Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert has been living mostly under the radar in recent years. He's worked on small games most people haven't heard of, and as a consultant to various projects. He recently worked on Penny Arcade Adventures. His public profile has been his Grumpy Gamer blog. But he's about to make a bit of a comeback with DeathSpank, an episodic Adventure/RPG hybrid under development at his new home, Hothead Games.

Gamasutra published a seven page interview with Gilbert today, and we assure you that every page is worth it. In the interview, Gilbert describes his new company's mission: reaching "lapsed gamers" -- people who used to be hardcore gamers but who today have trouble finding the time to play through 60-hour games. He argues that the episodic model is perfect for those users, and that people will warm up to it as they realize that episodic games are not one big game cut up into 10 pieces. Rather, they have their own, completely different narrative model.

Gilbert also suggests that the games industry will someday unionize in much the same way that the film industry did. That move will enable "individual creative people to assemble into teams to complete a project" (Gamasutra's words) as an alternative to the more restrictive studio model used today. If you have any interest in the future of the games industry, we really recommend you read the interview.