Monkey Island Creator Ron Gilbert on Today's Games Industry, Art and the 'Freedom to Fail'

Ron Gilbert, creator of Monkey Island and developer of DeathSpank, today delivered a keynote at the Penny Arcade Expo.

The speech covered his journey to become a game developer, then took a sharp turn to Gilbert's take on the industry today.

Gilbert's upcoming action-RPG DeathSpank, due "2010ish."

"The games industry [has become] just that.. an industry," said Gilbert, a slide behind him showing a set of smokestacks.

After stating that the first Monkey Island was developed by seven people for $135,000, Gilbert decried the corporate mentality behind modern big-budget development, saying: "Big companies need to be safe. This is why indie games excite me."

"They have the freedom to fail."

Gilbert also took a shot at those that would question the artistic merit of the videogame medium, including film critic Roger Ebert, who once stated that the interactive and unpredictable nature of games undermines the art form.

"Games are art that is meant to be lived, not viewed," said Gilbert. "What Hollywood fails to understand is that games are an art form; they are not toys."

"The worst way to tell a story in games is by a series of cutscenes interspersed between action [scenes]," he added.

The designer predicted that massively multiplayer games like World of Warcraft and EVE Online offer a glimpse of the unique storytelling potential in videogames.

"Art will be experienced not by a single person, but by millions," he said, explaining that the emergent nature of MMOs allows for the possibility of stories to be written by those same millions.

Gilbert ended by saying that the passion of videogame fans is the real force driving videogames to become the most important artistic format since film.

"Thank you for making games important, because god knows I have no other marketable job skills," he concluded.