Ron Gilbert
Encyclopedia
Ron Gilbert is an American computer game designer, programmer
Game programmer
A game programmer is a software engineer, programmer, or computer scientist who primarily develops codebase for video games or related software, such as game development tools. Game programming has many specialized disciplines all of which fall under the umbrella term of "game programmer"...

, and producer
Game producer
A video game producer is the person in charge of overseeing development of a video game.The earliest documented use of the term producer in games was by Trip Hawkins, who established the position when he founded Electronic Arts in 1982...

, best known for his work on several classic LucasArts
LucasArts
LucasArts Entertainment Company, LLC is an American video game developer and publisher. The company was once famous for its innovative line of graphic adventure games, the critical and commercial success of which peaked in the mid 1990s...

 adventure game
Adventure game
An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical challenge. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature and film,...

s, including Maniac Mansion
Maniac Mansion
Maniac Mansion is a 1987 graphic adventure game developed and published by Lucasfilm Games. It was Lucasfilm's first published video game, and it was initially released for the Commodore 64 and Apple II. A comedy horror parody of B movies, it follows teenager Dave Miller as he ventures...

and the first two Monkey Island
Monkey Island series
Monkey Island is the collective name given to a series of five graphical adventure games produced and published by LucasArts, originally known as LucasFilm Games through the development of the first game in the series; the games have produced a significiant cult following. The fifth installment of...

games. Gilbert was also co-founder of Humongous Entertainment and its sister company Cavedog Entertainment
Cavedog Entertainment
Cavedog Entertainment, or Cavedog, was a video game developer based in Bothell, Washington. Cavedog gained the attention of gamers and the gaming press alike with the 1997 release of Total Annihilation , winning many accolades such as multiple Game of the Year honors or being one of The Greatest...

. His games are generally focused on interactive storytelling. Additionally, Ron founded Hulabee Entertainment with Shelley Day
Shelley Day
Shelley Day is a former producer of children's video games. She founded Humongous Entertainment with colleague Ron Gilbert. She created the famous Putt-Putt character as a bedtime story for her son, which became a series of popular children's video games. In 1999 she was listed on Time Magazine as...

 after leaving Humongous Entertainment. He was Creative Director at Vancouver-based Hothead Games
Hothead Games
Hothead Games is an independent video game developer and publisher based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Hothead is best known for its role-playing/adventure video game series, On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, based on the Penny Arcade webcomic...

 development studio. He is currently working at Double Fine Productions
Double Fine Productions
Double Fine Productions is an American video game developer founded in July 2000 by Tim Schafer after his departure from LucasArts. He started Double Fine with Programmers David Dixon and Jonathan Menzies in what was once a clog shop in San Francisco...

, with former LucasArts writer/programmer/designer Tim Schafer
Tim Schafer
Timothy Schafer is an American computer game designer. He founded Double Fine Productions in January 2000, after having spent over a decade at LucasArts...

.

Early life

Ron Gilbert was born in La Grande, Oregon, United States in January 1964. He is the son of David E. Gilbert, a physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...

 professor and former president of Eastern Oregon University (then Eastern Oregon State College).

He became interested in games when he was 13 years old thanks to a Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Inc. , widely known as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, United States, which develops and commercializes semiconductor and computer technology...

 TI-59
TI-59
The TI-59 was an early programmable calculator, manufactured by Texas Instruments from 1977. It was the successor to the TI SR-52, quadrupling the number of "program steps" of storage, and adding "ROM Program Modules" and a magnetic card reader for external storage...

 programmable calculator
Programmable calculator
Programmable calculators are calculators that can automatically carry out a sequence of operations under control of a stored program, much like a computer. The first programmable calculators such as the IBM CPC used punched cards or other media for program storage...

 his father used to bring home. That calculator included a simple game in which the player had to guess the location of a battleship by entering the coordinates and the calculator would answer if the player was high or low. But it wasn't the game itself what captured Ron's attention as much as how this simple calculator was capable of making decisions and reacting to his choices.

