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A descent into madness, in which websites we list by name are subsequently reamed, games are hardly addressed at all, and Ron Gilbert starts interviewing himself. - An Interview by the Idle Thumbs staff
Ron Gilbert Speaks: Part 2
If you didn't catch the first installment of this interview, read up, and return with haste.
As the interview marched into hour two, reality began to crumble around us. The crying babies and laughing teenagers which interrupted our chat earlier on have, without our noticing, contorted into the screams of the eternally damned. We sat, talking, as the Palo Alto coffee shop, our souls, and our last scrap of dignity got sucked away into the void. Fortunately, the list of pre-written questions remained, ever our trusty ally in a pinch...
 Chris: Is there anything on here that's worthwhile?
 Jake: How about something along the lines about how [reads] "his design" ... "philosophy has changed" ... "in the last ten or so years." So, has your design philosophy changed in the last ten or so years?
 Ron: I don't think so. I don't think the underlying philosophy has. There are a lot more genres of games now than there were back in the day, but I think there's just some fundamental things that are really important that I don't think have really changed that much. Okay next question? Onto that secret of Monkey Island?
Jake: No, no. No.
Ron: I think that there's accessibility. I think this was something that the old arcade machines did really well, because they had to. Because they weren't going to be successful unless they could con you into putting in another quarter. There's this kind of art of being able to slowly seduce somebody into your game, and a lot of games you buy, they don't have to do that. Once you bought the game - other than you maybe creating some buzz out there - they don't care if you play it or not, because you've already bought it. The old quarter-drop machines were different, and I think that's a little bit of a lost art form. When I play a game, I want somebody to pull me into it. I want them to just give me more and more reasons to come back to it over and over again, and I don't see that a lot in games right now.
"If you look at an "independent" film, they still exhibit that perfect craftsmanship. It is such a well understood thing that even a low budget independent film gets that perfectly right.'"
I think the movie industry is a good example of that. Movies make so much money that the studios can really afford to have a lot more "successful failures." But, in the games industry, everything costs seven million dollars. If you want to have a good triple-A game out there, it's going to cost you a lot of money. So I think it's this kind of awkward thing. When games are much cheaper to make, you know, you can take a lot of risks, but right now you can't. I think that will change one way or the other, hopefully, over time.
Chris: I think that when the market of gamers becomes big enough - when enough people are out there who do buy games - games will make more money, and games can take more risks, but for that to happen publishers have to make games that appeal to more people.
Ron: Yeah, it's a bad catch 22.
Chris: Eventually something's going to have to give, I suspect. ... I'm cynical, can you tell?
Jake: Or games could just stay retarded for the next fifty years.
Ron: You know, they could just end up being like the comic book business. It's a little business. Not that many people actually read comic books. I imagine the comic book industry isn't as big as the games industry, but you may find there's a relative equality there. ... I don't know.
Chris: In comics now, though, there are a lot more alternative comic publishers, a lot more cases of one guy who writes and illustrates the entire book. And that's starting to become really cool, but we really don't have anything that parallels that in games ... these days.
Ron: No, a lot of the independent games you look at, you know, aren't big funded games. I think the problem with them is they dont have the same craftmanship to them that published games do, which means they're never really going to be accepted by the audience in general.
The interesting thing about the movie business is, even if you look at "independent" film, they still exhibit that perfect craftsmanship. The artistic issues may be different, but they're all well lit, the sound recording's excellent, the acting for the most part is very good, the photography is done well. This is all the craftsman part of making a movie, and that is such a well understood thing that even a low budget independent film gets that perfectly right.
Jake: I think that'll get better.
Ron: I hope it does.
Jake: I think right now independent computer games are often more like student films than they are true independent films. I'm sure that eventually people'll start doing this stuff younger... I... am unable to explain myself
Chris: I agree with you, but I also don't. I think that movies have fewer really specialized skills compared to games. One person like Robert Rodriguez or something can go and rule at all those things that a movie needs to get done, but with games its so much harder. There's so many weird — I mean modeling all these various high poly - especially as people start to expect more detailed models. With every character models that have a billion triangles...
Jake: But there are so many kids on the Internet who can do that, but just have no art director or directing sense.
Ron: I think that's true.
"I go through phases with Monkey Island. I mean, months and months will go by and I never think about it, it never enters my head, and then sometimes, I will think about it. Then I see my therapist and it all goes away.'"
Ron: I think games are probably more akin to animated films in the way they're produced. You can't just go out in the road with a camera.
