What are the future plans of Terrible Toybox?

[Enemy Unknown]

If there is a new game planned, are there info already shareable or if not, and if it is a new kickstarter project, will you inform people per Mail?

Would like not to miss another milestone. :O)

[mfahrnholz]

Jason the Newsguy obviously!

[Blackened Halo]

Monkey Island 5! :D

[LowLevel]

Monkey Island 3a, as stated by Ron himself:

http://grumpygamer.com/if_i_made_another_monkeyisland

(joking. I'm aware that he doesn't own the rights)

[Lord Dem]

Maybe they got them and even if they did, I think this would be a top government secret until 2 weeks before release! LOL

[TangoBravo]

It seems they are still busy with bug fixing and versions for different platforms. And after that i guess they will have a good look at the sales figures and go from there. Adventures and indie games are most likely selling slow and steady as they don't get AAA buzz and rely a lot more on recommendations, so I am not sure the data is in. In fact I don't know if any realistic figure can exist before to first sale, as this seems like one of the wishlist classics people take along once it is at 66% or in a bundle (which according to Ron Gilbert won't happen for a long time).

Then again the engine now exists and maybe David Fox can take it for a spin for a smaller project... well... wishful thinking I guess...

[DavidBFox]

Originally posted by TangoBravo:

It seems they are still busy with bug fixing and versions for different platforms. And after that i guess they will have a good look at the sales figures and go from there. Adventures and indie games are most likely selling slow and steady as they don't get AAA buzz and rely a lot more on recommendations, so I am not sure the data is in. In fact I don't know if any realistic figure can exist before to first sale, as this seems like one of the wishlist classics people take along once it is at 66% or in a bundle (which according to Ron Gilbert won't happen for a long time).

Then again the engine now exists and maybe David Fox can take it for a spin for a smaller project... well... wishful thinking I guess...

Speaking for myself... No idea what I'll do next once TWP is totally wrapped up. There are a bunch of small projects I put off for a couple of years while working on the game, so those come first. The idea of jumping right back into a big project, though, is daunting. Vacation time!

[Grabthar's Hammer]

Good Question. One I'd be curious to see answered too. In my perfect world Timbleweed Park would sell by the bucket load,Terrible Toybox would become the fully fledged successor to the Lucasarts point n click format, and they'd start churning out a new game every year.

Hell, in my dream scenario maybe Disney would even sell them the rights to all the old games Ron Gilbert & co used to produce and we could see proper sequels and use being made of them. After all, Disney has zero interest in anything George Lucas ever did beyond Star Wars. Why not sell it on to others who could properly love, care and look after the legacy of thse great old pieces of software? I guess if that was ever to be a possibility though it would all come down to Terrible Toybox's finances and how nice or greedy Disney turned out to be.

[[-THEMIGHTYBOOSH-]]

DavidBFox ... i got to say this thanks for adding tex murphy to the game ;)

[LowLevel]

On a serious note, I think that the future plans of Terrible Toybox depend mostly on how well Thimbleweed Park is selling and will sell. I'm not very optimistic on this front and my (crappy) estimates don't show an extremely positive result, but being them crappy estimates, it's very likely that I'm completely wrong.

Anyway, in the next episode of the podcast (which will be out this weekend or Monday at the latest) the team could address this topic, because several people asked for an update on this matter.

[tomimt]

I have an inkling Thimbleweed Park might actually sell far better on GOG than it's doing in Steam. Since its release TP has been on their top 10 list and it was a number 1 game for a good while.

[LowLevel]

Originally posted by tomimt:

Since its release TP has been on their top 10 list

Is the GOG list influenced only by how many copies have been sold on the website or also by how many copies have been redeemed?

[DavidBFox]

Originally posted by -THEMIGHTYBOOSH-:

DavidBFox ... i got to say this thanks for adding tex murphy to the game ;)

I can't take credit for that. It's a backer's answering machine message, and we didn't touch those. But thanks!

[Doesnotcompute83]

Originally posted by PJ:

Good Question. One I'd be curious to see answered too. In my perfect world Timbleweed Park would sell by the bucket load,Terrible Toybox would become the fully fledged successor to the Lucasarts point n click format, and they'd start churning out a new game every year.

Hell, in my dream scenario maybe Disney would even sell them the rights to all the old games Ron Gilbert & co used to produce and we could see proper sequels and use being made of them. After all, Disney has zero interest in anything George Lucas ever did beyond Star Wars. Why not sell it on to others who could properly love, care and look after the legacy of thse great old pieces of software? I guess if that was ever to be a possibility though it would all come down to Terrible Toybox's finances and how nice or greedy Disney turned out to be.

It seems to me that under Disney (I could be wrong since we had started to see remastered of old LucasArts games before the buy-out), the licenses are more obtainable as we had Double Fine remastering two classic LA adventures games.

That said, Disney could licensed out the Maniac Mansion IP to Terrible Toybox for a more direct sequel. If we do see another game made by Double Fine or Terrible Toybox, I hope they reprise the Tex Avery inspired art style. When reading the DOTT wikipedia article, the decision to have it in that style was from Ron Gilbert. I would like to see the other non-Bernard characters in a new game such as Razor (the more popular Maniac Mansion) characters and Michael F. Stoppe (one of the less popular characters).

[mckracken]

just as an aside: monkey island 3 was damn good. (and the funniest of the series?)

[mfahrnholz]

The reason Ron doesn´t want to licence the game rights from Disney but rather buy themselves is he wants to have full creative control over his creations, which he can never have with Disney. There is a Red Letter Media Video on one of the newer Star Wars movies where they point to a clip of Kathleen Kennedy saying she´s happy with Disney because with them they have all the possiblities to fully realise their vision. In this clip it´s obvious how uncomfortable she feels saying that, because inside she knows this is not true. And now with all we know about those studio ordered reshoots for Rogue One we know too that this, too.
Just imagine them pitching the ending of Thimbleweed Park to Disney, not gonna happen.

Now as for the reason why no money on earth could rebuy the rights I believe they think they can make more money on licensings fees for all their properties in the future than on a one time irreversible deal which makes them lose a property forever. As long as they don´t lose any money on it, there is no good reason for them to sell said property.

Also how would Ron have suggested the cartoon style graphics for Day Of The Tentacle if the didn´t have anything to do with that game? Me personally that was somewhat of a jump the shark moment for classic adenture games, I never really liked this decision. With simplistic pixel graphics your mind can abstract better and have the world feel more real than with a clearly surrealistic twisted cartoon style what with bended doors and such.

(full disclosure: I´m just guessing, I have no professional knowledge how any of these things work so I might as well be totally wrong)