WEBVTT - Tim Schafer and Double Fine Productions 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:07.200 Get in text with technology with tech Stuff from half 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:14.480 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:14.520 --> 0:00:17.960 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer and 0:00:18.000 --> 0:00:20.880 how stuff Works and I love all things tech. And 0:00:21.000 --> 0:00:24.680 in our last episode, we learned about how game designer 0:00:24.760 --> 0:00:27.639 Tim Schafer got his start in the business, first with 0:00:27.720 --> 0:00:31.320 a decade of work at Lucas Arts, creating adventure games 0:00:31.360 --> 0:00:34.240 like Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle, and then 0:00:34.280 --> 0:00:38.080 as he launched his own game studio called Double Fine Productions. 0:00:38.360 --> 0:00:40.839 We left off talking about how the second title from 0:00:40.880 --> 0:00:45.000 that studio, Brutal Legend, had a laborious development process that 0:00:45.080 --> 0:00:48.400 culminated in a struggle to find a publisher. The studio 0:00:48.440 --> 0:00:51.680 had produced two games at this point, Psycho Nuts and 0:00:51.840 --> 0:00:56.000 the aforementioned Brutal Legend, and they both received a favorable 0:00:56.040 --> 0:01:00.920 response from critics, but they only enjoyed somewhat luke warm sales. 0:01:01.400 --> 0:01:04.080 But let's take a quick step back into those early 0:01:04.200 --> 0:01:06.600 days at Double Fine since I didn't really get to 0:01:06.640 --> 0:01:08.600 dive into too much detail at the end of the 0:01:08.640 --> 0:01:11.520 last episode, and this is going to help us understand 0:01:11.520 --> 0:01:13.920 the journey Tim Shaefer and his company have been on 0:01:14.040 --> 0:01:17.319 since its founding. When the company looked for its first 0:01:17.360 --> 0:01:20.600 office space in the San Francisco area in two thousand one, 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:25.119 they found there weren't many affordable options. This was right 0:01:25.360 --> 0:01:28.840 toward the end of the dot com bubble inflating, so 0:01:29.200 --> 0:01:32.520 you had a lot of young companies flush with cash 0:01:32.600 --> 0:01:35.240 and they were just taking up office space left and 0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:39.280 right in the Bay area. So originally, Double Find Productions 0:01:39.280 --> 0:01:42.880 rented out an old warehouse on Clara Street, which was 0:01:42.920 --> 0:01:46.360 in a kind of rough neighborhood. The warehouse had no heat, 0:01:46.880 --> 0:01:49.600 and the space heaters they tried to plug in drew 0:01:49.640 --> 0:01:52.000 too much power and would trip the circuit breakers, so 0:01:52.040 --> 0:01:55.160 they couldn't use them. There was a rat problem apparently, 0:01:55.480 --> 0:01:58.640 and the neighborhood was home to troubled individuals and criminals. 0:01:58.680 --> 0:02:03.360 It just was not a good scene. And yet this 0:02:03.440 --> 0:02:06.000 was where the company began to work on its first game, 0:02:06.160 --> 0:02:10.639 the platform er Psycho Knots, set in the various imaginations 0:02:10.680 --> 0:02:15.480 of different characters. For about two years, Double Fine Productions 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:18.520 stuck around in this warehouse, but in two thousand three 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:22.280 the price of office space fell dramatically. The dot com 0:02:22.280 --> 0:02:24.960 bubble had burst by then, and many startup companies that 0:02:25.080 --> 0:02:29.320 had driven up the rental prices now no longer even existed, 0:02:29.520 --> 0:02:31.840 so it opened up a vacuum in the office space 0:02:31.880 --> 0:02:35.440 market in San Francisco, and Double Fine Productions was still around, 0:02:35.480 --> 0:02:37.600 so they were able to move into a nicer space. 