Feature: High Voltage Software Talks Wii, ESRB

In today's main Gamasutra feature, we profile Chicago developer High Voltage Software, talking to Chief Creative Officer Eric Nofsinger about a multitude of issues, from the un-named Wii title in development at the firm to the challenges of making Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude acceptable to U.S. rating authorities and retailers. Talking about the Wii, Nofsinger suggests: "“It’s been an incredible design challenge,” he confides, “Some of the unannounced stuff we’ve been working on for Wii…it’s been very challenging. You know, ‘How do you do a fighter on this, how do you do a platformer on this?’”... Nofsinger believes that Nintendo knows what it’s doing with the sleek, iPod like feel of the controller. “It was interesting to me,” Nofsinger relates, “I had this sitting out on my table. And our receptionist came in, and she was dropping off my mail, and just immediately ran right over to it, and was ‘what’s this?’ and picked it up and ‘oh, this is neat!’” Nofsinger notes that he’s had every imaginable controller in the world sitting on his desk. “Never has she just run over and picked it up and gone, ‘hey what is this thing, it’s really neat?’ So there’s something to that.”" Moving on to the issues with the ESRB over rating Larry, Nofsinger has further intriguing commentary: "Nofsinger further marvels at the amount of back and forth with the ESRB, and the retailers like Wal-Mart over the amount of sexual content that went into Leisure Suit Larry: Magna cum Laude... “There’s a pretty clear standard,” Nofsinger says, “On how many bodies you can shove in a woodchipper before you get an M rating. But there’s not too many games about sex. We were a comedy first, but a sex-based comedy.”" You can read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject for more insight into High Voltage, as the first in a series of profiles of Chicago-area developers (no registration required, please feel free to link to this feature from external websites).