Kotaku
After taking a look at what Peter Molyneux and Demis Hassabis were up to ten years ago, the final instalment of this 'how did their predictions turn out, a decade later' feature series asks some adventure game veterans.
Specifically, it chats to LucasArts' Larry Ahern and Jonathan Ackley, who were just about to complete 1997's The Curse Of Monkey Island, the first post-Ron Gilbert version of the franchise, and the last to use the famed SCUMM adventure game engine. Read on for what they said and whether they were right...
What do you think of the recent move backwards from point and click interfaces to text parsers?
Larry Ahern: I can't spell; I think it's very danjerous.
Jonathan Ackley: Seriously, I think it's a little silly. When you make a modern game, you're not competing with old text games from the 1980's. You're competing with the memory of old text games from the 1980's. People remember all the fun they had banging their head on their computer desk trying to figure out the proper input for the game's two-word parser. But if you play those games now, you enjoy the nostalgia factor for the first ten minutes and then you realize why interfaces have evolved in the way they have.
(My question here was particularly referencing Douglas Adams' Starship Titanic, and as such, the game's Spookitalk was hardly a trend. In fact, Starship Titanic was the only big title that every tried this method. So, although text adventures are still made, the graphic adventure is still ahead of them in terms of sales.)
Traditionally, the Monkey Island series was the work of Ron Gilbert. Is the game noticeably different without Ron?
Jonathan Ackley: We have no idea what Ron would have made if he had worked on this, so it's hard to compare. But, being big fans of the first two games, we tried to be as true to the characters and style of the series as possible. We'd like to think that we've taken the next step with the story and helped tie it all together into a satisfying trilogy. I don't know why it is, but for some reason trilogies seem appropriate here at LucasArts.
(Gilbert's loss was a shame, but The Curse Of Monkey Island was still received very positively by fans. Gilbert himself went on to found Humongous Entertainment (known for its kids games, and still operating as an Infogrames-owned company) and Cavedog Entertainment (the creators of Total Annihilation). Nowadays he's advising on the Penny Arcade Adventures game and blogging at Grumpy Gamer.)
The industry increasingly sees spin-off merchandising, cartoon series, and so on from the most popular and character-led games. So where's the Guybrush fluffy toy and animation series? Or did the Maniac Mansion TV series put LucasArts off that angle?
Jonathan Ackley: I think we haven't gone that route because it has nothing to do with selling computer games, which is the real business that we're in. We like to focus on what we do best, without having to worry about what someone else might be doing with characters that we license out to them. There's so much room for error with things like that. Crucial issues are at stake, like how fluffy should a Guybrush fluffy toy be? Should we have real flaming beard action on the LeChuck dolls, or will kids just use them to set each other on fire? Things like that.
(Since the Monkey Island series is mothballed, there's not exactly a lot of merchandising out there for it. However, the Wikipedia article for Curse does note: "After 'CMI' shipped, a Monkey Island movie was in the works. This was only brought to light when Tony Stacchi, a concept artist for the project, sent his work to The Scumm Bar, a Monkey Island fansite. The movie was cancelled in the very early stages of development." Nuts.)
Where do you see adventure games 5 years from now?
Jonathan Ackley: It can be a difficult and expensive style of game to produce, so we've seen fewer on the market recently. However, LucasArts has a long and successful tradition with the genre, and we're very fond of it here. each time out we make some alterations to the style and gameplay, so I'm expecting it to continue evolving, but at the heart of it all is always a strong sense of character and story. The balance is between providing enough story to draw the player into the world, and then opening up the world enough for the player to interactively become a part of it.
(Unfortunately, both Ahern and Ackley left LucasArts before the debut of the fourth Monkey Island title, 2000's Escape From Monkey Island - which was also the last pure adventure game the company ever produced. Adventures are starting to return via casual gaming and Telltale's Sam & Max series resurrection, though.
Nowadays, Ahern appears to work at Microsoft on titles including the Flight Simulator series, and Ackley, according to a recent lecture, is a a Director at Walt Disney Imagineering Research and Development, working on Epcot Center rides and other interesting projects.)
Interview: LucasArts Duo [GameGeekPeeks]
Comments
Nice post Simon!
I only hope they can remake the Monkey Island series and not butcher it some day.
I thoroughly enjoyed that series, and I get nostalgic because it was one of my first game purchases.
In my opinion curse was the last good monkey game... I played 1 through 3 this summer and had so much fun but i couldn't get that far ahead in 4..
maybe it's the switch to 3d..
