Game On! Podcast featuring guest Gary Winnick
In this episode of GAME ON, Adam Bellow interviews Gary Winnick. Gary is an artist and one of the true pioneers of the Point+Click adventure game genre who brought the Lucasarts game Maniac Mansion to life. Gary has had a long career creating artwork for comics and a catalog of computer and video games. Adam’s favorite computer game growing up was Maniac Mansion and he grew up playing games like them. These have served as an inspiration for the upcoming Breakout+ Games that will be coming to Breakout EDU later this year.
About Gary Winnick
Gary began his professional career at Continuity Associates in New York, where he worked with comic book legends Neal Adams and Dick Giordano. After which he co-founded Lightsource Studios, specializing in content and art development for clients such as Atari, Sega, Nintendo, EA and Disney. Later, during his nine-year association with Lucasfilm/Lucasarts, along with Ron Gilbert, Gary co-created, designed and developed Lucasfilm's first graphic adventure, Maniac Mansion, which was also syndicated as a live action series on the Family Channel. Additionally, Gary was the creator/designer on Defenders of Dynatron City for the NES. He served as creative consultant for a range of licensed products, including an animated special that aired on Fox and a Marvel Comics adaptation.
After Lucasarts, Gary accepted an offer of art directorship at Spectrum Holobyte to form and manage the visual development team for Spectrum's Star Trek, The Next Generation projects in association with Paramount Pictures. Gary became a co-founder at game developer Orbital Studios, he launched a number of projects including Dinonauts for Virgin Sound and Vision. Gary was a founder at platform and game developer Suddenly Social, along with Lucasfilm alumni Chip Morningstar, Randy Farmer and Noah Falstein. Soon after, he signed a contract with comic book company Red 5 to publish his graphic novel 'Bad Dreams' as a limited series and trade paperback in 2014.
In 2015, Gary reunited with Ron Gilbert to form a new game development studio Terrible Toybox. They ran a successful kickstarter in December of 2014 for ‘Thimbleweed Park’ a spiritual successor to their previous graphic adventures. Over the next three years they developed the game for a number of platforms including PC, Mac. Linux and Xbox One which was released in March 2017 to high praise and positive reviews. Additionally, they developed other SKU’s of the game including iOS, Android, PS4 and Nintendo Switch.
Most recently, he founded another joint venture, ‘Comicactive’ developing a prototype which showcased a new approach in digital comics, combining the aspects of interactive graphic adventures with traditional comics storytelling.
Learn more about Gary using the links below:
Website: http://www.garyart.net/
ComicActive: https://comicactive.com/
Thimbleweed Park: https://thimbleweedpark.com/
Game On! – Guest Gary Winnick - Transcript
Adam Bellow:
Hello and welcome to the Game On Podcast. My name is Adam Bellow. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Breakout EDU, but I'm also a father, a serial ed-tech entrepreneur, and an advocate for positive change in the classroom. Each episode of the Game On Podcast is going to feature a new voice from someone who's making an amazing impact and helping to pave the way for the future of education. We're gonna get to explore their ideas and opinions, as well as learn from the successes and failures of these amazing educational gurus. All right, let's get started.
All right, welcome. So, we're so excited and so lucky to be here today. I am joined by Gary Winnick. Now, Gary Winnick may not be a name that you know right off the top of your bat, but I guarantee you that you know, a lot of the work that he has been a part of over the last many years. I will tell you, just on a personal note before we get started here, I was just telling Gary, I am a huge fan of many of the titles that he was extremely influential in creating or co-creating. It is a thrill to be here. And Gary, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for taking the time.
Gary Winnick:
Absolutely. Glad to be here.
Adam Bellow:
Well, we're gonna get started. I think it's, it's, you know, it's a gaming podcast, as we said, and play is really important for us here at Breakout. So I always like to start off and say, what's your favorite game to play when you were a kid? And then what's a game that you've been playing now? Or in your case, maybe creating now? Doesn't have to be video games. Could be whatever you want.
Gary Winnick:
Well, when I was a kid, they, they were using Stone Knives and Bearskins. So <laugh> you know so we used to have family evening nights at my house. You know, I have a brother and a sister, and we used to, along with my parents, we used to play Monopoly a lot. You know, we played, I would say we probably did it for about six months, and we kind of got bored with it. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And in my early teens is when they first started having arcade games. So, I mean, pong came out and my brother saved up, you know, all his money and bought one of those home pong things that you attach to a TV set that went really slow, you know, it just Yep. <Laugh>. And so that, and then finally we went to, I think, you know, something like ColecoVision, where they had space invaders and things like that.
But I remember going down and playing pinball games. And also, I used to like abstract arcade games. I like kicks and I like Tempest and those things. But I, and I, the first game I remember when I went to New York, 'cause I moved from after I graduated from high school, I went to New York to actually work in the comic book industry was, I had this thing called Death Race, where basically you drove around a car and you ran over little vector pedestrians and stuff. I didn't really start playing actual game games until I was working at Atari. And at Atari, we were really at first doing con convert home, home computer conversions for the Atari 400 and 800 from arcade GA games. So I had worked I worked on Dig Dug, I worked on actually Donkey Kong for the Atari 800, you know, the conversion versions of the Atari 800 Centipede, those things.
