Feature: 'Ron Gilbert On His Post-Guybrush Universe'

In today's main Gamasutra feature, famed ex-LucasArts developer Ron Gilbert (Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion) speaks out exclusively on the lack of story-driven games, and his solution for the budget-conscious game creator wanting to compete in today's game market. Gilbert explains of his current views of the industry, with a view to getting more niche titles funded and the view of the big publishers: "I think they're basically just tripping over themselves. They blew up too fast, and now they don't really know how to deal with the creative aspect of it. Look at the movie business. Sure, there are movies that cost $10, $20, maybe $30 million to make, but there are also a lot of movies that cost a million to $2 million to make. So I think what you have in the movie business is this... the movie industry has a system and a pipeline for independent film that can not cost as much money and the movie studios know how to market that stuff. The movie studios understand that they're not going to make, you know, $400 million off an independent film, but that's OK with them because they only spent $1 million to fund it and the games industry does not understand that. If you go to any of these publishers, they're like baseball players that only want to hit home runs. They're not interested in hitting singles or hitting doubles. Everything has to be a home run or they're not interested, and I think the industry is a little more sophisticated than that. If you're willing to spend a little money to make a little more money, you can do that in the movie industry and the games industry is not willing to do that. I think that's a huge detriment to the whole industry." You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject, including more from the Monkey Island creator on the game titles he is planning (no registration required, please feel free to link to this feature from external websites)