Ahh monkey island.. my favorite games.. at least the first 3..such wonderful funny times.
Excellent interview and excellent questions.. wish there were new point n click games coming out with all the new graphics and effects they have nowadays.
great article, simon. a competent exercise in nostalgia for a simpler time. bloody brilliant!
(and yes, i'm being sincere)
I still dream of a Monkey Island film being made. It's been more than ten years, but I still get hopeful whenever I see a movie preview that's even vaguely piratey. Does this make me lame?
that was really cool to see.
SCUMM greatest hits pack for Wii (or on the VC!) or bust.
how appropriate, you fight like a cow.
best games ever
What a great idea. I wish we could do this with political pundits, or even with other video game news.
In two years, who will remember when hardly any of surfergirl's predictions come true? And every analyst has their own prediction of the console that will dominate; can't we check their predictions as well?
Does anyone have ten-year-old predictions about how Sega was going to crush the competition with the Saturn?
Trim the sails and roam the seas, my friends.
What happened at LucasArts? They cornered the market in adventure games, then something happened. They lost key designers, gave up on developing new IP, and started churning out "safe" titles based on LucasFilm. Makes me sad.
@boopadoo: Quite frankly, there was no more market to be cornered. A little genre called the "fps" came along and put 50 bullets in its head. Grim fandango was their attempt to "modernize" the adventure game with its non point-n-clicky d pad controls, and that didnt sell at all.
Games like the Monkey Island series make me feel that all gaming these days is becoming too generic. That was a unique series, though the transition to 3D was not something I liked.
Monkey Island 1, 2, and 3 were amazing, with 2 being the best, IMO. The humor was witty and not over the top, the story was stunning, and you had to use your brain to progress in the story. What happened to those kinds of games?
@GLaDOS: 3D video cards and peoples insane desire to use them.
Look I am rubber you are Glue!
Monkey Island is still one of my fav francises of all time.
All 3 games would make an awesome XBLA games!
i wish all the monkey island games could come to xbox live arcade,that would be great...and stick in Grim Fandango as well
Oh my god, I want a guybrush fluffy toy... NOW.
Something tells me if they ever made a Monkey Island 5 it would turn into some kind of FPS action adventure crap fest... Id say they might as well quit while they were ahead but... well MI4 was junk.. loved Grim Fandango too though. Sigh. Ill just keep whoring out DOSbox for the next 10 years.
I love the the adventure gaming genre and I love the old adventure games of yester-year.
I hate the people that remember adventure games and suddenly realize that gaming today ISN'T AS GOOD AS IT USED TO BE or some variant of that phrase. Give me a break.
There's still a fucking shitload of adventure games out there to play. The Chzo Mythos is an awesome series. Anyway, I am happy the market evolved the way that it did because adventure games are taxing on the mind and on the will... I have never loved a genre that has made me so infuriated before.
I still go back to the Monkey Island series once a year. I get the urge to sit down and enjoy one of my favorite game settings (not pirates, the Monkey Island universe) and listen to some lovely dialogue. I also know all of the puzzles so I really am playing a tedious book.
:)
If Sam 'n Max episodic content can succeed, perhaps Monkey Island episodic content could be next in Telltale's pipeline.
My only concern then is that it should have the cartoony style of Curse - as that game looked fantastic.
Fluffy toy from Day of the tentacle please! Purple!
@boopadoo: They found out that they could make gobs of $$$ off their Star Wars license. They kept releasing mediocre game after mediocre game and found that people didn't care how crappy it was, it would still sell. For a long time from 2000-2006, all they produced were Star Wars-themed games (most of which sucked badly). Even now, Lucasarts is primarily a Star Wars studio. Sam and Max 2 was canceled late into development because the suits at Lucasarts didn't think the adventure genre was viable (see the limited commercial success of Psychonauts). For the most part, they were probably correct, but it's a chicken and the egg dilemma. How do they know it won't succeed unless you try it first?
Pirates of the Caribbean (the first movie, at least) was a pretty good rendition of Monkey Island. Based on "Pirates of the Caribbean" Disney ride? Check. Crazy pirates? Check. Undead beardy pirate? Check. Monkey (also undead)? Check. Swear fencing? Check! And so on...
@mcderek3000: That's the kind of thing that dreams are made of
MI3 was the first PC game I bought with my own money and I would still remember it as the best game I've played (along with FFVII which I got just after I think). There are too many great games now days for me to spend a full month immersed in like when I was a kid, I mean I just picked up Orange Box, COD4, Mass Effect, Assassins Creed and Sam & Max Season 1 in the last month and they were all great but all the playtime just blurs together.
