Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. He there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works and I love all things tech and
Speaker 1: tech stuff. Listener one asked that I do an episode
Speaker 1: covering an important developer and businessman in the video game world.
Speaker 1: He cut his teeth working on games for George Lucas's
Speaker 1: video game company, and he went on to create some
Speaker 1: of the most innovative, quirky, and beloved games you can
Speaker 1: find on store shelves. His name is Tim Schaefer. My
Speaker 1: first experience playing a game that Tim Schaefer worked on
Speaker 1: was The Curse of Monkey Island, which was the third
Speaker 1: game in the Monkey Island series. I had heard of
Speaker 1: the previous two games and even played them a little bit,
Speaker 1: and those were ones that Tim Schaefer had worked on
Speaker 1: more extensively, but I didn't own those games at the time.
Speaker 1: But the world of Monkey Isle, with its goofy protagonist
Speaker 1: Guy Brush Threepwood, the numerous comedic, pirate radical stereotypes in
Speaker 1: the bizarre puzzles caught my attention and delighted me. But
Speaker 1: for many years I didn't know much about Schaefer, who
Speaker 1: gets a credit for a quote additional design end quote
Speaker 1: on the game. So this episode is all about Schaefer
Speaker 1: the game developer and Schaefer the businessman, and we start
Speaker 1: in California in nineteen sixty seven. Timothy John Schaefer grew
Speaker 1: up in Sonoma, California. He has four siblings, all of
Speaker 1: whom are older, with a four year gap between him
Speaker 1: and the next youngest. The age gap meant Tim didn't
Speaker 1: get the opportunity to play a lot of board games
Speaker 1: his siblings had played. His brother was nine years older
Speaker 1: still is in fact nine years older than he is,
Speaker 1: and a fifteen year old boy doesn't really want to
Speaker 1: sit down and play games with a six year old.
Speaker 1: But luckily for Tim, something came along that made it
Speaker 1: easier to play games on your own video games. Tim
Speaker 1: told us Gamer in an interview in that he remembered
Speaker 1: visiting arcades with his dad back in the early seventies.
Speaker 1: His earliest memory involving video games was of an arcade
Speaker 1: game called Space Race, which he discovered at a summer
Speaker 1: camp called Blair Camp Blue. Space Race was a simple
Speaker 1: two player game in which each player controls a rocket ship.
Speaker 1: The screen is divided into two vertical panels side by side,
Speaker 1: and your job is to pilot your spaceship on your
Speaker 1: side from the bottom of the screen to the top. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: obstacles like asteroids would fly across the screen left or right.
Speaker 1: You could only make your rocket move up or down
Speaker 1: the screen, and if you got a hit, your rocket
Speaker 1: would reappear at the bottom after a short delay. Getting
Speaker 1: to the top would score a point. Rounds would last
Speaker 1: a certain amount of time variable. According to the arcade
Speaker 1: game owner and little Tim Shafer found the game fascinating.
Speaker 1: He soon learned to love other arcade games. His dad
Speaker 1: shared a fascination with the technology and would take Tim
Speaker 1: with him to visit various arcades and other places that
Speaker 1: had arcade cabinets. In that same US gamer piece, Shaefer
Speaker 1: said that earlier arcade machines that he loved included Night Drive, Atari,
Speaker 1: Stunt Cycle, which had a handlebar type controller, and Space Panic.
Speaker 1: Things really changed for Shafer when his family purchased a
Speaker 1: Magnavox Odyssey game console. This was the first home video
Speaker 1: game console to become commercially available. It officially hit the
Speaker 1: market in nineteen seventy two. The Odyssey was pretty limited,
Speaker 1: all right, Well that's an understatement. It could not create sound.
Speaker 1: It was monochromatic. It could display four whole elements on
Speaker 1: screen at once. Two of those would be dots or
Speaker 1: bars that the players could control using the Odyssey controllers,
Speaker 1: which were little boxes that had dials for user input.
Speaker 1: The third element was a dot that the Odyssey itself
Speaker 1: would control, such as the ball in a game of pong.
