With Deathspank, Gilbert's satirical action RPG, now available on PSN and XBLA, we speak to the man who unleashed Guybrush Threepwood onto the world about the state of videogames today, the dangers of becoming what you parody and why his departure from Hothead Games was inevitable.
What do you think about the resurgence of point 'n' click gaming catalysed by the iPhone and iPad - is it progress or regression?
I think it’s definitely progress. You know, if I look back at that nostalgic Lucasarts adventure game era, even the Sierra games, there was really an interesting way that adventure games told stories. I think when adventure games kind of died, we lost a lot of that story telling as well. Which is a problem, because it solved a lot of interesting story telling problems. And with Deathspank, one of the things I really wanted to do was bring back the way games tell stories. So I think the resurgence of the point 'n' click is really neat, and people seem to really like those games.
Are you still interested in creating games in that genre, and do you think they still have relevance today?
Yeah, I think in their original form they absolutely do - they are still relevant, and you can do some interesting things. I think one of the things adventure games do need to do though, is grow a little bit and move away from point 'n' click – not that they can’t also be viable and interesting, but taking the way that those things tell stories and moving them forward into new genres is also very interesting.
Do you still keep your hand in at programming, or are you now in a more directorial role?
I did a lot of programming on Deathspank, so I really do keep my hand in programming. I mean, I program almost every day for three or four hours, or sometimes more, and I really enjoy it. As a game designer, you have to have another discipline – either programming or art – because you really need to be able to breath life into these things. As a programmer you can play around with game mechanics, whip up prototypes and do those kinds of things, so I think it’s important.
You once told us you couldn't disuss how you felt about SCUMMVM, for fear of George Lucas coming after you with a baseball bat. Would you like to elaborate now that that threat no longer exists?
[Laughs] I don’t think my feelings have really changed – I think the SCUMMVM project is really great because it kept those adventure games alive for a lot of people who didn’t have that old hardware they needed. And also allowed them to play on very different platforms. I think now that Lucasarts has really embraced the iPhone and brought Monkey Island to it, well, it’s not that SCUMMVM isn’t relevant anymore, because there are still a heck of a lot of platforms those games don’t play on, but I think it’s nice to see companies like Lucasarts embracing that platform diversity.
Deathspank seems to take a very dim view of the state of modern games - do you see today's scene as vacuous and repetitive?
One of the reasons that the character of Deathspank was created was kind of as a satire of the industry. I don’t really know if it takes a 'dim view', because I'm really excited about the industry, where we’re going and all of these things. But I think there is definitely some fun that can be poked at the industry, absolutely.
Are you concerned about the possibility that the irony in Deathspank might not be communicated, and that it could become exactly what it parodies?
Yeah, I think that could happen, but I don’t know if that’s bad. One of my absolute favourite satire movies is Spinal Tap, and you can get a bunch of people to watch the film, and they’ll say “Wow, this is great parody, look at those guys, they’re really idiots”, but you put Spinal Tap in front of somebody who’s a huge heavy metal fan, and they just look at it and go “Wow, those guys are amazing, I love Spinal Tap!” So you can really look at Spinal Tap from both angles, and if people look at Deathspank the same way, if some people look at it and go “Wow, what a clever satire of the games industry”, and then other people just go “Wow, I love all this action, and blood, and vacuous stuff!”, then I think I’ve really accomplished what I wanted to with the game.