In just two hours, Paul Morgan Stetler and @danielalbu will interview Ron Gilbert! 
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Thanks for the notice! 
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He just said that he’s thinking about a story for…
Thimbleweed Park 2!!!
I’ve been playing around with some ideas for Thimbleweed Park 2, a sequel. Just kind of writing stuff. It’s really bizarre… it’s going to be… I mean if I do it, the chances are low, but if I do it it’s going to be a game that a whole lot of people totally hate.
I’m doing a bunch of really weird things that are personally very interesting to me as a kind of designer and a storyteller. But it wouldn’t be necessarily just be “oh its’ exactly like Thimbleweed Park but different”. I think the odds of it happening are very low, but it’s fun, creatively, it’s fun to play with that stuff.
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Low chances for ever seeing the light of day
AND
High chances for lot of people totally hating it
(Especially the ending, I assume)
Sounds like a Ron Gilbert game all right!
Can’t wait 
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But just to be safe, I would start a petition on change.org to have a non-meta ending
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We can probably get AI to make us some weekly stand-up meeting podcasts, complete with Ron’s actual voice
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… and the whole game. That would be meta!
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Exactly.
I lost all hope some time ago 
While I can appreciate meta-narrative, I would have loved to play a Ron’s game with a simple, even banal “They lived happily ever after” ending. Unfortunately, I’ve also come to the conclusion that Ron will never invest time in something that mundane. It’s OK for me!
Yes, and our game will end with Ron saying in an uncharacteristically emphatic way: “…and they lived happily ever after!”.
But joking aside, I think another meta ending in TWP2 would make some sense since [added: we already know it’s a virtual world and] the C64 rebooted at the end of the first game.
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Maybe by using hypnosis, we could go back to Ron’s childhood and discover what kind of trauma he had, that now prevents him from concluding a story in a straightforward manner. We might still be in time!
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At least we know to expect total shenanigans every time now - I think if you go into a game knowing something meta will happen, it at least softens the blow.
At the end of TWP2, there will probably be a twist where it turns out you weren’t actually playing TWP2 after all, you were actually doing your laundry the entire time.
And as you look down at the washing machine you’ll go, “dammit Ron, you got me again.”
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I never played the games for children that he developed at Humongous Entertainment: did they have meta endings?
I seem to recall Pajama Sam got back to the real world after completing an adventure! (back to his pajama, in fact)
The few I played and finished so far had pretty whacky endings.
I mean, a talking car that could change colors to ride in front of the parade, or building a rocket to fly back home after getting there by fireworks… those can’t be taken literal and must have deeper meaning, right?
I’m playing one of them each year, that’s the most I can handle storywise.
If they did another kickstarter for Thimbleweed Park 2 (they probably wouldn’t, but if they did) I would be willing to throw in much more. Way back with the original Kickstarter, I was an editorial PA making dirt money and paying New York rent.
Nowadays I have like, a career. And I fucking LOVED Thimbleweed Park. Just loved it. I want to go back into that world so bad. I don’t care if I know in the world of the game that they’re not real people. Doesn’t bother me at all.
However, that ending was so divisive that I’d imagine they might have trouble getting crowd funded at the level of the first game. Or do you think I’m wrong about that?
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I would also support a Kickstarter because TWP was a very well made game for me. I loved the puzzles, the setting, the art and I didn’t care about the ending.
I like to think that Ron would have no trouble running a successful Kickstarter for TWP2, even taking into account the fact that the ending of TWP was not welcomed by (apparently) many people. Overall, the reviews of TWP are very good.
Also, the TWP Kickstarter campaign came after years of Ron’s hiatus from “classic” adventure game development. I think a lot of old-time fans weren’t even aware of the campaign. Now that he has gained more visibility through the release of TWP and RTMI, I believe he can reach even more people than he did in 2014.
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I’d play that. Having fun and your laundry done, what more could you want?!
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I imagine there would be little clues throughout the game, the quiet hum of a washing machine, the smell of detergent, etc.
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