0:02:37.919 --> 0:02:40.960 They still had not yet launched their game. However, that 0:02:41.080 --> 0:02:45.919 same year, the company experienced a really nasty internal shake up, 0:02:45.960 --> 0:02:48.880 all due to a failed attempt to make game design 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:53.760 more efficient. During the development process, certain people became level 0:02:53.919 --> 0:02:57.280 designers on Psycho Knots, so it was their job to 0:02:57.360 --> 0:03:00.360 come up with a concept for a specific level within 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:02.840 the game. They were to write out all the action 0:03:02.960 --> 0:03:05.880 pathways that you could potentially take through that level, and 0:03:05.880 --> 0:03:08.639 they were also supposed to describe all the different game events, 0:03:09.000 --> 0:03:11.280 and then they would hand over this work to an 0:03:11.400 --> 0:03:14.799 artist to bring those ideas to life, and the artists 0:03:14.840 --> 0:03:18.040 were given the job of creating the visual geometry for 0:03:18.160 --> 0:03:21.240 the levels. But that rubbed the designers the wrong way, 0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:25.160 who felt their ideas were being superseded by the artists. 0:03:25.160 --> 0:03:29.680 So you suddenly had this this this struggle between designers 0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:33.880 and artists about how a vision should be realized. The 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:37.400 level designers and the artists used the same set of tools, 0:03:37.920 --> 0:03:40.240 which turned out to be a bad thing, because soon 0:03:40.320 --> 0:03:43.560 there was this ugly pattern of levels being written and 0:03:43.800 --> 0:03:49.480 overwritten and redesigned repeatedly by both designers and artists competing 0:03:49.640 --> 0:03:52.960 to get their version into the game, and it led 0:03:53.000 --> 0:03:56.960 to unplayable levels. And then one day in two thousand three, 0:03:57.400 --> 0:04:01.320 all but one of the level designer were fired after 0:04:01.360 --> 0:04:05.200 this process had nearly torn the project apart. There was 0:04:05.320 --> 0:04:08.160 no producer on the game at that point, and Tim 0:04:08.200 --> 0:04:11.880 Schaefer was busy handling corporate level issues, so he couldn't 0:04:11.880 --> 0:04:14.880 dedicate his time to overseeing the project directly. He was 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:18.240 trying to be all things to all people, the lead 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:21.560 developer on a game while also being the head of 0:04:21.600 --> 0:04:25.520 that company. The one remaining level designer left on staff 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:28.600 was Eric Robson, who was put in charge of artists, 0:04:28.680 --> 0:04:32.040 and a new department was created called world Builder and 0:04:32.080 --> 0:04:35.440 that became responsible for level design. Things went a little 0:04:35.480 --> 0:04:38.840 bit more smoothly from that point forward, but the shakedown 0:04:38.880 --> 0:04:43.480 and staff understandably upset many on the team. Now at 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:46.719 the time, Microsoft was signed on to be the publisher 0:04:46.720 --> 0:04:48.880 of Psycho Knots. It was meant to be an Xbox 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:53.920 exclusive game, Microsoft requested a demonstration of the quote fund 0:04:54.120 --> 0:04:57.080 factor end quote of the game, or else it was 0:04:57.120 --> 0:04:59.480 going to cancel this agreement and say, all right, we're 0:04:59.480 --> 0:05:03.200 not gonna undo your development anymore. So the development team 0:05:03.240 --> 0:05:05.560 got to work and built out a level. It was 0:05:05.600 --> 0:05:09.600 specifically the black Velvetopia level in Psycho Knots. If you 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:12.799 played the game, maybe you're familiar with it. Microsoft appeared 0:05:12.800 --> 0:05:17.280 to be satisfied and the arrangement continued for a short while. 0:05:17.760 --> 0:05:20.920 In February four, just as things were really coming together, 0:05:21.480 --> 0:05:25.120 Microsoft canceled its agreement to publish the game, and this 0:05:25.200 --> 0:05:28.120 was a huge blow to the team. As Tim Schaefer 0:05:28.160 --> 0:05:31.240 would explain in a talk at the Game Developers Conference, 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:35.599 the way games get made typically follows this process. You 0:05:35.680 --> 0:05:38.159 have a developer that gets an idea for a game. 0:05:38.680 --> 0:05:41.279 They pitched their idea to a publisher, and if the 0:05:41.279 --> 0:05:44.520 publisher likes this idea, they agreed to fund the development 0:05:44.640 --> 0:05:48.000 of the game. The