
If I Made Another Monkey Island... - skardan
http://grumpygamer.com/5777333
======
soneca
I supported Double Fine Adventure on Kickstarter and lot of the last points of
the OP refer to how Tim Schafer is managing it.

But, in this case, if Ron Gilbert is making a proof of concept with this post,
a MVP to check if Monkey Island 3a can be crowdfunded - or even if it is just
a critique of Double Fine Adventure campaign, I am on Tim Schafer's side here.

Crowdfunding is not about "give me the money and trust me". The crowd is not a
substitute for publisher's money or even a maecenas. He wants to win the lotto
and create a game, not receive the support of the crowd (and all that come
from it).

I love the documentary updates, the forums, to understand what happens behind
the scenes. This is not about keeping the hype up, this is about sharing the
world of creating games with the people that supported it.

~~~
mtrimpe
I didn't read that much of a value judgement into it. It seems more like he's
just managing expectations by explaining that he wouldn't do it that way.

~~~
soneca
I tried to read it again, but I see a lot of value judgement into it. One
possibility is that it maybe not a judgement of how Tim is managing it, but a
critique to the Kickstarter model as a whole. Either way, I don't agree with
him.

If a Monkey Island is going to be created in this manner I wouldn´t support it
as a crowdfunding project. But I would certainly buy the game after it is
released! And pay good cash too!

I don't think Ron is doing something bad by stating those things, I just think
he doesn't get crowdfunding the same way I do.

------
gavanwoolery
I have no less respect for Ron than I did back in the 90s, but I think that
sometimes the veterans lose sight of what made their old games great (and this
of course, is just my opinion). He wants keep the retro aesthetic, which is
good, but then wants to include things like DOF and glows...which can
technically be done with a palette, but I don't think this is what he is
getting at, and could potentially destroy the rigid palettization that makes
pixel art what it is. He wants to use speech instead of text, which is one of
the things that I think ruined Monkey Island 3. There are many ways to improve
on the old formula while keeping the superficial aspects that fuel our
nostalgia - it seems like most remakes these days jump on the very generic
looking engines like Unity (yes you can tweak Unity to look any way, but if
you use the default shaders, cameras, etc it will look like any other game).

~~~
lloeki
> _He wants to use speech instead of text_

While the no-talkie and partial talkie DotT are great, full-talkie DotT is
absolutely awesome.

> _He wants keep the retro aesthetic, which is good, but then wants to include
> things like DOF and glows...which can technically be done with a palette,
> but I don't think this is what he is getting at, and could potentially
> destroy the rigid palettization that makes pixel art what it is_

I'm not sure pixel art and retro looks is the solution. There was something
unique yet common to all those great games that made them memorable enough
that we long for them even today.

As an example, while I don't quite like the whacky universe and style that
evolved since Rayman 2, Rayman Origins engine and graphics were stunning, and
captures part of that essence. Sadly the gameplay is largely forgettable,
almost a rhythm-based party game — I long for something like the first Rayman
gameplay — but the graphics part is a step in the right direction.

I feel like Orioto [0-3](browse his tumblr blog for more) tries to captures
this essence, and I long for games looking like his work. Given the incredible
horsepower we have at hand as of yet, I just can't believe it's not possible.

[0]:
[http://www.redbubble.com/people/orioto/works/8245345-through...](http://www.redbubble.com/people/orioto/works/8245345-through-
the-night)

[1]: [http://www.redbubble.com/people/orioto/works/8290902-city-
bo...](http://www.redbubble.com/people/orioto/works/8290902-city-
borders?p=photographic-print)

[2]: <http://orioto.tumblr.com/post/15721511369/1200p-1080p-print>

[3]: <http://orioto.tumblr.com/post/15627728854/1200p-1080p-print>

~~~
lobster_johnson
The voice version of DotT is indeed awesome. My favourite example of voice
acting in adventure game that you _don't_ want to click through. Too many
games rely on this "ask 23 inquiring questions picked from a list" in a way
that becomes really boring, with swathes of dialogue to get through.

(Even worse, in my opinion, are those that require that you delve into a
certain part of the dialogue tree in order to get an item or otherwise open up
something in the game, which means you _have_ to go through the entire
dialogue tree even some of the questions seem uninteresting and you don't want
to go through with it. DotT did have a few of those, if I remember correctly.)

