Leisure Suit Larry
kickstarter.com
kickstarter.com
Personally I discovered this while reading http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-Anniversar... which I recommend to anyone.
No arguing that LSL has its place in gaming history, but it doesn't have a place in a future that is trying its hardest to remove objectification of women from society.
EDIT: The down voting button is not a disagree button. If you disagree, reply!
It's a little disappointing to see immature misogynistic entertainment getting so many upvotes on HN.
I am not for misogynistic entertainment, though. But sexual attraction exists in the real world, we can not just make it go away by pretending that we don't see it.
Please, downvoters, read this essay: http://notrichyet.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/whats-the-big-dea...
http://www.replaygamesinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/tum...
Would you have preferred "this is the hooker's fabulous bedroom. The bed's perfectly clean, so is the hooker!"
But what makes me sad is the second part. Because it's in a game, and it's done to be funny.
I'm not shocked by the existence of hookers. I should be, but I'm desensitized.
I'm not saying it's a nice job, but neither it is fixing sewage pipes. You should be shocked that pimps exist, maybe, but then again their role is quite natural and I'm sure some of them are quite the professional. The massive amount of abuse surrounding the "industry" is a problem, but it's hardly the only industry where management can abuse the workforce.
Please stop saying I'm shocked. I'm not shocked, and I have never said I was shocked. The original post said I was disturbed by the comment in the screenshot, and it was mostly because of the way it described the prostitute.
Sleeping with the hooker is not framed as a funny or positive thing. The game makes it an empty and depressing act, leaving the main character feeling unfulfilled.
Also if you sleep with her without a condom you get an STD and it's Game Over, so there's even a helpful PSA included.
You are presented with a choice of losing your virginity to the hooker, or leaving and hoping to one day find true love. If you go to the hooker, you die and it's game over because you "feel empty inside".
The reason I'm disturbed isn't superficial, and has nothing really to do with Larry losing his virginity. It is the terms they use to describe the prostitute.
Consensual sex between adults? Disgusting!
Does anyone remember hot coffee from GTA? In a game full of gangs, drugs, stealing and killing the media became upset because of virtual sex.
Also, I think humans are pretty much hard-wired to objectify sexual interests. And there are places and situations where it's okay to express it and act on it, and places where it is less so. But not it's some black-or-white thing where it's always bad or always good.
Is it OK in computer games? Heck yes. Should it be in all games? Probably not. Is the world going to end if it's in just one game, or a small subset? Heck no.
However in my present, every ninety seconds, somewhere in America, someone is sexually assaulted. Tens of thousands of girls and women are trafficked for sex, and one out of 3 women are sexually assaulted in their lifetime.
Our society is fucked up around sex. It's not LSL's fault, but it certainly isn't helping.
It pisses me off that someone is trying to raise 500 thousand dollars to put LSL on an iphone. Is it their right? Yes. But it pisses me off.
A lot of things can be described as not being at fault, but not helping reduce the number sexual assaults in America. Apple pie. The Toyota corporation. Cows. Vegetarians. The colour blue. If LSL really isn't at fault, as you say, then why is it problematic that it isn't helping? Just because it has sexual content? I don't understand. Doesn't your criticism apply to, well...almost everything in life? (But especially almost every PG or higher rates movie and a huge number of television shows? Most of which have vastly higher budgets?)
(There's also, of course, the question of whether this is even a useful avenue of attack. There is some - confusing and contradictory, admittedly - evidence that violent games reduce violent crime, and pornography reduces sexual assaults. We have a lot of experience trying to repress basic human nature, and we have very little evidence that it ever works.)
Edit @rogerbruan: I've certainly been accused of being overly literal before. :) Still...
The original comment said that LSL isn't at fault. You're saying that it is a part of problem. I'm not sure how to square those two ideas. Either LSL fosters sexism, rape culture, and sexual assaults, or it doesn't. If it does, then it's at least partly at fault for these ills, and if it's not, then it's not bad for society, right? Still, I think you're broadly right: The original commenter was trying to blame LSL, and just phrased it oddly.
