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Good point! I agree that Grim Fandango has overall better and more interesting dialogue, and benefits greatly from the voice acting.* For some reason I was expecting this game to be a pure comedy thing, though. Probably because I associate Tim Schafer more with comedy than, uh, seriousity, and I expect that, with a limited budget, a funny game may be easier to make than something more serious. I don't know.

*I just realized I've only played Full Throttle once, and it was so long ago I only remember parts of it. I tried searching for it on Steam, but guess what came up?

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Good point! I agree that Grim Fandango has overall better and more interesting dialogue, and benefits greatly from the voice acting.* For some reason I was expecting this game to be a pure comedy thing, though. Probably because I associate Tim Schafer more with comedy than, uh, seriousity, and I expect that, with a limited budget, a funny game may be easier to make than something more serious. I don't know.

*I just realized I've only played Full Throttle once, and it was so long ago I only remember parts of it. I tried searching for it on Steam, but guess what came up?

I also expect this game to be a mainly comedy thing, so yeah that's a fair point. But it's definitely worth pointing out that the two games of which Schafer was the only project lead--Full Throttle and Grim Fandango--are definitely dramatic stories with levity, as opposed to comedy games. I always hope he'll do something in that vein again, but I don't imagine it'll be this project, for a lot of reasons.

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It's interesting how one starts to look at the rewards as though one is buying the rewards for the amount you pledge, rather than supporting the project with that amount and also getting a cool physable

This is amiguous. For example, the Elevation Dock thing (which I found out about shortly before it ended and probably thanks to the Double Fine project) is pretty much you buying something for a price less than the eventual retail price for it will be.

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Side tangent: One thing that really sticks out to me watching that video is -- and I hate to say this -- Ron Gilbert comes across as a bit out of touch with adventure games.

The thing that he hates most in adventure games is pixel hunting? He can't think of a *single* recent game with good dialogue? It is weird to me to hear two active industry folks talking analyzing the state of adventure gaming and its fans (and analyzing does seem to be the correct word here) without any apparent awareness of what has happened in the genre since Full Throttle. (Other than to hair-split genres and specify that Limbo is definitely NOT an adventure game. I'd be curious to see if he counts anything other than the classic LucasArts games as entirely within the genre.)

I realize Ron probably deserves to be cut a lot of slack for being one of the foremost early adventure game designers. And certainly, being hip to what the kids are playing these days is not a prerequisite to being a good designer, so I don't think it necessarily reflects on the game being made. But he did strike me as a little territorial -- Tim even seemed to be trying to moderate that impression by moving the conversation back to a more jocular, reminiscent mode.

Did anyone else notice this, or am I just making crap up?

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This is amiguous. For example, the Elevation Dock thing (which I found out about shortly before it ended and probably thanks to the Double Fine project) is pretty much you buying something for a price less than the eventual retail price for it will be.

When the reward is early access to the primary product itself you expect to pay a little more because you're funding R&D as well as manufacturing, but when the rewards are tangential (eg Venus Patrol, some of the DF rewards, the Idle Thumbs stuff) your brain definitely switches more into "shopping" mode, even though the markups on those kind of tangential reward tiers are usually way higher than the primary product ones.

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I also expect this game to be a mainly comedy thing, so yeah that's a fair point. But it's definitely worth pointing out that the two games of which Schafer was the only project lead--Full Throttle and Grim Fandango--are definitely dramatic stories with levity, as opposed to comedy games. I always hope he'll do something in that vein again, but I don't imagine it'll be this project, for a lot of reasons.

I think he could maybe use the shot to do what he's wanted (which is, a "comedy game," not a game with comedy as support), if only as an example of how it probably won't work out like how he imagines. But that's putting a lot of faith in his ability to learn from mistakes or be critical of himself / his own work. I just don't think it's possible to have something (a book, movie, game, etc) be comedy. Or well, there is a kind of book that does that - joke books. But even stand-up comedy is social commentary or story telling with comedy as the way to get that done.

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Side tangent: One thing that really sticks out to me watching that video is -- and I hate to say this -- Ron Gilbert comes across as a bit out of touch with adventure games.

