shoptroll

Another vote for Humble and itch.io. Both seem to have pretty low bars for entry so it shouldn't be all that hard to get the game on them. Humble also has the added benefit of having an embeddable widget you can include on the game's web page. Green Man Gaming also sells games but I'm not sure if they're just a vendor for Steam keys. Might be worth investigating anyways.

I believe he was credited as the "Company Historian" in the manuals for the Collection Series compilations that were issues in the 90's. He also has some involvement with SierraGamers according to the main page there.

I think Tommint has the right idea, it seems highly likely this will be mostly used for mobile ports of existing games (SCUMMVM has iOS/Android support now, right?) and re-releases or "remasterings" of older games. I can't see Activision dumping a ton of money into original development, although we do know they are/were interested in farming out the work to companies like TellTale and handling the publishing side. I doubt they're expecting this label/brand to make a significant amount of money for them, but they should be able to make some money and earn goodwill from the AG community by putting classic titles on new platforms (and maybe introduce more people to the genre this way as well). I don't particularly like the font/styling on the text for the new logo though. But, at least they're smart and making the full announcement at Gamescom. That's a good sign they're aware of the importance of the German market which kept the genre going. Either that or it's really convenient timing. EDIT: I expect we'll find out what's going on with King's Quest at the announcement. It's been over a year since TellTale said they had to give up the project, but that the franchise was "in good hands". The fact that John Williams knows what's going on is interesting to say the least. Yeah, Activision picked up the brand during the merger with Vivendi (who had absorbed CUC's holdings in the fallout of the Cedant scandal). The big question is which IPs they still own. They sold Larry to Codemasters during the merger, and there's a handful of games that haven't hit GOG yet like Freddy Pharkas, Laura Bow, and Conquests, so who knows who has the rights for those now. Sadly it makes sense for them to name drop more recent titles that have bigger audiences on a general purpose gaming news site. I remember the outrage in the Unreal community when Epic's PR team was promoting Unreal Tournament 3 as "by the studio who brought you Gears of War".

What I'm saying is that not all games need to cater strictly to the adolescent white male demographic. If I my hypothetical daughter and she comes to me asking for games that have a female protagonist because she wants to play as a woman, I could probably count on my fingers the number of modern mainstream games which I could give her. I would not have this problem if my hypothetical son asked for a game with a male protagonist. I'd have an even harder time if either of them were LGBTQ and wanted a protagonist to relate to. It's fine if we still have games that cater to adolescent white males. But variety is the spice of life, and that is what part of the community is asking for. (emphasis added in previous quote) And there's one of the reasons people are asking for change. Some of us don't want ham-fisted stories or commentary. If you have commentary to make, do it right. Don't fall back on lazy tropes or stereotypes for plots and characters.