Very cool. So, but in terms of things that I played myself I really, like I said, I, I liked pinball games, more actual pinball games, more than I liked arcade games, at least initially. And then I got involved in the industry and I was too busy being involved in the industry. We played, you know, competitors’ games. We played Sierra games and things like that just to kind of, you know, get some, you know, comparison. And as far as what I'm playing now, believe it or not, the thing that I play the most now is a game called Word Zapper. And what that is, is it's kind of a boggle type of game that was, I think, produced by Zynga years ago. Oh, cool. And it runs on my old iPad. The only reason I haven't gotten rid of my first-generation iPad is it still plays that game.
And I play it every morning when I get up because it's sort of a cognitive function thing for me, because I spend, you know, my doctor says to spend some, you know, some time on something that sort of cognitive function Yeah. Related. So I, it's kind of, you know, it, the nice thing about it is it has, you know, thousands and thousands of combinations. And I just, you know, play it every morning to try to sort of keep my, my brain a little bit more limber, otherwise turning into mush, which is the way it would be now.
Adam Bellow:
I hear you. I mean, my, my parents do the crossword every morning, and I think it's the same driver there, so. Sure. Yeah. We, we know games can be educational. That's yeah. <Laugh>,
Gary Winnick:
I mean, I've looked at, you know, the new Monkey Island game and stuff like that 'cause we're on and, which is great. I, which is really, I really like the way it looks. Yep. You know, I like stylization. I mean, I do a lot of things that are, I've always preferred two d animation and stylization to 3D I've always preferred the way something like Sleeping Beauty looks to the way something like, you know I'll say even Toy Story looks or whatever. I've always admired the skill in 2D animations. I mean, the guy who did all the backgrounds in sleeping videos fell by the, of Ivan Earl, just an amazing, amazing artist, sort of the father of what they call designed realism. I love that stuff. When we did Loom, it was actually somewhat based on that look.
Adam Bellow:
Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. I remember Loom well, I feel like all of them, and at Monkey Island obviously, or Day of the Tentacle, like, had a very different stylistic look and Sure. Even some of the Sierra Games, I know that they went towards that Disney look at the very end towards I don't remember which Kings Quest, it was VII or VIII or something, like, tried to take on that Disney look. Keeping with that, and I wanna get to your bio, which I think will make the art conversation make more sense. But before that, you know, you just sparked something in me, and I, did you get to see the new Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse? Or have you seen any of it?
Gary Winnick:
Bits of it. I've only seen the trailer for it. It's, it's pretty interesting looking.
Adam Bellow:
It's pretty amazing. I mean, for someone who loves style, they're playing with so many different things in there. It's fascinating. But anyway,
Gary Winnick:
I'm sure I'll see it when it's on, you know, the, the problem is nowadays with the internet and, you know, I mean, I have, you know, Hulu and Netflix and Max and Paramount Plus and I, I mean, there's so much stuff to look at. It's just insane,
Adam Bellow:
You know? Yep. Well, does come out August 8th, so I, have it pre-ordered and my kids are ready to go.
Gary Winnick:
Been one other thing, you know, in the case of something like Maniac Mansion, rather than being driven by style, we were driven by the limitations of what we could do. You know, so basically character set and pixel art and everything else drove those things more than style. The stylistic choices were basically to do this, for example, the decision to the large heads was just because you couldn't see what they looked like otherwise, you know, those kinds of things. <Laugh>, eventually it's, now you can kind of do anything stylistically. But in those, those early days, you were really driven by the limitations of the graphics.
Adam Bellow:
But I think that the limitations of graphics, and I know we're, we're kind of tangenting, but I, I love this conversation 'cause it, it relates so much to what my team is working on now. And I, I kind of think about it like the people that are driving a lot of our game development at our company were former teachers. And so the limitations are the fact that we are learning new skill sets as we go. And so I think that by not focusing on high-tech graphics with all sorts of animation and movement, the story and the game itself and the mechanics of the game shine even more. And with Maniac Mansion in particular, what I remember most about that game, and I haven't played Maniac Mansion the original in, in probably about 15, 20 years, but I remember playing it many times on different platforms. I remember the humor, I remember the cleverness of the mechanic of switching between the three different characters. So many of the things that were there, the graphics, although I could pick up, I could pick out a, a still for Maniac Mansion out of a lineup. Sure. The game itself was driven so much because of the limitations, I think. 'cause You focused on the quality of the content.
Gary Winnick:
Well, I, I, I mean, definitely Ron and I, I believe, had sort of a vision of what we wanted. Well, it evolved and once it, we kind of, you know, we weren't sure in, in the beginning, what we were gonna do. But as it evolved, then we got pretty clear. And, you know, both of of us have sort of the same, I'm going to use the word, you know, twisted sense of humor, so to speak. Sure. So a lot of it was driven by that. A lot of it was driven by the fact that you know, we liked a lot of things in popular horror movies that we thought were ridiculous and stuff like that. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But one other thing too is it takes place in this house pretty much because we wanted a, a contained area to keep it in. You know, we wanted to do something, that we felt was manageable. We didn't realize, or Ron didn't realize, you know, by having it be five different protagonists or whatever yeah. Whatever that we, or, or, and multiple endings that we were sort of opening a can of worms that turned into a huge you know, just, it, it's amazing that it, that it didn't crash all the time.
