The International House of Mojo

One glimmer shone its way through this morning’s news that Microsoft is laying off 4,800 employees – Double Fine is going independent.

Double Fine and Compulsion Games are returning to their founders, so Tim Schafer will take Double Fine back to independence along with Guillaume Provost making Compulsion Games an indie game studio again. Ninja Theory, the makers of Hellblade, and Undead Labs, the developers behind State of Decay, are also being sold, with agreements in place to ensure Senua and State of Decay 3 continue to ship.

More to come.

And here comes more! Double Fine published a statement on their website:

Once again, Double Fine Productions will be an independent studio.

We're thankful to everyone at Xbox for seven great years together, and for working with us to reach an outcome which preserves our history and culture, and returns ownership of our games to us.

To everyone who has reached out to us these past few weeks: Thank you so much for all your kind words, we've been deeply touched by all your messages. We will share more news soon on what comes next.

Your continued support is greatly appreciated,

Tim & All at Double Fine

Oh, and here’s the whole official Xbox spiel.

Source: The Verge

The June 20th passing of prolific British actor Michael Byrne was reported by all the usual trades this week. Though you’ve likely seen him in a number of productions, his celebrity status in Lucasfilm world is secured by his role as sadistic SS officer Ernst Vogel in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade -- a performance he's manifestly having a ball doing.

Source: Variety

Telltale’s two Puzzle Agent games may have brought the story to a satisfactory conclusion, but the world can always use some more Nelson Tethers.

Well, creator Graham Annable is on the case. And now, so are you. It may not be a new game, but maybe it’ll raise your appreciation for the Ancient Etruscans who had to do all their Puzzle Agent-ing strictly in a web browser, terrestrially.

Source: Grickle

You might have thought all SCUMM esoterica had been found by now, but damned if they don't just keep digging more up:

The Video Game History Foundation took the liberty of uploading the demo to Archive.org if a mere video reproduction isn’t enough to get your boulder rolling.

Like a good betrayal story? Jake Rodkin, game developer and First Generation Mojo Alumnus, decided to sell out to The Adventure Game Hotspot Network.

Which is to say, he’s the latest person to get interviewed by Ron McAdams of Ron’s Computer Videos.

But mostly, he’s a traitor.

Source: Ron's Computer Videos

Mike Levine, an old LucasArts hand perhaps known best in these latitudes for his work on Insecticide and Sam & Max: This Time It’s Virtual!, is these days flogging an AI video workflow platform, because what right do you really have to read pleasant things.

In a display of…judgment, he had the radical idea to try to sell the “charms” of this service to people who enjoy high quality, human-made works. He accordingly fed the opening cutscene of Full Throttle through the patented Make Things Awful™ machine and seems quite proud of the results. But let’s not prejudge. I’m sure with an open mind, we’ll all be won over:

...or maybe we’ll all want to pitch ourselves off a sheer cliff after rubbing lye into our corneas and lamenting the evolutionary curse that saddled us with consciousness. Everyone sees a different statue in the marble, is my point.

Source: Mike Levine's Twitter

When the Adventure Gamers forums got executed by the site’s venal new masters last year, people rightly wondered what would become of all that historical discourse, which the Wayback Machine doesn’t capture to any useful degree. There were rumors floating around about offlined backups and frustrating innuendos about “somebody” eventually hosting them.

Well, thanks to the heroic efforts of Huz and Remi (and I’m guessing some other unnamed allies along the way), today is the day we can start speaking of these things in declaratives. The AG forums archives are now available, hosted by Mojo. In part, anyway: You may recall that the AG forums got relaunched in 2012, and that era corresponds to a separate backup. It’s being worked on, probably. But really, the 2003-2012 archive contains all the stuff you actually care about.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have seven hundred and fifty broken links to fix in the Freelance Police article. ¬¬

Source: The New AG Forums Archive

I guess it was too good to last.

