Dave Grossman | |
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 Dave Grossman at the Comic-Con 2007 | |
| Occupation(s) | Video game designer, programmer |
Dave Grossman is an American game programmer and game designer, most known for his work at Telltale Games and early work at LucasArts. He has also written several children's books, and a book of "guy poetry" called Ode to the Stuff in the Sink. [1]
In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time. [2]
Grossman joined Lucasfilm Games, later known as LucasArts in 1989. [3] At LucasArts, Grossman wrote and programmed The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge together with Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer. [4] He later co-designed Day of the Tentacle . [5]
Grossman quit LucasArts in 1994 to begin a freelance career. For Humongous Entertainment, a company co-founded by Ron Gilbert, [3] he helped create many critically acclaimed games aimed at children, such as the Pajama Sam series. [6] Later he also wrote children's games for Hulabee Entertainment and Disney.
He then designed adventure games at Telltale Games, a company founded by LucasArts veterans. [7] He joined Telltale in 2005 as lead designer. [3] In 2009, he returned to his Monkey Island roots, as Design Director [8] on Telltale Games' episodic Tales of Monkey Island . [4]
He left Telltale in August 2014 and joined Amazon Alexa gaming specialists, Reactive Studios, in November 2014 as Chief Creative Officer. [9] Reactive Studios has since changed its name to EarPlay. [10]
In 2020 he joined Ron Gilbert in developing Return to Monkey Island . The game was released in 2022. [11]
Lyrick Publishing published three books written by Grossman that were based on characters from Humongous Entertainment's games. They were Freddi Fish: The Big Froople Match, [12] Pajama Sam: Mission to the Moon, [13] and Freddi Fish: The Missing Letters Mystery. [14]
For Fisher-Price/Nickelodeon, Grossman authored two interactive books, SpongeBob SquarePants: Sleepy Time and Fairly OddParents: Squawkers. [15]
Grossman claimed that his interests in other works were often inspired by his father: "I guess I've inherited a certain restless tinkerer's curiosity from my father (who mainly works in words, wood, photography and architecture, often in combination)." These include his interests in writing, drawing, sculpture, and music. [3]
Grossman is the author of "Ode to the Stuff in the Sink: A Book of Guy Poetry," which he self-published in 2002. It contains a selection of illustrated poems dedicated to different aspects of male life, including inability to dance, old stuff in the fridge, and unwillingness to clean anything. The book is available from Dave Grossman's personal website, Phrenopolis.com. [16] Many of the poems were first published in his Poem of the Week electronic mailing list. [17]
Grossman co-designed a successful robot toy for Fisher-Price.[ citation needed ]
Grossman also made contributions to The Dig , Total Annihilation , and Insecticide , and was a script editor on Voodoo Vince . [6] He also designed the trophies / Steam achievements for the remastered version of Day of the Tentacle .
Day of the Tentacle, also known as Maniac Mansion II: Day of the Tentacle, is a 1993 graphic adventure game developed and published by LucasArts. It is the sequel to the 1987 game Maniac Mansion. The plot follows Bernard Bernoulli and his friends Hoagie and Laverne as they attempt to stop the evil Purple Tentacle - a sentient, disembodied tentacle - from taking over the world. The player takes control of the trio and solves puzzles while using time travel to explore different periods of history.
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.
Monkey Island is a series of adventure games. The first four games were produced and published by LucasArts, earlier known as Lucasfilm Games. The fifth was developed by Telltale Games with LucasArts, while the sixth was developed by Terrible Toybox with Lucasfilm Games and Devolver Digital.
Sam & Max is an American media franchise about Sam and Max, a pair of anthropomorphic vigilante private investigators. The characters, who occupy a universe that parodies American popular culture, were created by Steve Purcell in his youth, and later debuted in a 1987 comic book series. The characters have since been the subject of a graphic adventure video game developed by LucasArts, a television series produced for Fox in cooperation with Nelvana Limited, and a series of episodic adventure games developed by Telltale Games. In addition, a variety of machinima and a webcomic have been produced for the series.
The Secret of Monkey Island is a 1990 point-and-click graphic adventure game developed and published by Lucasfilm Games. It takes place in a fictional version of the Caribbean during the age of piracy. The player assumes the role of Guybrush Threepwood, a young man who dreams of becoming a pirate, and explores fictional islands while solving puzzles.