Adam Bellow:
Yeah. But it was brilliant. I mean, the mechanic was brilliant. And I think the humor, and it's, it's something, it, it's funny because when I was talking about this idea for what we're calling Breakout + this, this new type of game I talked about it with the team and, and they had not really played a lot of the point and click Adventure Games. So we had sent around a file I found of a walkthrough or a Playthrough video rather, of the Secret of Monkey Island. One of the things I always referenced was like, when we started getting further beyond, like the puzzle itself, the mechanic of getting from one place to another or whatever I referenced the, the hamster in the microwave, and I started talking about like, those types of things that make the game memorable, that make it, you know, we're, we're an education company. We're not putting hamsters or microwaves, but I re I use that as the example of like, we should allow the users to do all sorts of different
Gary Winnick:
Things. Have you ever heard Ron talk about that? Effectively what that really came down to was when, when David and he were wiring up the scum system and we were doing, I was doing animation or whatever, we were just doing, you know, we were doing things that we didn't, we don't have to be like, kind of like a dollhouse where you could do everything. So, you know, the faucets worked, you know. Yeah. Some of the, the like, you know, the, the, the oven worked, you know, those, the microwave worked. And so I think it was, you know, David, David and I were sort of, you know, spitballing something one day. And, and David was, you know, between the two of us, we just decided to, you know well, what would happen if you put the hamster in the microwave? And I did, Ron wasn't even in the room. And, David and I literally took 15 minutes and did this thing and wired it up, and David took it into Ron, you know, Ron's office and said, go ahead, put the hamster in the microwave now. Go ahead, turn it on. And then we all just laughed our asses off, you know what I mean? But we left it in there and that was part of the scum system where you could just basically wire stuff up real dynamically and see how it worked. And Ron tells that story. So it's pretty interesting.
Adam Bellow:
That's, that's incredible. I did not know that story. So that's I appreciate you sharing that. Well, we'll, we'll move on. I think we'll kind of, we covered some of the ground, but I, I'm really excited to kind of dig into our level two question, which is all about your history, your origin story. Everyone has one. I feel like we've kind of hit on a few of the things that you've done. But we, you mentioned comics. We've mentioned a couple of things you've done. Sure. so what kind of put you on the path to becoming who you are in doing the work that you've done
Gary Winnick:
Well in, in high school? I, I had a, I've had a love of comics ever since I could remember. So, you know, I learned, I actually learned how to read by reading comics. That's how I learned how to read. Because it was easier, at least for me at the time, to read Spider-Man Comics than it was to read, you know you know, an English text or whatever they wanted me to read. I'd much rather do that. So while doing that, and I guess I had, you know, some innate artistic, you know ability. So I really decided that's what I wanted to do. So I used to copy comic books when I was, you know, from the time I was about 11 years old, I copied comics. And then when I graduated from high school, which was in 1972 to date myself, I had two very good friends, Frank Ciroc and Bre Anderson, who are both in the comic book industry now.
And we decided at the time, you know if you wanted to become, you know, be in the movies or whatever, you'd go to LA if you wanted to work in the comical industry, you went to New York. That's where Marvel was. That's where DC was. So we had a friend who was working at the time in the industry fellow by the name of Carl Pots. He was working as an assistant to Neil Adams, who I'd mentioned before, who was just an amazing talent. He was, you know, probably the most famous comic book artist in the world at the time that I went. And he had a studio on 42nd Street between Fifth and Madison. And we showed up there one day, <laugh> and, and Carl kind of brought, you know, brought us in. My friend Frank had relatives in the area.
So we had somebody to stay within New Jersey, I believe, at the time. And we just, Neil couldn't have been more gracious. He took us into his studio. And the studio was a place where, although it did a lot of comic book work, it also did a lot of, did a bunch of advertising work to really, you know, pay the bills. So while we were there, we kind of learned about storyboarding and we learned about doing animatics they were doing. But an animatic is, is basically kind of a glorified storyboard that's sort of animated that they, you know, that an advertising agency shows the client in order to sell them on the concept of actually making a real commercial. Then we were working, you know, for the, for, I'm trying to remember the name of the agencies, but we basically worked on Kool-Aid and Fi a Cat Chow and Breck hair shampoo and all of these things.
I remember we actually, Jimmy Carter was running for president at the time, Uhhuh <affirmative>. And we did a, a coloring book, the Jimmy Carter coloring book, <laugh> for the Jimmy Carter, you know, presidential campaign. I remember. And I remember meeting Jimmy Carter for like, the thing that I remember about Jimmy Carter is that he had the biggest whitest smile of anybody I ever saw in my life. <Laugh>. And, you know, so, and we worked in, in, you know, there, and along with that we were doing comics. Neil was doing all of the covers for all of the DC books at the time, most of them. So I remember doing coloring on comic books, so, you know, action comics, Superman, Batman, those kinds of things. And then we were there for about oh seven months. And then I came back from there and ultimately we opened up our own studio in the San Jose area. And that kind of led from one thing to another, finally, like, kind of getting into, the computer. I'm gonna say the home computer revolution was heating up. And so Atari was there, in fact, that was offered a job with Atari and a company called iMagic the same day.