On the other hand IIRC the game was basically about some loser who thought he was a stud but was outwitted at every turn by smarter women.
I played some of the games when I was probably a little too young but if anything they showed me that sex was something that could be laughed about and that things in the sexual marketplace were not always what they seem.
In any case it's content was pretty tame, far far more hardcore stuff is only a google search away.
Are some women forced to do it? Yes, of course. So in those cases it is not consensual. If it's not consensual in one case it does not mean it's not consensual in all cases.
If I said "In some cases it is legal to download a video and in some cases it is not", would you call that "never legal to download a video"? The fact that I can't legally download a movie currently in the theater shouldn't affect me from legally downloading a video licensed under a creative commons license.
Significant numbers of women are forced into sex work in countries across the world.
(http://www.unglobalcompact.org/docs/issues_doc/labour/Forced...)
Even if the person is not trafficked there are consent issues around addiction: Can a person addicted to a substance make a free informed choice? Here's some research showing that many people involved in prostitution are also drug users. (While this research isn't great it also references a lot of earlier research)
(http://myweb.dal.ca/mgoodyea/Documents/Health%20and%20wellbe...)
In theory there's nothing wrong with someone buying or selling sex. In practice there are often horrible problems.
Meanwhile, in saner socialist countries prisons are for reform, prostitution is government sponsored for health reasons and subject to drug testing and checks for pimps or links to human trafficking.
Just because some countries can't do some things right doesn't mean the things they screw up are wrong.
Firstly I'm pro informed consensual activity, whether or not that activity is distasteful to myself or society at large. As far as drug use and prostitution are concerned I'll go with history and note that humans will always be doing both.
Now, in response to someone raising prostitution, if consensual, being okay you responded with a link to a UN report on human trafficking and a US study on drugs and prostitution being highly correlated.
These are fair points to raise, my position would be that if various countries decriminalised drug use and prostitution then they could be regulated as many other activities and industries are which would lead to a strong reduction in health issues and unsavoury slave like conditions.
The tone of my post was to strike a response, if anything I was the one expressing an anti US (government policy) sentiment. I noted you cited a US report linking drugs and prostitution (although I note it mentioned drug use in London as well) and I reacted rather strongly to that. If you meant to imply that prostitution -> drug use + pimping then I disagree as I feel that correlation does not equal causation and personally feel that federal level policy that declares a war on drugs and regards the business of sex as immoral is more likely to be the root cause of problems.
Indeed there often are, and those problems desperately need to be solved. The first step in solving this problem would be to compare the situation in the US, with the situation in countries where prostitution is legal and in the open. Are things better there? If so are there lessons that can be drawn from this? Trafficking is abhorrent and must be fought at all fronts, but forcing things further and further underground is not the solution for bringing the problem to light. Make it legal, bring it out into the open and regulate it. It won't make things perfect, and I'm not so naive that I think it would completely end all trafficking, but I do believe it will make things a whole lot better.
In that case any employer with a drug addicted employee is guilty of slavery and any person with a drug addicted spouse is guilty of rape.
Is this your belief? If not, why not?
I am going to go out on a limb here and say that, if we have learned anything from the War on Drugs, then the solution to this problem is probably not increased criminal penalties for prostitution.
Perhaps the solution is to educate people - both young women who are at-risk of getting caught up in human trafficking, as well as men who may be likely to pay for sex and may not be aware of the problem of human trafficking.
In general I don't have a problem with people selling or buying sex. There are some people who need strong protections - anyone under age; anyone who's being coerced; anyone who's being trafficked. There could probably be strong laws made around those areas, with extra help and support for victims.
Then there's a bunch of public health stuff. People addicted to drugs; people with STDs; people engaging in risky ('bareback') behaviour; and so on. Education and support would be good for these. Unfortunately drug addicted sex workers are not a sympathetic vote winning crowd.