Monkey Island 3 was one the last great p&c adventure games.
After the 90's point&click adventure games has become an almost dead genre.Apart from the Sam&Max games there are no big budget games.Maybe the revival of RPGS helped kill it,I remember reading about a game developed by Blizzard called "Warcraft adventures".
From what I read about it and looking at the few screenshots,it was going to be a typical p&c adventure game,it was canceled perhaps to divert resources to some obscure MMORPG they were also in the early stages of developing at the time.
This post just made me so damn sad...
@Dirkcee: in after You fight like a dairy farmer.
Nuts.
Actually there's quite an active adventure scene in Europe, espacially in Germany, but also in France, Spain and parts of Eastern Europe. In the last few years some really great (more serious) 2d/2.5d adventure games came out like "The Moment of Silence", "Runaway", "Black Mirror" or just recently "Overclocked".
Of course this is a niche market even over here, but apparently they aren't too expensive to make and sell enough to keep these studios alive.
I really like the idea to keep these games old-school in terms of graphics and gameplay since 3d adventure games with action and stealth parts just don't work in my opinion (compare the great "Broken Sowrd 1+2" to the awful sequels).
My point is there wasn't really much to improve in the genre 10 years ago. The good games sounded, played and looked awesome (and still do) and every try to add something new resulted in a decline of quality. So I think it's cool that every once in a while a true gem is released even though it doesn't use the newest fancy technology and therefore doesn't get any publicity.
I learned from this to never spend more than twenty bucks for a computer game.
I only have one question...
Who do I have to kill/blow to get a Monkey Island 5? I'd even settle for it on the DS! Or as an XBLA game.
@JuliusMode:
I heard Johnny Depp already did a few Monkey Island films...
@Kenzya:
There are two distinct styles of adventure games. There's the serious ones, like the Myst series, and there's the comical ones like Day of the Tentacle and Monkey Island. The former are still coming out in a steady trickle for PC, but the latter are almost unheard of. Even the last King's Quest game tossed the lighthearted humor of its predecessors in favor of dark and gloomy near-FPS gameplay. Broken Sword didn't go quite so far down that path with its last iteration, but it did at least start to (then again, it was never quite as comical as some of the later KQ games anyways).
>> but the latter are almost unheard of.<<
You guys need to head over to [www.adventuregamers.com]
You'll see funny cartoony adventures like the Egyptian Ankh series (already up to its 3rd installment), plus of course the new Sam & Max episodic adventures made by ex-LucasArters at Telltale games (one of the Sam & Max games from last season "Abe Lincoln Must Die" is now a free download at [www.telltalegames.com] ).
Then there's Bill Tiller's forthcoming adventure (he was the art designer behind Curse of Monkey Island among other LucasArts classics) A Vampyre Story [www.amegames.com]
Other games to watch out for in the future include Cassius Pearl (trailer here: [www.youtube.com] )
Plenty of funny, LucasArtsesque adventure games in the pipeline... also less 'point & clickey', but there's Tim Schafer's Psychonauts & forthcoming Brutal Legend and Ron Gilbert's 'humerous RPG' that he's been pitching to a number of studios, but nobody knows much in the way of details on that one.
People who wish the classic-style graphic adventure were still around should really check out Zack & Wiki. It reminds me more than anything of a Japanese-style Leisure Suit Larry 2: clever goofy puzzles, lots of deaths, points for everything, and satisfying to solve.
Of course, Sam & Max is also doing the old-school LucasArts style quite well, and that series is definitely worth playing. (Season 2 Episode 1 is a real treat.)
@Nawara_Ven: We'll surely avoid scurvy if we all eat an.. orange.
@Brackynews: Those game quotes quickly become boringe.
Also, the cake is a lie and all your base are belong to us.
@Ilia Chentsov:
Dangit, it's hard to quote stuff like Vader showing Luke a photo of Anakin and pregnant Padme on vacation...
@Purple Dave: You fight like a cow and I'm all out of gum, so let's rock this spoony bard.
Ahern appears to work at Microsoft, only that's an illusion, as I'm actually Creative Director at Crackpot Entertainment, developer of the new action-adventure title "Insecticide." Involving neither monkeys nor islands, it is nonetheless a rollicking return to story-based content. And, at the risk of sounding less than blatantly self-promotional, let me also just comment on the article: who were these bozos?!
Ah...if only they were still making these games...
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