Adam Bellow:
Oh, wow.
Gary Winnick:
And iMagic was doing game cartridges for the Atari, and they were just going berserk. But I really decided I would rather go to work for Atari 'cause they were the actual manufacturer of the hardware. And I did that for about seven months. And then my friend Charlie Kelner said, Hey, George Lucas is starting up a game development group wanna come, they need an artist. Are you interested <laugh>? And I said, no, no. I mean, basically, you know, how could you turn that down? And I was there for 10 years.
Adam Bellow:
That's incredible. And that's, so, I mean, your time at Lucas Arts, and that was the, at the start, right? Like that was, you were there from the beginning.
Gary Winnick:
The first thing, the first thing I did was I did this thing called the Jaggy Monster. We had two games. We had Ball Blazer and Rescue on Fractals, which originally had been called Behind Jaggy Lines. 'cause David Fox thought it was sort of this play on, you know, the pixelated, you know jaggy bars that were in the cockpit <laugh>. So because everything was fairly pixelated. And Lauren Carpenter, was working on what became Pixar, the computer graphics group Ha was, was working on basically doing real-time fractal rendering. He, he was doing a he was doing a fractal landscape for this thing called the Genesis effect for the Wrath of Kahn, a Star Trek movie, where they fire this missile at the, at this planet in Terraform it. Yep. And Lauren was sort of involved in doing the fractals for that. And basically, he was sharing an office with David, who was working with an Atari 800. And I think there was something like, you think you could get a fractal geometry engine to run on this thing? And everybody was like, no. And Lauren took the thing home for a night and they had her running the next, I mean, that was the level of people, you know, those people were just incredible.
Gary Winnick:
And from that, David actually created the rescue on Fract list. And at that time, I mean, you look back at those graphics, they're very primitive now, but at the time people were like looking under the Atari eight, under looking for like a real computer that was rendering it in real-time, you know, that kind of thing. And the first thing I did was this thing called the Jaggy Monster, which is basically this alien that comes up and pounds on the windshield and breaks it and kills you. <Laugh>. I dunno if you're familiar with the game at all or not.
Adam Bellow:
Yeah – a vague recollection.
Gary Winnick:
Yeah. I mean, it was actually George's idea where like the goal of the game rescue was to land. First of all, it was, you didn't have guns originally. 'cause David was sort of this pacifist type uhhuh, like you flew around and rescued pilots. And George came to play it. And he's like, where's my guns? And David was like, well, you know, I want to be pacifistic and flat. And David was like, and George was like, put a gun on the thing, you know, <laugh>. So, he flew around and rescued these pilots. And so it was George's idea, I believe, where one, every, so once in a while, one of the pilots would actually be an alien in disguise, and it would, you know, jump up and like break the glass of your you know, spaceship and let the toxic atmosphere in and kill you, <laugh>. And you can only tell it had like a little green head or something, you know. Okay. It only happened on the higher levels. That's great. It was considered one of the first jump scares in a computer game.
Adam Bellow:
Oh, awesome. And then what was, what was after that? Was that moving on to Manic Mansion or?
Gary Winnick:
Well, so let's see. We did Ball Blazer and Rescue. The next two we did were Coronas Rift and Id on
Adam Bellow:
Okay. I know Coronas Rift.
Gary Winnick:
Yeah. Noah Folstein design Coronas Rift. And I was work, I, at the time, I worked on everything in the very beginning. I worked on everything. I was the only artist they had. And then eventually we, we started hiring on people and we brought in contractors, mostly people I knew. That's awesome. People like Ken Macklan, people like that. And then after that, I think, you know, part of the problem with this is there's so much of it, it's hard for me to remember it chronologically. Sure. So, as I say, forgive me if I kind of screw this up, but we then did a, game, the first kind of graphic adventure we did was actually a game based on the film Labyrinth. Mm-Hmm.
Adam Bellow:
<Affirmative> jammed. And
Gary Winnick:
Because at that time we weren't allowed to do any, you know, one of the reasons we went there was we thought we were gonna do Star Wars games. That was like a huge attraction for everybody. 'cause Lucas filmed Star Wars games. We all loved Star Wars. Sure. And when we got there, we found out we weren't gonna be able to do Star Wars games because Star, the licenses for Star Wars games were so lucrative. They would license them out to some other company and get paid millions of dollars upfront and not have to spend any money and, and just, you know, collect a royalty. So we were told, effectively, you're not gonna do Star Wars games. We were not gonna do Indiana Jones games. Any of that stuff we were gonna do, which actually was, was amazing for us. When you think about it, it was like, you guys get to do original content.
In fact, you have to do original ip. 'cause You can't use any of the IP that Lucasville owns because it's being, you know, it's over here generating revenue at another company out of the licensing division. So because of that, that was actually a godsend in a way. 'cause Then we were able to do things like Maniac Mansion and Loom and Zach McCracken and all of those things. The first, as I say, so what happened was, because Labyrinth was really a, a combination, I think it was Jim Henson's group that was doing it. They allowed us to actually build out, pardon me, a Labyrinth game. And so that was sort of the first graphic adventure we really did. And rather than having Point and Click, David had this thing, which was like kind of a, a wheel that, that, I dunno if you've ever played the game or
Adam Bellow:
Familiar with him. I, I have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen the wheel.