I agree about the retro pixel art. A retro style just to capture the essence
of a golden age is, in my opinion, philosophically harmful; it quickly becomes
annoying. There are some games that sort of redeem themselves: "Superbrothers:
Sword + Sorcery", which uses ultra-low-rez graphics blown up to full size
combined with fluid animation, is pretty good, although I wound the glib,
self-referential tone of the game to be a bit obnoxious. Then there are Wadjet
Eye games (like Gemini Rue and Primordia), which use some kind of SCUMM-like,
really retro engine, and graphics that are something like 320x200, again blown
up to full size, but without any modern animation wizardry. The games are so
good that it works, but you do get the sense that the time of this kind of
game is, and should be, over.

While I loved the zany style of DotT, I never liked the exaggerated "French"
drawing style of Monkey Island 3 [1]. Monkey Island 4 was just awful, and the
new Monkey Island episodes are downright creepy in its empty-eyed-doll
animated characters, and the "enhanced" remake again does a kind of Disney-
style makeover that doesn't quite fit. (Among other things the animation has
gone from wonderfully zany to just plain. Watch how they animate talking
people [3], it's hilarious.) (Of course, part of the problem with MI3-4 and
later was that they turned Guybrush from a likeable, sort of innocent hero
into an annoying, clueless, condescending moron somewhere between Chris
O'Donnell and Chris Elliot. I don't know if it was the voice, or the hair, or
whatever, probably a combination of them. It didn't work for me. It wasn't
Guybrush.)

A more recent game that creates a cozy and charming, yet contemporary and
technologically up-to-date style is Machinarium. Crisp high-rez graphics,
charming animation, fun story, pretty much perfect in every way. _That's_ the
way to go, I think.

[1]
[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-O8op_6zSEYQ/UBDrWkuhwiI/AAAAAAAAAG...](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-O8op_6zSEYQ/UBDrWkuhwiI/AAAAAAAAAGk/Qmk0KIAHHbQ/s1600/CurseofMonkeyIsland_001.jpg)

[2]
[http://wiimedia.ign.com/wii/image/article/100/1008507/tales-...](http://wiimedia.ign.com/wii/image/article/100/1008507/tales-
of-monkey-island-episode-1-20090728032640858-000.jpg)

[3] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9eJHotWoDQ>

~~~
Gravityloss
The voice acting in The Dig was really good. It also didn't have the verbs.
The graphics were great as well but the plot was lacking...

~~~
lobster_johnson
Yes. Actually, I really liked The Dig's plot [spoilers ahead!] until they
brought forth the magical alien ghosts. It was basically Rendezvous with Rama
reworked with some subpar new-age nonsense.

Another excellent voice acting game: Tim Schafer's Full Throttle.

------
aresant
"True, I wouldn't raise huge sums of money or break any records . . ."

Haha.

Come on.

I'd wager that MI 3 would far and away be the #1 all time Kickstarter fund
raise, starting with my money:

"After its release on Steam, the Special Edition remake topped the sales
charts for the week ending July 18. On July 20th, the Xbox 360 version had
already sold over 38,000 copies" (1)

I bought the SE on iPad the day it was released, and still haven't played it -
that is how strong the nostalgia is with me . . .

(1)[http://www.miwiki.net/The_Secret_of_Monkey_Island:_Special_E...](http://www.miwiki.net/The_Secret_of_Monkey_Island:_Special_Edition)

------
Aloisius
I may be an odd ball here, but I cheated at Monkey Island 1 and 2. I don't
like to be frustrated with a puzzle that relies on either randomly choosing
inventory items or seeing some pixels that look like almost every other set of
pixels on the screen and trying to pick them up.

For me, what made Monkey Island great was that it was a pretty quirky comedy.
I wanted to see what Guybrush would say next.

Further, it shocks me at how bad the graphics are at some of these games after
looking at them again after decades. It occurs to me that what I remember it
looking like is a heck of a lot better than what it actually looked like. So
I'd rather the game not look like the pixely original. I'd rather have it look
like I remember.

~~~
Contero
I think Machinarium is a good example of how you can preserve the fun
frustration of adventure games without pushing people to cheat. They would
allow you to play a mini-game in order to reveal some extra hints which would
push you in the right direction enough to figure out the rest on your own.

In Monkey Island I would sometimes get annoyed and google for what to do out
of angry frustration. It was easy for me to throw my hands up and say "I don't
give a shit any more, time to move on!" Lots of times the solutions made zero
sense to me. In Machinarium I still got a sense of frustration and puzzlement,
but I would try to forego the hints out of pride for as long as I could which
made for a much more enjoyable experience.