Speaker 1: So the two dots that the players could control would
Speaker 1: be the paddles, the dot that the computer is controlling
Speaker 1: is the ball. And the fourth element it could display
Speaker 1: was a vertical line, and that would serve as different
Speaker 1: things for different games. It could act as the center
Speaker 1: line of a game of pong, so it's sort of
Speaker 1: like the net in tennis, or it could serve as
Speaker 1: the edge of a handball court. You had a little
Speaker 1: dial that you would use to adjust where the vertical
Speaker 1: line was supposed to appear on the screen, and all
Speaker 1: games were really just some sort of variation on pong. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: Shaver found the technology really interesting, and he also liked
Speaker 1: the overlays that came with the Odyssey. You would get
Speaker 1: these clear plastic overlays with designs on them, and you
Speaker 1: would put those on your TV screen and they would
Speaker 1: stick to it due to static cling, and the overlays
Speaker 1: would create visuals that the odyssey couldn't produce on its own.
Speaker 1: So you might have one that looks like a castle,
Speaker 1: for example, and then you're, I don't know, playing Pong
Speaker 1: inside a castle. The magic of video games. A little
Speaker 1: bit later, the family purchased an Atari twenty hundred. Shaver
Speaker 1: talked about how he would love to play a game
Speaker 1: without even looking at instructions, and that the period of
Speaker 1: confusion he would experience while trying to suss out the
Speaker 1: game was one of his favorite experiences. It would become
Speaker 1: one of the elements of his own game design philosophy,
Speaker 1: to build in elements into games that would require the
Speaker 1: player to try different things, to adopt and abandon various
Speaker 1: approaches in order to progress through the game, and to
Speaker 1: include consequences for those actions that would be almost as
Speaker 1: entertaining as finding the right solution. So he did something wrong,
Speaker 1: you at least knew that you had done something, as
Speaker 1: opposed to just randomly pushing buttons. Schaefer, like many of
Speaker 1: his video game designer appears gradually began to not just
Speaker 1: play games, but also learn how to build code and programs.
Speaker 1: Schaefer's first work was on an Atari eight hundred, the
Speaker 1: home computer that Attari had put out, and that used
Speaker 1: the six five oh two assembly language. Not exactly an
Speaker 1: intuitive programming language. Assembly language falls to a category called
Speaker 1: low level programming language. That means it's not that far
Speaker 1: off from basic machine code. That's the language that a
Speaker 1: computer actually quote unquote understands the problem with machine code
Speaker 1: is that it's not easy for humans to work with,
Speaker 1: so we humans have designed various programming languages to help
Speaker 1: create an abstract way to manipulate information in order to
Speaker 1: make processors do what the programmer wants the processor to do.
Speaker 1: Assembly languages do this, but at a pretty low level,
Speaker 1: something close to the original machine language. Each assembly language
Speaker 1: is specific to a particular style of computer architecture, so
Speaker 1: you can't poured it over from one type of computer
Speaker 1: architecture to another. The literal architecture of the computer will
Speaker 1: not understand that assembly language. Schaefer's interest in computers and
Speaker 1: programming stuck with him throughout his childhood, and he graduated
Speaker 1: high school and then was accepted into the university of
Speaker 1: California at Lee and chose computer science as his major.
Speaker 1: He would later say that he most enjoyed several of
Speaker 1: the classes that were outside the realm of computer science,
Speaker 1: such as creative writing, English literature, and anthropology, and while
Speaker 1: he was attending class at the university, he happened to
Speaker 1: see a job opportunity posted at the school's career center.
Speaker 1: The opportunity was to apply to be a playtester for
Speaker 1: Lucasfilm Games, which would later become Lucas Arts and Yes
Speaker 1: it's George Lucas. Longtime fans of Tech Stuff will know
Speaker 1: that we once did a full episode about being a
Speaker 1: playtester many many years ago. Playtesters have a job that,
Speaker 1: on first glance, sounds like it would be a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. You play video games for a living, and
Speaker 1: better yet, you play games that are so new they
Speaker 1: aren't even available for purchase. You get to play them
Speaker 1: before anyone else does, while it's still being built, and
Speaker 1: you get paid for it. That sounds like a dream job, right.
