Exclusive interview and footage about “Sam & Max: This Time It’s Virtual”!

Hello Mike, nice to have you here with me. Can you introduce yourself and HappyGiant?

I’m Michael Levine, and I’m the CEO and Creative Director at HappyGiant. I’ve been making games for over 20 years now. 

I started at LucasArts, where I was responsible for creating new art paths for new games, cutscenes and Visual FX. Then when I left, I helped create a startup with other people from ILM, the special FX division of LucasFilm. HappyGiant has always had games at its core, and it works on a mix of client work and its own projects. In the last 6-7 years, we have been very focused on XR.

Now you’re doing Sam & Max, which is a VR game… but I knew you were actually doing many projects in mobile AR before… what’s happened?

Yes, true. We worked a lot on mobile AR, and we feel we brought it to the edge of what was possible today. But the truth is that outside of Niantic, there’s no real traction in mobile AR in gaming, in terms of popularity or revenues. Most people don’t even know what mobile AR is outside the filters on social media (Snap, etc…) and it seems that mobile AR is best served with small bites of 30-60 seconds. This is the opposite of what you need for gaming, where you want to keep the player engaged for a long time.

We did some projects for AR headsets, and we had made a VR game for GearVR, so we had experience. Then I tried the Quest at AWE two years ago, I was blown away. I already loved VR, but the cable had always been a big limit to its usability and the breaking of immersion for me. With the Quest, I understood that VR could finally be usable for the masses. I felt there was finally going to be a market for VR games, maybe a niche market, but still a viable market. So we decided to pursue that road.

What’s your forecast for AR (and VR) in the short and long-term future?

Regarding mobile AR, I think that WebAR is hitting its stride due to ease of use and low barrier to entry, and 8th Wall is doing incredibly well with short experiences providing short bites of entertainment. TikTok is also very interesting, and I want to see how it can unfold due to the use of the rear facing camera more on TikTok. I have always been very bullish on Snapchat’s AR capabilities and they continue to impress. What would be so helpful to the AR community, is if a company like Snapchat released some statistics to let us know how people are using mobile AR, and what is being used apart from filters: How much do people use the back camera? Do they use full-body interactions? We need to know.

For AR mobile gaming, no one has cracked the formula yet in my opinion. For now, it must be served in small bytes. It needs to be “managed” really as no one wants to hold their phones up for long periods of time. Can a mobile AR game be a hit without a large brand attached? That remains to be seen. 

To have good AR headsets, we will need to be patient… and all those things we all dream about, like the AR Cloud, data painted everywhere, etc… they could require 10 years or more. For sure Apple, Facebook, and Google have to invest in this technology because the sales of the smartphones are declining, and they need something new. But the technology has to improve before it will have a chance at mass market success in my opinion.

It’s funny that AR and VR are on a scale with two plates: in the beginning, people were excited for VR, then they started saying that VR is dead and all believed in AR, now the VR market is more mature than the AR one…I think we will see these shifts in enthusiasm continue.

Let’s talk about the main topic: Sam & Max: This Time Is Virtual! What’s the backstory? 

At LucasArts, I worked on “Sam & Max Hit The Road”. I have always remained in touch with the creator of Sam & Max, Steve Purcell, as well as many others from those days that worked on Hit the Road and other LucasArts classics . As we took a serious look at VR Gaming and became excited about the potential, Sam & Max came to my mind.

I knew it is the only franchise of the LucasArts “classics” that Disney doesn’t own, so I decided it was worth a chat with Steve. Steve is very independent which I have ultimate respect for, so I approached him and he was intrigued.  It was a chance to explore new gameplay mechanics, and put Sam & Max into new scenarios. There had not been a new Sam & Max game in 10 years and after making a demo, we were met with enthusiasm to get the game co-funded and away we went.  