Another thing that made him approach the gaming world was a film, Star Wars
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, originally released as Star Wars, is a 1977 American epic space opera film, written and directed by George Lucas. It is the first of six films released in the Star Wars saga: two subsequent films complete the original trilogy, while a prequel trilogy completes the...

(1977). The combination of programming technology, which allowed gamers to interact with characters and situations, mixed with his love for telling stories, like that of the aforementioned film, were the main reasons that made him start making games.

The impact of Star Wars and his love for telling stories was so big that Ron Gilbert, at the age of 14, and his good friend Tom McFarlane made a couple of films on a Super-8 camera
Super 8 film cameras
A Super 8mm camera is a motion picture camera specifically manufactured to utilise the Super 8mm motion picture format. Super 8mm film cameras were first manufactured in 1965 by Kodak for their newly-introduced amateur film format, which replaced the Standard 8 mm film format. Manufacture continued...

.

The first film they shot in 1978 was Stars Blasters; it was directed by Ron Gilbert and acted by friends Tom McFarlane and Frank Lang. In 1979 they filmed another movie, Tomorrow Never Came, acted by Ron Gilbert, Tom McFarlane; it was also directed by Ron Gilbert.

In 1979 his parents purchased a NorthStar Horizon
NorthStar Horizon
Introduced in October 1977, the NorthStar Horizon was an 8-bit computer system based on the ZiLOG Z80A microprocessor. It was produced by North Star Computers, and it could be purchased either in kit form or pre-assembled....

 home computer. At the age of 15, he took his first steps in game programming. He used to study and analyze games for hours; capturing in his mind every frame of the layout of games like Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong (video game)
is an arcade game released by Nintendo in 1981. It is an early example of the platform game genre, as the gameplay focuses on maneuvering the main character across a series of platforms while dodging and jumping over obstacles. In the game, Jumpman must rescue a damsel in distress, Lady, from a...

, Pacman, Asteroids, Space Invaders
Space Invaders
is an arcade video game designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, and released in 1978. It was originally manufactured and sold by Taito in Japan, and was later licensed for production in the United States by the Midway division of Bally. Space Invaders is one of the earliest shooting games and the aim is to...

or Robotron: 2084
Robotron: 2084
Robotron: 2084 is an arcade video game developed by Vid Kidz and released by Williams Electronics in 1982. It is a shooting game that features two-dimensional graphics. The game is set in the year 2084, in a fictional world where robots have turned against humans...

; taking notes of every detail and then trying to replicate them on his computer. Once the games were replicated he would start doing experiments with them, adding changes. He also used to look at Atari 2600
Atari 2600
The Atari 2600 is a video game console released in October 1977 by Atari, Inc. It is credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor-based hardware and cartridges containing game code, instead of having non-microprocessor dedicated hardware with all games built in...

 games' advertisements in magazines, then imagined what the game was like to play and tried to make them on his computer. Once the games were finished he used to bring his friends home to test the games and tell him what did they like or did not like.

Career

Gilbert began his professional career in 1983 while he was still a college student by writing a program named Graphics Basic
Graphics BASIC
Graphics BASIC is a third-party extension to the Commodore BASIC V2.0 programming language of the Commodore 64 computer. It was originally written in 1983 by Ron Gilbert and Tom McFarlane. The program was licensed to Hesware, who briefly sold the program in 1984 as part of their product line before...

with Tom McFarlane. They sold the program to a San Francisco Bay Area
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...

 company named HESware
HESware
HESware was an American home computer software and hardware developer/publisher during the 1980s, who concentrated on the Commodore 64 and the Atari 8-bit.-History:...

, which later offered Gilbert a job. He spent about half a year at HESware, programming action game
Platform game
A platform game is a video game characterized by requiring the player to jump to and from suspended platforms or over obstacles . It must be possible to control these jumps and to fall from platforms or miss jumps...

s for the Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...

 (C64). None of them were ever released; the company went out of business. Shortly thereafter, Gilbert joined Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm Limited is an American film production company founded by George Lucas in 1971, based in San Francisco, California. Lucas is the company's current chairman and CEO, and Micheline Chau is the president and COO....

