Bill Tiller | |
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Born | November 1, 1967 |
Occupation(s) | Game designer, writer, artist |
William Tiller is an American computer game designer, writer, and artist. [1] At LucasArts, he was the lead artist and art director of The Dig , [2] the lead background artist on The Curse of Monkey Island , [3] and the lead artist on Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine . He created the games A Vampyre Story and Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island for Autumn Moon Entertainment, a studio he co-founded with Mike Kirchoff in 2002. He worked as a game designer on the iOS title Perils of Man .
Tiller was hired by LucasArts adventure games by Collette Michaud in 1992 as an animator for Brian Moriarty's version of The Dig . He stayed with the project through all of its incarnations, and was ultimately the lead artist and art director on the final version of the game. He was the lead background artist of The Curse of Monkey Island , and the lead artist of Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine . In 2001, he left LucasArts to work at ArenaNet. [4]
In 2002, [5] co-founded Autumn Moon Entertainment to develop his own adventure games. [6] Their first release was A Vampyre Story in 2008, followed by Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island in 2009. Due to financial issues with the publisher of the Autumn Moon games, Crimson Cow, Tiller has maintained a freelance career in the industry. His royalty checks from his work on Snuggle Truck has allowed Tiller to keep working on his own adventure games. Before the success of Snuggle Truck, Tiller served as the art director for MunkyFun, which is itself a studio founded by a number of ex-LucasArts developers. [7] In 2013, Tiller started a crowdfunding effort for an episodic, independent prequel to the A Vampyre Story saga called A Vampyre Story: Year One . The Kickstarter campaign was unsuccessful, however, the game remains in development. [8] In 2013, Tiller collaborated with IF Games in Switzerland as one of the game designers for the 3D adventure Perils of Man , which saw release in 2014. In August 2014, Bill Tiller began a Kickstarter campaign for a spin-off of Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island titled Duke Grabowski: Mighty Swashbuckler!. [9]
Lucasfilm Games is an American video game licensor and a subsidiary of Lucasfilm. It was founded in May 1982 by George Lucas as a video game development group alongside his film company; as part of a larger 1990 reorganization of the Lucasfilm divisions, the video game development division was grouped and rebranded as part of LucasArts. LucasArts became known for its line of adventure games based on its SCUMM engine in the 1990s, including Maniac Mansion, the Monkey Island series, and several Indiana Jones titles. A number of influential game developers were alumni of LucasArts from this period, including Brian Moriarty, Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert, and Dave Grossman. Later, as Lucasfilm regained control over its licensing over the Star Wars franchise, LucasArts produced numerous action-based Star Wars titles in the late 1990s and early 2000s, while dropping adventure game development due to waning interest in the genre.
Full Throttle is a 1995 graphic adventure video game developed by LucasArts and designed by Tim Schafer. It was Schafer's first game as project lead and head writer and designer, after having worked on other LucasArts titles including The Secret of Monkey Island (1990), Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge (1991), and Day of the Tentacle (1993). Set in the near future, the story follows motorcycle gang leader Ben, who must clear his name after being framed for the murder of a beloved motorcycle manufacturing mogul. A remastered version of the game was developed by Double Fine Productions and was released in April 2017 for Windows, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita, with later ports for iOS and Xbox One.
The Dig is a 1995 point-and-click adventure game developed by LucasArts for PC and Macintosh. Like other LucasArts adventure games, it uses the SCUMM video game engine, as well as the last SCUMM game on MS-DOS. It features a full voice-acting cast, including voice actors Robert Patrick and Steve Blum, and a digital orchestral score. The game uses a combination of drawn two-dimensional artwork and limited, pre-rendered three-dimensional clips, with the latter created by Industrial Light & Magic.
The Curse of Monkey Island is an adventure game developed and published by LucasArts in 1997. A sequel to 1991's Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, it is the third game in the Monkey Island series.
Timothy John Schafer is an American video game designer. He founded Double Fine Productions in July 2000, after having spent over a decade at LucasArts. Schafer is best known as the designer of critically acclaimed games Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Psychonauts, Brütal Legend and Broken Age, co-designer of Day of the Tentacle, and assistant designer on The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. He is well known in the video game industry for his storytelling and comedic writing style, and has been given both a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Game Developers Choice Awards, and a BAFTA Fellowship for his contributions to the industry.
Hal Barwood is an American screenwriter, film producer, film director, game designer, game producer, and novelist.
