›

Ron Gilbert talks Making of Maniac Mansion

Rather DashingRather Dashing
edited March 2011 in General Chat
This showed up on mixnmojo a few days ago via fellow forum members Kroms and Laserschwert, and I myself received the link thanks to Secret Fawful, but I thought posting it here was probably a good idea and possibly a good way to open up a discussion!

Ron Gilbert recently gave a talk at Game Forum Germany about The Making of Maniac Mansion(click "2011" and then choose the "Ron Gilbert" talk). I think everyone should give it a fair watch to see the making of one of the most innovative titles in the genre, and my personal favorite. It's pretty long as far as internet videos go, but it offers some incredible insight into the behind-the-scenes creation of Maniac Mansion, the reasons it was so innovative, and a look at early LucasArts that I found really fascinating.

Does watching this video affect your view of Maniac Mansion, of game design, or of designing an adventure? How so? What do you think about the talk and it's main point?

PS: If anyone knows how to download this from the website, please tell me. I want to put the video on an install disc I'm authoring for the original Maniac Mansion.

Comments

  • zounds!zounds!
    edited March 2011
    There is a plugin for firefox, that lets you download any flash thing. I know one is called flashgot, it should work. Google chrome would probably have something similar also. It looks like it's an mp4 too so should be a snap.
  • GuruGuru214GuruGuru214
    edited March 2011
    This does sound interesting to me, but I'm not sure if I want to read it until after the first time I play Maniac Mansion. I'm thinking that'll be in the next week, though if nobody shows any interest I may give up on the streaming thing and lose some of my motivation to get around to it.

    And Dashing, this link should work for you to download the video.
  • Rather DashingRather Dashing
    edited March 2011
    GuruGuru214 wrote: »
    This does sound interesting to me, but I'm not sure if I want to read it until after the first time I play Maniac Mansion. I'm thinking that'll be in the next week, though if nobody shows any interest I may give up on the streaming thing and lose some of my motivation to get around to it.
    As far as spoilers go, a couple potential ways of getting a dead end are mentioned, as is an enemy or two from the game, but otherwise I wouldn't say it's all that spoiler-laiden.

    Also, thanks!
  • doodo!doodo!
    edited March 2011
    Thank you for sharing this.
  • Secret FawfulSecret Fawful
    edited March 2011
    I guess I was right, Dashing. Most of the people here seem to hate Maniac Mansion and don't care what they might learn from it or how much they owe to it as adventure game fans. That makes me insanely angry. I personally learned a lot from this video, and I rewatch it a lot. I always had this stupid impression that as developers the LA crew were incredibly good at what they did and knew exactly what they were doing. I think I had this impression because the games were so good. I was absolutely wrong. They had no clue what they were doing, and had to learn as they went. That and the overall story has really inspired me personally, and given me the faith in myself I need to work on video game projects I've always wanted to pursue. I've completely lost all doubts in myself as a developer and in my own abilities as a result of what I learned from this video, because I've realized that everyone and everything had to start somewhere. Lucasarts adventure games came about from a group trying to make something different and having no clue how to do it. That's incredibly inspiring to me. Anyway, that's just my two cents on it.

    Guru, I really hope you're able to get that stream together. I'd love to participate and watch you play through some of the classic games.
  • EmilyEmily Telltale Alumni
    edited March 2011
    I saw Ron's talk at GDC (which according to Mixnmojo is very similar to the Germany talk, which I haven't watched). The whole talk was awesome, but I have to say my favorite part was when he said that they'd been working on Maniac Mansion for a year already and came up with all these ideas for characters, locations, etc. but had no idea what the gameplay should be like... and then he played King's Quest and it suddenly all made sense. :D
  • GuruGuru214GuruGuru214
    edited March 2011
    Secret Fawful wrote: »
    Guru, I really hope you're able to get that stream together. I'd love to participate and watch you play through some of the classic games.

    Then why don't you bump the thread? I'd rather not double post after I necroed it and nobody responded, and if it's going to work I'm probably going to need some input on what times will be good (though apparently several of us are now free on Friday afternoon, since we're not playing D&D).
  • puzzleboxpuzzlebox Telltale Alumni
    edited March 2011
    GuruGuru214 wrote: »
    This does sound interesting to me, but I'm not sure if I want to read it until after the first time I play Maniac Mansion.

    The talk doesn't have anything terribly spoiler-y, and I wouldn't have been unhappy if I'd watched it before playing Maniac Mansion. Playing the game first though meant I could relate the analysis and anecdotes to something concrete. It's good stuff.
    Emily wrote: »
    The whole talk was awesome, but I have to say my favorite part was when he said that they'd been working on Maniac Mansion for a year already and came up with all these ideas for characters, locations, etc. but had no idea what the gameplay should be like... and then he played King's Quest and it suddenly all made sense. :D

    Absolutely. Strange to think it was possible to work on a game for a whole year and not know what they were ultimately aiming for in the gameplay department! I struggle to see how it would have ever worked as anything other than an adventure game... in hindsight it seems so obvious, and it's like that was the natural direction all along. Glad it worked out the way it did.

    I think it's unlikely we'll ever see something so complex from a big-name company again. By Gilbert's own admission, they basically had no idea what they were doing and didn't realise how badly that complexity would drop them in the deep end. They totally pulled it off though. Maniac Mansion is one of the best games I've played in a long time, and I'll almost certainly be playing it again. There's a lot in there that you just wouldn't get to see on one playthrough.
  • JwabJwab
    edited March 2011
    This is great stuff - I love insights like this. Would be great if Telltale could produce similar for their works - I def think there is interest there for in-depth looks beyond a 2 minute youtube clip or 3 questions on the blog!
  • PimPamPetPimPamPet
    edited March 2011
    Great, thanks for the link!
  • ScrawfflerScrawffler
    edited March 2011
    Thanks for sharing this, I just finished watching it. There's some really interesting information there. Plus, now I know why Dave says "tuna head". :D

    Like Emily said, it's pretty amazing how they spent ages putting together all these ideas for a game, but until they played King's Quest they didn't have a clue of what genre of game it would end up as! It's great that they were so open-minded about the project and how everything fell into place like that.

    Maniac Mansion was an ambitious project for them, but they pulled it off and it's a great game. It's probably my favourite adventure game that has "dead ends"; usually that puts me right off of adventure games, but Maniac Mansion just has certain charms about it that makes me forgive it. Plus, it's replayable with it's range of characters and solutions.

    Heh. And one of their inspirations was the 1986 movie "Little Shop of Horrors". That just makes it even cooler.
  • coolguy721coolguy721
    edited March 2011
    maniac mansion special edition anyone?
  • DaviesDavies
    edited March 2011
    hamza721 wrote: »
    maniac mansion special edition anyone?

    It seemed to be on the cards before Darrell Rodriguez left LucasArts. I'm convinced it was to be their next SE adventure game following MI2 (judging by comments made by people over at LA prior to the shakeup). Shame, but at least we have Maniac Mansion Deluxe.
Sign in to comment in this discussion.