Action Talks with Eric Jacobus
Action Talks with Eric Jacobus
Eric Jacobus
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Ron Gilbert on writing comedy, designing puzzles, and Monkey Island (Action Talks #14)
1 hour 56 minutes Posted Jun 23, 2023 at 7:28 pm.
Ron's Influences
Why Adventure Games Suck
Ron's home videos
SCUManiac Mansion engine
No action scenes in Maniac Mansion
Zak McKracken
How to make a joke
Are people less funny if they're trying to be more realistic?
Indiana Jones The Adventure Game
Action scenes in Indy
What he learned from Maniac Mansion
The Maniac Mansion TV show
Ron's involvement in Loom
Chronology of his work
Indiana Jones made in 1 year
Puzzle Dependency Chart
Origins of the Puzzle Dependency Chart
Ron's inspiration for puzzles
Being the first to do a verbal user interface
How games like Maniac Mansion get made without a greenlight
Ron's inspiration for Monkey Island
The ethics of comedy
Return to Monkey Island's mature content
Inspiration for Guybrush Threepwood
The Monkey Island Pitch process
Monkey Island's art design
Why a pulley chicken?
Collaboration on Monkey Island
Number of verbs in Monkey Island
Trusting the audience
The inspiration for insult swordfighting
Music in Monkey Island
Hardest puzzle in Monkey Island
Monkey Island 2's verb reduction
Writing an adventure game where you can't get stuck
Incentivizing curiosity
How you insult your audience
Monkey Island 2 Production timeline
The one joke from Monkey Island 2 Ron regrets
Star Wars point n click?
Relationship between Sierra & LucasArts
Why LucasArts sold better in Europe
Humongous Entertainment and why you can't make adventure games for kids today
Ron's views on the Maniac Mansion remake
Don't f*ck it up. Ron on Day of the Tentacle
Why Ron Left Lucas
Ron's involvement in the MI1 and 2 remasters
Ron's involvement in Tales of Monkey Island
The Cave
Thimbleweed Park trusting the audience
Puzzle design in Thim
Thimbleweed Park inspirations
Thimbleweed voiceover
Making Adventure Games for short attention spans
Can there be hard adventures?
Artificial intelligence
Film adaptation of Monkey Island?
Hollywood Envy today
Ron's advice for making adventure games
Why we laugh
Selling 100K units can be a success
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Show notes
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 https://www.mobygames.com/person/1363/ron-gilbert/
Action Talks on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7D289YtkiQIkSVhNLDX8O2
Action Talks on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/action-talks-with-eric-jacobus/id1686666319
Telegram: t.me/ericjacobus
My studio SuperAlloy: www.superalloyinteractive.com
Blog: www.ericjacobus.com
Timestamps:
This podcast uses Anchor (from Spotify) for stats, tracking, and dynamic audio. Learn more on this podcast's About tab. Dynamic Audio may cause this episode's timestamps to be slightly off.
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