The law in the UK is a bit odd. Exchanging money for sex is okay, but you're not allowed to offer sex for money or to offer money for sex. And then there are some newer laws which are "strict liability offences" (it doesn't matter if you know or not; even if you made efforts to find out) covering women who are forced into sex working. (This covers drug addicts paying debts for drugs using sex work.)
The UK has a stricter definition of trafficked than the UN. A person can voluntarily be trafficked into the UK.
I find it disturbing how close minded and parochial you are. I live in a liberal Western democracy. Several years ago our female Prime Minister pushed through laws completely legalizing prostitution. It's just a job; maybe not a very nice job, but a fairly high paying one. They pay tax, are protected by police, and have to follow health and safety laws. And given our generous welfare net, nobody is ever even forced into prostitution to eat.
Do you think getting a haircut at a barbershop is consensual? If so, then what's the difference?
Your idea of prostitution is filtered through the lens of your own experiences. In America and other repressed countries, it's probably a good idea to assume that prostitution is not consensual; there is indeed coercion and violence, which is absolutely inexcusable and disgusting. But America is not the world, and you need to drop the rediculous sweeping universal statements.
If we apply the idea that game worlds should be moral, what about GTA?
Ban Coronation Street? Perhaps not. But we can't really say that media is not influencing our behaviour...
Do we remember the last time that exact phrase came up as a topic on HN?
But as a racial minority I'll say that media bleeds into real life plenty often - even in the most liberal, diverse parts of this country I'm either supposed to A) beat someone up with mad kung fu or B) be really good at math and talk nerdy. There's a compounding and cyclical effect in media portrayals of anything - it begets more skewed perceptions which begets more skewed portrayals.
Media and real life reinforce each other - fiction is not consequence-free.
It's easy to sit back and ask everyone to just take the joke in good humor - until you end up on the wrong end of it. I'm not a woman, nor a sex worker, nor someone resembling Larry, but I've seen enough of these issues to know that when complaints like these arise, there's most often a valid rhyme and reason behind it.
If LSL serves only to objectify women, then doesn't Grand Theft Auto serve only to glorify crime?
I always felt like these games were less about the women, and more about the comedy, stupidity and repulsiveness of the main character.
Do you feel that other forms of art and entertainment should also not objectify women? Do you feel porn should be banned?
I personally feel that there should be a clear line between real life and art/entertainment. While I completely agree that we should not objectify women in real life, I feel that an artist or an entertainer should have the liberties to create any imaginary world they want.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leisure_Suit_Larry_in_the_Land_...
While that's true, prostitution was just fine in every other system. Maybe if we could get rid of scarcity of resources, there would be nothing to trade for sex. But that still leaves us with all kinds of psychological reasons, so maybe if we could get rid of human nature...
http://www.zmescience.com/research/how-scientists-tught-monk...
No? Prostitution is itself purely a service; why wouldn't people trade sex for other services in a kind of barter exchange? (One might note that this kind of informal quid-pro-quo is in fact an element in many 'traditional' sexual encounters.)
In the future games like this can be made and most people will enjoy them for that they are: games.
Or did you never play Larry and posted after looking at random third-party media about it?
Seriously, the game series is about the struggle of a stereotype of a "disgusting" male. And it is dark humour, sarcasm, cynism, you name it.
I've never played this game, but I'm guessing it is supposed to be humorous, and I think protecting satire and supporting comedic efforts is extremely important.
There's a reason the slippery slope argument is considered a fallacy and not something that should be taken seriously in any kind of argument.
> a future that is trying its hardest to remove
> objectification of women from society
Whatever happened to the awareness of the context?
Ironically some of the most common female sexual fantasies involve them being objectified one way or other—because in this case they are not responsible and have no guilt for acting contrary to the expectations of the society which wants them to be serious, shy, prudent, etc. Guess who is responsible for such expectations.
