Ron Gilbert Leaves Hothead Games

Adventure game veteran Ron Gilbert has left Hothead Games, the studio at work on his upcoming DeathSpank. The Monkey Island creator says that now that the game's creative and production phase has wrapped, he's finished with his work at the studio. "When I started working there two years ago, my goal was to make DeathSpank the most awesome game ever made and have it win a Nobel Prize and the early word out of Stockholm is that DeathSpank is neck-in-neck with some string theory dweeb (eleven dimensions my ass)," writes Gilbert on his personal blog. Just last month, Electronic Arts' EA Partners signed DeathSpank for publication on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and although a PC version wasn't announced, an EA rep implied that one was at least under consideration. "As DeathSpank ends the creative and production phases and starts down that long and winding road of certification and testing of the XBox and PS3 and [REDACTED] versions, it's looking quite amazing and is damn funny," writes Gilbert. "So, to quote my childhood hero George W. Bush: Mission Accomplished." Gilbert says he'll continue to work with both EA and Hothead to promote DeathSpank, which is slated to release later this year. The game blends adventure gaming and Diablo-style dungeon-crawling, and will have a humorous tone that relies on beloved tropes of the adventure genre. Hothead is also developer of Penny Arcade Adventures, and while DeathSpank was originally intended as an episodic title, it's now been reformulated into a more traditional release. Although he says he has "vowed to blog more and try and remember my twitter password," Gilbert did not indicate what his next professional steps will be. He's best known for his work with LucasArts on Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, and the SCUMM scripting language that became a major defining factor in LucasArts' PC adventure game success. After leaving LucasArts, he founded Humongous/Cavedog, and a few years back, set out on his own.