According to TheGamer, The Wolf Among Us 2’s director is none other than Zak Garriss, a man who, when taking time out from being a massive creep, called BLM a “hate group,” and removed a transgender character from one of the Life is Strange games (Footnote: Worth noting: They did bring a transgender character back for Life is Strange: Double Exposure, which was released after this yahoo’s departure.). So yeah, good times all around.

I don’t know. Can The Wold Among Us 2 not catch a break? It certainly doesn’t seem so. Check out TheGamer’s story for more on Garriss’ life and works.

Source: TheGamer

Things have been a trifle chaotic at Xbox Game Studios lately, and it probably wasn’t lifting too many hearts when its recently-appointed CEO spoke of a need to “reset the business”.

Now comes word that Compulsion Games, Double Fine and Ninja Theory, all award-decorated developers that the giant collected during 2018-2019, are at risk of being shuttered. Reports Bloomberg:

The potential closures are part of a broader reorganization being overseen by Asha Sharma, who took over as Xbox’s new chief executive officer in February. Last week, Bloomberg News reported that the gaming division is planning significant layoffs. Sharma sent out a memo to staff lamenting the bleak state of the business, which has seen revenue and margins plummet in recent years. “Going forward, this cannot continue,” she wrote.

As an alternative to oblivion, the studios in the crosshairs are currently in negotiation to spin themselves off, which means Double Fine becoming an independent studio again is a possible outcome. That best case scenario, however, would come at a high cost. It’s a developing story, so more as we have it.

Source: Bloomberg

Or, to use ScreenRants’ headline: “Elijah Wood Pitches TV Reboot Of Lucasfilm’s Underrated 33-Year-Old Adventure Franchise.” Apparently, the former Hobbit and confirmed Monkey Island fan, has set his sights on Sam & Max:

Now, in an interview with ScreenRant's Ash Crossan about his work in Among Us, Elijah Wood shared his hopes for a new Sam & Max TV reboot, specifically based on Lucasfilm's Hit the Road title. The Emmy nominee praised the 33-year-old title for having "a really great art style," which he further feels "lent itself to an animated series."

Not a bad proposal. ScreenRant proceeds to serve up a shaky Sam & Max story, which you should read all the same.

Source: ScreenRant

Yep, it’s that time of year again – another The Wolf Among Us 2 announcement. This time, though, it looks like it’ll stick.

Sweet!

Release date… well, year… is 2027, so maybe it’ll hit your device before we turn thirty. Check out the official Telltale(!) website.

Oh, and a remaster of the original – a perennial Mojo favorite – is slated for a 2026 release, so hey, no complaints from me on that front.

Daniel Albu hasn’t posted an interview in a while, but he gets the floor today because it turns out we overlooked his latest upload a few months back. And it’s a doozy, a near five-hour conversation with compatibility tech Lynn Taylor, who worked from 1995-2008 at LucasArts.

Obviously, at that length, Daniel and Lynn go through one heckavu deep dive of her career. I’ll turn your attention to two moments that might be of particularly interest: at 35:49 there’s talk of the Young Indy game that was being made at LucasLearning, which Taylor calls “basically done” and reveals actually had River Phoenix voicing Indy. And at 4:33:56 comes some talk about the fates of Full Throttle 2 and Sam & Max 2.

Here again with an interview round-up. The latest from Ron McAdams is a chat with Collette Michaud, whose many credits at LucasArts were predominantly artist and animator roles. You may also know her for a choice bit of trivia: she was the rotoscoping reference for Sophia Hapgood’s animations in Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Sure, we'd all like that on our resume, but only she can claim the honor.

Elsewhere we have an interview with the much-elusive designer Sean Clark, and that means you get recollections about Fate of Atlantis, Sam & Max Hit the Road, The Dig, Escape from Monkey Island and Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels. He even confirms a longstanding rumor that he pitched in on Sam & Max: Freelance Police toward the end, specifically helping out on its many minigames. You know, the ones you never got to play. Too soon?