 Games, which later became LucasArts
LucasArts
LucasArts Entertainment Company, LLC is an American video game developer and publisher. The company was once famous for its innovative line of graphic adventure games, the critical and commercial success of which peaked in the mid 1990s...

. There he earned his living by doing C64 ports of Lucasfilm Atari 800 games.

In 1985 he got the opportunity to co-develop his own game for LucasArts together with graphics artist
Game artist
A game artist is an artist who creates art for one or more types of games. Game artists are responsible for all of the aspects of game development that call for visual art...

 Gary Winnick. Maniac Mansion
Maniac Mansion
Maniac Mansion is a 1987 graphic adventure game developed and published by Lucasfilm Games. It was Lucasfilm's first published video game, and it was initially released for the Commodore 64 and Apple II. A comedy horror parody of B movies, it follows teenager Dave Miller as he ventures...

was about a dark Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...

 mansion
Mansion
A mansion is a very large dwelling house. U.S. real estate brokers define a mansion as a dwelling of over . A traditional European mansion was defined as a house which contained a ballroom and tens of bedrooms...

 populated by a mad scientist
Mad scientist
A mad scientist is a stock character of popular fiction, specifically science fiction. The mad scientist may be villainous or antagonistic, benign or neutral, and whether insane, eccentric, or simply bumbling, mad scientists often work with fictional technology in order to forward their schemes, if...

, his family and strange alien
Extraterrestrial life
Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth...

s.

Gilbert created a scripting language that was named after the project it had been written for, the Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion, better known as SCUMM
SCUMM
Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion is a scripting language developed at LucasArts to ease development of the graphical adventure game Maniac Mansion....

. The technology was used in all subsequent LucasArts adventure games, with the exception of Grim Fandango
Grim Fandango
Grim Fandango is a personal computer game in the graphic adventure genre released by LucasArts in 1998 and primarily written by Tim Schafer. It is the first adventure game by LucasArts to use 3D computer graphics overlaid on pre-rendered, static backgrounds...

and Escape From Monkey Island
Escape from Monkey Island
Escape from Monkey Island is a computer adventure game developed and released by LucasArts in 2000. It is the fourth game in the Monkey Island series....

. Despite being an internal production tool, the SCUMM acronym became well known to gamers since a location in The Secret of Monkey Island
The Secret of Monkey Island
The Secret of Monkey Island is a graphic adventure game developed by Lucasfilm Games and published by the same company after its name was changed to LucasArts. The game spawned a number of sequels, collectively known as the Monkey Island series...

, the SCUMM Bar, was named after it.

Gilbert created many successful adventure game
Adventure game
An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical challenge. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature and film,...

s at LucasArts, including the classic The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. In 1992, he left the company to start Humongous Entertainment with LucasArts producer Shelley Day
Shelley Day
Shelley Day is a former producer of children's video games. She founded Humongous Entertainment with colleague Ron Gilbert. She created the famous Putt-Putt character as a bedtime story for her son, which became a series of popular children's video games. In 1999 she was listed on Time Magazine as...

.

While at Humongous Entertainment, Gilbert was responsible for games such as Putt-Putt
Putt-Putt (game character)
The Putt-Putt series is a collection of children's adventure and puzzle computer games created by Humongous Entertainment. They primarily involve clicking to get to a destination, although some sub-quests and mini-games involve the keyboard...

, Freddi Fish
Freddi Fish
Freddi Fish is an award-winning series of children's software from Humongous Entertainment.Freddi Fish is an anthropomorphic yellow fish who takes on detective investigations throughout the series of games. She has her own pal, the green-colored Luther, who is her best friend and goes with her on...

, Pajama Sam
Pajama Sam
The Pajama Sam series is a collection of point-and-click children's adventure and puzzle games originally created by Humongous Entertainment.-Character:...

and the Backyard Sports series. Many of these games continued to use an offshoot of the SCUMM engine. In 1995, Gilbert founded Cavedog Entertainment
Cavedog Entertainment
Cavedog Entertainment, or Cavedog, was a video game developer based in Bothell, Washington. Cavedog gained the attention of gamers and the gaming press alike with the 1997 release of Total Annihilation , winning many accolades such as multiple Game of the Year honors or being one of The Greatest...