Apologies in advance if my post comes off like I'm firing from both barrels without warning. Because this has been irking me all day and I wanted to chime in. Yup. The article Fronzel linked points that out later on: "The sexual violence at the end of that tutorial will single out a fifth of the female audience who have experienced sexual violence". There's also this October 2013 report from the World Health Organization which shows that number jumps up to 35% on a worldwide scale for general sexual violence. Look Fronzel, this isn't some sort of moral panic like the ones you're equating it to. No one is saying people need to stop making these games because bad things will happen if they don't. People want the industry to shift away from a very entrenched worldview. This isn't a hobby that is the domain of only adolescent white males these days. There are other people playing games, and they are all minorities who are very underrepresented by the medium. You say "It's 100% pure escapism". How is it escapism for women if the majority of the time they're forced to play as a male character? How is it escapism for a person of color when the vast majority of game characters are white? Or LGBTQ players who want to have a non-heterosexual relationship option in a game but the developers didn't think to include one? This isn't the gestapo coming by and saying we need to burn these games. This is criticism. This is a reviewer doing her job and saying that she had a very negative reaction to a specific scene in a game that she didn't think was handled properly by the developers. This is a reviewer who clearly enjoyed the previous game and is pointing out to the developer and the community that she thinks a specific scene weakens the product and will likely negatively impact other players too. Criticism allows people to have a dialogue about issues. Censorship does not. Shouting down people who bring up valid points is not how you have a dialogue such as this follow-up interview with Dennaton on RPS. What Cara's doing is no different than someone pointing out they didn't think the voice acting was good on a specific character, or something in the story doesn't make sense. She's not doing it because she hates the game, she's doing it because she wants this to be a good experience for anyone who plays it. People don't get better at making things unless people are willing to explain the faults in their work. And considering rape isn't usually handled well in a lot of fiction, it's a good criticism to levy because it can encourage the authors to revisit their work and see if they can handle it better or use a different scene to convey the same information (see the above interview). She's also doing other people a favor by highlighting content that might be problematic for them. With 1 out of every 5 women having suffered from rape (and the real statistic is probably higher because it's an underreported crime for various reasons) there's real reason to let victims who might not be aware of the content in the game (especially considering the previous game didn't have any sexual violence in it). Rape victims often suffer from something akin to PTSD like soldiers (and this is true of other abuse victims as well) and stuff like this can cause a very physical response for them. That's being an empathic human being and looking out for others. No one is saying you can't enjoy these things. I enjoyed the Larry games because I found them funny, but I also acknowledge there's some problematic bits in them as well (and a lot of this is due to the age in which the games were made). I also like Game of Thrones which is also problematic in spots. Does people pointing out the problematic bits diminsh my enjoyment of them? Not really, but I also don't think people shouldn't voice their opinions and criticisms when there's something problematic going on. As for why it seems like this is all you see about games these days... Well it's a combination of factors. The main one is that there's a lot more gamers out there from all walks of life and it's no longer the 80's or 90's where many of the minorities were unwilling to speak up. The Internet has given a lot of groups their own safe spaces to gather and discuss issues without fear of retaliation. Some of these people are now writing for game publications, running their own sites, or just being vocal on social media. So a lot of opinions that were being kept underground before are now out in the open and finding there's an audience of likeminded people. There's also the fact that a lot of people are dissastisfied with the current stagnation in the market and encouraging developers to write for different demographics is one way of addressing this. And some people are growing older and looking around and noticing that "hey, there's very few games with good female characters for my daughter to look up to". (Great post here by Jeff Vogel of Spiderweb Software if anyone's interested) I'm 31 and have been gaming since I was 5. I know I'd much rather live in a world where more people feel empowered by games because they can find characters to relate to other than buff macho white guy with a gun. I love games and I want more people to enjoy them. I also want to live in a world where hopefully my offspring will be able to enjoy a large variety of games regardless of their gender (or sexual orientation, or religious beliefs, or ethnicity, etc.). So I ask you, Fronzel, what the fuck gives you the right to air question another person's opinion in such a callous manner?

Currently getting my fake retro on with Shovel Knight and Quest for Infamy. Shovel Knight is a great tribute to the NES platformer games of yore, and I'm on a second playthrough of it on a harder difficulty (because it's fun and there's some achievements I thought might be fun to try and get). QfI has been good fun as well, although I never played any of the QFG games back in the day. I was purely won over by the demo and pre-ordered it as a show of support and because devs gotta eat, ya know? I didn't know which class to pick so I randomly rolled Rogue and I just reached Tyr for the first time a couple nights ago.

That tribute video is great! I never bothered to register for the Replay forums so I completely missed that one. The exploding genitals death is probably my favorite death in the original game. I always get my hopes up every time I check in on this forum (so like once every few months) and I see this thread has new posts. Only to find that, nope, Codemasters hasn't transferred the license to someone else and gotten Al and Josh back together on a new game or another remake. Such a shame the way this one turned out :(

Congrats on the contribution to this Collector. I've used your patches/installers many times and it's good to see you getting some recognition for your hard work :)

Vivendi acquired Cendant? back in the early 2000's which was Sierra's holding company at the time. Vivendi later merged with Activision. That's how Activision owns the rights.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear about the casino game either. Even though I liked the old one back in the day, I didn't see myself getting into any new version if they went ahead with a F2P model even with Al on-board. The fun of the old game was the no-risk single player and having to interact with other people to get free money. But a cynical cash grab? No thanks. Glad to hear the reload bug with the casino games in Reloaded was fixed. Don't think I'll be diving back into Reloaded any time soon but that will make it certainly less frustrating next time I play.