Guybrush Ulysses Threepwood is a fictional character who serves as the main protagonist of the Monkey Island series of computer adventure games by LucasArts. He is a pirate who adventures throughout the Caribbean in search of fame and treasure alongside his love interest and later wife, Elaine Marley, often thwarting the plans of the undead pirate LeChuck in the process. Though a "mighty pirate" by his own account, he is a rather clumsy and disorganized protagonist throughout the series. It is a running joke throughout the games for characters to garble Guybrush Threepwood's unusual name, either deliberately or accidentally. In all voiced appearances, Guybrush has been portrayed by actor Dominic Armato.
Escape from Monkey Island is an adventure game developed and released by LucasArts in 2000. It is the fourth game in the Monkey Island series, and the sequel to the 1997 videogame The Curse of Monkey Island. It is the first game in the series to use 3D graphics and the second game to use the GrimE engine, which was upgraded from its first use in Grim Fandango.
From the late 1980s to the early 2000s, LucasArts was well known for their point-and-click graphic adventure games, nearly all of which received high scoring reviews at the time of their release. Their style tended towards the humorous, often irreverent or slapstick humor, with the exceptions of Loom and The Dig. Their game design philosophy was that the player should never die or reach a complete dead-end, although there were exceptions.
Ron Gilbert is an American video-game designer, programmer, and producer. His games are generally focused on interactive story-telling, and he is arguably best known for his work on several LucasArts adventure games, including Maniac Mansion and the first two Monkey Island games. In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time.
Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine is an action-adventure video game by LucasArts released in 1999. The first 3D installment in the series, its gameplay focuses on solving puzzles, fighting enemies, and completing various platforming sections. The story is set in 1947, after the events of Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix, and puts the eponymous protagonist, the adventurer Indiana Jones, against the Soviet Union. In a race for a mythological Babylonian power source, he joins forces with the Central Intelligence Agency and collects four pieces of the Infernal Machine, an ancient device that allegedly opens a portal to another dimension.
A Vampyre Story is a 2008 point-and-click adventure game developed by Autumn Moon Entertainment for Windows and published by Crimson Cow. The game is set in Europe during the 1890s, and follows a young female opera singer turned vampire as she attempts to make the journey back home to Paris in search of fame and normality. The title's distinctive spelling of vampire with a y was derived from the seminal western vampire tale The Vampyre by John Polidori.
Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island is an adventure game developed by Autumn Moon Entertainment and released in 2009. The concept and design were created by William 'Bill' Tiller, who was also responsible for the visual look of The Curse of Monkey Island. The game was released in November 2009 in Germany, throughout the rest of Europe on February 19, 2010, and finally in the United States on August 30, 2010 by German publisher dtp entertainment. The game is built on the open-source Panda3D game engine.
The International House of Mojo is a website focused on LucasArts video games. It later expanded to cover studios founded by former LucasArts employees, including Double Fine Productions, Telltale Games, Autumn Moon Entertainment and Crackpot Entertainment. It was founded in 1997 by James Spafford and is among the longest-running "fan sites" on the internet.
Nathan Stapley is an American artist. He was the lead artist on Double Fine's adventure game Broken Age and has worked on Psychonauts and Psychonauts 2.
Jonathan Ackley is an American interactive theme park attraction and computer game designer, writer, and programmer. He is best known for being the Creative Director and Producer on Walt Disney World's Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom and co-project leader, with Larry Ahern, for LucasArtsGamesThe Curse of Monkey Island.
Gary Winnick is an American computer game designer, writer, artist, and animator who was the first artist hired by Lucasfilm Games. He co-designed Maniac Mansion, alongside Ron Gilbert, and created the comic book Bad Dreams.
A Vampyre Story: Year One is a discontinued episodic point-and-click adventure game prequel to A Vampyre Story, formerly in development by Autumn Moon Entertainment for Windows. The game would have consisted of up to four self-contained episodes. Each episode would have taken place during one of the four seasons of the year. Autumn Moon attempted to crowd fund the game in 2013, but the Kickstarter campaign was unsuccessful. However, the game was still in development for a while.
Duke Grabowski: Mighty Swashbuckler! is a point-and-click adventure game spinoff of Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island, developed by Venture Moon Industries for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android via Ouya. In August 2014, a crowdfunding campaign was launched to fund the title, originally envisioned for a modest two-to-four hours of gameplay. As it neared completion, however, the game found a publisher and additional episodes are planned. The first episode was released on October 6, 2016.
Dyscourse is a survival adventure video game developed and published by Owlchemy Labs. It was released on March 25, 2015 for Windows, OS X, and Linux. The game has he player take on the role of Rita, a barista stuck on a desert island after a plane crash. Along with five others, Rita has to lead the group to survive. The game was funded by a Kickstarter campaign, raising over $40,000 from 1,816 backers. Inspirations for the video game are The Oregon Trail, tabletop role-playing game Werewolf: The Apocalypse, and television series Lost.