From Comic-Con 2007, Dan Connors and Dave Grossman spill the beans about the new season of Sam and Max.

Hot on the heels of the announcement of the second season of the episodic adventure series Sam and Max, I sat down with Dan Connors, the CEO and founder of Telltale Games, and Dave Grossman, the series' design director.

Season Two of Sam and Max was just officially confirmed. Is there anything that you learned from the first season that is going to make you approach the second season differently?

DAVE: We learned a lot of small things in the first season. I mean, there's lots of little production issues, we got into trouble trying to bite off pieces that were too big and we didn't approach in the right way. So we're being smarter about that. Spending a little more time planning. But the model worked pretty well. Eventually we made all of our dates. It's not like we needed to make a lot of big changes or anything.

The biggest thing is we allotted more time up front to design the season as a whole. We really didn't have that much time last time. We sort of started a little late and had to sort of get right on the first thing and get all the assets built and just get the first episode out on time. Now it's sort of - we have Sam and Max, for one thing, so yeah. We spent a lot of time thinking out how the season is going to hold up. How we are going to keep the side characters interesting. We worked out a lot of that before we even sat down and wrote out the details.

When you started out the first season, did you anything to go off of or were you sort of coming up with the story episode by episode?

DAVE: There was a rough plan, to put it that way. This episode is going to be about this, this episode about that. We sort of sketched out the six before getting started. And there was a sort of hierarchy. There was a lot about the hypnosis and everything. But this time we actually went through the effort to think about what the acts of each episode are going to be, which roles are the supporting cast going to play in each episode, that was all stuff we did episode by episode the first season.

How do you feel about this process as opposed to how your other episodic game, Bone, works?

DAVE: Bone is kind of a different animal. For one thing, the story is written. We're just retelling the epic saga. Of course, we don't always follow exactly the same pieces of it. There's some stuff the author sort of glosses over where we say, "ooh, that would make some really cool gameplay". We spent some time on that and it's sort of interesting to explore. But basically, the broad structure is already laid out for us so we don't have to sit down and plan it all out.

There are plusses and minuses to each process. I mean, we get a big head start by working with an existing story, but then you're kind of bound by it and it usually throws up a few road blocks. One I always bring up is the Great Cow Race. There's this great big race, and you're building up to it, but when you actually play the race you have to lose. The story dictates that you have to lose. So to find a way to make the game still fun when you clearly have to lose the race is a challenge.

How does it feel to be working on a series like Sam and Max, where there is a pre-existing game in the same genre with a large fan base? Do you feel you have any expectations to live up to?

DAVE: I didn't. I'm sure some of the audience did, though. Certainly there were a lot of people on the forums who were vociferously in favor of a particular take on the license. We use Steve [Purcell, creator of the original Sam and Max comics] as our benchmark. Just as long as we're doing what he thinks is right and we're kind of aimed at the comic specifically, so we are doing things differently. I think maybe better, but certainly differently from the old LucasArts game or the animated series. Steve likes our approach just as much.

What is it like working with Steve Purcell?

DAVE: He's a peach. I actually worked with him on Secret of Monkey Island. Even working with his own characters here, he's very free and trusting of us. He was a little insecure at first, but we made a few preliminary mock-ups and he saw that things were going good. He does understand that it's not going to be precisely what he would have done, but as long as he likes it, he's fine. He'll come in and help you if you need it. He's always good for an idea or two.

DAN: Sam and Max is so much about anarchy in general, and Steve gets that. The general philosophy of Sam and Max isn't something you need to be controlling over. And he's not, which is great. And the license benefits from it because he gets all this talent, which brings out the best in people. They all want to create this great universe. Sam and Max has had all these great characters through the years. We're having so much fun building characters around them, creating a world for them to be in. Steve just set these two characters in motion, gave them their office, and let them go wherever. Other people are free to create that world around them. It's pretty cool.

DAVE: Everyone working on it is a fan. I knew Steve's comics before I met him. Also, he understands that it is an adaptation, and that the demands of an interactive form are a bit different and that because we're requiring the player to think their way the story, things have to make slightly more sense than they do in the comics. Since he's actually worked on games himself, he actually understands that.

DAN: Yeah. Steve having made a game once in his life and his career - a couple, actually, Monkey Island and Sam and Max - makes him so much easier than someone where you're explaining to him why you're making the decisions every step of the way. That's like from networks to individuals to license holders that aren't in games that just don't get it, where Steve definitely gets it.

DAVE: He's been around. We used to include him in a lot of the design sessions.