A new long interview with Ron Gilbert, about writing, designing puzzles and his games

Adventure/Lucasfilm Games
1

YouTube suggested to me this new interview:

TIL: Ron, although not involved in the development of Day of the Tentacle, was the one who suggested that the game should be about time travel, with puzzles between past and future. :slight_smile:

Table of contents:

  • Ron’s Influences
  • Why Adventure Games Suck
  • Ron’s home videos
  • SCUManiac Mansion engine
  • No action scenes in Maniac Mansion
  • Zak McKracken
  • How to make a joke
  • Are people less funny if they’re trying to be more realistic?
  • Indiana Jones The Adventure Game
  • Action scenes in Indy
  • What he learned from Maniac Mansion
  • The Maniac Mansion TV show
  • Ron’s involvement in Loom
  • Chronology of his work
  • Indiana Jones made in 1 year
  • Puzzle Dependency Chart
  • Origins of the Puzzle Dependency Chart
  • Ron’s inspiration for puzzles
  • Being the first to do a verbal user interface
  • How games like Maniac Mansion get made without a greenlight
  • Ron’s inspiration for Monkey Island
  • The ethics of comedy
  • Return to Monkey Island’s mature content
  • Inspiration for Guybrush Threepwood
  • The Monkey Island Pitch process
  • Monkey Island’s art design
  • Why a pulley chicken?
  • Collaboration on Monkey Island
  • Number of verbs in Monkey Island
  • Trusting the audience
  • The inspiration for insult swordfighting
  • Music in Monkey Island
  • Hardest puzzle in Monkey Island
  • Monkey Island 2’s verb reduction
  • Writing an adventure game where you can’t get stuck
  • Incentivizing curiosity
  • How you insult your audience
  • Monkey Island 2 Production timeline
  • The one joke from Monkey Island 2 Ron regrets
  • Star Wars point n click?
  • Relationship between Sierra & LucasArts
  • Why LucasArts sold better in Europe
  • Humongous Entertainment and why you can’t make adventure games for kids today
  • Ron’s views on the Maniac Mansion remake
  • Don’t f*ck it up. - Ron on Day of the Tentacle
  • Why Ron Left Lucas
  • Ron’s involvement in the MI1 and 2 remasters
  • Ron’s involvement in Tales of Monkey Island
  • The Cave
  • Thimbleweed Park trusting the audience
  • Puzzle design in Thim
  • Thimbleweed Park inspirations
  • Thimbleweed voiceover
  • Making Adventure Games for short attention spans
  • Can there be hard adventures?
  • Artificial intelligence
  • Film adaptation of Monkey Island?
  • Hollywood Envy today
  • Ron’s advice for making adventure games
  • Why we laugh
  • Selling 100K units can be a success
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