We spoke with one of the designers behind the legendary Day of the Tentacle.
The readers of Spillhistorie.no have most likely grown up with a computer in front of their noses. Many games came and many games went. Some memories faded quickly, while others were never forgotten. One of the people who created truly unforgettable moments is Dave Grossman.
Whether you grew up with an Amiga or a PC, there’s a good chance that at some point in your childhood, your free time was invaded by pirates. Long before you started humming He’s a Pirate by Klaus Badelt, there was a simpler monkey-themed tune that got stuck in your head. When the title screen of The Secret of Monkey Island appeared, along with that wonderful music, you’d see three names: Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer, and Dave Grossman.
A few years later came what might be the greatest adventure game of all time—a classic that should be played through at least every other year: Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle. On that title screen, we see two names: Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman.
We had a little chat with the man who, despite a long career filled with highlights, is first and foremost remembered for creating these epic adventure games. Games full of delightful humor, exciting stories, and somewhat logical puzzles—games we maybe didn’t fully understand until we played them again as adults.
How did you get started making games? Do you prefer programming or storytelling?
I had a keen interest in computers at a time when that was still unusual, when they were not something everyone had in their home. I went to college to study them, and after that I needed to find a job. One listing I came across that sounded particularly fun was a job at Lucasfilm making games.
I had played some games before, including adventure games, but it had not occurred to me that creating them was something you might do for a living (indeed, even today it is not the most effective way to earn a living). I applied for the job, and for some reason I can’t quite fathom, they gave it to me. So then I was a game developer, and I’ve mostly done that ever since!
As for programming versus storytelling, I like both of those things, and they use different parts of my brain so it’s sometimes helpful to jump back and forth from one to the other. For much of my career, my role hasn’t involved any real coding, and I find that I need to give myself some hobby projects to keep that part of me satisfied.
The coolest part is where logic and story come together, when I’m not writing a story but rather designing it, because it has to have a bunch of moving parts to allow for the one character that I don’t control, The Player. It’s sort of like story engineering, and sort of like improvisation with a partner you have to imagine, and I find it all endlessly fascinating.
You’ve clearly figured out what it takes to make a good and engaging game. What are the key ingredients that need to be in place?
I suppose I came into it with some useful tools from working with computers, writing, making hobby films, and playing games myself, but also I like to think I’ve learned and figured out a few things about games over the last three and a half decades of making them. And it’s a big topic!
I could go on forever talking about all of the individual parts of a game and what it takes to get them working well, but at the center, the most important thing, is The Player, and the success of everything boils down to the nuances of your relationship with that person (or people). What things do they control, and what do you control? How do you communicate the difference clearly? How much do you guide them and how much do you leave them alone?
I did a talk once upon a time, where I portrayed games as a shared authorship between designer and player. The title of that talk was, «The Hand of Fate,» because I thought that was a good description of how much the player should feel the hand of the designer – enough to feel like events outside their control had meaning and that they weren’t alone in the universe, while still leaving them in full control of themselves.
Also, remember that it’s the player that you’re responsible for entertaining, not yourself. Keep them in mind at all times, try to put yourself in their shoes, what do you imagine they will be doing, experiencing, and thinking about at any given moment? It’s important to develop some empathy for them. I feel like designers of adventure games in particular have a tendency to lose sight of this when they have a clever idea for a puzzle.
We all love Day of the Tentacle, but why do we love it? Is it because we enjoy time-travel puzzles, fear tentacles, or just appreciate the weird hairstyles?
I’ve often said that I think one of the reasons DOTT is so pleasing is that all of its pieces are working together towards a common goal, which is, to give the player the experience of being a cartoon character. The art and the stretchy animation and the music and the sound effects and the wacky voice acting are supporting this, which is not so unusual, but even the puzzles often coerce the player into *thinking* like a cartoon character. It’s hard not to get immersed.
That said, there is something about the mechanics of time travel that is particularly fascinating to think about, isn’t there?
Would you agree that DOTT is the best thing you’ve worked on, or do you have another personal favorite among the DOS games?
I maintained until fairly recently that DOTT was still overall the best game I’d ever managed to make. But then came Return to Monkey Island, which I’m even more fond of, I think mainly because it has a lot more to say. Of course, that’s not a DOS game, is it?
Let’s just agree that DOTT is the best game of the first 30 years of my life, and RtMI is the best of the second 30, and we’ll see what happens with the third.
Do you remember any mistakes that were made during the development of DOTT—or perhaps some ideas that were scrapped?
Mistakes? Game designers never make mistakes! Only rough drafts. Of course we did remove things. Originally we were going to have six playable characters, and you’d pick a team, just like in Maniac Mansion, but before production even started we decided that was way too much work with all the combinations, and we cut it down to three. Chester got repurposed as Ned and Jed Edison, Razor and Moonglow weren’t so lucky.
I’m sure we also had a million puzzle ideas that we didn’t use, because that’s how you make these things, by thinking up huge piles of garbage and throwing away everything that isn’t good. But you also forget that stuff immediately, because your brain needs room for more.
In which future game are you planning to make DOTT playable via an in-game PC?
Are you suggesting we re-use gags from game to game? Because we would never… well, all right, we probably would. But I can’t see doing that in anything but a DOTT sequel.
And that’s probably what you’re really asking about anyway, isn’t it: hey Dave, how about a DOTT sequel? To which I would reply that the likelihood of that happening is pretty slim. Too many improbable factors would have to line up all at once. (Of course, that’s what I said about Monkey Island for ages, and look what happened there.)
Speaking of new games, how would you compare the early days of game development to the games you work on today?
I think the biggest differences are all about the progress and evolution of technology. For one thing, the computers people have in their houses have kept getting more and more capable over the decades. Nowadays they can play video, do 3D rendering on the fly, play music at amazing fidelity, all kinds of stuff they couldn’t do in 1990. And so you can make games that look amazing, with voice acting, and orchestral scores, and huge numbers of players connecting from all over the world. Which, in turn, requires a lot more advance planning, and a lot more organization as you make the game. Producers today have a much harder job than they used to! And your team is bigger and everything costs more and takes longer.
On the other hand, the evolution of technology has also enabled digital distribution, which in turn has facilitated an explosion of indie games. You still fight for attention, but you don’t fight for shelf space anymore, and you can find an audience online for whatever crazy thing it is that you’re making. A friend of mine just published a vampire psychotherapy game. There’s lots more experimentation and variety in games now, and that’s marvelous.
Have you had any success creating a funny AI model, or do you still have to write all the dialogue yourself?
I’m fairly obnoxious about wanting to write more or less everything myself, but even if I wasn’t, or didn’t have the time, I wouldn’t be using AI for that. I’d hire a person. I want everything in my games to be crafted for the moment by artists who understand what it’s like to be a human being. Also, I happen to like working with artists, and I want them to continue to be able to make a living at their craft. As an academic exercise I find AI fascinating, but keep it away from my game.
And finally, do we have more adventure games to look forward to?
Oh, I’m working on something. It’s going to take me several minutes to finish it, so, in the meantime, enjoy these charming dancing bunny rabbits, conquer the world one more time, play some indie games, and follow me on Bluesky or Mastodon so you’ll know what’s happening when it happens.
We thank Dave Grossman for answering our questions, and we can’t wait to see what his next project will be!
P.S. Don’t forget that we have a lot more of english articles for you