Speaker 1: It's only can be fun at times, but play testing
Speaker 1: can also be frustrating and repetitive, particularly if the game
Speaker 1: has design flaws. Play Testers are supposed to look for
Speaker 1: bugs and glitches as they play. Are there any game
Speaker 1: breaking problems? Are there issues with the game engine? Is
Speaker 1: it possible to get stuck somewhere just because of level
Speaker 1: design or some other issue. Is the game's path a
Speaker 1: clear one? Is it playable? Is it fun? It might
Speaker 1: mean playing the same section of the same level dozens
Speaker 1: of times for several hours as you poke and prod
Speaker 1: testing a game to make sure it will hold up
Speaker 1: once it's released, and even the best play tester may
Speaker 1: overlook something. The goals define as many problems as you
Speaker 1: can before you ship, so you can fix them. Because
Speaker 1: once it's out in the wild, you have hopefully thousands
Speaker 1: or millions of people playing your game, and at that scale,
Speaker 1: people are bound to find bugs and glitches, so your
Speaker 1: best hope is to weed out the most preval ones
Speaker 1: in an effort to deliver the best game possible. Schaefer
Speaker 1: decided to apply for the position and landed a phone
Speaker 1: interview with David Fox, one of the founding members of
Speaker 1: the game company, and it was a bit of a
Speaker 1: rocky interview. How well, I'll tell you, But first let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break to thank our sponsor. So there's
Speaker 1: Tim Shaefer and he's on the phone with David Fox.
Speaker 1: Fox had worked on games like Labyrinth, Zach McCracken and
Speaker 1: The Alien Mind Benders, and Rescue on fractal Us, among others. Schaefer,
Speaker 1: in an effort to present himself as an enthusiastic potential employee,
Speaker 1: stated that he had really enjoyed playing the Lucas Arts
Speaker 1: game ball Blasters, and there was problem number one. Ball
Speaker 1: Blasters was a pirated version of a game released by
Speaker 1: Lucas Arts. The official game SAME's name was ball Blazer,
Speaker 1: but in nine three, Lucasfilm Games had handed over an
Speaker 1: early build of ball Blazer to Atari. After that someone
Speaker 1: had mysteriously pulled the code off the game and uploaded
Speaker 1: it to a bulletin board system or BBS. Soon copies
Speaker 1: of the game began popping up on other bb s
Speaker 1: s and people were downloading it for free, and it
Speaker 1: was this version that Shaefer had played. The pirated version.
Speaker 1: It's awkward moment Number two happened when Schaefer admitted he
Speaker 1: had not played Zack McCracken. That was awkward because David
Speaker 1: Fox had actually been the lead on Zach McCracken. Again,
Speaker 1: Schaefer walked out of the interview, or rather hung up
Speaker 1: the phone convinced that he had totally blown it. He
Speaker 1: had not been prepared, he had admitted to piracy, and
Speaker 1: he may as well have said Star Wars stinks. But
Speaker 1: Shaffer decided to at least have a little on with
Speaker 1: his experience. He was invited to send in his resume
Speaker 1: and cover letter, and instead he drew up a cartoons
Speaker 1: strip slash text adventure style document on paper, so he
Speaker 1: illustrated it, but it was done in the style of
Speaker 1: an old text adventure game where he as a character
Speaker 1: was trying to land a job at Lucas Film Games,
Speaker 1: and through the process he makes all the right decisions
Speaker 1: and he ends up getting the job, and he sent
Speaker 1: that to Lucasfilm. Whether Fox was secretly amused by this
Speaker 1: interview or the comic strip gave him insight into Shaffer's character,
Speaker 1: he decided to hire Schaffer for the position to play tester,
Speaker 1: and Shaffer's first gig was beta testing Indiana Jones and
Speaker 1: The Last Crusade, the action game, but soon he was
Speaker 1: tapped by a designer named Ron Gilbert to learn the
Speaker 1: game engine that Lucas Film Games had been using at
Speaker 1: that time. The game engine had the name Script Creation
Speaker 1: Utility for Maniac Mansion or SCUM, so Schaefer became a scumblet.
