Why does nobody like(d) MI4?

Adventure/Lucasfilm Games
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I understand the dilemma well, and you bring up an interesting point regarding whether you think you are the person to do a Monkey Island 3a or a New “Popular Media” Monkey Island. It definitely mirrors the new Blade Runner/Mad Max idea.

I suppose my question revolves around the releasing of information regarding what you would have done, what your 90’s conclusion was? Because as you have said before, it has changed with time.

Why not do something like Mark Laidlaw and Half Life 3 and release your 90’s Monkey Ending, especially if there is such a slim chance you could ever get it back. That way it would be a closed book. The people like us who care, would be sad that we didn’t get to play it, but at least the information would be available for something that could have been. I also understand that it “written” is never as powerful as playing and living it, but it’s a compromise. I know I am sad that Half Life 3 got an ending without me getting to play it, but happy that it is out there. It would also tame the probably unending questions you receive regarding it.

Though failing that, why not try to work with Disney? I understand and have read your feelings regarding not having complete control over it whilst working, but if its such a “small fish” series to Disney, why would it matter so much to them if you came in requesting to make another Monkey Island. Like with Tim and the remasters it seemed to an outsider looking in, that they had control over how they developed those remasters and Disney just took cuts of the profits.

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Since the late 90s, I have been convinced that there is definitely a sufficient market for good point & click games, but it’s hard to sustain one’s position as a developer in the midst of so many competitors who flood the market with rather disappointing games (both 3D and 2D) year in and year out.

I think that the reputation of a company is also relevant for the success of their games. In the minds of a lot of people, the name of LucasArts or Lucasfilm Games, respectively, stood for excellent adventure games back in the 90s, because a lot of people had played (and pirated, admittedly) some SCUMM games like Monkey Island and enjoyed it, so they looked for some other games from this company and played them, too. This also applies to myself as a consumer (and a fan), by the way. I later bought the most recent LucasArts games at the full price once they were released. And I also tried some adventure games which disappointed me. When I got disappointed by Escape from MI, I completely lost my interest in new releases - until your Kickstarter campaign for TWP.

I think that Wadjet Eye is another example for a company that benefits from its reputation. Their games are not everyone’s cup of tea, but they apparently have a lot of fans and they seem to make ends meet.
Maybe power of endurance is exactly what it needs for a talented point & click game developer until his company has a sufficient popularity. I don’t know whether or not TWP has been too nostalgic to attract younger consumers. However, if you continue to release such great adventure games via Terrible Toybox, the public interest in your most recent games might increase by and by. Regardless of your personal reputation, your company is young and all beginnings are difficult.

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Hmmm… will see, but I wont give up that easy.

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Only a few minutes absent and the thread explodes. :slight_smile: Let’s go:

@RonGilbert: I share your concerns but I don’t see them that pessimistic. :slight_smile:

First: All genres were “dead” in the past. I can’t count how often RGPs and strategy games were said to be dead. Same with the adventure genre. Then came “Runaway” or the “Deponia” series. (Note that I can only speak for Germany.)

The graphics and the interface aren’t that important as we might think. Have a look for example at the success of FTL. The success of a game depends more on the game itself. If the game sucks the player in, if it “hooked” him/makes him addicted, then it will be automatically a huge success. In an adventure you can achieve this for example with a thrilling story and good puzzle chains. (This is why Firewatch and other “Walking Simulators” are selling good: They suck the player into their world. The player want instantly know what happens next.)

And don’t forget that Monkey Island is a special case: It is world wide well-known and has a lot of fans. Even if a MI3a has crappy C64 graphics and the control scheme of Maniac Mansion, a lot of people would buy it - just to see how it is. Most reviews of the players would be of course horrible in that case, but just the name “Monkey Island” sells a lot of copies.

No. You could do both at once: The Special Editions of MI and the remakes of DOTT, Grim and Full Throttle sold well. The developers of these remakes just polished the graphics and allowed the players to switch to the original. You could do this with MI3a from the start: Write an adventure that looks modern but allow the player to switch anytime into a “retro mode” with pixel graphics and SCUMM interface. With this system you could satisfy both: The hardcore fans and the millenials.

