Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer Teaming Up Again
It was recently announced that Ron Gilbert, fresh off of Hothead Games studio and his hits DeathSpank and DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue has joined former colleague Tim Schafer at his own studio, Double Fine. This marks the first time the men have worked together on a game in nearly twenty years (their last being 1991′s Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge).
Whatever they’re working on, they’re keeping it pretty hush-hush; in fact, despite the fact that Gilbert claims that old-school adventure gamers will enjoy it, he flat-out refused to confirm he was making an adventure game. In an interview with Kotaku, Gilbert stated:
It’s an idea that I’ve been batting around for many, many years. I’ve been talking to Tim over the last couple of months about it and it sort of percolated back up. It’s very different than DeathSpank, it’s a bit of a departure from that. It’s going in a very interesting direction. Fans of those old adventure games will like it.
Anyone keeping up with the goings-on of Schafer and Double Fine may be interested to know that whatever it is Gilbert and Schafer are working on, it’s not one of the four games Double Fine recently announced as in development.
I declare this news awesome. I’m a little surprised though. It makes sense in a way since Gilbert has been working out of the Double Fine offices, but the surprise announcement I expected was going to be that he was super-secretly working with Telltale on a new season of Monkey Island.
Pete: I already declared the news awesome. Or didn’t you see the tags? :P
I would love to see another Monkey Island game out of Telltale. The problem is licensing: LucasArts still holds the license and they seem to be more profit-oriented lately; I wonder if getting the license again may be too rich for Telltale’s blood after the acquisition of Jurassic Park and Back to the Future.
I don’t really think that’s much of a problem. Tales was a success (their biggest to date, as far as I know), and I don’t think they’d have any problem getting the license again. I’m almost certain there are long term plans for it.