Speaker 1: The team was working on a port of Maniac Mansion
Speaker 1: for the Nintendo Entertainment System or in ne S. The
Speaker 1: game originally came out for home computers in nine and
Speaker 1: featured a point and click interface to navigate through the world,
Speaker 1: explore environments, and solve puzzles. The game included many innovative features.
Speaker 1: For example, in the game, you can choose two companions
Speaker 1: from a pool of six potentials to help you in
Speaker 1: your missions. Who you choose affects the way you must
Speaker 1: complete the game, and so player choice actually had an
Speaker 1: impact on how the game plays out. After working on
Speaker 1: the port, Schaefer got an invitation from Gilbert to work
Speaker 1: on the next project, which was a pirate themed adventure game.
Speaker 1: He would join another up and coming star at Lucas
Speaker 1: Art's named David Grossman, and originally the game was meant
Speaker 1: to be a pretty serious homage to Treasure Island. It
Speaker 1: was more or less a straight laced pirate tail, kind
Speaker 1: of grim and gritty. Schaefer was brought on as a
Speaker 1: programmer and a writer for the project. While building the game,
Speaker 1: Schaffer and Grossman started to insert temporary placeholder dialogue just
Speaker 1: so that something was there. It wasn't meant to represent
Speaker 1: the final game, and their impish sense of humor meant
Speaker 1: they threw in a lot of jokes. Pirates who were
Speaker 1: meant to be scurvy dogs who inspired fear, and all
Speaker 1: who met them transformed into odd ball characters with silly
Speaker 1: names and dialogue options. Schaefer's temporary dialogue with such a
Speaker 1: huge hit, so much so that Gilbert actually decided to
Speaker 1: change directions with the game and make it a comedic
Speaker 1: action adventure set in the pirate world, and thus The
Speaker 1: Secret of Monkey Island was born. In the game, you
Speaker 1: play as guy Brush three Wood, a bit of a
Speaker 1: dweeb who wants to become a pirate. Three woods nemesis
Speaker 1: is the evil pirate Lachuk. There was a series of
Speaker 1: weird adventures, odd puzzles, and lots of jokes. The player
Speaker 1: eventually faces down Lachuk and through the power of carbonated beverages,
Speaker 1: stands triumphant. The game received good reviews and a positive
Speaker 1: response from players, and so the same creative team got
Speaker 1: together to work on a sequel, The Secret of Monkey
Speaker 1: Island to La Chuck's Revenge. Grossman and Schaefer worked well
Speaker 1: together and impressed the executives at Lucas Arts, so the
Speaker 1: two were given the opportunity to act as project co
Speaker 1: leeds on a new game, a sequel to Maniac Mansion
Speaker 1: called Day of the Tentacle. This was a comedic time
Speaker 1: travel adventure and it too received positive response. Schaefer's work
Speaker 1: on the Monkey Island games and Day of the Tentacle
Speaker 1: convinced Lucas Arts that he should be allowed to work
Speaker 1: on a project of his very own. Schaefer decided to
Speaker 1: create a game that would incorporate one of his favorite
Speaker 1: genres of music, heavy metal. That game was called Full Throttle,
Speaker 1: which was released in nineteen and it featured an outlaw
Speaker 1: biker accused of a crime he didn't commit, but still
Speaker 1: contained a lot of humor as well. One of Schaefer's trademarks,
Speaker 1: you might say and Schaefer acted as lead developer on
Speaker 1: Full Throttle, writing and programming much of the game himself.
