Ron Gilbert on writing comedy, designing puzzles, and Monkey Island (Action Talks #14)

Ron Gilbert is a game designer known for games like Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island, and Thimbleweed Park. He talks about the early days of LucasFilm, how he creates puzzles in his comedy, and how he tackles comedy. You can see his Moby Games profile at Action Talks on Spotify: Action Talks on iTunes: Telegram: My studio SuperAlloy: Blog: Timestamps: 0:01:41 Ron’s Influences 0:04:54 Why Adventure Games Suck 0:02:02 Ron’s home videos 0:06:15 SCUManiac Mansion engine 0:12:38 No action scenes in Maniac Mansion 0:13:46 Zak McKracken 0:14:20 How to make a joke 0:18:41 Are people less funny if they’re trying to be more realistic? 0:20:38 Indiana Jones The Adventure Game 0:23:17 Action scenes in Indy 0:26:16 What he learned from Maniac Mansion 0:29:06 The Maniac Mansion TV show 0:31:41 Ron’s involvement in Loom 0:32:13 Chronology of his work 0:33:02 Indiana Jones made in 1 year 0:34:08 Puzzle Dependency Chart 0:35:18 Origins of the Puzzle Dependency Chart 0:36:52 Ron’s inspiration for puzzles 0:39:03 Being the first to do a verbal user interface 0:40:16 How games like Maniac Mansion get made without a greenlight 0:40:54 Ron’s inspiration for Monkey Island 0:43:28 The ethics of comedy 0:44:44 Return to Monkey Island’s mature content 0:47:37 Inspiration for Guybrush Threepwood 0:51:14 The Monkey Island Pitch process 0:53:25 Monkey Island’s art design 0:55:30 Why a pulley chicken? 0:55:54 Collaboration on Monkey Island 0:57:52 Number of verbs in Monkey Island 1:00:04 Trusting the audience 1:03:02 The inspiration for insult swordfighting 1:06:00 Music in Monkey Island 1:07:22 Hardest puzzle in Monkey Island 1:08:08 Monkey Island 2’s verb reduction 1:08:29 Writing an adventure game where you can’t get stuck 1:11:06 Incentivizing curiosity 1:14:50 How you insult your audience 1:15:31 Monkey Island 2 Production timeline 1:16:01 The one joke from Monkey Island 2 Ron regrets 1:18:27 Star Wars point n click? 1:19:48 Relationship between Sierra & LucasArts 1:21:39 Why LucasArts sold better in Europe 1:24:57 Humongous Entertainment and why you can’t make adventure games for kids today 1:28:27 Ron’s views on the Maniac Mansion remake 1:29:12 Don’t f*ck it up. - Ron on Day of the Tentacle 1:29:55 Why Ron Left Lucas 1:30:38 Ron’s involvement in the MI1 and 2 remasters 1:31:37 Ron’s involvement in Tales of Monkey Island 1:32:01 The Cave 1:33:28 Thimbleweed Park trusting the audience 1:34:51 Puzzle design in Thim 1:35:44 Thimbleweed Park inspirations 1:36:46 Thimbleweed voiceover 1:39:32 Making Adventure Games for short attention spans 1:41:51 Can there be hard adventures? 1:43:45 Artificial intelligence 1:44:35 Film adaptation of Monkey Island? 1:46:28 Hollywood Envy today 1:48:20 Ron’s advice for making adventure games 1:52:45 Why we laugh 1:55:05 Selling 100K units can be a success