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge is an adventure game developed and published by LucasArts in 1991. Players control the pirate Guybrush Threepwood, who searches for the legendary treasure of Big Whoop and faces the zombie pirate LeChuck.
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.
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.
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.
Steven Ross Purcell is an American cartoonist, animator, game designer and voice actor. He is the creator of the media franchise Sam & Max, for which Purcell received an Eisner Award in 2007. The series has grown to incorporate an animated television series and several video games.
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.
Elaine Marley is a character in the Monkey Island series of graphic adventure video games. Created by Ron Gilbert for LucasArts, the character first appears in The Secret of Monkey Island and is one of the core characters in the franchise. Originally conceived as a ruthless island governor, the character evolved during development into the protagonist's love interest. While the first two games in the series did not feature voice acting, Elaine was voiced by Alexandra Boyd in The Curse of Monkey Island and by Charity James in Escape from Monkey Island; Boyd would reprise the role for later entries in the franchise.
The Pajama Sam series is a collection of point and click children's adventure and puzzle games originally created by Humongous Entertainment. Pamela Adlon voices the title character in all games, excluding the first spin-off game and the final entry.
Sam & Max: Freelance Police was a graphic adventure video game developed by LucasArts from 2002 until its cancellation in 2004, and the final game in the company's adventure game era. Freelance Police was originally intended for release for Windows in early 2004 as a sequel to the 1993 title Sam & Max Hit the Road. The game was based on the characters Sam & Max: an anthropomorphic dog and "hyperkinetic rabbity thing" who debuted in a 1987 comic book series created by Steve Purcell. Freelance Police was announced in August 2002, and showcased at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in 2003. Like its predecessor, Freelance Police was designed as a point-and-click adventure game, but used a 3D game engine in place of the SCUMM and GrimE engines used in older LucasArts adventure games. The project's development was led by Michael Stemmle, one of the original designers for Sam & Max Hit the Road, while Steve Purcell assisted in developing the game's plot and providing artistic direction.
Humongous Entertainment, Inc. was an American video game developer based in Bothell, Washington. Founded in 1992, the company developed multiple edutainment franchises, most prominently Putt-Putt, Freddi Fish, Pajama Sam and Spy Fox, which, combined, sold over 15 million copies and earned more than 400 awards of excellence.
Tales of Monkey Island is a 2009 graphic adventure video game developed by Telltale Games under license from LucasArts. It is the fifth game in the Monkey Island series, released nearly a decade after the previous installment, Escape from Monkey Island. Developed for Windows and the Wii console, the game was released in five episodic segments, between July and December 2009. In contrast to Telltale's previous episodic adventure games, whose chapters told discrete stories, each chapter of Tales of Monkey Island is part of an ongoing narrative. The game was digitally distributed through WiiWare and Telltale's own website, and later through Steam and Amazon.com. Ports for OS X, the PlayStation Network, and iOS were released several months after the series ended.
Jake Rodkin is an American video game designer, writer, graphic designer, and podcaster. He was the co-project leader of Tales of Monkey Island and the co-project leader and co-writer of The Walking Dead, Poker Night at the Inventory, and Puzzle Agent 2. He was also the director of the fifth episode of Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse, and designer and writer of Firewatch.
Mark Darin is an American video game designer and writer. He was the co-designer of CSI: Hard Evidence, Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space, Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, Tales of Monkey Island, and Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent. He wrote the second episode of The Walking Dead, Starved for Help.
Wraith: The Oblivion – The Orpheus Device is an audio-based adventure video game developed by Earplay and published by Paradox Interactive on October 29, 2020 for Android, iOS, and smart speakers, and is played using the virtual assistants Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, or the Earplay mobile app. It is based on White Wolf Publishing's tabletop role-playing games Wraith: The Oblivion (1994) and Orpheus (2003), and is part of the larger World of Darkness series.
Return to Monkey Island is a point-and-click adventure game developed by Terrible Toybox and published by Devolver Digital. The sixth Monkey Island game, it was released for macOS, Nintendo Switch, and Windows on September 19, 2022, for Linux on October 26, 2022, for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on November 8, 2022, and for iOS and Android on July 27, 2023. It was the first Monkey Island game by the series' creator, Ron Gilbert, since Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge (1991).
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