The thing that he hates most in adventure games is pixel hunting? He can't think of a *single* recent game with good dialogue? It is weird to me to hear two active industry folks talking analyzing the state of adventure gaming and its fans (and analyzing does seem to be the correct word here) without any apparent awareness of what has happened in the genre since Full Throttle. (Other than to hair-split genres and specify that Limbo is definitely NOT an adventure game. I'd be curious to see if he counts anything other than the classic LucasArts games as entirely within the genre.)

I realize Ron probably deserves to be cut a lot of slack for being one of the foremost early adventure game designers. And certainly, being hip to what the kids are playing these days is not a prerequisite to being a good designer, so I don't think it necessarily reflects on the game being made. But he did strike me as a little territorial -- Tim even seemed to be trying to moderate that impression by moving the conversation back to a more jocular, reminiscent mode.

Did anyone else notice this, or am I just making crap up?

The thing HE hates the most is pixel hunting, so? How does this make him out of touch? Because he doesn't hate the same things you do?

Do you know what games he's played? He probably doesn't play as many games as us.

And what exactly has happened to the genre since Full Throttle? Episodic adventures? In game hint systems? I pretty sure they mentioned hint systems and he's aware of the other.

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I noticed that a little too, but it's not too worrying for two reasons:

(1) Tim Schafer is leading this project, and he gets modern design. I actually think it'll be kinda interesting to have Gilbert being the first principles/old school designer, work along side Schafer, the modern design principles designer.

(2) I've never read something Ron Gilbert said about adventure games that I disagreed with. He *really* understands how to make adventure games work, as opposed to how to make "what adventure game fans expect from adventure games".

The thing that he hates most in adventure games is pixel hunting?

I'm not sure if I'm reading this correctly... but do you think pixel hunting is a good thing? It definitely *is* a big problem, but continues on due to expectations from fans of the genre. I'm hoping DFAG will be super-progressive, getting rid off a lot of the filler/crap that exists purely to pander to the existing audience.

It'd be great if DFAG was not only an excellent adventure game, but one that also has appeal beyond the pre-existing market for it.

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Side tangent: One thing that really sticks out to me watching that video is -- and I hate to say this -- Ron Gilbert comes across as a bit out of touch with adventure games.

The thing that he hates most in adventure games is pixel hunting? He can't think of a *single* recent game with good dialogue? It is weird to me to hear two active industry folks talking analyzing the state of adventure gaming and its fans (and analyzing does seem to be the correct word here) without any apparent awareness of what has happened in the genre since Full Throttle. (Other than to hair-split genres and specify that Limbo is definitely NOT an adventure game. I'd be curious to see if he counts anything other than the classic LucasArts games as entirely within the genre.)

I realize Ron probably deserves to be cut a lot of slack for being one of the foremost early adventure game designers. And certainly, being hip to what the kids are playing these days is not a prerequisite to being a good designer, so I don't think it necessarily reflects on the game being made. But he did strike me as a little territorial -- Tim even seemed to be trying to moderate that impression by moving the conversation back to a more jocular, reminiscent mode.

Did anyone else notice this, or am I just making crap up?

Hey man, why all the Ron hate? (Or was it Tim hate?)

But yeah, the dialogue part was iffy. While I can't think of a recent game with really good dialogue off the top of my head, I am pretty sure Ron Gilbert doesn't play a ton of newer games either, making his judgment a little bit harsh.

Everything else, I think he's got it covered. I did say before somewhere outside of Thumbs that I was hoping this game might be more serious or wondrous in the vein of Full Throttle or Grim Fandango, much like Remo just said, but I think the Ron Gilbert factor will prevent that from happening more than just the budget. I don't recall Ron ever being involved in a game with a more serious story whatsoever. The Humongous games were all pretty silly and had moments of absurdity just as much as Deathspank and Monkey Island. Does Total Annihilation count? He has story credits but I don't really know how deep it goes.

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For what it's worth, Ron is working on his own separate project at Double Fine. He's leading up that team and presumably that's still where most of his effort will go. I doubt he will be a principle creative force on the Kickstarter game; rather, I imagine he'll serve essentially as a consultant.

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I need to watch the video again, but I don't recall him saying that no modern games had good dialogue. He was just disappointed that the story and dialogue in the games that are being praised for having good story and dialogue today, don't really seem all that great.

