Ron Gilbert

Ron Gilbert is a computer game designer, best known for his work on several classic LucasArts adventure games, including Maniac Mansion and the first two Monkey Island games.

He began his career in the computer games industry in the early 1980s with a program named Graphics Basic, which he sold to a company named Human Engineered Software. Having meanwhile received his diploma in computer science, Gilbert started to work there as well.

He spent about half a year at HESware, programming arcade games for the Commodore 64. None of them were ever released; the company went out of business. Searching for a new job, Gilbert ended up at LucasFilm Games, which later became LucasArts. There he earned his living by doing C64 ports of Lucasfilm Atari 800 games.

In 1985 he got the opportunity to develop his own game for LucasArts about a dark Victorian mansion populated by a mad scientist, his slightly retarded offspring and strange aliens. Ron Gilbert and Lucasfilm artist Gary Winnick had come up with this idea during several chats, and they saw the time fit to present it to the management.

Gilbert programmed a scripting language that was named after the project it had been written for, the Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion, better known as SCUMM.

Maniac Mansion was released in 1986 and was an incredible success. SCUMM proved to be the perfect technical frame for an adventure game. Gilbert created many successful graphic adventure games with his engine at LucasArts, including the classic The Secret of Monkey Island, until he left to start his own company: Humongous Entertainment.