The following interview with Sam & Max Season One lead designer Dave Grossman was published on 1up.com just before Situation: Comedy was released in December of 2006. You can read the original here.

Episode 2's title: "Situation: Comedy." Any special meaning behind that?

Sure! For one thing, as you might have guessed, episode 2 is indeed a comedy, or at least is intended as one. But more than that: the story is about a hostage situation at a low-rent television studio, and Sam and Max wind up as stars of their own sitcom before it's over.

With Situation: Comedy being about a TV studio held hostage, was there any development inspiration from GameTap creating a service that competes with TV? Or Telltale making games where the episodic structure competes with TV?

You may be crediting us with more intelligence and/or self-confidence than we deserve. However, a surprising number of people at Telltale have been involved with public access or other small television operations, and we did draw on those experiences to some degree.


We hear you don't want to give away too much of Episode 2's story, but what can you tell us? A few teasers?

Episode 2 contains some or all of the following ingredients: a scandal, a shark, five television shows, and a jar of monk paste.


How about gameplay scenarios -- anything particularly special in Episode 2?

The sitcom itself has a bit of gameplay that's slightly unusual for us -- the mechanics are not different, but they're organized in an attempt to capture the trial and error of trying to ad-lib a moment of comedy while the cameras are rolling.


What kind of feedback did you get on Culture Shock? What were the most common things that fans wanted to see improved upon in future episodes?

We got a lot of really gratifying pats on the back about Culture Shock, and the main thing that people wanted to see was more -- and with five episodes still to come, that's exactly what they'll get. I'm happy to say that suggestions for improvements fell into the category of small tweaks rather than major overhaul - some people wanted things to be weirder, some wanted the challenges to be more difficult, a few even wanted them to be easier. A few wanted to be able to walk faster -- don't we all?


As we understand it, Episode 2 has been mostly complete since Culture Shock shipped in order to have everything ready to start flowing monthly at this point. And as a result, feedback from the first episode might be seen a few episodes down the line rather than immediately?

True to some degree, though it really depends on what type of feedback we're talking about -- things that affect the basic game design will take the longest to appear since we're working the farthest ahead in that area, whereas a feature such as, for example, walking faster can be done later in the process, and that one almost (but not quite, I'm sorry to say) made it in for the second episode.


Say for whatever reason someone wants to jump right into Situation: Comedy and hasn't played Culture Shock -- maybe they find the plot synopsis for the second episode more up their alley or something along those lines. Are you making it so those players can get into the game smoothly without going back to the original, or would you recommend they go back to Culture Shock?

It wouldn't be any problem at all for someone to start off with Situation: Comedy without any knowledge whatsoever of the first episode, and that is part of the design philosophy for the series. Each episode stands on its own two feet. Characters return and we do occasionally refer back to events from previous episodes, but we don't leave out any explanation that's necessary for your understanding of what's currently going on. Of course, I would recommend that people play the entire series for a different reason: they're fun!


Is there anything you know of in Culture Shock that has yet to be discovered -- some kind of Easter Egg or bonus that you guys hid away in that game?

I don't think anyone has figured out how to get the octopus hat -- but I don't recommend that people try to, because I'm probably just making that up right now. However, I do have something in mind for a future episode to reward the diligent and the lucky.


Finally, how's that Wii development kit treating you guys?

We keep it with the octopus hat. But I do think the Wii would be a great platform for our games, don't you?