Ron Gilbert is largely credited with helping to forge the adventure game genre. But it may have never happened if he hadn't been restricted from what he really wanted to make: Star Wars games.

At his PAX Australia keynote, Gilbert said the game group at Lucasfilm wanted to make Star Wars games, but the license had been sold to other companies before the company formed a games division.

"Had we been able to make Star Wars games, I'm sure that's all we would have made," he said, according to The PA Report. "Not being able to make those games creatively freed us in ways I don't think we understood at the time. Without that freedom, there would be no Maniac Mansion, or Grim Fandango, or Monkey Island, or Loom. "Constraints or limitations can sometimes be a driving force to innovation and creating inspiration."

His speech argued that developers should "embrace limitations" to make them a strength. In retrospect, he says, "I'm so thankful that we were not allowed to make Star Wars games."