In the beginning, there were many discussions and debates about what kind of game to make. We were lucky to have Mike Stemmle and Peter Chan on board as well. Mike was Lead Designer along with Steve on Hit the Road, and Peter was Lead Artist, as he was on all LucasArts adventure titles. We wanted to lean into VR and make something very “VR Native”. It’s a very unique game for VR. There is really a lot of variety in it. Every level, there is something new and different to challenge and hopefully amuse you.

How is the gameplay? Is it a point and click game?

I know that people want to put games in “boxes”, but this is going to be a very hard game to define, as it’s gameplay is incredibly varied, and has a story that evolves and kind of takes over as you get deeper into it.

The premise of the game is that Sam & Max are looking for help. Evil is on the rise, and they could use a hand. They are looking to recruit and train new cadets to become the next generation of Freelance Police. After a brief but intense opening scene, they invite you up to their office. To begin your training, you must first prove yourself with a set of menial office tasks. This game has tons of references and callbacks to Sam & Max’s past, and we of course wanted the Office to be a focal point. After completing your tasks, the player is taken to an abandoned amusement park which was created decades ago by a brilliant inventor who believed tardigrades (the microscopic creatures) could be the future of children’s entertainment, and turns out he was very wrong. Sam & Max have adapted the park and its attractions into 9 “death defying” courses to test and train you. The park is fairly massive in scope, and was designed by Peter Chan. It’s pretty amazing to just be in it and inside a Peter Chan world, at least for me!

While the game is not a full on adventure game, it has many of those elements in it. Fans of those games will feel very at home in this game. Just like the games we made at Lucas, every scene and level is new and different, and has new challenges. And as you play deeper into the game, more “adventure-y” parts are unlocked. 

In the beginning, we thought a lot about how the game could work. We researched and played lots of other VR games which we drew some inspiration from. But we also did not see many games that we wanted to play, or make. A game that was quirky, funny, had a story and kept changing so players did not get bored. I think Beat Saber is totally cool … but I am not inclined to play it for hours. We wanted to be entertained with a story.

Every Sam & Max game has always been in third person, but we knew early on we needed to re-think this for VR. You need to see Sam & Max together to let their magic play out, not be one of them. We also did not want to slap tons of UI dialogue across the screen in VR as it very much breaks the immersion we were working so hard to create. We wanted the players to feel like this was “real”. In the end, this game has a little bit of everything, with the steady presence and hilarity of Sam & Max leading you through it all. There is action. We have a shooting gallery, and obstacle courses with climbing and so much more. There are also more story, adventure levels as I mentioned. We wanted to showcase and explore what is possible to do in VR. As people play, a story and mystery unfold. When people arrive at the end… it is like arriving at the end of an action movie, the old-school ones with Bruce Willis, like Die Hard, but with Sam & Max and YOU as the action heroes! But it’s not a button masher … you will need to use your brains a little bit as well!

Some people were surprised when they discovered that all the footage we’ve released so far has been captured on a Quest 1. Many Devs start with the super high end to show off how the game will look on the highest end platforms, but we have been committed to making this look awesome on Quest and lower end platforms, and in our experience it’s usually harder to bring things down, then up. At least for a game with this type of style. 

You said that in the game there is a bit of action, adventure, sport, etc… but doesn’t this risk confusing the user?

There is progression with the core mechanics. Actions like throwing, shooting, climbing, grabbing are things you use over and over, but in evolving situations. And as I have mentioned, there are other parts where it becomes more like an adventure game and you also have to use your brain.

All the “Courses” are graded, so you can replay them and attempt to get a better grade … but players don’t have to worry: Sam & Max have a fairly low bar to approve you. 

Why have you chosen VR for what was an old 2d game?

VR represents an exciting new medium and you see lots of experimentation adapting current and older paradigms. Sam & Max have always lived in “flat” games, whether 2D or 3D. We were excited by what bringing them and players into a true 3D world meant. The first time I stepped into Sam & Max’s office in VR and stood toe to toe with them, it was an amazing experience for me as a fan. To have seen that office so many times, but now to actually be in it, I couldn’t stop smiling. Getting up and close to them, and interacting with them, we knew we were onto something cool and different in VR early on.