I really hope this means the whole debacle is pretty much over even if it means there will be less popcorn consumption from watching Paul implode (I still feel bad for anyone who caught up in this). I don't think I've seen anything like this since the bizarre incident with one of the Gizmondo founders back in 2006. I'm glad Al finally got out of there. After the incidents in October, I was surprised he didn't leave at the time, but it sounds like he needed to complete his contract before leaving. Given Paul's behavior, I wouldn't be surprised if there would've been a breach of contract lawsuit or something if Al had terminated his involvement early. It also makes me think that Josh left in July because his contract was up at the time as well. It's also frustrating to read that Replay might still be able to license the IP from Codemasters without Al's involvement. I know Paul was saying something about a "surprise" in January, and I really hope he's not arrogant enough to try and continue remaking Larry games without Al or Josh. Or if he is, I hope it backfires horribly on him. No Al, no sale. One of the things I always felt that was weird with Replay was how it felt like Paul was trying to force his way into the limelight in many of the interviews or videos. It's great that he was able to set everything up for Al, but I always felt like as the CEO or Executive Producer or whatever of a company you're better off staying behind the scenes and making sure everything is running smoothly. Also it sounds like he was pushing for a Larry 4 which I think is just one of those things that doesn't need to exist (like Star Wars prequels or Matrix sequels) and would completely ruin one of the central gags in Larry 5. Also, did many of the Sierra alum actually know Paul from the old days? I know it wasn't the biggest company but from the bits I've managed to find on MobyGames indicate that most of his work at Sierra was in QA or as a Production Assistant on several of the FMV games. How does someone go from low-level development roles to CEO of a retro-revival studio? Oh, and what of the Fester Mudd team? I've been meaning to pick that up but Replay never really seemed to care much for publicizing it :( Now that Al and Josh aren't at Replay I really don't want to buy the game as long as Replay is seeing some of the money. Anyways, If people haven't already, it might be a nice thing to send Al an email. He's always been good about reading fan mail and I'm sure it would mean a lot to him if people dropped him a line. He also badmouthed Phoenix Online completely out of the blue when "discussing" Adventure Mob on Corey's facebook feed. (My speculation is that he's not pleased Phoenix Online continues working on TSL. Or they've got the KQ license after Telltale failed to do anything with it.) RPS is the best. Really glad to see them reporting on this and going into a lot more depth than some of the other sites. Not surprising though given some of their associates were well aware of Paul's antics. While I'd love to know more about how My "perfect" Larry 1 would be something like a hybrid of LSL1 VGA and Reloaded. The animation (and lack thereof) in certain spots hurts it a lot along with pacing issues that were introduced by the new content. Some of the new content fell kinda flat with me like Angry Broads (I don't feel Larry has ever deliberately tried to be misogynistic) and the "HIdden Object" gag which I thought went on too long (and seemed out of place). But I'm still happy Al and Josh had a chance to work with the property once again, even if it really felt like the game could've used a much larger budget. The new writing was good, they eliminated some frustration (but added more unless the 2.0 patch fixed reloading on the blackjack machines) and the soundtrack was phenomenal (even if I still have a soft spot for Mark Seibert's work). Really, just an HD version of LSL1VGA would've been enough for me.

Liked the update, it was really informative and I have a better idea of where things stand now. That was a really rough demo, but definitely an alpha build. I liked the bits I could play, even though I got stuck on the first screen because it took me way too long to realize you had to click and drag to open the airlock. Despite the issues it was great to see something in action and it showed the art and animation worked fine.

It'd be really amusing if the reason for the delay is that Activision contacted them about doing a proper Space Quest game on the sly and SpaceVenture had to be shoved to the side. I don't think that's the case but I'd pay money to see a certain someone's reaction at that. Double bonus if Josh is involved.

Al's got a tip jar on his website. Maybe use that? I don't think calling for an organized boycott helps the situation at all, but giving people a heads up on the antics isn't a bad idea. I am!

