Petition: Disney, please sell the rights to 'Monkey Island' back to its creator Ron Gilbert

For companies, fan fiction and fan art comes down to the PR trade-offs, that’s about it. If you doing fan stuff is helping them, then it’s fine. If it’s hurting them, prepare to be sued. There is a big grey around around fair use, transformative work, etc, that lawyers love, because it makes them money auguring over it.

There is also the difference between violation of copyright and trademark. If you put a companies trademark (company name, product name, character names) on something, it’s almost a guaranteed take-down notice due to how trademark works and your need to defend them, or lose them. Copyright (game art, character art) has lot more wiggle room, since you’re not in danger of losing the copyright for not defending it.

I say all this from experience, I am not a lawyer.

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That’s what happened to the Star Trek fan film. It became too big of a deal to the company disregard as a fan art. They sued the shit out of the creators.

Ok, I give up. It surprises me how negative the reactions were to my suggestions. Don’t get me wrong: Some of my ideas were beep. But I have scanned the thread again and it seems that no one has tried to be constructive and/or to find (other) ways.

Of course it is Ron’s decision and he stated in older posts that he would only do an adventure game (and this only if he gets the IP). I don’t want to persuade Ron, but I wanted to show some possibilities. Because I found it extremely unfair to the fans of MI1 and MI2 to say: “Hey, guys, I have a great idea, but you will never get to know how the story ends.” Disney will never sell the IP and if Ron dies (what I hope will never happen!) we won’t know how MI ends. This makes me really sad and frustrated. I can only repeat: It’s like watching a movie and after 2/3 the projector eats the only existing copy of the film. I’m fine with any solution, to sign an NDA or whatever. (Monkey Island is the reason why I don’t buy and play adventure games with an open end anymore.)

Depends on the country and how the trademark is used. :slight_smile: I don’t know the laws in the USA but here you can use the trademark for example in reports or texts about the product/company/whatever. You can even write negative about it as long as you don’t lie. So even fan fiction could be legal (to all critics: yes, could, not is. I know this.)

Why is it unfair? It is not owned by you nor by “fans of MI1 and MI2.” The owner of the property has the prerogative to do as they wish. They owe you or the fans nothing. It may not be nice, it may not be what you wish, but it is not unfair.

But you do know how it ends: it ended with MI2’s closing. It wasn’t a grand plan or a single fully fleshed story that transcended multiple episodes. Granted, it’s an expansive game and story world which they could continue exploring in multiple installments; but they never made a third game, so it’s over.

Mr. Gilbert has stated that he is not interested in just writing “fan-fiction” or facsimiles, nor is he interested in licensing the property or affiliating with corporate entities – he would only make a new episode if he owns it outright.

Disney won’t sell it, though, so what else is there?

I understand, it is not a happy situation for anybody, and Disney does not seem to care. Perhaps it’s time to move on. It looks to me like Mr. Gilbert has done so already.

It is not at all like that. It’s not like they wrote a single very long game, divided the diskettes into three sets and published only two.

The way these things work is that every game stands more or less on it’s own to some degree, otherwise it reduces it’s marketing appeal. Also, companies like LucasFilms only decide to make sequels when the property is hot and becomes popular, and there is a chance to make more money from turning it into a franchise.

The first Monkey Island game was a best-seller, so it was natural that they made a second; but you could play them to completion and have a fully realized story arc after each. In fact, many people took it as such.

The authors may have hoped to continue making episodes, but that was never guaranteed, especially in a corporate environment driven by commercial and marketing forces.

Besides, I could be wrong, but I do not think Mr. Gilbert is sitting on a fully designed and written game for the past 20 years, waiting for the opportunity to release it.

I appreciate that you really like the Monkey Island franchise and really, really want a new episode; but sometimes we don’t get everything that we want. It’s frustrating, but such is life. We take the good with the bad. :wink:

Personally, I think it’s a blessing that Mr. Gilbert can focus on completely new and original properties of his own devise, such as Thimbleweed Park, rather than continue to milk dry a 20 year-old franchise.

