Joel DeYoung discusses what it's like working with Ron Gilbert

A portion of a Eurogamer interview with Hothead’s co-founder Joel DeYoung…

Eurogamer: What was it like working with the legendary Ron Gilbert? Was he a diva?

Joel DeYoung: Ha ha ha! No! I never saw him throw a latte or something like that!

He is very creative and he was great to work with. The thing I noticed, and this will apply to Gabe and Tycho and to Ron is that there does seem to be - and to a lot of people here at Hothead because we’re a creative bunch - a lot of emotion and a lot of passion. Certainly when we made DeathSpank there was lots of vigorous debate about what features would be in the game, how DeathSpank would be portrayed, how far we’d go with certain jokes. But at Hothead the whole office and environment is set up to be a creative space. We allow people to have a creative outlet. If that means having heated discussions or being emotional or being passionate about what you think then we certainly allow for that.

But we also have an environment that’s set up for mutual respect. Our philosophy is that we run the studio so that there is no diva or central figure and it’s their creative genius that rules the day. Everyone’s a designer and everyone contributes - it’s actually one of our three core values. Just because you’re, say, the lead designer of a project or just because you’re Ron Gilbert does not mean your say-so has any greater weight than anyone else. Everyone gets to contribute and through a collaborative environment and process, we believe it’s the best ideas that rise to the top.

Eurogamer: Are the roots of why Ron Gilbert departed buried within that communal spirit?

Joel DeYoung: Well you’d have to ask him specifically about his exact reasons for leaving. I mean it was an amicable departure certainly, but my sense of it was that he was working with us a consultant on the Penny Arcade titles and we really enjoyed not only his experience of making adventure games and how he could educate us and Gabe and Tycho, but he was also a nice guy to work with. And very creative.

When he said he had the DeathSpank concept and he had been pitching it to publishers for a few years but never had any bites - how about Hothead making it? We said yeah we’re definitely interested in that. There was a brief period when he was going to work remotely from the States and we were going to possibly open an office near where he was. But he said why don’t I just move to Vancouver and that’s when we hired him in as our creative director, and he of course had an influence on all the stuff we were working on at the studio.

But DeathSpank was his focus because it was his baby. I think when DeathSpank was nearing completion he decided he had done what he came to do and then he moved on at that point.

Eurogamer: Do you feel a bit lost without him?

Joel DeYoung: No, like I said: based on the way we run this studio it just comes naturally. DeathSpank as a character, I think it’s very clear what he’s all about. You could easily imagine DeathSpank in some other scenarios or other situations or other environments and extrapolate out what that means. We’ve got writers and designers and artists internally here and they were the people who created DeathSpank. Because of the way we ran it it’s not the sort of thing that’s really reliant on any one individual.