Speaker 1: It was one of the earliest games to feature a
Speaker 1: fully voiced game script, meaning every line was spoken by
Speaker 1: a character in the game, delivered by a voice actor
Speaker 1: up to that point, most games relied heavily on text,
Speaker 1: which wasn't nearly as resource intensive and obviously did not
Speaker 1: require voice actors. You might spice up a cut scene
Speaker 1: or something like that with a little voice acting, but
Speaker 1: it was extremely rare to find a game that included
Speaker 1: voice acting all the way through, and the voice actors
Speaker 1: included some folks you'd recognize at least by voice, if
Speaker 1: not by name. Maurice LaMarsh and Tress McNeil both provided
Speaker 1: voices for the game, as did the Jedi Master himself,
Speaker 1: Mark Hamill. Full Throttle also made use of licensed music,
Speaker 1: something that was new for Lucas Arts. The music came
Speaker 1: from a San Francisco rock band called the Gone Jackals.
Speaker 1: Gameplay was in a two D playing field and featured
Speaker 1: the point and click interface adventure gamers were used to it.
Speaker 1: Will also had a pie menu, which is a circular
Speaker 1: pop up that lets you pick different interaction options when
Speaker 1: you interact with some sort of object or character. For example,
Speaker 1: he might be able to pick up, push taste, or
Speaker 1: talk to something by selecting different options on this pop
Speaker 1: up menu, and you're highlighting a specific object or character.
Speaker 1: In addition to the adventure portions of the game. There
Speaker 1: were action sequences in which you'd try to fight off
Speaker 1: rival bikers while writing on your motorcycle. That created a
Speaker 1: certain arcade element in Full Throttle. The game received generally
Speaker 1: positive reviews, though by any measure it was a pretty
Speaker 1: short game, requiring only about four hours to complete, and
Speaker 1: that's if you're not even rushing. After Full Throttle, Schaefer
Speaker 1: created a game that I think is a real masterpiece,
Speaker 1: not just for Schaefer but for video games in general.
Speaker 1: I really think it's something special. It's called Grim Fandango.
Speaker 1: It's another point and click adventure game, and it came
Speaker 1: out in Grim Fandango. Unlike the other adventure games in LucasArts,
Speaker 1: did not use the Scum engine. Instead, Shaffer's team developed
Speaker 1: a new game engine called grim E and a scripting
Speaker 1: language called Lua. Actually they didn't develop Lua, but they
Speaker 1: used it. Rather than pointing and clicking to move your
Speaker 1: character around, you could use keyboard controls to move about
Speaker 1: the environment in a tank like control scheme, meaning you
Speaker 1: could use certain keys that would allow you to pivot
Speaker 1: left or pivot right, and other keys would make you
Speaker 1: walk forward or backward. The game's setting was the Land
Speaker 1: of the Dead, inspired by the folklore of Mexico with
Speaker 1: a strong film noir motif. The player takes control of
Speaker 1: a Department of Death employee named Manny Calavera, who must
Speaker 1: investigate a mystery that suggests there's some high level corruption
Speaker 1: going on in the world of death. The game is quirky,
Speaker 1: it is challenging, and it's filled with tons of nods
Speaker 1: to classic film noir cinema like Casablanca or The Maltese Falcon.
Speaker 1: It received critical acclaim and in TWI it was the
Speaker 1: subject of a remastered edition, which has updated controls, graphics,
Speaker 1: and a commentary track featuring Tim Shaefer and other members
Speaker 1: of the development team. And if you haven't tried it out,
Speaker 1: I recommend giving it a go. It can be a
Speaker 1: little frustrating at times, but that's Schaefer's style to present
Speaker 1: the player with a tricky situation that requires a lot
Speaker 1: of adaptation to figure out how to get out of it.
Speaker 1: In fact, Shaefer has talked at length about the tragedy
Speaker 1: of creating computer tutorials for every single game. He said
Speaker 1: a lot of fun he had as a player was
Speaker 1: learning how the game worked and how you interacted with it.
Speaker 1: And trying to figure out ways to solve puzzles, but
Speaker 1: that a lot of games these days kind of spell
Speaker 1: everything out, giving you step by step instructions on what
Speaker 1: you need to do in order to get through a section.