Most Quest VR users will not know Sam & Max or the old adventure games, which is absolutely fine. This is a way to expose them to a new audience, and give the old time fans something new at the same time. So we have a delicate balance to hit. We want the game to be as easy to learn and play in VR as possible, but at the same time, we also want to make sure that if you were a fan of Sam & Max, there were parts that felt more familiar. For this project and over the years, along with Steve Purcell, Mike Stemmle has really been the constant for Sam & Max, and he and Steve have been our compasses. I feel like Mike really outdid himself on the writing on this game, and we hope people will enjoy it. For hardcore fans if you play it more than once, you will hear jokes you didn’t the first time, I promise (:

What are the difficulties that you have faced while developing the game for VR and what lessons have you learned?

We had some experience in developing VR and XR games as mentioned, but the Quest was a new world in many ways. We wanted to lean in to what it was good at, and make a room-scale VR game. Joking with the devs, I say that this game is a hidden fitness game, because you are constantly dodging, ducking in some levels. So there is movement… but then we discovered that some people like to play seated. So we are accommodating that as well as best we can.

We always start with trying to make a game we would want to play, because if you don’t have that, you kind of don’t have anything. But at the same time, as we have released footage, we have listened to the fans. We try to read every comment on Youtube and Twitter, and we listen and react. One example of that is we initially did all the movement via teleporting, but then many people asked for “analog” locomotion as well. So we learned people have preferences for things in VR games.

The thing that we learned the most is how much we took for granted… for instance, we as developers are used to the basic VR interactions (grabbing, teleporting, etc…). But with Quest 2 coming out over the holidays, many people are coming to VR for the first time. Nothing can be taken for granted or you can lose new users very fast.  

This game is big. How many people worked on it and for how much time?

The core team is about 10 people. If you add up music, sound, actors, and other people who helped out for shorter times, closer to 20. The game really kicked off when we began our demo, which was around March 2020. So we’ve been working on it for 9-10 months total. It’s a pretty big game for VR, and fairly intricate. Sam & Max have a high quality bar that we are trying to hit. As the gameplay is so varied, each level takes time and care to polish. We want Steve, and the fans to be happy.

You have already publicly announced that the game works on Quest. Can you also say something about the other platforms, the release date and the expected price?

I can’t tell you specifics yet, but we’re going to announce all this info very soon I hope. I can only hint that in terms of platforms, we hope most people will be happy. We’re trying to focus where most of the users are, at least initially. At some point, we’re going to show footage of the other platforms you can play it on. In terms of price, it’s an indie game, so it won’t be overpriced: we want people to be able to afford to buy this game and have fun with it.

How long can we expect the gameplay to be?

The core adventure is in the 6+ hours range, bigger than many other indie VR games. There are outliers in VR like Alyx, but most games we looked at that were similar to us, were under 2 hours of gameplay. It’s always hard to judge the exact playtimes, but in our playtests we are seeing some things take longer for first time players, which is normal. So while the core game is 5-6 hours, fans and people wanting to replay Courses, and enjoy more the jokes can stay for longer times. It depends on how long players want to explore for as well vs critical path stuff.

Can you tell us something about your past times at LucasArts, when you did all those amazing adventure games?

When I started there, we were 60 people, when I left 350. Many changes in technology happened over that time from about 1990-1997. Change was constant. 

There were the very early days when it was very low-key, there were no egos… we were just a bunch of pimply geek kids making stuff up as we went. I think looking back, people may think there was some master plan unfolding, but we were just kids saying “hey, wouldn’t this be cool?”. Now it was a lot of very smart kids, there is no doubt. Because Star Wars games were licensed to other companies, LucasFilmGames, which became LucasArts, were forced to become creative. If in those early days they were forced to make only Star Wars games, there would have been no Monkey Island in my opinion. So for me, stepping into this culture was a truly awesome and life defining experience for me.  

