and recognition. Games with a story focus, such as Sierra's canon adventure games, still exist, but occupy a different space in public consciousness and in the marketplace.
posted by codacorolla at 12:22 PM on March 18, 2015 [5 favorites]

Frictional Games are probably the closest mid tier dev house that does what he's talking about. Though Creative Assembly's Alien: Isolation could be an example of AAA story done well. Though I would put that down as the exception to the rule.

I believe the spirit of his points stands to some degree. To what degree is an exercise left to the reader.
posted by The Power Nap at 1:09 PM on March 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'd kind of like to sit this guy down with a copy of The Walking Dead or Tales From the Borderlands.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:58 PM on March 18, 2015

I played Larry all the time in my youth and was actually one of the people who supported the Al Lowe Kickstarter (for a very small A phrase you are no doubt familiar with amount.
And I have to agree with Painquale. Oh, we were warned it was going to be the same game but they did promise new material and there was one brief new scene. But I too was expecting some of the old jokes to update and was disappointed when the jokes like lubber were retained. I too was hoping my support for the Kickstarter meant a new Larry but it doesn't look like it.
So in lieu of a period for Larry, I leave:


Ken sent me.
posted by dannyboybell at 2:23 PM on March 18, 2015

I toured Sierra's offices back in the 90's as a kid, when I was making my own shareware adventure games, inspired by their output and LucasArts. This was just before the second Gabriel Knight came out and I remember seeing concept art from it up on the walls. All I had to do was agree to not tell any magazines or whomever about what I saw there ( I was under 18, so an NDA wasn't exactly going to cut it, legally speaking). A big publisher/developer like that opening its doors to tours these days seems almost unthinkable to me.
posted by Durhey at 4:03 PM on March 18, 2015 [3 favorites]

My dad let me play Leisure Suit Larry games starting when I was, oh, about 9 years old.

I was in the exact same boat! I learned about a lot of things from that game...

That was a really fun read, thanks.
posted by Bacon Bit at 4:56 PM on March 18, 2015

I remember a friend of mine's dad had LSL 1, and we snuck around and played it some. It didn't leave much of an impression on me, honestly; too much a nerd, I guess?

My first Sierra game was Space Quest II, on an amber monochrome monitor hooked up to some computer that my dad put together from computer show parts. The game came by way of a work friend of my mom's, and I don't know how she came by it. I remember getting on a local BBS that my dad used for hints for it, and for other games. I was probably 7 or 8, so it had been out for a year or two.

After that, I would look at the games in the back of.. Computer Shopper, probably? I think that's where we got them, after that. CS and then, again, computer shows. I had KQ 5 on something like 40+ 5.25" floppies, I played the Quest for Glory series at least once a year for a couple of decades.. I was a Sierra kid. LucasArts is fine, we played Monkey Island, whatever, but for me it was Sierra. The Quests, the weird Dynamix games (Beamish, Gobliiins, even Inca and The Prophecy).. this is to say nothing of The Sierra Network, which is its own topic...

I miss Sierra. I don't know if I could still really get into one of their games - pick up everything that isn't nailed down (and if nailed down, look for a hammer), save early, save often, et cetera - but they were such a huge, formative part of my childhood.
posted by curious nu at 5:59 PM on March 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

I actually sent away for the shirt you could get by returning a card that was enclosed in the box. Still have that thing around somewhere.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 9:01 PM on March 18, 2015

I was always defeated by the LSL age gate.
posted by Brocktoon at 9:37 PM on March 18, 2015

Actually it was the funniest part of the game.
posted by Dr Dracator at 10:00 PM on March 18, 2015

The age verifying quiz taught me that Sgt. Pepper was the leader of the Lonely Hearts Club Band, thought it didn't make sense til years later as a teenager when I actually heard the music.

The questions are on Al's site.
posted by banwa at 5:04 AM on March 19, 2015

If you go back and play those old Sierra games... they are terrible

This is a STRAIGHT UP LIE. Metafilter actually helped me get a couple of old Sierra games a few years ago and they were still totally awesome!! I mean, King's Quest IV wasn't at all as hard as I remembered, but then again, I'm not nine anymore. It's still super hilarious and fun (and I get a lot more of the humor now).
posted by leesh at 7:44 AM on March 19, 2015

Between Tell-Tale games Sam & Max episodes, the Grim Fandango re-release, Thimbleweed Park, and Kelvin and the Infamous Machine, I am feeling pretty hyped about adventure games!

Had no idea about the King's Quest license and Spaceventure!
posted by Theta States at 9:40 AM on March 19, 2015

effbot: "If you've played Larry, you know me

Or maybe it's Charlie Benton you know, the guy who designed the text-only predecessor Softporn Adventure, which was remade as the first version of LSL: "In the game, the player (playing a down-on-his-luck party animal) searches for certain items that will allow him to win the affections of three beautiful (and sometimes not-so-beautiful) women. Benton claimed that parts of the game were based on his own life."

(that game is perhaps best known these days for the cover photo...)"

And now you have where I stepped into this picture... (The Apple II version, that is...)
posted by Samizdata at 1:32 PM on March 19, 2015

Byzantine: "I play a lot of video/computer games, and honestly, story is everywhere, from the quirky indie titles to the big-budget blockbusters. Elaborate storylines are commonplace in popular games--think of the twisty plots of the Bioshocks, all the over-elaborate alt-history stuff in the Assassin's Creeds, the emotional journey of "The Last of Us," the slowly-pieced-together storylines of "Gone Home." Heck, I'm playing the latest Call of Duty game on the PS4 and even it is trying to tell me a story (even when I'd rather just shoot things). Even games heavy on randomization (FTL, Darkest Dungeons, etc.) are designed in such a way that a recognizable and meaningful story evolves dynamically throughout play.
"

I, as a lover of FTL, often describe it as an engine for creating stories to tell other people about. I also once won a crapton of games from HappyPuppy for an essay on the importance of storytelling and plot in video games.
posted by Samizdata at 1:38 PM on March 19, 2015