Ron Gilbert Has Left Double Fine

Ron Gilbert was never involved on an official level with Double Fine Adventure (or REDS).

He fits right in with the general quality level with the rest of Double Fine's output. I mean where else is he going to go?

That's a shame, Ron Gilbert is awesome. I wish him luck in his future endeavours wherever he may go!

Knowing his history, I'm not surprised. He's being in and out of studios for the past couple years, the biggest example is Hothead Games and Humongous Entertainment. For a while in the early 2000s and 90s he was doing small graphic adventure games for children.

He's in the same bin as Peter Holymoly in my opinion, both his and Gilberts current games are a mere shadow of their past, they are enjoyable but nothing fascinating about them and sometimes downright broken.

He's in the same bin as Peter Holymoly in my opinion, both his and Gilberts current games are a mere shadow of their past, they are enjoyable but nothing fascinating about them and sometimes downright broken.

Get Jesse Ventura on it! He'll crack this conspiracy WIDE OPEN!

DF is not good, I would leave too... Phychonauts... last great game... Oh wells.

It doesn't seem like Ron likes staying in one place for very long these days.

It's hard to reconcile a team that works two years on a bad game that sells poorly. No surprise here that Gilbert is leaving.

@driftspace: Damn, bummer :(

At least he's still going to PAX AUS. I wish the GB crew will be going as well :(

You're confusing Ron Gilbert with Tim Schafer. Ron was never part of the DF Adventure.

The cave was a game that was ripe for randomization. I don't get why they had to have the areas of all of the characters in there. They should have made the cave reconfigure depending on who you picked. Also, the endings felt flimsy. They needed to be animated.

Also, multiple saves and an autosave just before the end would have been nice.

Out, out damn you I'm done with you. Go, run back to Winterfell! I'll have your head on a spike! I'll put it there myself you fool! You think you're too good for this? Too proud and honorable? This is a war!

But seriously I wish the man luck on his future endeavors.

@jazgalaxy: You aren't the only one. I was pretty darn happy with it. I'd actually like some new characters to change it up, but it was great for what it was.

Looking at my twitter feed Ron and Tim are still joking with each other. They must of left on good terms which is very good to see.

I don't know that I have played a ron gilbert game before.

That's what happens when you make mediocre games, you get the boot. Best of luck to him regardless however. I hope he finds his passion again.

@tzarstefan:

Yes, it's terrible. I wish I could get a refund. Character switching is tedious, and multiplayer makes it worse, with inactive players literally left with nothing to do or look at. I even bought it for Wii U because I figured multiplayer would be great with the second screen; they didn't even use the Wii U GamePad's second screen for anything but character switching. The puzzle solutions are either obvious or non-sensical. It was a huge waste of my time to play through it once. I got to a section of the game which was for one character (The Twins), and after watching me play through that level for 15 minutes my wife just put down her controller and left.

Deathspank was pretty tedious too. Maybe he should retire instead of making shitty games; I'd like less shitty games from which to choose.

Take the money and RRUUUUN, no, Ron probably did his part with the concept/ideas/stories, now it's up to them to finish it off.

What is GOING ON?!

So this guy works on a game that isn't that good, isn't all that well received....and then bolts.

cool guy..no really

Oh. . .shit.

I wish Ron all the luck.

Is it just me or does everyone else think Ron's game had more potential? All his recent projects seem to have gotten mediocre scores.

@kevin_cogneto: Adventure games are NOT DEAD.

If there's one kind of piracy I don't like...

I wish Ron Gilbert all the best, he seems like a nice guy, grumpy though his persona may be. But let's face it, his contributions to gaming are minimal at this point. Yes, he revolutionized the adventure genre by removing the text parser and thereby basically invented the point-and-click interface, which was a significant achievement at the time. But that genre is now long, long dead. Maniac Mansion doesn't hold up, and although the first two Monkey Island games are fantastic, in hindsight it's clear that Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman were really the talent behind those games -- evident by the fact that Tim and Dave each went on to become the creative leads of their own studios, while Ron kicks around from one middling product to another. I wish Ron Gilbert well, but we really shouldn't be treating him like a significant figure in the industry anymore. It's sad, but his time had passed a long while ago.