And yes, why fictional violence gets free pass, but sex is tabu (or even crime). Imagine the outcry if instead of "shooter" S stood for "sex" in FPX games played by teens.
How come that depiction of killing other is OK, but sex, which is key to our survival is not OK?
Or simply because they are fun.
Maybe it's beyond your comprehension that males do have strong sexual urges. Wheter you call it objectification, or arousal triggered by visual stimuli is semantics. In the end you're just blaming the men for being men.
But to be against a work of fiction that _parodies_ negative concepts, like objectification of women, which is clearly what LSL is about if you ever played it, is not acceptable from a freedom of speech perspective. Once you start finding disagreements with parodies, you're on a slippery slope. Next thing you are disagreeing with religious or political parody. A parody is about conveying a negative concept humorously after all, if the common mindset found the concept agreeable, it wouldn't be called a parody in the first place.
This really just boils down to saying, "the society is too stupid to understand subtleties, so we better keep humor and entertainment direct and remove any irony/parody/cynical/dark humor". There are countries where this mindset is common, and censorship is what it leads to, I know this because I've been there.
Free society begins with free speech, no matter if you like what is being said or not.
Nobody is forcing anyone to play or buy that game. If you don't like that kind of contents, don't buy it. Leave the ones who enjoy it alone. We don't need a higher moral authority to tell everyone what's right or wrong.
Sexuality is one of the strongest, maybe the strongest undertone in society. This is (was) a game lampooning some of the silliness.
Take a deep breath and laugh at the silliness.
Take a look at teen pregnancy numbers in Texas after they stopped teaching sex education in schools.
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/10/19/govenor-per...
So? It's just a game. If you don't like it, ignore it. But no, you would rather have it so nobody else can enjoy it either.
"but it doesn't have a place in a future that is trying its hardest to remove objectification of women from society."
Do you honestly think that a women that poses in Playboy doesn't want to be objectified? If you truly want society to stop objectifying women, women need to stop voluntarily putting themselves in a position to be objectified.
This was posted on Hacker News a couple of months ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3591342
Kings Quest I/II/III, Quest For Glory II: http://www.agdinteractive.com/games/games.html
Space Quest II / Kings Quest III: http://www.infamous-adventures.com/
From the LSL Kickstarter project goals:
* The freedom to play on mobile devices * A modern point-and-click/touchscreen interface * Updated, ultra-high res graphics * Fully voiced characters * Even more of the humor that’s made Al Lowe a household name…like “Borders” and “Enron”!
Khaki Pants Pete did/does all of that, except the voiced characters. Has music and audio feedback effects, but only on-screen text dialogue bubbles. Though pretty funny.
I'm not sure if I like or dislike the fact that their KS project has set a goal of raising $500k to fund developing it. I know our/my budget for making Khaki Pants Pete was much much less than that. My slice was much smaller anyway. :)
clarification: I did not design the game play or script, but I did design and code the entire game engine from scratch, solo.
It sounds as though the only thing missing from KPP may have been fully voiced characters. Tough to tell -- but, presuming that were the case, would alone be a drastic difference.
Pile on top of that the nostalgia, association with the character and franchise, and every other intrinsic benefit of a genuine over imitation and it becomes a different conversation.
*edit to correct acronym
Any chance for an Android version ?
Not sure if anyone remembers that aspect of it, but I still do.
If there was a moral story, it was lost on me at that age, and not likely to revisit it. Certainly better than Custer's Revenge, which is a horrifying concept and makes me very sad.
If you think that LSL is a good and relevant example of misogyny and bad attitudes towards women, then apparently you never turn on your TV, watch movies or look at at advertisements around you. A rehash of LSL is the least of our problems in this space.
People feel better when you treat them as people, not objects. This goes for men and women. We're all human and deserve a lot of respect and understanding.
Some people probably like the cheap thrills that the game offers, some are nostalgic, some may be interested in social commentary. This is all quite all right and healthy.