Gary Winnick:
It's kind of a, you know, it has this revolving wheel kind of thing. Yeah. Which I, I would say is kind of a precursor to the whole point-and-click thing, sort of in a
Adam Bellow:
Way. It's interesting 'cause we, you know, I keep on referencing this, this thing that we're working on internally. And I, we've looked at obviously, you know, going back to Zork and I, I actually have it as referenced here, you know, this point in Click book. Oh, okay. That that you're referenced in as well as many, many others. Yeah. It's fascinating. Yeah. It, it's fascinating to see how I mean, Sierra had their system evolve differently, obviously Scum. And I would love to kind of to hear from you how that developed. Because I think, well,
Gary Winnick:
Ron, it really came down to the fact that Ron hated the parser. More than anything else. Ron, Ron is playing a c you know, was playing Sierra Games. If you listen to Ron's sort of talks about it. There are several talks. But, you know, he's basically playing the game because we weren't really sure what we were doing. We knew we were gonna make this Maniac Mansion game. He and I kind of, you know, he was, he was brought on to do the conversion of the, the C 64 version, I believe of Coronas Rift. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I believe is what it was. And he was brought on because he was a, he, he was a commodore, he, he knew the Commodore 'cause he had written a program called Graphics Basic for the Commodore. So he was a contractor doing the conversion in those days. You know, you, you really did conversions in the sense that nothing was portable.
Yeah. Graphics weren't portable, nothing was portable <laugh>. So he was doing the C 64 conversion of Coronas Rift, I believe. And he and I used to hang around in the evenings and talk about, you know, what we wanted to do. And so we would, when we had, as I said, a similar twisted sense of humor. And so we decided we really wanted to do a comedy horror game. 'cause He and I would go see these, you you, you'd go see a movie. And it was, you know, the typical kind of, you know, slasher film where, you know, kids, you know, go into an old old house and go into different rooms. They split up immediately. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's like Cabin in the Woods is a good kind of, you know satire of that. And we just thought that was funny as hell.
So we decided we were gonna make one of those, and we had this big kind of board game version that we created at the house. And I had these plastic sheet sheets of acetate where I would kind of have different arrows and I'd overlay these sheets of a clear plastic acetate. Yep. And it would show kind of where, you know, how everything connected and where the objects were. And you, you know, we had cards and stuff and you picked up all this stuff, but we really didn't know what we were gonna do. And then Ron, I think went off over Christmas vacation one time and his, his nephew, nephew or cousin had a copy of King's Quest. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and Rome was like, of course it'll be a graphic, it'll be an adventure game. But he was really frustrated because you can see the, you know, it's a bush and you're typing in, you know, pick up, you know, Bush.
And it goes, I don't know what Bush is. And you pick up shrub, I don't know what shrub is, pick up tree. I don't know what tree is. And Ron's like, it's on the screen. It's right there. I should be able to just point at the thing and pick it up 'cause it's right in front of me. So that's kind of, you know, you know, part of the evolution of that, which is, which is brilliant. Which I think Ron's frustration with the parser. I mean, we wanted to get as close to, I'm gonna say, you know a simulation, you know, not, not the way, you know you know, a, you know, sim city is or something like that. But basically a simulate a simulated, you know, where you had a reality, as I said, like a dollhouse where, you know, things worked, you know?
And one of the things is, you know, in the least Sierra games, you could die pretty easily. And in real life you don't die. You know, unless, you know, we would say things like, okay, if, if there's like the space shuttle and you're standing under the space shuttle's engines and it's going three, two, okay. If you die because of that, you're an idiot. You know what I mean? Right. <laugh>. But you, as David said in Sierra game, you know, I, it's been referenced before, but if you pick up a piece of glass, you cut yourself and die. Right. You know, you bleed to death and die. Right. And, and effectively most people can pick up a piece of glass in the real world and not cut themselves and bleed to death.
Adam Bellow:
Right. <laugh>. So, so a quick question on that. 'cause This is, this is interesting, like not to go back to the hamster idea, but like, we we're at the end of our first game that we'll release, and it's but our process was build out the puzzles. We knew the story structure, and then we went back and then we came up with the dialogue or the, or the narrative lines of like, what happens at each interaction. How did you guys plan that? Was it more story focused in the beginning, or
Gary Winnick:
Probably very story-focused in the beginning. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> mean. Yeah. And then, and then David now if we're talking about Maniac Mansion, I mean, we're talking about Maniac Action. I talk about, you know, Thimbleweed Park, which are similar processes in a way because the teams are the same teams, almost. Sure. But in the case of Maniac Mansion, Ron and I pretty well had the whole story figured out. We had, you had the locations figured out and, and, you know, so you were running around doing things and as you ran into people, you, we sort of realized people had to be able to communicate in a way. So a lot of that stuff was written by Ron and David. I might have had something to say about it, but we generally, most of the dialogue was written by Ron and David. You know, we kind of knew what was gonna happen very loosely.
