[SamandMax]

That's right, two of the legends of the adventure game genre are once again working together!

From IGN.com:

Famed Monkey Island creator and recent Death Spank designer Ron Gilbert has joined Tim Schafer at Double Fine Productions. The two are reunited after developing several titles in the 90s, including The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge.

Gilbert is developing a new project, separate from the four previously announced titles by the studio, including Costume Quest, published by THQ.

"It's an idea that I've been batting around for many, many years," Gilbert told Kotaku. "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," he added.

Gilbert left developer Hothead Games in April as production on Death Spank came to an end. The game's sequel, DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue, was released last week.

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/112/1123575p1.html

[Ascovel]

Finally, Tim and Ron are taking a more adventure game like direction.

[DustyShinigami]

Great news! It's the way it should be. All we need now are for Double Fine to collaborate or merge with Telltale Games.

[Sughly]

That is so, so good! Not much more to say on the matter than that. And no merge with Telltale necessary, these two are more than fine on their own...

[Lupin The Third]

Originally Posted by Gazzoid

Great news! It's the way it should be. All we need now are for Double Fine to collaborate or merge with Telltale Games.

Please no. I understand that some people love TT but I find their games to be the most broken, borderline unplayable messes out there (and the ported versions are even worse). They are more like comic books/cartoons with gameplay thrown in at the last minute...like old attempts at interactive cartoon dvds. While Double Fine may only have Psychonauts to show at this point it's an amazing title and one of the best platform adventures ever made. They do NOT need to merge with TT, please just bring us quality Shafer products.

Edit: Totally forgot about Brutal Legend...durrrr.....

[Intrepid Homoludens]

"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," he added.

What exactly does that mean? That the games they'll put out will be flat 2D point & clickers available only on the PC? That it'll be simply story and puzzles and no action or combat?

Or does he mean it'll have the quality of deep story, characters, and thinking man's challenges, a more abstract way of thinking about what made adventure games likable during the 90s, even it features direct control and action?

[Sughly]

Originally Posted by Intrepid Homoludens

What exactly does that mean? That the games they'll put out will be flat 2D point & clickers available only on the PC? That it'll be simply story and puzzles and no action or combat?

Or does he mean it'll have the quality of deep story, characters, and thinking man's challenges, a more abstract way of thinking about what made adventure games likable during the 90s, even it features direct control and action?

Haha, such skepticism! I highly doubt he's implying PC only releases. Buuut as for the 2D thing, as much as I'd personally prefer a rehash of the 2D aesthetic myself, I won't be disapointed by whatever graphical approach they take. They're making a game together! The result will be great regardless.

You really don't have to make such an ultimatum as to say that "fans of those old adventures games will like it" means it will either be 2D tripe or direct control genius. I'm positive it will have great characters, great writing, and great gameplay whatever approach they take. Positive thinking!

[Henke]

This is incredibly good news. Every game Schafer has done both at Lucasarts and Double Fine are superb and Gilbert is now back in the game (he he he). I'm currently playing through the second Deathspank game and it's great. I'm really looking forward to this (and to the other upcoming Double Fine games for that matter).

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Originally Posted by Sughly

...as for the 2D thing, as much as I'd personally prefer a rehash of the 2D aesthetic myself, I won't be disapointed by whatever graphical approach they take.

2D? Not gonna happen in this day and age. Gamedom today is nothing like the 90s. Way too much is at stake. Even if they did decide to release a 2D deal, the best it can do is XBL Arcade at about $20 to a very limited audience. Unless that's what they want.

They're making a game together! The result will be great regardless.

I bet. But, as I stated in that editorial I wrote 5 years ago...

Marketing is the worst problem of the adventure genre, above outdated design and technology. What scant efforts have been made in this area is more the exception than the rule. It seems that, because adventure developers and publishers neglected the 'zeitgeist' of game design, culture, and commerce in the past several years, the genre stagnated and has steadily slipped below the popular radar, and is today suffering the consequences.

Marketing today is more than merely sticking ads in gaming magazines and participating in gaming forum discussions. In actuality it's a veritable amalgam of science, research, psychology, creativity, [imagination] and sheer guesswork. It's a complex art of persuasion where, emphatically, being educational, conditional, inquisitive, and tangibly pervasive socially, culturally, and even politically can be critical in selling a product.