Speaker 1: He says, well, where's the fun in that? If I
Speaker 1: walk up to a puzzle and then the computer says, hey,
Speaker 1: why don't you try picking up this thing and using
Speaker 1: it with that thing? It takes the joy of that
Speaker 1: discovery away from me. So Shaefer goes with an approach
Speaker 1: where he specifically tries to design games that are a
Speaker 1: little confusing, but intriguingly confusing, not frustratingly. So that's his
Speaker 1: goal at any rate. However, after Grim Vandango went gold
Speaker 1: and got tons of critical acclaim, he found himself in
Speaker 1: a bit of a tricky situation. And I'll explain more
Speaker 1: in just a second, but first let's take another quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor. Schaefer's next project that Lucas Arts,
Speaker 1: never saw the light of day. It was a project
Speaker 1: meant for the PlayStation two, but never really emerged from
Speaker 1: early development. I don't even have a name for this
Speaker 1: game or what it was supposed to be about. It
Speaker 1: really didn't get very far at all. But around that
Speaker 1: same time, there was a shift in LucasArts away from
Speaker 1: the adventure style games that Schaefer had really cut his
Speaker 1: teeth on, and Schaefer himself wanted to try something new
Speaker 1: and develop his own company with his own identity and culture.
Speaker 1: He had worked for Lucas Arts for a decade and
Speaker 1: so he thought, maybe it's time to strike out on
Speaker 1: my own, and so Schaefer, along with a few other
Speaker 1: LucasArts employees, left to found a new game studio called
Speaker 1: Double Fine Productions in June two thousand. The first game
Speaker 1: to come out of Double Fine was Psycho Knots a
Speaker 1: few years later, and that's a platforming game in which
Speaker 1: you play as as a psychically gifted young boy who
Speaker 1: infiltrates a special summer camp for kids with superpowers, and
Speaker 1: the real purpose of the camp is to train kids
Speaker 1: to become special agents called Psycho Knots, which is a
Speaker 1: job that Raz would really like to have. He discovers
Speaker 1: there's something hinky going on at the camp and the
Speaker 1: story unfolds from there and again it received really great reviews,
Speaker 1: but sadly sales were a little lackluster. The next title,
Speaker 1: from Double Fine and Schaefer was Brutal Legend, and Brutal
Speaker 1: has a really good name for the process of what
Speaker 1: the company went through in trying to bring this game
Speaker 1: to life. A Brutal Legend is a real time strategy
Speaker 1: action adventure game that had a heavy metal soundtrack, an
Speaker 1: extensive one. Schaefer wanted to combine elements of fantasy and
Speaker 1: heavy metal, largely because a lot of heavy metal albums
Speaker 1: feature artwork that's inspired by fantasy genre. Just look at
Speaker 1: any Ally Hatchett album cover and you'll know what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. And there were even tons of songs in
Speaker 1: heavy metal that dealt with fantasy concepts. As Schaefer said,
Speaker 1: there's heavy metal songs about fighting orcs. Why can't we
Speaker 1: bring these two things together in a video game? So
Speaker 1: he thought they were a really great match. And if
Speaker 1: you want to talk soundtracks, Brutal Legend has got to
Speaker 1: be up there. I mean, the game has more than
Speaker 1: a hundred licensed heavy metal tracks from bands like Motorhead,
Speaker 1: Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, and Kiss, among others. The protagonist
Speaker 1: of the game is voiced by Jack Black of Tenacious D,
Speaker 1: and there's even a Tenacious D song on the soundtrack
Speaker 1: as well, and there's even a track from the cartoon
Speaker 1: death metal band Death Clock in there. His company developed
Speaker 1: the game, but they found it difficult to get a
Speaker 1: publisher too many companies had misgivings about the real time
Speaker 1: strategy elements. Originally, Sierra Entertainment, which was part of Vivendi
Speaker 1: Games at that time, was going to publish Brutal Legend,
Speaker 1: but then Activision acquired Vivendi and Activision backed out of
Speaker 1: the agreement. According to Activision CEO Robert Kotick, dropping the
Speaker 1: game was not done just on a whim, but rather
Speaker 1: because the team was falling behind on deadlines. They were
Speaker 1: missing those deadlines and he felt that the game didn't
Speaker 1: look like it was going to be any good. So
Speaker 1: I guess there was nothing personal. It was just business.
