allgeektout

Mike Stemmle is a video game writer, director, and designer who has been working in the industry since the early 1990s. His previous work at LucasArts includes Sam & Max Hit the Road as well as Escape from Monkey Island and Star Wars: Battlefront II.

This February, he joined many other former LucasArts employees at Telltale Games, where he most recently acted as the writer for the third episode in the SBCG4AP series, Baddest of the Bands, which will be available for download this Monday. I had the opportunity to ask him about his experience in the game industry. Check the interview after the jump.

How did you first get into the video game industry?

Mike: By one of those happy corkscrews of fate. A friend of mine got called up for an interview by Lucasfilm Games, but he’d just gotten a sweet gig at Apple, so he had to demure (in a manly way). He pointed Lucas in my direction, and the rest is history.

Is it hard having to write for an already pre-established universe with such a huge fanbase as Sam & Max or Strong Bad (or Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and Star Trek)?

Mike: It’s not so hard if you learn not to take it too personally. When you start having near-violent debates about nature vs. nurture as it relates Clone Troopers, it’s time to take a few dozen steps back from the abyss. Not that I’m speaking from experience or anything.

Since your work on Hit the Road, you have largely stuck to being the designer and writer of games as opposed to working on the technical side. What draws you to being a writer?

Mike: I love words. Long exotic words. Short stubby words. I love pushing words together in ways that they haven’t been (and perhaps shouldn’t be), to make people laugh, think, curse, and cry. It’s danged fun. Also, as most of the programmers and testers I’ve worked with will tell you, I really shouldn’t be trusted with the programming.

What it coming up next for you?

Mike: Right now? Another cup of coffee. Afterwards, I’ll be pitching in to help wrap up Mark Darin’s zanier-than-a-drunken-bedbug fourth episode of SBCG4AP. Some time this week I’m scheduled to have a meeting to kick around some Sam & Max Season Three ideas that have been bubbling up from the urpy bowels of Telltale. After that it gets kinda hazy; I’m still trying to keep my options open for a possible congressional run in 2010…

Check back soon for the second part of the interview, where we talk about the recent resurgance in point-and-click adventure games.