, Humongous' sister company for non-kids games.

While at Cavedog, Gilbert was the producer of Total Annihilation
Total Annihilation
Total Annihilation is a real-time strategy video game created by Cavedog Entertainment, a sub-division of Humongous Entertainment, and released on September 30, 1997 by GT Interactive for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. It was the first RTS game to feature 3D units and terrain...

and worked on a game called Good & Evil. Widely regarded as his pet project, Good & Evil was said to incorporate many different themes and gameplay styles. The game was previewed by several publications, but the project was cancelled when Cavedog closed down in 1999. In an interview with GameSpot conducted a while after Cavedog's shut-down, Gilbert said the Good & Evil project had suffered due to him trying to design a game and run a company at the same time.

As of 2005, Ron Gilbert was independently designing an unspecified new adventure/RPG game, which he was pitching to publishers. He also started a blog called Grumpy Gamer offering game industry commentary, occasionally in the form of animated cartoons that he created with Voodoo Vince
Voodoo Vince
Voodoo Vince is a video game for the Xbox, created by Clayton Kauzlaric, developed by Beep Industries and published by Microsoft Game Studios...

 designer Clayton Kauzlaric.

In January 2007, Gilbert created an exclusively Monkey Island themed guild on the World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994...

 server Quel'Dorei, under the name Threepwood.

In May 2007, Gilbert began to collaborate with Hothead Games
Hothead Games
Hothead Games is an independent video game developer and publisher based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Hothead is best known for its role-playing/adventure video game series, On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, based on the Penny Arcade webcomic...

 on Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness
Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness
Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness is an episodic action-adventure video game series based on the webcomic Penny Arcade....

, a game based on the webcomic Penny Arcade
Penny Arcade (webcomic)
Penny Arcade is a webcomic focused on video games and video game culture, written by Jerry Holkins and illustrated by Mike Krahulik. The comic debuted in 1998 on the website loonygames.com. Since then, Holkins and Krahulik have established their own site, which is typically updated with a new comic...

.

In January 2008, he joined Hothead Games as Creative Director, with whom he was developing DeathSpank
DeathSpank
DeathSpank, , is a comedy action role-playing game by game designer Ron Gilbert. It was developed by Hothead Games and published by Electronic Arts. The game was released on July 13, 2010 on the PlayStation 3 via the PlayStation Network and on July 14, 2010 on the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade...

, an adventure/RPG game.

Although still working at Hothead Games, Gilbert contributed to the design for Telltale Games
Telltale Games
Telltale Games is a leading independent digital first publisher and game developer founded in June 2004 as Telltale, Incorporated. Based in San Rafael, California, the studio includes designers formerly employed by LucasArts...

' Tales of Monkey Island
Tales of Monkey Island
Tales of Monkey Island is a 2009 graphic adventure video game developed by Telltale Games and LucasArts. It is the fifth game in the Monkey Island series, released nearly a decade after the previous installment, Escape from Monkey Island. Developed for Windows and the Wii console, the game was...

, taking part in the brainstorming process early in the development of the game. The episodic fifth entry in the Monkey Island series marked the first time Gilbert worked on a Monkey Island game since 1991's LeChuck's Revenge.
He was chosen to be the Keynote Speaker for Penny Arcade Expo
Penny Arcade Expo
The Penny Arcade Expo is a semi-annual gamer festival held in Seattle and Boston. PAX was created by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, the authors of the Penny Arcade webcomic, because they wanted to attend a show that gave equal attention to console gamers, computer gamers, and tabletop...

 for 2009.

On April 6, 2010, on his blog he announced that he left Hothead Games. He will continue to promote DeathSpank with Electronic Arts.

