Telltale Q&A

YVG: Most developers have to release their game all at once and wait for the feedback. Did you modify your approach based on the comments you received from fans or the press as the episodes came out?

BF: Most of us at Telltale learned to read just so that we could understand what all those game reviews and forum posts were saying. And when we did, it turned out to be very enlightening! Thanks to the gracious criticism of our fans, we were able to respond and make each episode better than the last. Like when everyone said they hated Joe the Two-Spleened Mime, we just shot him out of a cannon into Lake Michigan and everyone cheered.

YVG: Each Sam & Max episode is a self-contained story, but you included some plot arcs that spanned multiple episodes. Was it a challenge to balance the two, and will you be shifting the balance in Season 2?

BF: Yes, it's a lot harder to design a story when part of the audience is expecting a continuation of the previous story, and part of it has never played the previous episodes. Given the intrinsically episodic nature of the Sam & Max comics, we wanted to be sure each episode had a distinct feel that could be appreciated on its own merits. Based on feedback from playtesters who played later episodes without having played the earlier ones, I think we succeeded in letting players jump in anywhere in the series, but given how many people do play them through in order, I think we'll continue to work at making the season-wide story arcs more involving.

YVG: Some Sam & Max episodes drew criticism over the repetitiveness of the roles of a couple of the duo's supporting characters. Do you think that repetition is an inevitable consequence of the episodic model?

BF: Giving Bosco a new disguise and Sybil a new profession each episode was just one way to make players excited to revisit them each episode. I agree that this strategy ended up being too predictable, and we're committed to finding new situations and storylines for recurring characters to keep them fresh and interesting. Maybe Bosco has an affair with Sybil and then Jimmy shoots their illegitimate child when he realizes he's dying of a rare repetitive stress injury... hold on, that's the fifth season of Dallas. Start over, start over.

YVG: There is going to be a Season 2, right? I mean, you would have just called "Season 1" "Season" if there was only going to be one of them.

BF: I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of Season 2, but it's going to be awesome.