In the case of Thimbleweed Park, for example, the first iteration of Thimbleweed Park, we, we released it. You couldn't actually talk, you know, you could talk to an N P C, you could talk to another character. Right. But you, that you could actually not talk, you know, the group that you could switch between could not talk amongst themselves. And people really complained about that. And so we actually went, the, the beauty of the internet, the beauty of, you know, doing stuff now is you can just go back in and patch it. I mean, if you feel it's worthwhile. Yeah. So that's what we did,
Adam Bellow:
Which is awesome. Yeah. You've been pushing, or, you know, have pushed an update and stuff, which is fantastic. I, I mean, I, I, and it
Gary Winnick:
Cost all this, the other thing is all this stuff costs money. That's the other problem, is you have to, you have to trade off a lot of things because you're going, well, I, I can either, you know, have four people in this game, or I can have two people that talk, you know what I mean? Or whatever. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, what do you wanna do, <laugh>?
Adam Bellow:
Yeah. It's interesting. And I think that, like, as you've pioneered that, that system, I feel like Manc Mansion is ambitious for multiple reasons, multiple players. I think I've, I've always looked at that as like, wow, you know, for, for <laugh>, for being the first Scum engine game, to have the ability to switch between different characters and control people at the same time as
Gary Winnick:
What Ron, Ron was worried we were gonna get fired. You know what I mean? <Laugh>, it was like, basically we were doing this thing. We didn't know what the hell we were doing. We were trying to get it done. We were late, you know, that kind of thing. And he was just like, he was just trying to not get fired, you know what I mean? But he'd al they, but they'd already gone down that road so far. I mean, if you've heard the stories, which you might have or not, is that Ron started just coding the thing in 65 0 2 or whatever. He was coding it mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, and, and it was basically this is gonna take forever. And Chip Morningstar, who was our tools guy, said, well, why don't you create a scripting language and all? So, you know, scum and everybody, most people know Scum stands for script creation. Utility for Maniac Mansion is what Scum stands for. And in fact, we had all of, you know, mucus and phlegm and bile. We were naming basically all these things after bodily fluids and stuff like that. So Yeah. But <laugh>, but it was, you know, they had started going down the road of just, Ron was just trying to program the thing and realizing that it wasn't gonna work. And that's kind of where, you know, with Chip's help, they came up with the whole, you know, the scripting language concept and sort of went from there,
Adam Bellow:
Which is brilliant. I mean, it, it, I think it opened up the door to the entire success of, of the company going forward. Well, that's a good, I mean, you just mentioned a couple of things that I think brings us to our level three questions, which is about challenges. Right? So, sure. What, what is the biggest challenge or obstacle you faced, whether it be in the development process or in design, or, or whatever it is. I feel like you've mentioned a few that are technical, then there are things like time and budget. Well, that's a challenge that you can remember overcoming?
Gary Winnick:
Well, I mean, it kind of depends how far back you go because you choose <laugh>. Today's challenges are different than the ones I had 30 years ago, or 20, or 35 years ago. I mean, when I first started out for, you know, before even being in the, in the computer industry, it was just, I was kind of, I felt I was sort of by myself. There was no community because there was no internet, so you didn't know who to talk to, or, I mean, you just kind of, it was sort of that thing where, you know, you kind of fumble around like molecules and you maybe bump into the right molecule to sort of, you know, if you're an oxygen molecule, you, you know, you can, you can form water if you like, bump into the right, you know, hydrogen molecules or whatever. It was sort of like that in that there was not really the community that there is today.
And today we just have, you know, you, you can find somebody to talk to about anything. So that was more of a challenge, certainly than it is today. But that was probably one of the greatest challenges I had in the beginning was just not being able to, you know, connect with the right people or what, you know, or try to figure out how to do that. You know, aside from the fact that, you know, at software companies, once again Lucasfilm was very different. Lucasfilm was kind of an anomaly when it comes to software companies, because most software companies, certainly when I worked at Atari, when I first there and other places I went on to, they were very much driven by the marketing departments as opposed to the creative people at Lucasfilm, the creative people. Basically, we decided we wanted to make something, and we just made it. And the marketing department had to figure out how to sell it. We weren't being told, you know, you gotta make, like, you know, you know, movies about, you know, jaws comes out and then you gotta do a shark movie. You know, I mean, or whatever. We weren't being told that kind of stuff. We were basically told, you know, you're smart guys. Figure out something interesting.
Adam Bellow:
I think you I
Gary Winnick:
Dunno if I answered the question or not,
Adam Bellow:
But No, I mean, listen, I, I, I think it speaks to you. You mentioned two things. One, I think is the challenge of, there's two things that I, I latched onto there. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. One is the fact that your ability to create drove the process as opposed to a directive. Like, oh, make a movie for this. Make a game for that. Yeah. I think that's incredible. The molecules bumping out and, and kind of connecting with people that either challenge you and push you forward or are like-minded enough to kind of gel with. Is that, do you feel like the first time you overcame that is when you met Ron? Or is it other people before that,
Gary Winnick:
Or, oh it, it was before that because I really, the first people I met really were more in the comic book industry. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.
