Ron Gilbert

Ron Gilbert, July 2013

Ron Gilbert (* in La Grande ) is an American game developer . His most famous creations are the computer games Maniac Mansion , The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge .

Life

Gilbert began his career in the computer industry in the early 1980s. With his own creation called Graphics BASIC , a command extension for the standard BASIC of the C64 , he programmed his first, simple games. He sold the tool to the software company HesWare , which also employed him after completing his computer science studies . He programmed arcade games for the C64, but none of them were ever published and the company filed for bankruptcy six months after he was employed.

In 1985 he was given the opportunity to develop a game for Lucasfilm Games . Together with Gary Winnick he created the concept for Maniac Mansion and programmed his own engine for this game: the Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion , better known under the acronym SCUMM .

In 1987, Maniac Mansion was released and proved to be a great success. Many other graphic adventures have been developed on the basis of SCUMM, including Zak McKracken and Monkey Island 1 and 2.

After LucasArts left, Gilbert was instrumental in the companies Cavedog Entertainment ( Total Annihilation ), Humongous Entertainment and Hulabee Entertainment . The latter two were primarily specialized in creating computer games for children, Humongous Entertainment made a name for itself with games like Fritzi Fisch or Töff-Töff , which, like Gilberts at LucasArts, were based on the SCUMM engine.

In 2004 he worked again on a game for adults for publisher Hothead Games . It was a mixture of adventure and role-playing game , which was published in 2010 under the name DeathSpank . In September 2010 Gilbert revealed that he had been contacted by his former colleague and friend Tim Schafer and was planning to join his studio, Double Fine Productions . In February 2012, Tim Schafer had confirmed that Gilbert was now employed by him to work on his own project. This was unveiled as The Cave in May 2012 and is the realization of an idea that Gilbert had developed 25 years ago - it appeared on January 22, 2013.

In December 2014, Gilbert and Winnick raised a good 600,000 US dollars on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter , which will be used to finance a new point-and-click adventure. The game with the name Thimbleweed Park was released in March 2017. According to Gilbert, the game brought back its production costs, but the sales were not so high that the financing of another point-and-click adventure via a crowdfunding platform seemed attractive allow.

After Disney's withdrawal from the gaming division in mid-2016, Gilbert approached the company with the request to cede the rights to his games Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion to him, similar to what Deus' ex- inventor Warren Spector had done shortly before .