Life is too short, so we must pick our battles. :slight_smile:

dZ.

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I have different information about the development of Monkey Island 2:

Monkey Island was never a big hit. It sold well, but not nearly as well and anything Sierra released. I started working on Monkey Island II about a month after Monkey Island I went to manufacturing with no idea if the first game was going to do well or completely bomb. I think that was part of my strategy: start working on it before anyone could say “it’s not worth it, let’s go make Star Wars games” [Ron Gilbert, on his blog]

Anyway, I wanted just to add an opinion about the “it will never happen” mood that I have detected in some of the previous posts. I prefer to see it as probabilities. I would say that Disney selling the IP to Ron is extremely unlikely but not utterly impossible.

As long as Ron says things like…

Don’t expect me to ever answer this question… [If he had approached Disney and if they responded; LowLevel’s note] many people ask. It would not be in my negotiating best interest to say anything about any negotiations, or even if we’re having them. This isn’t to say we are, but I will never confirm or deny them." [Source]

… it means that he still thinks that it makes sense to protect his interests. These are not the words of someone who has thrown in the towel.

I don’t think about MI all the time but I think it’s fair to leave me an ounce of hope to see the trilogy completed, one day, maybe. :slight_smile:

You’re presenting this as if you’re the first person to come along and try to get Ron to come up with a public conclusion to the story in one way or another. The reality is that Ron has been pestered about a conclusion to Monkey Island for literal decades now. Every idea you’ve presented has already been proposed over and over. You’re not finding new solutions, you’re repeating solutions that have been presented by many other equally motivated fans over a multitude of years. The solutions didn’t work then. Why would they work now?

I’ve seen the exact same things proposed repeatedly regarding the fate of the Half-Life series, which also ended on a cliffhanger, with no sequel in sight. Half-Life 3 hasn’t been in development limbo anywhere near as long as Monkey Island 3a has, yet people keep clamoring for the sequel, or at least a comic that tells a conclusion to the story. Unlike Ron, Valve does in fact own the rights to their IP, and could legally publish (and optionally charge money for) a conclusion in any form they desire, yet it hasn’t happened.

The reason for the “negativity” is that many of us have already seen how this plays out several times already. Ron has undoubtedly heard it all when it comes to requests for a conclusion to Monkey Island. If he was going to be moved to give into the requests, 25 years is plenty of time for it to have happened. And considering his article about a hypothetical Monkey Island 3a, it’s pretty clear to me that he only wants to continue telling the story in a very specific way. Why would he go to all the trouble to spell out what it would take for MI3a to happen if he was actually open to alternatives?

To look at it a different way, think of how bothered you are about the negative responses in this thread. Now imagine if instead you presented your ideas 26 years ago, and people have been continuously telling you over and over again for each and every one of those 26 years all the reasons why it’s not going to happen? Ron is basically in that position. He decided a long time ago that he wasn’t going to make Monkey Island 3a for someone else, but he’s had to listen to people pestering him for a quarter-century about why he should do it anyway–even if it needs to be some bootleg version in a different format. I don’t want to be yet another person telling him that my desires for a 3rd game should trump his personal feelings about what it would take to conclude the Monkey Island story.