And that I agree with. :getmecoat

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Side tangent: One thing that really sticks out to me watching that video is -- and I hate to say this -- Ron Gilbert comes across as a bit out of touch with adventure games.

The thing that he hates most in adventure games is pixel hunting?

Uh? When did he say that? His actual words were: "One thing I wouldn't do is have any pixel hunting..." He never said it was the thing he hates the most.

I'm more concerned with them not having access to SCUMM. Why could Ron use it for his games, but DoubleFine not use it for theirs?

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For what it's worth, I don't think there are many games with great dialogue either. The best-written games I know of from last year both featured genuinely great writing (meaning that they were both the best and, on an absolute scale, very well-written), but both were delivered in monologues: Portal 2 and Bastion.

Edit: although, come to think about it, Portal 2 had some dialogue (like

the "What's wrong with being an orphan?" conversation

). Too much of it was in cutscenes, though.

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To be honest, DeathSpank is one of the funniest games I've played in recent years. Maybe a bit over the top with some of the jokes, though.

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I'm more concerned with them not having access to SCUMM. Why could Ron use it for his games, but DoubleFine not use it for theirs?

What on earth would they do with SCUMM at this point? Not even the later LucasArts games used it.

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It's probably going to be in-house tech, not just because of the fact it'll slot into their existing production habits but also because it'll mean cross-platform compatibility is already in place. It might seem like a stretch but I'd imagine the Brutal engine (which has powered all DF's subsequent games) could be adapted to produce a 2D adventure — in fact this would make things like fancy parallax effects and MI:SE-style lighting quite easy. I mean really the engine would be most suited to an incredible-looking 3D adventure game with Telltale-style fixed cameras, but I think it's already been confirmed as 2D.

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I don't recall that they wanted to use scumm, but something like scumm so that Tim could do the "programming" for the game. (to minimize the team size).

Then again, taking parts from scumm and combine it with some new game engine logic would also reduce the time needed to have a usable engine.

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I don't recall that they wanted to use scumm, but something like scumm so that Tim could do the "programming" for the game. (to minimize the team size).

Then again, taking parts from scumm and combine it with some new game engine logic would also reduce the time needed to have a usable engine.

Or taking parts of AGS or something. I forget, is AGS open source now or not? The FAQ still says not.

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Uh? When did he say that? His actual words were: "One thing I wouldn't do is have any pixel hunting..." He never said it was the thing he hates the most.

I'm more concerned with them not having access to SCUMM. Why could Ron use it for his games, but DoubleFine not use it for theirs?

Sorry, that does read ambiguously. All I meant was that the last time I remember pixel-hunting being an actual problem I've experienced in an adventure game was probably 10 years ago -- in other words, this is not something that would even have been on my radar as a potential pitfall when making an adventure game had they not brought it up.

I wasn't trying to hate on Ron! As I said, I don't think the conversation reflects on anyone's design sensibilities. It's just that the conversation seemed to be framed as a sort of "What's the problem with making adventure games these days?" which, I think, is a conversation in which you should maybe mention adventure games these days. Just something I noticed, that's all!

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What on earth would they do with SCUMM at this point? Not even the later LucasArts games used it.

Both Ron and Tim agree that they want to create the game in something they can craft themselves, like they used to. Not just pass it over to somebody else and then get their interpretation back, and then give them notes, etc, etc. They talk about the importance of being able to do this.

Both Ron and Tim have extensive experience with SCUMM, so it would make perfect sense for them to use it. Every 2D LucasArts game used SCUMM (only the 3D games used LUA -- Escape from Monkey Island and Grim Fandango), and since this is a 2D game (at least, from the hints they've dropped, it is) it makes perfect sense that they use an engine they're both already familiar with.

Building an engine from scratch, just for this project, would be a tremendous waste of resources, as Ron points out in the video.

What else is there...? AGS? A three million dollar AGS game?? Yikes.

It would make perfect sense to license SCUMM... I just wondered why they immediately dismissed it, saying it wasn't an option. I presumed it might be high licensing fees or something. Given that they only thought they'd have $400,000 when they made that video, maybe things have changed?

Weren't there legal issues, or at least some bad blood, that resulted from Humongous' use of SCUMM?

That's news to me, but given how Humongous went down, maybe they ended up owing LucasArts a lot of money?

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