You can design the best adventure game ever in the history of mankind, but it's absolutely worthless and a waste of time if nobody knows about it, and you're not gonna make any money off of it so forget about that sequel.

[orient]

Great news :-) I bet it'll be a multi-platform 3D adventure game.

[Sughly]

Yeah I agree orient, most likely case.

Originally Posted by Intrepid Homoludens

2D? Not gonna happen in this day and age. Gamedom today is nothing like the 90s. Way too much is at stake. Even if they did decide to release a 2D deal, the best it can do is XBL Arcade at about $20 to a very limited audience. Unless that's what they want.

That's not particularly fair when the Monkey Island special editions were such a success, and more and more 2D based games are starting to garner widespread attention, indie or otherwise.

But I don't want to begin another 2D debate, and I think we all agree that this can only be good news!

[orient]

Yeah, the Special Edition's of Monkey Island 1 & 2 have demonstrated that 2D adventure games are feasible nowadays, or at the very least they're feasible when the foundation is already there and you're working with an extremely popular franchise.

I don't think the size of the digital download market is an issue for developers. Across Xbox LIVE, PlayStation Network, Steam and the Apple iOS devices, you're covering a lot of ground, if you go that widespread like LucasArts have done. Some games have topped a million units on Xbox Live alone. Most modern retail adventures could only dream of selling as many copies as Castle Crashers.

[UPtimist]

Originally Posted by Intrepid Homoludens

What exactly does that mean? That the games they'll put out will be flat 2D point & clickers available only on the PC? That it'll be simply story and puzzles and no action or combat?

Or does he mean it'll have the quality of deep story, characters, and thinking man's challenges, a more abstract way of thinking about what made adventure games likable during the 90s, even it features direct control and action?

I think that it means that they feel that (that's a lot of 'thats') "[f]ans of those old adventure games will like it" - and that's all you can interpret at this point. No point getting too speculative before there's anything to go by

Anyway, this is something very good indeed. And hopefully this will also slightly restrain Schaefer's crazy (metal) mentality a little too - so that there's the huge creativity but directed at a good goal, which is something that is the key to a creative project with good results

[Jannik]

I see two likely scenarios:

- Double Fine are using their Brutal Legend engine for their announced download games, so I think there's a good chance the Gilbert game will make use of that engine too. That means the game would probably have 3D graphics, but the gameplay could of course be either 2D or 3D.

- Ron Gilbert has spoken about his fondness of the iPhone, so another scenario is that Double Fine now see an opportunity to enter the iMarket, and develop an engine and game for iPhone/iPad, or simply just adjust the Brutal Legend engine to work on those platforms.

But good news no matter what!

[Squinky]

Originally Posted by Intrepid Homoludens

2D? Not gonna happen in this day and age. Gamedom today is nothing like the 90s. Way too much is at stake. Even if they did decide to release a 2D deal, the best it can do is XBL Arcade at about $20 to a very limited audience. Unless that's what they want.

Yeah, a very limited audience, just like Braid and World of Goo and Castle Crashers. *sigh*

Also, I have it on good authority that Ron's new project is a Facebook game about poop. So yeah.

[SamandMax]

Double Fine should focus exclusively on downloadable games from now on, I honestly don't know why you'd want to spend millions of dollars and years on a single project when you could do so much more creative and interesting things in a quarter of the time and budget and then just give it directly to the consumers as a download for a much smaller price. Stuff like Limbo, Deathspank, Braid and Shadow Complex - they are just as good as any full priced retail game, and other downloadable games like them are just going to continue to get better and more ambitious in the coming years until this is the dominant market in video games.

[Henke]

Are we still at the 2D vs. 3D debate? I still say that it depends on the game. The whole thing is extra funny since Gilbert used a rather nice mix of both styles in his latest game.

@SamandMax: I was against it at first but now I'm beginning to agree with you.

[Erwin_Br]

Both Schafer and Gilbert haven't released anything for the PC lately, so I'm still pretty "meh" about it. I'll just wait and see what happens.

[MoP]

Originally Posted by Erwin_Br

Both Schafer and Gilbert haven't released anything for the PC lately

That's finally going to change apparently, since:

Originally Posted by Ron Gilbert

DeathSpank Coming to the [REDACTED]!!
DeathSpank is finally coming to the [REDACTED] platform in Oct and [REDACTED] later in the year and you can pre-order them on Steam.