developer gets money from the publisher 0:05:48.160 --> 0:05:50.600 and they use that money to build out the agreed 0:05:50.680 --> 0:05:54.039 upon game. All that money goes to developing tools, paying 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:57.279 people salaries, et cetera. Now, once the game is ready 0:05:57.279 --> 0:06:00.760 to ship, it's gone. Gold. The publisher takes this completed 0:06:00.800 --> 0:06:03.799 game and then sells it to customers, which can actually 0:06:03.800 --> 0:06:06.120 be a multi step process as you can go through 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:10.120 various distributors like retail stores, but we're simplifying this for 0:06:10.160 --> 0:06:13.560 this example. Customers then by the game and the publisher 0:06:13.760 --> 0:06:16.680 once it has recouped the cost of funding, the game 0:06:17.040 --> 0:06:20.680 starts to share a portion of the profits with the developer, 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:23.920 and so a developer only sees profit if the game 0:06:24.000 --> 0:06:27.680 sales go really well. Otherwise, the only money the developer 0:06:27.720 --> 0:06:30.160 gets is during the actual development phase of the game. 0:06:30.240 --> 0:06:33.720 That's not profit, that's just covering the cost of development. 0:06:34.320 --> 0:06:37.799 So when Microsoft canceled its publisher agreement with Double Fine, 0:06:37.839 --> 0:06:40.839 it left the studio without funding to complete the game. 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:44.920 Ed Freeze, a Microsoft executive who had been in favor 0:06:45.040 --> 0:06:49.760 of publishing the game, had left Microsoft, and Double Fine 0:06:49.800 --> 0:06:52.920 found itself with no more supporters at the company. As 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:57.080 Psycho Knots executive producer Caroline as Murdoch said to Game 0:06:57.120 --> 0:07:00.719 Developer Magazine back in two thousand five, the remaining executives 0:07:00.760 --> 0:07:04.760 at Microsoft appeared to view Double Fine as being late 0:07:04.920 --> 0:07:08.640 to delivery and too expensive and not worth the investment. 0:07:09.040 --> 0:07:11.680 So the studio had to look around for another publisher. 0:07:12.240 --> 0:07:15.400 For months, Schaefer and as Murdoch worked to keep the 0:07:15.440 --> 0:07:19.440 project moving forward even in the absence of funding. They 0:07:19.520 --> 0:07:22.560 tried to keep the development team focused on meeting deadlines. 0:07:23.000 --> 0:07:25.119 It was hard to do, as no one was even 0:07:25.200 --> 0:07:27.520 sure their work was ever going to be seen or 0:07:27.600 --> 0:07:31.080 experienced by anyone, and not everyone was on the same 0:07:31.120 --> 0:07:34.840 page and the development team there were disagreements about elements 0:07:34.840 --> 0:07:37.640 within the game itself. It was also hard to find 0:07:37.680 --> 0:07:41.080 a publisher willing to take a risk on a quirky 0:07:41.160 --> 0:07:45.119 game that did not rely upon an established intellectual property. 0:07:45.160 --> 0:07:49.560 But eventually, in July two thousand, four months after Microsoft 0:07:49.640 --> 0:07:52.960 had already pulled out, Double Fine found a new publisher 0:07:53.120 --> 0:07:57.360 in Majesco Entertainment. While the company received funding once again, 0:07:57.800 --> 0:08:00.800 it came with some conditions, and one of those was 0:08:00.880 --> 0:08:03.920 there wasn't enough money to hire on additional staff to 0:08:03.960 --> 0:08:07.520 help finish the game. Another condition was that the promised 0:08:07.600 --> 0:08:10.920 deliverables were still in play, so that meant the development 0:08:10.960 --> 0:08:13.960 team had to do more work than they anticipated to 0:08:14.040 --> 0:08:17.160 get the game done on time, which resulted in what, 0:08:17.280 --> 0:08:21.240 as Murdoch said, was quote the most insane crunch I 0:08:21.320 --> 0:08:24.800 have ever witnessed end quote and crunches when you've got 0:08:24.800 --> 0:08:27.120 everybody working on a project over time in order to 0:08:27.120 --> 0:08:30.720 get it to ship on deadline. The team pushed themselves 0:08:30.800 --> 0:08:34.440 hard for nearly another year, with Psycho Knots going gold 0:08:34.480 --> 0:08:37.600 in two thousand five. According to as Murdoch, this was 0:08:37.679 --> 0:08:41.600 done without ever once missing a single payroll day, which 0:08:41.640 --> 0:08:44.280 is a testament to Schaefer and as Murdoch's work to 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:49.040 manage money carefully during the arduous process. As Murdoch pointed out, 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:51.600 one of the big problems during the development of Psycho 0:08:51.640 --> 0:08:56.440 Knots was that Schaefer had been unwilling to delegate responsibilities. 