Speaker 1: But the story goes that Double Find didn't find out
Speaker 1: about their game being dropped by Activision until they saw
Speaker 1: a press release for upcoming titles from Activision that failed
Speaker 1: to have Brutal Legend on it, and that's how they
Speaker 1: found out their game was not going to be published.
Speaker 1: Schaefer was not allowed to talk about the status of
Speaker 1: the game while his team looked for another publisher. They
Speaker 1: eventually found one, an Electronic Arts or e A, but
Speaker 1: then Activision sued Double Fine, saying that the company had
Speaker 1: invested millions of dollars in this game and that some
Speaker 1: other publishers shouldn't be able to just sweep in and
Speaker 1: become the benefactor for the company and thus realize all
Speaker 1: the profits out of the investment from Activision, And anyway,
Speaker 1: Activision and Double Fine were still in negotiations to publish
Speaker 1: this game in the first place. Double Fine counter suit Activision, saying, no,
Speaker 1: you dropped this game. It severed all obligations because you
Speaker 1: pulled your support, and things got really heated. Schaefer was
Speaker 1: clearly affected by the situation in a really negative way,
Speaker 1: and before the matter could receive an official court decision,
Speaker 1: the parties settled out of court under a private agreement.
Speaker 1: Brutal Legend published under e A again. The game got
Speaker 1: great reviews, but sales just didn't follow suit. Part of
Speaker 1: the problem may have been in the marketing. Schaefer's team
Speaker 1: had set up from the beginning to create a real
Speaker 1: time strategy action adventure game, but aren'ts games were a
Speaker 1: bit in a bit of a lull and e A
Speaker 1: seemed less inclined to market a game that was in
Speaker 1: that genre, so instead, marketing focused on Jack Black's involvement
Speaker 1: and the heavy metal angle, but not so much on
Speaker 1: the actual gameplay inside the game, and gamers may not
Speaker 1: have known what the game actually was like, and therefore
Speaker 1: they just never bothered to pick it up. The first
Speaker 1: two titles from Double Fine were praised for their design,
Speaker 1: their story, their execution. The problem was people just weren't
Speaker 1: buying the games. Morale was at a low point for
Speaker 1: a Double Fine, and Schaefer was feeling it too. Actually,
Speaker 1: during the production of Brutal Legend and before its publication,
Speaker 1: Schaefer made a decision. The game's development had taken much
Speaker 1: longer than anticipated. The delays were really wearing the team down.
Speaker 1: The publishing woes were incredibly stressful, and what had started
Speaker 1: out as a passion project about heavy metal and fantasy
Speaker 1: had become a source of stress and anxiety, and Schaefer
Speaker 1: instituted what he called the Amnesia Fortnight's. The Amnesia Fortnits
Speaker 1: was a type of work retreat. Everyone at the company
Speaker 1: was to stop work for two weeks. They were all
Speaker 1: to divide up into four different teams and each team
Speaker 1: was to come up with an idea for a game.
Speaker 1: This exercise was meant to be a fun distraction for
Speaker 1: Double Find employees. It would turn out to be a
Speaker 1: solution to save the company. But I'll talk more about
Speaker 1: that in our next episode about Tim Schaefer. For now,
Speaker 1: it's time to say goodbye to all our company. But
Speaker 1: if you have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: whether it's a technology, a person in tech, maybe there's
Speaker 1: someone you want me to interview on the show. I
Speaker 1: would love to get Tim Schaefer on here to talk
Speaker 1: about his philosophy and game design and the challenges that
Speaker 1: he's faced. That would be fantastic. But if you have
Speaker 1: suggestions for people I should talk to or subjects I
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