Ron Gilbert is known for creating many games, but he’s especially famous for the Monkey Island series. His most recent game is the roguelike Death by Scrolling, and he once planned an RPG that unfortunately never got made – the issue stemmed from disagreements with the game’s publishers.
A game not worth investing in
Following the release of Return to Monkey Island in 2022, Ron Gilbert began planning a large-scale, 2D open-world RPG inspired by games like Zelda. However, he recently told ArsTechnica that he’s decided to abandon the project because he doesn’t have enough time or funding to complete it.
Creating a large, open-world game just wasn’t feasible for me right now. Those projects usually take years as a labor of love, or require significant funding to bring in a team and the necessary resources.
The developer received offers from publishers, but he felt they were all very poor. Gilbert explained that publishers were hesitant to invest because the game’s genre was too specialized and they didn’t believe it would be profitable.
Creating a retro-style game like the old Zelda titles isn’t currently a major trend, so publishers weren’t interested in funding it. They didn’t see a path to making a significant return on their investment. The financial offers and terms they presented simply didn’t make the project viable for me.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=-60325
Publishers only want specific titles
You know, as someone who’s been gaming for ages, I totally get what Gilbert’s saying. He pointed out that publishers these days are way more focused on data and analytics than they used to be. Basically, they’ve all got their own little formulas to predict if a game will be profitable. And honestly, I think that’s why so many games feel…samey. Like, a lot of them just look and play like everything else that came out a year ago. It’s like they’re playing it safe instead of taking risks on something new.
In the beginning, we had to experiment a lot because we weren’t sure what was driving our success. That’s why I love working with indie games – they’re less influenced by the pressures of big publishers, allowing for more creativity and unique, unconventional ideas.
Gilbert considered crowdfunding as a way to get funding, but decided it wasn’t as simple as it used to be. He felt strongly that Kickstarter, in particular, was no longer a viable option for financing games.
Interestingly, Death by Scrolling was created partly to critique the practices of certain publishers. The game is set in a purgatory controlled by investment bankers, and the idea behind it came from observing the modern world and recognizing how capitalism seems to dominate everything, often causing significant hardship.
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2025-12-02 16:33