This approach has of course two drawbacks: First, you can’t try a complete new game concept like “Firewatch” did. But I don’t think that would be necessary because as Milan said above: MI is focused on the characters, not the player. And the Grim, DOTT, etc. remakes sold well. Second, you have to develop two games in one. (But maybe you can reduce the needed effort with some tricks.)

Then don’t name it “Point and click adventure”. :slight_smile: In Germany over several decades no one wanted to see ventriloquists. They were boring. Then came Sascha Grammel. He is doing Puppet Comedy. That is exactly the same as a ventriloquist. He just gave it a new name and now everyone wants to see him. Find a new name for “adventure game” (maybe we can help :wink: ) and make sure that each player can’t stop playing after the first few seconds.

That doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

You like Firewatch? :slight_smile: It would indeed interesting to see a Firewatch-like game designed by Ron Gilbert.

And don’t forget that these games age much faster than hand-drawn 2D games.

I’ve thought the same but Disney has restrictive policies.

They just made remakes. In Ron’s case Disney would change the story.

As I said: He is pessimistic. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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65

No, all I´m saying is that it will never ever be the game that would have come out in the mid 90s.

That´s your opinion, and mine. Many don´t seem to agree, though.

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He´s lucky not enough germans know Jeff Dunham. Just like Alf Poier took his act from Carrot Top. Or Jürgen von der Lippe copied Bill Cosby, etc…

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Well, I know him since the early 90s. :wink:

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Well that´s real early.

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The first thing I saw from him has to be this:

I still have that on VHS somewhere…

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The comparison between movies like Mad Max/Blade Runner and a new MI (the third installment of the original trilogy) in my opinion is only partially fair. Unlike movies, in adventure games the story doesn’t go on its own. It needs an interaction by the player, which has to be involved to take action.
The media is different.
If you look at the technical innovations in games from early nineties, they are many, compared to movies. Watch the first and the second Blade Runner: it’s basically color motion pictures with sound projected on a big screen. (I don’t want to banalize the media: in those pictures can live the most various feelings and thoughts about world, life, everything… I’m talking about technical features of the media itself).
So if Ron feels that Firewatch is the technical, the mechanical base on which starting to build his gameplay and storytelling aimed for a wider and younger audience… well, why not? For what is worth a post of mine… he has all of my fostering.

He reminds me of a young man who was looking for a structure for his first game and came across a kid who was playing King’s Quest…

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This is a very interesting thread. I’ve taken some minutes to re-read all the posts, and, although a bit chaotic, there are many sparks.

  • I wish Thimbleweed Park and Terrible Toybox all the best. I still think, as Ron said, that games like these (he referred also to Monkey Island 1) have a long tail. I still expect that the game will grow in popularity, and at that time, having an IP of his own will be rewarding (finger crossed). I talk about it as much as I can, expecially with younger people which are into gaming: despite they don’t usually know the devs of TWP, two out of three know Monkey Island.
  • Since the exciting times of the TWP dev blog, I’ve always said that it is a wise approach from Ron to let Monkey Island rest in our memories, for all the reasons he explained here before. First the IP belonging to Disney, second traditional audience vs new audience.
    After all, thinking of Monkey Island 3a doesn’t mean thinking of the actual game (which is impossible to produce now by Ron) it means thinking of the future of adventure games from the LucasFilm Games alumni point of view, with their style in gameplay, storytelling, puzzles and so on.
    There’s that post on Grumpygamer.com https://grumpygamer.com/if_i_made_another_monkeyisland
    where Ron was thinking about the third installment of MI, and there he said he would have done it without verbs. In a way similar to “Why adventure games suck” did for Monkey 1, I took that post as a manifesto for the new point and click to come, which would have been Thimbleweed Park. Despite I liked very much the coming back of the verbs more beautiful than ever in TWP, I would have not disliked a different user interface. There’s a role played by the committment to backers here.
    I really don’t know what to think, if losing the verbs would help to embrace a wider audience. Probably only time will tell us about the role of user interface in the success of the game.
    It seems there are three roads to deal with the significative tradition from the LucasFilm Games experience.

