Sam Suede Cancelled, Al Lowe Out Of PC Gaming

Earlier this year, Al Lowe made an announcement which, at the time, seemed like the news all Leisure Suit Larry fans have been waiting for - that is, the *old* Larry adventure games, not the latest Magna Cum Laude piece of jelly, which was done without Al's blessing. After a long break from the gaming scene, he announced in May that he was finally working on a new comedy adult game, called Sam Suede: Undercover Exposure. Since then, we didn't get to hear much about the game, and now we unfortunately know why: it was "put on indefinite hold" (a.k.a. cancelled) a few months ago!

With it, Al's new company iBase Entertainment was also shut down, after having underestimated the kind of money it takes to make games nowdays. FiringSquad got in touch with Al Lowe, who revealed that his last day on the job at iBase was on September 11, when most of the rest of the 20 or so team members got word that the company was shutting down. Here's more on why they came to this sad decision:

"Lowe did tell us that they discovered that developing a game for next generation consoles would be much more expensive than current gen systems and that they were also told by publishers that if they just released Sam Suede on the PC they would not sell enough copies to make it worthwhile. Sam Suede had been in deep production for about a year before the shut down of iBase Games and Lowe estimated they were still a year away from completing the game. So will this rather dissapointing experience with game development keep Lowe from pursuing future video-PC game projects? Unfortunately, Lowe said the answer to that question is yes. "This was the best shot I could have had", he told FiringSquad and said he doubts he will ever try to get into the game industry again. At the same time he said he was proud of the work that he and the iBase team had put into Sam Suede."

So not only was Sam Suede cancelled and the company shut down, but realistically speaking, this was also Al Lowe's last shot at making PC games (unless, by some miracle, they manage to get more funding and continue development). A sad news indeed.

Well, at least now he's back to updating his AlLowe.com website with all kinds of funny stuff. Ho-ho-ho.

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)