More like Gone Gilbert, amiright? Huh? eh? Huh?!

Anyway, I've always felt just a little bit like Ron Gilbert was a bit of a kindred spirit for my curmudgeonly soul. I wish him the best in his next adventure.

@warchief said:

I think you meant to type "reddit" into your address bar!

I swear up and down I'd play a new, Gilbert-revitalized Humongous Entertainment game. I'm a man of simple tastes, and 700 clickable, noisy doodads per screen is one of those tastes.

Collusion!

It's pretty good. "Pretty good" did not meet expectations of "The New Maniac Mansion-like Game From The Guy What Invented Maniac Mansion".

Is "The Cave" really that bad?

What could have been.

@razielcuts: could have*

Double Fine's probably better off utilizing their talent elsewhere than giving Gilbert another game/team. Even if it's a good surface fit this sounds like the best move for both parties, if it wasn't the outright plan from the start.

This isn't a spur of the moment decision or based on how the Cave fared.

I can't remember if it was a 2011 bombcast or somewhere else, but you've said here before that Gilbert was talking with Schafer when Ron mentioned brought up his ideas for the Cave. Schafer offered him a place to hang and a team to help him make the game. Almost verbatim.

I guess we didn't read a lot into it at the time, but it's clear in aftersight that their agreement was for Gilbert to borrow Double Fine horsepower and then be free to do whatever he wanted to do afterwards.

@notha: We must have watched a different Kickstarter. There was an offside joke about him working on the game but even then he was busy with the Cave although we didn't know that at the time as many people confused the Cave with DFA. As there is the documentary series, you get to see the creative process and I think Ron was in one episode very early on and only briefly as Tim and him went back and forth on ideas of what the game could be now they have a bigger budget. At the end of the day, he's had very little to do with the game and DFA is very much a Tim Schafer headed game.

For anyone that's watched the Double Fine Adventure documentary, Ron was always played up as "grumpy guy over there in his room" but in reality there's probably something to that (minus the grumpy sort of). Ron signed on because of his direct relationship with Tim and the opportunity to get around to making this game. He never intended or seemed to want to integrate into Double Fine in general.

I think you read/watched or remember it very wrong.

If you're a backer, haven't you been following the documentary? Gilbert has had no visible part in the production after it actually started. He has been busy with the cave.

Meh...I honestly haven't enjoyed any of his games since his Lucasarts years.

I figured he was just there to publish his game and move on. That seems to be what he does these days =P

I'm not implying it's malicious either, just in case it seems like that.

@sado: I'm not sure what you're referring to. If you mean Double Fine Adventure (code named Reds) Ron Gilbert is not working on that game. He helped Tim during the initial phase of figuring out what the game is (just discussing it), but that's been about it.

Perfect price for it.

STOP LOOKING AT ME GUY BEHIND RON GILBERT

I never got the impression that Gilbert was going to be a permanent part of Double Fine, so I'm not surprised. The comparison with JJ Abrams seems at least partly apt--there are definitely people out there who are more about ideas than they are about game production, and Gilbert seems to be one of those. The comparison begins to break down on quality--Gilbert's best game design days are long behind him. One might even say the same about Schafer. And I say that as someone whose favorite game of all time is Grim Fandango. The last few Schafer-run games have seriously bummed me out. That said, I am optimistic about the Double Fine Adventure. But Gilbert's apparent focus on iOS games says basically all I need to know about his future in gaming: ie., I won't be playing any of his games.

Sounds like... he caved.

BAM!

Oh well, he came into Double Fine, made one game that was sub par by Double Fine standards and left. I don't think much of him leaving.

I think that was entirely Ron "Deathspank" Gilbert. Honestly, he hasn't made a good game since Monkey Island 2, and I'm starting to suspect those games weren't good because of him.