The original Larry Casino wasn't terrible for what it was. It's no adventure game but it did have a good selection of casino games and a number of options to tailor how each table worked. It's a shame the WON integration was really loose and completely jarring with how you'd have to bring up a seperate application to join a game. The F2P game seems really cynical, but I'm not surprised Al is going along with it. Last time I checked his site there were a bunch of banner ads for online gambling sites. The man likes his Vegas :)

Happy Birthday!

Larry 2 is probably one of the few games in the franchise that really could use a remake (5 is probably the other). I'll be sad if we don't get that one, but unfortunately it's a much bigger game and they already had to dump additional money into Reloaded just to have enough cash to finish it. Reloaded came out ok, but there's some very rough edges which was to be expected given the resources they had. Anyways, I decided to send Al an email inquiry this morning just to say I still support him and any future endeavors despite whatever is going on at Replay. I figured given everyone's anger at he who shall not be named and the company it seemed like a good idea to let Al know that some people still believe in him and his creation. I know Larry means a lot to him and I've always hoped that HWSNBN wasn't trying to take advantage of Al for personal gain. I wonder if the Coles, Jane Jensen, and Jim Walls felt there was something fishy about Replay? None of them signed on with Replay for their projects and oddly it doesn't sound like HWSHNBN ever gave much consideration to QfG, GK, or PQ in some of the earlier interviews. It was all about KQ, SQ, and LSL which I think were Sierra's best selling adventure series in the heyday?

The only people I can think of are Richard Cobbett (freelancer and does a lot of stuff for PC Gamer and RPS) and John Walker (RPS). Both have written extensively about various adventure games and are very familiar with the Sierra alum. Other than that ping someone at Adventure Gamers? Personally I don't think there's much of a story aside from Josh's departure. Squabbles between fans and companies usually aren't the best news items (unless it's a very big company), but an unexpected departure of a company executive is newsworthy.

Just went digging through the RPS archives and found this interview last year with Al and Paul (which was during the Larry kickstarter, so before SpaceVenture was announced). If Paul was smart about this he'd let SpaceVenture finish up and then approach Mark & Scott about a new SQ game or making a remake. But instead, it seems like he's content to go ahead and throw some kerosene on the bridge.

I think Josh was going to get his own project at Sierra at some point, but from one of the interviews on Adventure Gamers or Adventure Classic Gaming it sounds like he departed following some sleazy contractual issue with post-Ken Sierra. You might be right about being the "star" of Replay. I think there was some mention of him helping out a fair bit with Fester Mudd. Codemasters currently owns the Larry IP. They bought it from Vivendi during/after the merger with Activision when Activision-Blizzard decided to drop Box Office Bust (along with a number of other titles like Brutal Legend). EDIT: I would be greatly amused if Activision licenses out King's Quest to either Himalaya, Infamous Quests, or Phoenix Online.

I saw this on UMBCast's Twitter feed and wanted to chime in as a show of support for Serena, et. al. You all made the right choice to stand up to Paul who was acting like a bully. While I think Paul's entitled to his opinion, the way he's acted since that post has been pretty shameful. To quote a certain movie, "You're not wrong Walter, you're just an asshole". I don't know anything about the office politics around Sierra back in the day, but I have a really hard time believing that Ken Williams would let this level of animosity erupt between project teams. And, most importantly, he certainly wouldn't go about pissing off the company's most loyal fans in such a manner, based on what he's said on SierraGamers. Paul seriously needs to get over the fact that Replay isn't Sierra 2.0 and that Larry Reloaded and Fester Mudd aren't selling as well as they hoped. I'm also dismayed that Josh supposedly left. I was looking forward to seeing a Larry 2 remake (which it could tremendously benefit from) but between Paul's behavior and Al's co-writer/Replay's Chief Creative Officer likely gone what enthusiasm I had left for that possible project is gone. Al and Larry deserve better than that. I'm sure SpaceVenture is going to turn out fine despite what Paul thinks. Yes, the communication hasn't been the greatest, but I think the team will get eventually something out the door even if they have to scale the project back some. I'm patient and I know they're not working with an established development team (like N-Fusion) so there's going to be some turbulence in the process. Anyways, that's my 2 cents.... er buckazoids?