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The Strong Bad panel (officially titled “Make a Scene with Telltale [Strong Bad Edition]”) was a great experience. On the panel were several of the developers behind the new episodic series, including the company's co-founder, the writer for both Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People and Sam & Max, as well as three other members of the game's development team.
Last year, this panel was helped by the audience to make a scene for Sam & Max, well apparently this was such a big hit, Telltale decided to come back and do it again for SBCG4AP. And with the audience's help, we got to see exactly why Strong Bad couldn't make it to PAX this year.
First the audience was asked to choose a location (Strong Badia was of course the winner), from there the cast was selected. We chose Homsar, Homestar and King of Town to join our anti-hero on the stage. Then it was a bit of group writing as we talked about what exactly was going on. It appears that King of Town had wandered into Strong Badia, eating some butter. Naturally Strong Bad assumed he was trying to invade with said butter, but when the King confessed to just making a large pancake, Strong Bad's curiosity was satisfied.
Unfortunately, both Homestar and Homsar were on the scene and interjected their own non-sequiturs about either being in a pancake (Homestar), or being a pancake (Homsar). When Strong Bad gets fed up and says he has to leave for Seattle (to attend the Expo), King of Town reminds him of the type of people attending and suggests he stay home.
After the group decided on the scripts, it was time for a casting call. The panel's moderator went around the audience asking for people who could do good voices for the various characters, and once that was settled, they read their lines and all the pieces were put together for an amazingly funny scene that felt very much like the Flash cartoon.
Of course, the final stitching together wasn't immediate. After the dialogue was recorded, the panel went into a Q&A session. When asked about the Homestar Runner creators' (Mike and Matt Chapman) involvement in the Strong Bad games, it was pretty obvious that Telltale games makes sure to keep them in the loop at all times. In fact, one comment was “They are essentially off-site employees.” Every script goes through them multiple times, they re-write lines, add in jokes and give the developers sneak peaks at the up coming comics so they can work those references in where plausible.
Telltale was also asked about the fact that they are focusing heavy on licensed titles at the moment, and what their plans were for the future. Here the company commented that they were still small (only recently breaking 50 employees), so using licenses, especially ones they already love, means they don't have to worry about money in exactly the same way they would if they developed a new IP (Intellectual Property). Plus by using Sam & Max, Homestar Runner, and now Wallace & Grommet, they are able to work in an existing universe, and bring an existing audience into their games. While they would love to have more IPs in the future, this is what they are focusing on now. They also believe that it is their goal for each license, to match the original designs as much as possible. That's why SBCG4AP looks like a Flash cartoon, and that's why Wallace & Grommet will have the clay-mation feel to it.
Before the work on the scene was ready for show, Telltale also commented on their desire to bring some of their games to other platforms. Currently, they are developing for the PC, and recently the Wii. They said that they do in fact have a lot of interest in also putting their products on Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network. |