When Star Wars arrived at LucasArts, it was the beginning of the end for LucasArts Adventure Games. Once they saw the money that Star Wars could bring in, there was no competition. As the company grew, it became like most other big companies and it was all about profit over creativity. But most of those creative people left, and started their own companies and have gone on to do many great things. Nothing lasts forever.

Today Star Wars is very tightly controlled. There are story bibles, timelines, and everything must be approved and fit into that canon. When I began at Lucas at the beginning of the 90s, people had almost forgotten about Star Wars. So things were pretty low key with real props and matte painting hanging over our desks, not even protected. We were free to come up with almost anything if people liked it, even as we began making Star Wars and Indiana Jones games. 

Since I was in charge of a lot of video at Lucas, I got to sit in with about 100 people and see the footage of the new CG Jabba in the restored scenes from the original Star Wars, the first people to have seen it outside of those working on it. I could tell Star Wars was going to become the focus again. As a side note, it’s nearly impossible to see the original Star Wars anymore, George Lucas did a great job in hiding it from the world. Too bad! 

Other funny stories that you want to tell from those years?

I could go on for hours. We were young crazy kids, but luckily there were also people that imposed stricter regimens and taught us how to get things done. I started at LucasArts in QA Testing. The “Testing Pit” as it was known was an infamous place, and also where all the early “pizza orgies” took place. Thes are what is now called “User Experience Testing” but for us it was when you invited your friends in for a night, offered food, drinks, and watched them play the game you were working on. 

During those years I was working many hours and also interning in the city and learning new digital tools like Photoshop and Premiere and After Effects. I approached Collete Michaud, the art director, who started letting me use the Mac’s there, and eventually apply those skills to games in development. Then one day Jesse Clark, someone I started with in QA who had moved to the art department, asked me if I wanted to be the “art tech” on Sam & Max. I didn’t know much about the job, but I said, “Of course I do!”. Jesse had been the art tech on Day of the Tentacle and wanted to try animating on Sam & Max, so lucky for me, they needed someone.

Amazingly, they had me sit next to Steve Purcell for the entire project. I am still not sure why. But it was an incredible experience that I mainly remember laughing, not working. My job was to process all the art and animations of the game into a format that would work for the SCUMM engine Lucas used. Each morning, I would walk a bunch of floppy disks from the art department across the parking lots to the Programmers to put into the game. During those days, they used to keep the artists and programmers in separate buildings. And without the internet, someone had to hand deliver the art each day and that was me. Which allowed me to get to know Mike Stemmle and others, which was good. I also recall pulling an all-nighter with Jesse before our first big user test, to get as many animations into the game as we could. It was fun!

In every game the technology was different from the previous one: the resolution was improving, there was new hardware for the audio, and so on. Every game we asked ourselves “how do we do things now?”. Art was driving much of the games then.

What’s the difference between developing those old games and this new one?

Making Sam & Max: This Time It’s Virtual! has been a total deja vu for me… if you remove the technology, it’s no different. Working with Steve, Mike, Peter, Bay Area Sound – it all fits like a glove. So in many ways, it’s more similar than you would think perhaps!

Will we ever have a Monkey Island game in VR?

Ha ha ha. We talk about these things, or fantasize I should say. I also think something like Maniac Mansion would be very fun in VR – it all takes place inside the mansion, the space is close and defined, there are many interesting things to do. Oh, and Time Travel. Of course, I would also love to work on Monkey in VR, but it’s a very big franchise, and it’s the property of Disney. We work with several leads of various past Monkey games. I know Ron Gilbert wants to make another one also… we’ll see!

Anything is possible. I’m optimistic, because VR is at an inflection point, and big brands are starting to notice. I think you will see more enter the space. This is an inevitable reality as the platform grows to viability. So, who knows about Disney… if someone from Disney is reading this, we’d love to talk about it!

Anything else to add to this interview?

I mainly thank you Tony for doing this, and I love your blog because you tell your opinion about what happens in VR and not just report press releases. So thanks Tony for everything you do for the community! 

[Then he added other very kind things, but I’m blushing and so I won’t continue reporting them :)]