On September 27, 2010, it was revealed through Kotaku
Kotaku
Kotaku is a video games-focused blog. It is part of Gawker Media's "Gawker" network of sites, which also includes Gizmodo, Deadspin, Lifehacker, io9 and Jezebel. Named to CNET News' Blog 100, Kotaku is consistently listed in the top 40 of Technorati's Top 100...

 that Gilbert had been hired by fellow former LucasArts game designer Tim Schafer
Tim Schafer
Timothy Schafer is an American computer game designer. He founded Double Fine Productions in January 2000, after having spent over a decade at LucasArts...

, to work at Schafer's own Double Fine Productions
Double Fine Productions
Double Fine Productions is an American video game developer founded in July 2000 by Tim Schafer after his departure from LucasArts. He started Double Fine with Programmers David Dixon and Jonathan Menzies in what was once a clog shop in San Francisco...

. While it has not yet been announced what game Gilbert is working on, he has said that it will be "an entirely new concept" and that "fans of those old adventure games will like it".

Published works

  • Maniac Mansion
    Maniac Mansion
    Maniac Mansion is a 1987 graphic adventure game developed and published by Lucasfilm Games. It was Lucasfilm's first published video game, and it was initially released for the Commodore 64 and Apple II. A comedy horror parody of B movies, it follows teenager Dave Miller as he ventures...

    (1987), writer, director, art and programmer, LucasArts (LucasFilm Games)
  • Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders
    Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders
    Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders is a graphical adventure game, originally released in October 1988 , published by LucasArts . It was the second game to use the SCUMM engine, after Maniac Mansion...

    (1988), writer, LucasArts (LucasFilm Games)
  • Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure
    Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure
    Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure is a graphical adventure game, originally released in 1989 , published by Lucasfilm Games . It was the third game to use the SCUMM engine.-Plot:The plot closely follows, and expands upon, the film of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade...

    (1989), writer, LucasArts (LucasFilm Games)
  • The Secret of Monkey Island
    The Secret of Monkey Island
    The Secret of Monkey Island is a graphic adventure game developed by Lucasfilm Games and published by the same company after its name was changed to LucasArts. The game spawned a number of sequels, collectively known as the Monkey Island series...

    (1990), writer and director, LucasArts (LucasFilm Games)
  • Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge
    Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge
    Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge is an adventure game developed and published by LucasArts in 1991. It was the second game of the Monkey Island series, following The Secret of Monkey Island, and the sixth LucasArts game to use the SCUMM engine. It was the first game to use the iMUSE sound...

    (1991), writer and programmer, LucasArts (LucasFilm Games)
  • Total Annihilation
    Total Annihilation
    Total Annihilation is a real-time strategy video game created by Cavedog Entertainment, a sub-division of Humongous Entertainment, and released on September 30, 1997 by GT Interactive for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. It was the first RTS game to feature 3D units and terrain...

    (1997), (producer only)
  • Penny Arcade Adventures, story and design consultant, Hothead Games
    Hothead Games
    Hothead Games is an independent video game developer and publisher based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Hothead is best known for its role-playing/adventure video game series, On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, based on the Penny Arcade webcomic...

     (2008)
  • Tales of Monkey Island
    Tales of Monkey Island
    Tales of Monkey Island is a 2009 graphic adventure video game developed by Telltale Games and LucasArts. It is the fifth game in the Monkey Island series, released nearly a decade after the previous installment, Escape from Monkey Island. Developed for Windows and the Wii console, the game was...

    (2009–2010), "Visiting Professor of Monkeyology", Telltale Games
    Telltale Games
    Telltale Games is a leading independent digital first publisher and game developer founded in June 2004 as Telltale, Incorporated. Based in San Rafael, California, the studio includes designers formerly employed by LucasArts...

  • DeathSpank
    DeathSpank
    DeathSpank, , is a comedy action role-playing game by game designer Ron Gilbert. It was developed by Hothead Games and published by Electronic Arts. The game was released on July 13, 2010 on the PlayStation 3 via the PlayStation Network and on July 14, 2010 on the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade...

    (2010), design, Hothead Games.
  • Co-created many children's games at Humongous Entertainment, including Freddi Fish and Putt-Putt.

External links

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