Adam Bellow:
So the friends you mentioned before,
Gary Winnick:
I, I had already met people, you know, I, I was already working at Lucas. I was working at Lucasfilm as a full-time employee when I met Ron, Ron came on. Now, the thing I will say about this is that Ron and I really gelled as friends, and he was somebody. So it was incredible in that, you know, he and I, we were kind of at the same point in our lives to a certain degree in that we were both around the same age. We had the same kind of interests and stuff. And the thing about Ron is Ron is the most, one of the most brilliant people I know. He's also one of the hardest-working people I know. I, I'm gonna, I don't wanna shoot myself in the foot when I say this, but he works. He's a way, way harder worker than I am, if you know what I mean, in terms of, you know, I, I, you know, he likes to have fun and everything, but that guy is a working maniac.
You know what I mean? He just works really hard. And I, you know, I admire that. And I, I am, I used to do it when I was younger, you know, we all used to stay up all night long, even in the computer industry, you stayed up all night long, you know, and you basically drank Coca-Cola and ate pizza and hamburgers and stuff. All this stuff that was really bad for you. Sure. And that's kind of the way it was. You just stayed up all night, you know, crunch time. You just worked and worked and worked. I, at my age, I won't give that away, but I, one of the reasons I moved to North Carolina is I have a much more sedate pace of life than I had when I was in ca in Silicon Valley. Yeah. You know, I, I work hard and I like working, but I kind of do what I want to do. And generally speaking, I'm not up till like, you know, all night long working on something.
Adam Bellow:
I, I think that, you know, it's funny, I think you mentioned like when you're trying to get a project over the line Yeah. You know, whether it's, you know, a group maniac mansion, whatever, whatever it is that you have worked on, where I'm sure there were days where it's pizza and up till three and, you know, get up again at five
Gary Winnick:
At Lucasfilm all the time. Maniac Mansion all the time, all day long, all day long, all night long.
Adam Bellow:
Yeah. I mean, you've more than, you've more than carved the path and paid your dues. I think it, at least the people I work with, you know, there is no directive here at our company to be like, work, you know, get this done at a, at any cost. And, you know, I think culturally things have changed. I think there's also, you know, but I do like to surround myself with people that are driven because they are challenging themselves. I'm gonna figure it out. I'm gonna get it done. I'm so excited about it. And I think that's evident in the quality of work that you've been a part of. And, you know, I think it's one of those things where it's like, if people love what they do, they give it, they're all as much as they can. And, you know, you, you've certainly put in many years of, of staying up late eating pizza to <laugh>. Yeah. Take it slow. Yeah.
Gary Winnick:
Yeah, yeah. My wife would rather I not do that now,
Adam Bellow:
Basically. I, trust me, I, I get it. <Laugh>. well, moving on to our level four question. It's about passion. What are you most passionate about right now, learning or sharing yourself?
Gary Winnick:
Well, I mean, sort of two things. You know, it's, it's interesting because I am very interested in the technology part and basically taking things kind of into the digital online world. I'm also very interested in the traditional side. So my background is kind of in the traditional side. And I, you know, I, I still draw. I mean, the way I draw is still like, you know, so I just draw on paper with a pen, pencil or rather a pen, and I scan that stuff, and then I color it all digitally. And actually I have a, a company that I've been trying to get off the ground called Comic Active. And in fact, you can go to the website, comic active.com and look at, we have a demo that David Fox and I built with David Fox, myself and Mark Ferrari built. It's something that's awesome, but we're still, but we're, you know, we were, we worked on it before COVID and we almost had like I say hooked a couple of big fish and then Covid happened and everything went to hell.
So we built our demo, I'm gonna say you know, a fairly cost to myself, and it's sitting up there. And that's something I would love to do. It's basically it's, it's sort of a hybrid graphic adventure, digital comic book. So check that out when you have a chance. And I would love to hear from anybody who was interested in funding something like that. That's awesome. And then the other part of it is just continuing to work in comics in general. So I'm trying to sort of get to that next generation and kind of visual storytelling. And that's sort of the current path that I'm on right now. If you look at my website, I have a website, Gary hart.net. You can see a lot of sort of the comic book work that I did there. I did a number of comics most recently I did a book for a company called Red Five, which is called Bad Dreams.
I did that for them. So I'm still doing kind of traditional comics, but I am trying to take it into sort of that next level of kind of, it's that weird kind of, I'm gonna say meld of comics NFTs, which I have a whole other kind of, you know baggage and feeling about, but it's something that interests me. And you know, sort of the development of art and an art form on, you know, in the digital world. So that's kind of what I'm interested in. And then I'm also interested in just sort of effectively possibly teaching some of that to people, because I'm at that stage in my career where I'd like to sort of impart some of this. So the area that I live in there is art Institute that's local in the Elkin area where I live in North Carolina that I might be doing some stuff with, I don't know yet. But
Gary Winnick:
Like, I'd like to teach, and I'd like to sort of impart that to, you know, the, I will say the next generation of creative visual storytellers, so they, they have it, you know, because it's, it's just fun to, to sort of, it's, I, I'm lucky I've had a career that is, that I've had fun at, and, you know, I have no complaints.
