Tim Schafer



Describe Tim Schafer. [NOW / LATER]

[NOW]

Hmm. To get the ball rolling, let's dub him the Patron Deity of Crazy Awesome Video Games, then follow up with an informal description cribbed from That Other Wiki. Sic Parvis Magna; Greatness From Small Beginnings.

His application for Lucas Arts was somewhat disastrous; he mentioned he was a fan of Ballblaster, at which point the interviewer, David Fox, informed him that this was the pirated version of Ballblazer. He was still permitted to send in his resume and a cover letter, so to make up for the phone interview, he sent in a comic of himself applying for and getting the job at Lucasfilm Games, drawn as a text adventure. It worked, and the rest is history.

He began as a play tester for the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade action game. Afterward he assisted with the NES version of Maniac Mansion. Then lightning struck when Schafer was assigned as a writer and programmer to the production of the pirate-themed adventure game The Secret of Monkey Island. Though originally conceived as a blatant rip-off of Treasure Island with a rather serious tone, this came to a gut-bustingly funny end when Schafer's place-holder dialogue was read. Changing horses in midstream, the game was then re-written as a straight-up comedy. The Secret of Monkey Island became one of the most acclaimed games of its kind. The same team created the sequel, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge.

In his first lead role on a game project (along with Dave Grossman), Schafer returned to Mad Science themes with a sequel to Maniac Mansion titled Day of the Tentacle, a time-travel comedy adventure. It was awesome. After that, Schafer was given relatively free reign, resulting in the biker adventure Full Throttle and afterlife adventure Grim Fandango. Then LucasArts decided to axe the "Cleverness Division" in favour of the "Milking the Star Wars License Until It's Udders Turn Into Little Black Stalactites Department".

Not to be deterred, Schafer jumped ship with a bunch of his buddies to start Double Fine Productions. Psychonauts was born here, but like all Cult Classics, it took some time to find its audience.

Schafer spent the next four years working on a project he'd had in the back of his head for almost two decades; the heavy-metal high fantasy adventure Brütal Legend. "I've always seen this overlap between medieval warfare and heavy metal. You see heavy metal singers and they'll have like a brace around their arm and they'll be singing about Orcs. So let's just make a world where that all happens. That all gets put together, the heavy metal, and the rock, and the battling, actually does happen. Let's not flirt around with this let's just do it."

The game went through five long years of Development Hell. The game was cheerfully supported by Sierra, who was then bought out by Activision. Finding out it had it combined Action with Real Time Strategy elements (RTS being a "naughty word" in the industry), they tried to force Tim Schafer to abandon the entire game mechanics and change it to a Guitar Hero game. After a failed attempt, Brutal Legend was canceled. Tim Schafer then took the game to Electronic Arts, who although supported the game and used Focus Tests to find out the game really was fun for players of any skill level, they were so scared to admit it was part-RTS, they chose to heavily advertise it as just a Single Player action game. Producing a massive Internet Backdraft from players whose expectations were driven in the wrong direction. Despite high reviews (from those who actually touched the multiplayer), the game did not sell well.

He's openly mocked Activision and Bobby Kotick, calling him "a total prick."

During the production of Brutal Legend, Double Fine took a break from their work for a motivational exercise. Tim Schafer called it "Amnesia Fortnights," because it made it mandatory that Double Fine forget what they were working on for two weeks. In those two weeks, Double Fine broke up into four teams, each one trying to make a game.

The sequel to Brutal Legend was canceled by Electronic Arts into early production, and EA refuses to release the patches that Double Fine made for the first game, acting as if the game never happened. After the cancellation, Tim Schafer had no projects to pitch and was in a Despair Event Horizon. He built up a massive team over the years and dreaded laying people off, or worse, shutting down Double Fine. In a final Author's Saving Throw, Double Fine pitched those four simple games created in two weeks as demos, and all four titles were signed by publishers, saving Double Fine.

The four games are smaller and shorter, with smaller budgets. At least one will be a retail title, and the others will be downloadable games. All of them use the Brutal Legend game engine. In his own words "Trying to kill us made us multiply." Two of the games are published by the recently created THQ Partners. The other two games were published by Warner Brothers Interactive (for Once Upon A Monster) and Microsoft Game Studios (Trenched/Iron Brigade).

Tim Schafer has expressed frustrations over his games being cult hits and hates labels such as "arthouse" or Tortured Artist.“There’s definitely not any sort of drive to become exclusive, art-house content” Schafer told Games TM magazine. “I think we’re making very accessible games, and I think we’ll keep doing that until one of them is a huge hit and then people won’t say that anymore. They’ll say, ‘Double Fine sold out!’ And we’ll say, ‘We were trying to sell out with every game we made since the first one!’”

The four games are created by four of Tim Schafer's most trusted leads in Double Fine. The first of the four games was called Costume Quest, created by the lead animator of Brutal Legend, Tasha Harris. A former Pixar animator, she left specifically to make video games. The second was Stacking, created by lead artist Lee Petty.

Apparently, the third game will be a Kinect game based off Sesame Street. This game being the brainchild of Nathan Martz. Regardless if this is a fantastic choice or not, it's left a lot of people scratching their heads. The final game, Trenched, was a combination Tower Defense/Shooter led by Brad Muir, lead designer of the Brutal Legend stage battles.

Ever since the beginning of Double Fine, the only game to move from console to PC was Psychonauts. PC fans have complained that Tim Schafer used to work exclusively on PC games, and they are now left out. Tim Schafer has now added his response to that exact complaint to a permanent part of his FAQ. It is the decision of his publishers to whether or not his games leave consoles. Thankfully, now that Double Fine are slowly regaining the rights to their games back from publishers, they're hunkering down on PC ports, starting with Costume Quest.

Tim Schafer contributed heavily to the creation of:

 * The Secret of Monkey Island: 1990
 * Monkey Island 2, LeChuck's Revenge: 1991
 * Day of the Tentacle: 1993
 * Full Throttle: 1995
 * Grim Fandango: 1998
 * Psychonauts: 2005
 * Brütal Legend: 2009
 * Costume Quest: 2010
 * Stacking: Feb 9 2011
 * Trenched: Summer 2011