~~~
ricardobeat
You mean Altavista?

------
nollidge
I hope no one minds if I hijack to ask:

What are some really good MODERN adventure games, along the lines of MI or the
Space Quests?

Besides the Two Guys' Kickstarter campaign, I mean...

~~~
HeXetic
I consider "L.A. Noire" the modern equivalent of an adventure game. Much of
your time is spent walking around crime scenes picking up everything that
isn't nailed down. The rest of the time consists of solving the game's
"puzzles", which are all in the form of conversations, and sometimes involve
using objects (evidence) to solve, while otherwise requiring careful
observation. The combat and chase sequences are actually very incidental, with
the foot chases in particular having extremely simplified controls (just hold
"up" to climb a whole set of fire escape ladders and stairs) and if you screw
them up enough then the game will simply let you skip them. Unlike old
adventure games, there are multiple ways to solve each case, and there are no
instances of "Moon Logic Puzzles".

~~~
bentcorner
I enjoyed LA Noire except for the conversations. Maybe there's something wrong
with me, but I could never figure out the right responses when interrogating
someone.

------
runjake
For the people going on and on about Kickstarter and crowd funding, note point
#11: _"The only way I would or could make another Monkey Island is if I owned
the IP"_

This seems more like a post to get the masses exited and perhaps help him get
a license for or ownership of the Monkey Island franchise.

I hope he's successful, I was a big fan of the first two games (never got to
play the 3rd). I'd certainly buy whatever he produced if it inspired the same
awe of the prior games.

I do like the idea of starting fresh with a new story, ala The Legend of
Gorilla Mountain, or something silly like that. After all, it was the wit of
the writers and the artists that really sold the game.

~~~
dublinben
Isn't it actually relatively possible now for him to secure the IP rights from
Disney? With LucasArts disbanded, they've made it clear they intend to license
the IP to other developers.

------
egypturnash
Honestly after "The Cave" and "Deathspank" I'm not sure Gilbert is on my HERE
TAKE MY MONEY list any more. And him saying "MI3 will be RETRO looking!" isn't
making me interested; the Monkey Island games were GORGEOUS for the time, but
I don't want to go wallowing in nostalgia for something made now.

~~~
lobster_johnson
Indeed, The Cave had good visuals, but extremely boring gameplay. I understand
what he was going for, but it just didn't work. Way too much running back and
forth to place your characters in a certain place, and all the running took
way too much time.

Deathspank was mildly amusing, but got tired very fast. It was visually flimsy
and felt underdeveloped overall; it wasn't a good RPG, but it wasn't a good
action game either, and it was a terrible adventure game.

Admittedly neither of those games are classical point and click games. It may
well be that he's just much better at designing point and clicks than at the
other game genres.

------
tseabrooks
FFS, I was secretly hoping for a tiny kickstarter link at the bottom.

~~~
libria
Myself as well. On the other hand, I'd wait to see how the Two Guys from
Andromeda [1] fare before having hopes of something like this. They appear to
have missed their February delivery.

[1] [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spaceventure/two-guys-
sp...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spaceventure/two-guys-spaceventure-
by-the-creators-of-space-que)

------
morganwilde
This is absolutely brilliant! One on one with the community, speaking from the
heart to people that understand you, no marketing BS, just the good old truth.
I enjoyed Monkey Island for that same reason. By this point, I think it is
pretty obvious Ron is just trying to gauge the readiness of the crowd, which
obviously is there and happy to pay up. The one thing that scares me - he'll
probably have start buy shelling out a ton of money to buy the IP and that may
turn out to be a showstopper...

------
erdogan
I love Monkey Island series and other Lucas Arts Adventure games, spent way
too many hours playing them. However, I am a bit disappointed in this article
because it feels a bit concierge-mvp to nostalgia (feeling the grounds before
a full-on Kickstarter campaign), unfortunately without any interesting build
upon what those great games offered. Well, consider this as my feedback to the
mvp. Grim Fandango was a breakthrough, including its no-interface approach and
clever use of camera angles to script the player. I have never seen a game
script coming alive so strongly, it was like playing a movie. But Monkey
Island re-pixelated? Although I played it on my iPad and switch back and forth
between old-new renderings, I would expect these wonderful minds to be more
inventive than nostalgic when producing something new.

------
aidenn0
Reading the linked rules of adventure gaming, it is true that you can have
arbitrarily hard puzzles without breaking any of them.

[spoiler for a two puzzles in Monkey Island 2 below]

The example for me is in MI2; there comes a point at which you are suspended
over a boiling cauldron with a candle that is burning through the rope holding
you up. If you are really clever, you will remember that earlier you got a
drink that would thicken your spit (and you can't have not picked it up, since
you needed it to solve a puzzle to get to this point). However, you can't spit
at the candle, but you can spit at a shield on the wall, causing a ricochet to
extinguish the candle.

I was stuck on this for months, finally got bored and played through the game
again. The moment I got to the first time you need to spit I just slapped my
self in the head.

------
DigitalSea
People have so much respect for the Monkey Island series from yesteryear and
for Ron as well. Lets face it, if there was a Kickstarter for a retro-styled
Monkey Island game built by Ron and a few of his friends, it would shatter
Kickstarter records faster than Usain Bolt. Just tell me where to send the
money and I'll send it all, so many would love another Monkey Island game,
lets get the IP back into the hands of Ron and let him work the magic.

"True, I wouldn't raise huge sums of money or break any records . . ."

We all know that isn't true. A remake would seriously break any sales record
of any game no doubt.

------
ComputerGuru
Is SCUMM really better than Lua?