  1. A game like TWP. It’s the core of the traditional LucasFilm games experience, boosted at his highest level. Luxurious 8 bitish 2D graphics, Ron Gilbert’s gameplay at his best, great balance in puzzle solving, story and dialogues, a storytelling which stimulates interpretation, user interface with verbs better than ever, plus some grants to the contemporary player like a built-in hint line.

  2. A game like new chapters of Charles Cecil’s Broken Sword, or other 2D graphics games. Luxurious hand-drawn like 2d graphics (or 8bitish 2d graphics), intriguing gameplay which goes towards comics or animation movies, a light user interface which let the player interact with the whole scenery.

  3. A game like some new adventure games with 3D graphics. As @milanfahrnholz said, here the focus tends to shift from the story of many characters (with the prevalence of the protagonist) to the main character controlled by the player. This is probably the point which make me difficult to think of a game like MI or TWP in this context. Even Grim Fandango and EMI have pre-rendered sceneries with fixed views in which the player moves the character.

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72

Didn´t I say that? :thinking:

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73

I would like to add that you can’t compare the different sub-genres: Walking Simulators and Point and Click adventures are telling their stories in totally different ways. I like both approaches and it would be great if both sub-genres could exist together.

/edit:

Yep.

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74

+1

Point´n´CoExist

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75

Aka Oxenfree. It’s pretty much the ideal version of a Telltale game.

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76

I got an idea, a “choose your own Monkey Island 3a” game:

  1. Choose who you play as:
  • Guybrush
  • Elaine
  • LeChuck?
  • Murray?
  1. Choose your graphics preferences:
  • 2D retro point and click
  • 3D telltale style adventure
  • FPS walking style simulator with more puzzels
  1. Choose the narrative:
  • Original way it was going to be if made back in 91
  • New more up to date version of the 90’s game, with many tongue in cheek “in jokes”
  • All new “modern popular culture” narrative of Monkey Island for the youth of today, a retcon? a reboot? No nasty in jokes to put off the young people
  1. Choose your music:
  • Michael Land composed score, with help from Peter and Clint iMuse and MT32 support
  • Michael Land composed score, with help from Peter and Clint fully orchestrated
  • Hans Zimmer composed score, fully sampled from real orchestra sounds put together in pro-tools with no main theme or any idee-fixe just loads of long drawn out bass notes doubled with sub synth and high screeching violin with no rhyme or reason sold to you as “atmospheric” really capturing that cinematic quality. (If you can’t tell I am not a fan)
  1. Make many hard choices:

Borrowing a successful element from the telltale series, every choice you make matters and will change the narrative as you play, compare your results with others online.

  1. Finally find out the Secret of Monkey Island…

Well now there is several secrets because of all these other gameplay and narrative things we have to take into account

Of course you can mix and match any of these elements seamlessly in your playthrough

Become rich beyond our wildest dream, releasing the most successful game ever conceived by man or woman, so successful that everyone who plays it makes money while they play

It’s a start anyway… :joy:

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Herman Toothrot.

2D Point´n´Click

Hero´s Journey with a few screwball silliness in between.

Instrumental reggae soundtrack performed by the reunited members of The Police (which is more likely than the game ever happening, I mean they already reunited once in 2007…)

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78

agree w Milan

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Though an equivalent I see a lot in music is where a band wants to expand their audience outside of their hardcore fans and so they take the option to “make an album that sells well but upsets the hardcore fans”.

BUT they undestimate how difficult it is to make something popular, or they don’t quite understand populist things, and so they make something that does not find a larger audience AND doesn’t appeal to the hardcore fans.
Those bands usually then go back to catering to the hardcore fans, which may be a small market, but it’s stable and they understand it.

I’m not saying that would necessarily happen if you tried to make a current/wide-appeal version of MI (or any game), but there is an inherent risk with that route of appealing to no one if you don’t totally nail the leap over into the popular arena.

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That’s why Escape from MI was not as popular as its predecessors. I think LucasArts opened a can of worms by deciding for the “way more modern” GrimE.

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