// I got Neil Young's "Pochohontas" associated with that terrible game. AAAAAAAAHHH. :'(
Secret of Monkey Island and several of the modern Capcom adventure games (Phantom Detective) have made successful transitions. If this is being built from scratch, why is this not focused on what is clearly becoming the biggest casual gaming platform?
If I were in charge of developing this I would be using a cross platform setup from the start, Unity etc.
Assuming all the answers to those questions are no, then this is a game that would easily fit on the Android/iOS platforms, where much more complex adventure games have already been ported (Secret of Monkey Island, Capcom's Phantom Detective, etc).
I can however see this going more for the nostalgia market than the "casual" market as such.
I can see that it would work well on a tablet but there may be other reasons to port to the PC first.
For example there the already existing codebase (although massively out of date). Also their developers may be more familiar with programming for the PC, so it may just be quicker to bring to market on that platform. Also at the moment there are just more people that own PCs than there are who own iPads.
If there is sufficient interest/funding for this project I doubt that it will not be released for tablet devices at some stage.
The old Sierra games required constant focus and diligent note taking that I would have thought would rule them out from being casual. You'd never get anywhere with these games just spending ten minutes a day playing on the train. It can work for Monkey Island, since you can keep slamming things together until you win, but the Sierra games punish anything short of building a complete mental map of the game universe.
EDIT: I suddenly became afraid that this post came off as snarky or sarcastic. I didn't intend for it to be. Honestly, I'm just getting old and recognizing that the definition of casual changed while I wasn't looking. I really do want to know what it now means for a game to be casual.
I guess it's a demographic that does not fit the pimply faced teenager that many games were marketed too in the 90s. Take me for example, I probably spend an average of 3-5 hours a week playing games and I don't take them too seriously so I would think that would classify me as "casual". But on the other hand I generally enjoy in depth RTS or RPG games more than basic puzzle games.
The old Sierra games I remember playing the most were the space quest series and I wouldn't describe those as "casual" since they were brutally difficult in parts.
To me a hardcore gamer is somebody who is interested in ranking in competitions and being top of the online leader board. Where their ego is directly associated with the game. Or perhaps someone heavily into modding/mapping.
edit in case anybody is interested, they should check out Matt Chat on Youtube, some of the most compelling interviews with adventure game designers of the past...
Here's Part 1 of "Al Lowe" (designer of LSL) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PGGEFQdZuw
http://lauradesign.com.au/on-fire
http://lauradesign.com.au/to-the-bat-cave
http://lauradesign.com.au/what-the-rock-is-that
I've made an objc framework for quest games, ready to go, just need lots of artwork. Maybe we'll finish it one day...
Kickstarter rejected my application to fund/finish an app for survivors of a certain disease. It was a strong application - I don't think that was the issue - I guess it just wasn't shiny enough for KS to warrant giving it a shot at crowd-sourced funding.
It's interesting to watch the evolution of projects that the KS folks deem Kickstarter-worthy. Somehow this LSL sequel was worthy, but an <$30K mobile application to reduce the suffering of a few thousand patients? Guess not.
Well provided they don't make it first person :P
There are so many great games from the eighties. Many of them had to have original elements and wit because they were so constrained by the machines of that day.
The 8-bitness of the old-school games gave the old sierra games their magic. I would have loved to play a new larry game, but this just makes me sad.
What a waste...
I had an interesting OMG moment a while ago realizing that was also one of Tim Schafer's games.
LSL is dated now. it was fresh when it was made.
how much more time they could have put into an ORIGINAL product if they haven't filled the pockets of big-game-studio?
hint: to people that actually likes games, a title that sports some well know adaptation is often associated with a bad experience to come. It's often the cheap game made to cater to parents buying xmas gifts without a clue.
Also, I don't think these particular games are a good example of games made to cater to parents buying xmas gifts. :)
I do agree that the games feel dated though (even if they update them slightly as they suggest.)