We haven’t heard a whole lot about Puzzle Agent in a while, so I was somewhat surprised to see Graham Annable update his Grickle store with Nelson-Tether-related products. Pleasantly surprised, as it is – a patch, a sticker, and a combo pack. Not exactly a new game, but hey, we take what we can get.

Now go shop.

Deadline reports that renowned editor of the New Hollywood era, Marcia Lucas, passed away of cancer on May 27th.

Born Marcia Griffin, she was an important collaborator on the early pictures of Martin Scorsese and then-husband George Lucas, with her credits including American Graffiti, Taxi Driver, and Star Wars.

She was no less influential outside her credits: she cut together Al Pacino’s screen tests for The Godfather, helping Francis Ford Coppola strengthen his case to Paramount (which was against his casting), and the last scene between Indy and Marion at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark was conceived at her suggestion.

In acknowledgment of her role in the foundational days of the company, Lucasfilm has posted a tribute of its own.

Source: Lucasfilm

Mixnmojo declared every month Pride Month a year ago today. Lest ye think that applies only to 2025, this is your reminder that every month is Pride Month. What year? Every year.

Neptune's navel, but what a year. We got a little planet with a whole lotta queers, a small number of people who would like to round them. With corporate funding for Pride going as kaputt as the US's credibility and the UK shoving a wedge issue up its own arsenal, one questions the inalienable structure of the world we've inherited and how much longer we need keep our heads above this flood of AI-riddled, misanthropic nonsense.

Still, people keep making things. There's a bundle of LGBT+ games/art over on Itch you could buy. Try reading queer (non)fiction. (Footnote: I'm starting On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous.) Maybe write a letter or protest. Or just tell a queer person you love 'em.

Happy Pride, always. (Footnote: All of you. Except Sam Altman and Peter Thiel, but those have it coming.) The struggle is eternal, but so is Pride Month.

If you happen to be Remi, you know that I’ve long been a thorn in your side about the frankly sorry offering of merchandise available at Mojo’s TeePublic page.

Why could we not, pitched I as a random example, grow the inventory with something that'll really turn some heads, like a B minus reproduction of the official Maniac Mansion T-shirt offered from the LucasArts company store back in the day?

Ron’s Computer’s Videos has published an interview with its latest Mojo-relevant guest, Ken Macklin. As you may/should know, Macklin is an accomplished comic artist whose work in the olden days of Lucasfilm Games included the iconic cover painting for the iconic graphic adventure Maniac Mansion. The discussion of that part of his career starts at the 32:27 mark.

Source: Ron's Computer Videos

Tom Kane has passed away. In a 30+ year career, the actor had a prolific number of roles to his name, retiring finally in 2021 after a stroke.

For many, he will be known for playing major roles in children's animated shows, like The Powerpuff Girls, The Wild Thornberries, Kim Possible, and Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends; others will know him from various Star Wars games, including Battlefront and Knights of the Old Republic.

Perhaps most relevant to Mojo are his turns in Grim Fandango, Curse of Monkey Island (including Capt. Rottingham), and Escape from Monkey Island (including Pegnose Pete).

It was a long and illustrious career that most actors would love to have. All of our condolences to his loved ones.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

For you aristocrats out there who have upgraded your Switch to its glossier sequel, you'll be happy to know that as of yesterday, the smash hit Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is available for the Switch 2, notching its bedpost with yet another platform.

This news was accompanied by a massive update which you can peruse on Steam, the highlight no doubt being this:

We’ve added a new outfit for Indy for all players across all platforms, based on the suit he wore in Club Obi Wan at the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom™.

To switch to this outfit, visit the “Outfit” tab in the Options menu and select the “Shanghai Club” outfit.

When equipped, Indy will wear this outfit whenever he isn’t wearing a disguise, or if the level requires a special outfit such as in Marshall College or in Nepal.

Outfitting Indy in that white tux was of course Spielberg's nod to Goldfinger. Below is a trailer for the Switch 2 launch, and you can glimpse Indy in his vaunted new duds 41 seconds in.

Source: Steam