Adam Bellow:
That's incredible. I mean, I love, I I, I love looking at your, you know, the, the career. You're, you're talking about your early days in comic art now coming as almost a return to form, still doing, you know, felt tip drawings and doing a blend of digital, but then thinking about like the art design and direction you had to, you were forced to go in with Man Mansion. Well, pixelated <laugh>,
Gary Winnick:
I was first working in the game development group game development. So like, I don't even see this. Oh, wow. So those are the character sketches I did for Maniac Mansion, and then this is what I had to do.
Adam Bellow:
That's amazing.
Gary Winnick:
So actually, I, I had to actually draw this stuff on grid paper. We had no scanners at the time, Uhhuh <affirmative>. And then I would meticulously by hand with a a program, which was a actually the way it worked, you had a joystick on the Atari 800 at the time. We, we went a little bit further on the, in the C 64, but it was still, you had a joystick and you use, and when you pushed the fire button, it plotted a point on the screen <laugh>. And then I didn't have a magnified function. I had, you know, those magnification lamps, you know, with a big
Adam Bellow:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. With a big glass. I
Gary Winnick:
Used to have one of those attached to the side of my monitor was a monitor, and I would swing it down in front of my monitor, and that was my magnify function. And then I'd swing it back out
Adam Bellow:
Of the way. And you'd go pixel at one pixel at a time,
Gary Winnick:
One pixel at a time. Oh, gotcha. The other thing I did is I would draw on plastic, you know, acetate uhhuh, and then I would tape that to the front of my screen was one of the characters in the idle on, and you can see that it's on a piece of plastic.
Adam Bellow:
Yep.
Gary Winnick:
And what I would do is I would draw this with a Sharpie, and then I would tape it to the front of my screen, and then I would plot it and sort of look at and move the thing. And then no scanners, you know, nothing. So that, those were the good old days.
Adam Bellow:
But it, I mean, again, like that, that to me is the most fascinating piece. That you can have traditional artistic talent development skill, a career in this pioneer, this completely different aspect of it, and then be able to swing back on the other side and dabble in both, which is wonderful.
Gary Winnick:
Yeah. I mean, now I, you know, I have a giant scanner on my desk. I can scan, you know, <laugh> Oh, I'm sure. 11 by 17. I draw these things, as I say, I just draw these on paper. I scan these, and then I color them in Photoshop. But amazing. I do everything by hand on paper first. Then sc, I mean, traditional an, it's more and more like traditional animation. It's not, you know, where you're building out a three D model and stuff like that. I mean, I, I think that there, that's becoming, once again, more and more trans, all these, all these things are converging, you know, and with AI on top of that, we have AI doing it on top of that. I mean, it's just crazy.
Adam Bellow:
Well, that goes to, you know, we can dig into that conversation. We started with Off Air, which was talking about like kind of movies that allow you to play a movie and kind of pull them together. I feel like AI will have a whole mm-hmm. <Affirmative> you know, we'll make that even more possible quickly. But I guess our level five question comes back to advice. You've obviously worked for a long time in this career in many different facets. What's the best career advice or advice that you've gotten in general that you can share with our
Gary Winnick:
Audience? Okay, yeah. It's actually, I have an interesting story about that. So, when I was working for Neil Adams, who I said was this just fabulous, famous comic book artist I ha I actually sat at a, you know, in his studio, I sat at a desk next to his, and one day he walked in and he said to me, I have a gift for you. And he handed me a brand-new eraser, and he said, never be afraid to use this. And I consider that one of the best pieces of advice I ever got in the
Adam Bellow:
Industry. That's amazing. I love that. I love that. Yeah. We our, our tagline, we have unlocked the love of learning, but it's also, yeah. The company that I said, it's based on the Escape Room. I, I was explaining that to you earlier. It's all about failing forward. Like, don't be afraid to try something. 'cause If you get it wrong, you'd be able to, I,
Gary Winnick:
I mean, one of the things, you know, iteration, one of the things wrong. Yep. Part what, part of the problem that people have in, in industries, creative industries, but any kinda industries where you've invested a bunch of your time doing something and you've worked really hard at it, is you are loath to change it. You are loath to give it up. And what you should be as fluid in that, you should be as fluid in that as possible. You should be able to sort of recognize when something can be better and recognize that if you have to basically throw away, you know, I'll say everything but the bones or even the bones, if that's gonna improve what you do. If, if you can certainly manage to do it. You need to be able to have sort of the ability, sort of the mindset that you can do that.
Adam Bellow:
Absolutely. Absolutely. That's, that's absolutely wonderful advice. I know you mentioned before where we could find you, Gary. So you mentioned Comic Active you mentioned your site. What, what's the name of your personal website again?
Gary Winnick:
It's GaryArt.net.
Adam Bellow:
Wonderful. Wonderful to get time with you. And, again, I, the eight-year-old, or 10-year-old, or however old I was at the time, cannot believe I'm having this conversation because I, I enjoyed Oh, please, immensely, all the, the work that you had created, it really was a giant part of my youth. Yeah.
Gary Winnick:
Thank you.
Adam Bellow:
You know, I will say, and I, and I've talked about it several times, it, it has informed not just the fond memories, but it's informing what we choose to work on today at this company.
Gary Winnick:
I think that's great. Thank you a lot. And I'll say that back to you. I appreciate that.
Adam Bellow:
Well, thank you very much. It Alright, Gary, it's been great to have you here. So until the next time everyone… Game on!