Chris: And in a film you can have a big pile of garbage right off frame —
Ron: And nobody wants to root through it.
Chris: I'm probably too much the harbinger of doom. You guys are probably more — or Doom 3! — you guys are probably more realistic than I am.
Jake: No I just want more small games to be made, so I'll just say this stuff blindly hoping it will work.
[pause]
May I ask you a Monkey Island question that has nothing to do with the secret of Monkey Island?
Ron: Absolutely.
Jake: I'm curious because I've been reading interviews with you on various sites for a while, because I worked on Mixnmojo forever, and you always refuse to talk about Monkey Island stuff, but you clearly have thought about it. Do you ever still find yourself thinking about future Monkey Island games, or have you not told anyone "what the secret is" because you like keeping the secret?
Ron: [laughs]
Jake: I mean, do you ever find yourself come up with something and think "Ah, that would be great for that Monkey Island game I never made, that I never tell the fans about to drive them insane." ... Okay I had to get that question out, and after this I'm done talking about it until the end of time, or the next time we interview you.
Ron: I go through phases with Monkey Island. I mean, months and months will go by and I never think about it, it never enters my head, and then sometimes, I will think about it. Then I see my therapist and it all goes away.
I think the thing is, when I planned those games out — and this is nothing new — but, when we did the first one the whole story just got too big, which is when I broke it up into three different parts. I know what that third one is, right? So it's not that I kind of sit there and think about "oh, what would the third one be?" I kind of know how that story's supposed to end, so I don't really think about it too much.
Jake: So when you're on your deathbed you're going to satisfy the ten remaining Monkey Island fans by writing the script out, right?
Ron: Yes, yeah... Err, I don't want to say anything that would lead people to believe that when I die I'm going to reveal "the secret," because that could encourage some really bad, bad behavior.
Chris: I'll be there.
Jake: Someone will just, sort of, slightly stab you, to give you time.
Ron: I had a lot of fun with Monkey Island. I do think about it every so often.
Jake: Especially when I was younger I was extremely obsessed with those, I'd read those interviews and think,. "That bastard's not saying anything!"
Ron: And now you can say it to my face! "Bastard!"
Jake: And now I have!
[Looks at Chris] Now you've got to come up with some blindingly intelligent question about the games industry, so we can move away from the secret of Monkey Island.
Chris: I do? I think you should.
Jake: How about The List?
[Ron grabs the list]
Jake: You're not supposed to see that.
Ron: Ohh, What's the best movie you've recently seen and why?
Hm.
John Carmack once said "Stories in games are like stories in porn..."
[continues to read]
Okay, that's a good one. That last one is good.
Jake: Okay, are you going to ask yourself some of these questions then?
You've got to read it to yourself. Ron—
Ron: Okay. If I were forced to do a licensed game, what license would I most like to work on?
Chris: Your choices are Star Wars or Monkey Island.
[laughing]
Ron: Yeah, see that's interesting, because I don't like to work on licenses. I find them too confining. I worked on the Indiana Jones adventure game, and I just found it really confining. I mean it was cool to read the script before the movie came out, but I just found that to be super confining. So yeah, if I was going to do a license, it would have to be the type of game that wasn't following the movie, but could just take place in the universe that the movie took place in.
Jake: It doesn't have to be a movie...
Ron: True...
Chris: You could say the same thing for books or whatever though.
Ron: Yeah, you know it's a good question, not because I have an answer for it, but because I've never really thought about it.
Chris: I liked the Chronicles of Riddick game, I guess. I don't know if you'd played that but it's sort of a licensed game that's—
Ron: Yeah, I played it for 10 minutes. Then I got so mad at it that I just stopped playing it. [laughter] I actually have a thing that I'm going to put on Grumpy Gamer about it.
Chris: Nothing to do with the quality of the game really, but that was a licensed game that took place in the world without having to follow the story of the film.
Jake: Or like Goonies 2 for the Nintendo!
Chris: Goonies 2.
Ron: You know, I don't like to work on licenses... but that's a good question.
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Thumbcast 08
Wiiiiiiii this is the wii podcast! Plus: Gears of War is for noobs, and Viva Pinata is nothing like Animal Crossing. |
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Thumbcast 07
A brief look at PS3 and Wii launch hype, discussion of gaming shows VideoGaiden and 1UP Show, the mario rap, and more. |
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Thumbcast 06
We discuss Tetsuya Mizuguchi's perpetual state of jetlag, the closing of Lik-Sang, the closing of Clover Studio, and possibly other bonus closings. |
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It is not as bad as it seems, because the voltage is quite low.