The way I see it, the effort is being misplaced. The solution isn’t trying to find a way to break Ron Gilbert. The solution is trying to find a way to convince Disney to send the rights to Monkey Island back home to Ron Gilbert, where they belong. Admittedly very unlikely, but sometimes people can defy the odds. When it comes to making fan games, people will tell you (and rightfully so) that making a game based on someone else’s IP is a recipe for a Cease & Desist letter–especially if it’s based on Nintendo IP. So when people started making a fan remake of the original Half-Life, many people assumed Valve would kill it. Instead, Valve embraced it. The only legal action they took was to make a minor change to the project’s name (dropping the word “Source” from the title) to prevent it from seeming like an official Valve product. The fact that they allowed the project to exist was impressive enough, but when Greenlight was first launched, the devs put Black Mesa on there. Instead of rejecting the project due to IP infringement, Valve approved it as a Greenlight title, and later signed a deal with the developers allowing them to charge for the game, as well as granting source code access in the process. The end result is that a game that originally started out as a Source engine mod got promoted to full-fledged standalone title available for sale on Valve’s own Steam platform. I’d have never guessed that Valve would be so accommodating with their own IP if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. The odds are against Disney giving up the rights to Monkey Island, but I’d sure feel a lot better about annoying Disney into giving in than I would Ron Gilbert. I can live with Disney selling the rights to Ron just to shut us up. I don’t know that I could live with pushing Ron into publishing any old half-assed conclusion to Monkey Island just to shut us up. It’s important to me that whatever he releases is what he wants to make–not what he’s pressured to make. So to conclude, what do we need to do to convince Disney to do the right thing?

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I’ve been thinking this myself too. I get tired of seeing TV and film franchises that ended years ago suddenly get dragged out of the ground and injected with botox. I’m a massive, massive fan of The X Files but was pretty wary when they announced a comeback. It wasn’t bad, and two of the episodes were pretty decent. But I’d much rather see something new, something that’s taken effort and creativity instead of relying on predefined characters and storylines. And that extends to video games.

Having said all that, I’m really enjoying Twin Peaks.

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So the game didn’t light the world on fire. It did sell well for LucasFilm’s standards, if not by Sierra’s. Sierra was always in a league of their own, and LucasFilm Games always had a bit of Sierra-envy. :wink:

Digital Antiquarian:

While Loom had been greeted with critical uncertainty, reviewers fell over themselves to praise The Secret of Monkey Island, which wasted no time in becoming Lucasfilm Games’s biggest hit to date.

Anyway, that statement from Mr. Gilbert you quoted hardly sounds like Mr. Gilbert already had written a full and long story and chopped it into three pieces from the beginning.

The point is that it was profitable enough for the second one to have been approved and released.

The first game had its own complete story arc, so had the second one never been released, that would have been that.

I’m sure that if the opportunity to make a third game comes, and it falls within his parameters and conditions, Mr. Gilbert will consider it. However, I doubt that he’s losing sleep thinking about it, or hanging by the phone waiting for Disney to call.

He seems to have moved on to other things. Perhaps it’s time for fans to do the same. Life is too short.

If it ever happens, unlikely as it is, we can all be pleasantly surprised. :slight_smile:

dZ.

I need to know the “real” ending for the MI - trilogy.

I really liked Curse of MI but Escape was an abomination and Tales was kinda meh.

But the first ending thought out by the brilliant mind of Ron. I just need it.

I wonder if there really is such a thing, or if Mr. Gilbert had just been teasing the fans for all these years.

Personally, I doubt that he’s been sitting on a single specific answer for 25 years – and that if he gets a chance to make a third game, I doubt that it is already written.

dZ.

If Ron will take the secret to his grave, we’ll use the Ash-2-Life™ on him!

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Using water jet cutters to sharpen scissors? Interesting idea. (But hold them the right way!)
Let’s do a Kickstarter!

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Cutstarter!

Petition has over 20 000 votes now :grin:

The more votes these petitions get, the more Disney realizes the Monkey Island IP has value and the less likely they are to sell it to me. This isn’t a democracy where your vote matters.

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Love the ambiguity of that sentence :slight_smile:.

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Could go the nuclear option:
Make up an incredibly controversial secret of Monkey Island (and claim it already runs thematically throughout the existing series), so that Disney (as a family-friendly company) wants nothing more to do with it and wants to dump it as soon as possible.

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Unfortunately the opposite isn’t true. Otherwise we’d all happily sign the “please destroy the Monkey Island IP such that there never will be another game in that series and especially not one by Ron Gilbert”-petition

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