~~~
kbruner
No. I've used SCUMM, was the core systems engineer on Grim, and founded
Telltale. I'm very familiar with both. The spirit of SCUMM is very much alive,
but SCUMM is a system, not just a language. Lua runs circles around SCUMM as a
language (SCUMM didn't support >8bit numeric types till Monkey3!), but as a
game development system SCUMM was really cool. There's much that Unreal,
Unity, etc could learn from it, but "running circles around Lua" is (ahem)
hyperbole.

~~~
catwell
That's what I thought. I wonder what the DSL used in Grim and Escape from
Monkey Island looked like.

Also, the Lua version used in Grim was 2.5 (!) and a major issue was the lack
of cooperative multithreading (see
[http://www.grimfandango.net/?page=articles&pagenumber=2](http://www.grimfandango.net/?page=articles&pagenumber=2)).

I don't know what version was used in Escape from Monkey Isand (3.1 ?), but
the current version of Lua also "runs in circles" around the Lua that was used
in those games.

EDIT: more by Bret on Lua in Grim:
[http://www.slideshare.net/hughreynolds/lua-patient-zero-
bret...](http://www.slideshare.net/hughreynolds/lua-patient-zero-bret-
mogilefsky-scea)

------
taeric
Point Eleven is awesome!!

 _Eleven - The only way I would or could make another Monkey Island is if I
owned the IP. I've spent too much of my life creating and making things other
people own. Not only would I allow you to make Monkey Island fan games, but I
would encourage it. Label them as such, respect the world and the characters
and don't claim they are canon. Of course, once the lawyers get ahold of that
last sentence it will be seven pages long._

edit: Thanks!

~~~
MartinCron
_Grr, how do I do block quotes? Because, this is terrible. Apologies to
everyone seeing it_

I usually just do block quotes as italics by surrounding them in asterisks. As
I did above.

------
rocky1138
What was wrong with Tales of Monkey Island? I thought it was good!

------
austinstorm
Living up to his name, and yet I still want him to TAKE MY MONEY NOW

------
ganeshtoday
Ron, please shut up and take my money!

------
PavlovsCat
What business model is this? Give gamers blue balls and then wait until they
inevitably ram down your door with money trucks?

~~~
cskau
You plant the seed for the violent revolt of rampaging gamers that will
ultimately see Disney surrender the Monkey Island IP to restore global peace.

Then you make a game.

~~~
okamiueru
If he wanted to put the effort and time to make this game, why would it have
to use the Monkey Island IP?

I think that any new game with same quality, the humor and mechanics, but in a
different setting (or heck, just a different name!) would still be loved.

~~~
rrreese
Using existing IP is a lot safer, and will generate more sales, even if
otherwise the games are the same. There are a lot of people who played Monkey
island in their youth and are nostalgic for it, but who don't follow the
latest game news and wouldn't auto buy a game without the IP. Yes it could be
successful, but that the Monkey Island name it would be more so.

See for example the success of every new Civ game compared to the success of
other strategy games.