0:08:56.720 --> 0:08:59.599 He wanted to define the culture of Double Fine. He 0:08:59.640 --> 0:09:02.360 wanted to make it a special place to work, and 0:09:02.400 --> 0:09:05.240 he was worried that if he brought on executives to 0:09:05.280 --> 0:09:10.120 head up the various departments like HR, finance, operations, web development, 0:09:10.160 --> 0:09:13.560 et cetera, before he could define what the work culture 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:17.120 at Double Fine should be like, that would cause big problems. 0:09:17.160 --> 0:09:20.360 They would end up defining the culture rather than Schaefer. 0:09:20.920 --> 0:09:23.200 So he decided he would do it all, but that 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:27.720 meant he was constantly dealing with one emergency situation after another, 0:09:28.040 --> 0:09:31.120 and he couldn't focus on game development to the detriment 0:09:31.160 --> 0:09:34.560 of the company. And as tough as Psycho Nauts was, 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:38.240 things would not go easier during the development of Brutal Legend, 0:09:38.440 --> 0:09:41.960 the real time strategy adventure game married fantasy elements with 0:09:42.120 --> 0:09:46.360 heavy metal music, and Double Find was having a real 0:09:46.440 --> 0:09:48.920 hard time finding a publisher. They shot the idea around 0:09:48.920 --> 0:09:52.360 for a while, but they finally were able to find 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:55.920 somebody interested in publishing this game, and that was Vivendi 0:09:56.280 --> 0:10:01.120 Universal Games. But it didn't turn out to be the 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:05.880 publisher that would eventually actually publish that game. I'll explain 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:07.520 more in just a second, but first let's take a 0:10:07.600 --> 0:10:18.320 quick break to thank our sponsor. The Brutal Legend team 0:10:18.360 --> 0:10:22.080 decided first to focus on the multiplayer part of the 0:10:22.120 --> 0:10:26.480 game because Double Find hadn't done a multiplayer game before. 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:30.320 Schaefer had not done it before, and so they took 0:10:30.440 --> 0:10:32.800 nearly a year and a half to work on the 0:10:32.880 --> 0:10:36.520 multiplayer concept, after which Vivendi said to the team, hey, 0:10:36.880 --> 0:10:39.640 how about now you focus on the solo player experience. 0:10:39.640 --> 0:10:41.160 We want to see what that's going to look like. 0:10:41.800 --> 0:10:44.640 In October two thousand and six, Double Fine started work 0:10:44.720 --> 0:10:47.480 on the solo campaign and began casting the voice talent, 0:10:47.559 --> 0:10:51.640 including casting Jack Black as the game's protagonist. It wasn't 0:10:51.679 --> 0:10:54.719 until June two thousand and seven that the team had 0:10:54.760 --> 0:10:57.360 something to show Vivendi to give an indication of where 0:10:57.400 --> 0:11:00.680 the solo campaign was heading. By that time, the development 0:11:00.679 --> 0:11:04.120 team had changed the shape of the game significantly, which 0:11:04.200 --> 0:11:07.000 of course, had delayed things. The game missed its ship 0:11:07.120 --> 0:11:10.280 date twice and was delayed by nearly a year and 0:11:10.360 --> 0:11:13.600 a half. In that time, Vivendi dropped the game as 0:11:13.640 --> 0:11:17.960 publisher because Vivindi itself had been acquired by Activision, and 0:11:18.000 --> 0:11:22.240 then Electronic Arts stepped in as the new publisher. Double 0:11:22.280 --> 0:11:26.480 Find adopted the scrums system of development. Now. I covered 0:11:26.520 --> 0:11:29.719 this when I talked about agile systems in a recent podcast. 0:11:30.120 --> 0:11:35.080 Scrums involve sprints. These are work sessions during which teams 0:11:35.120 --> 0:11:38.960 focus on specific deliverables rather than the full project, and 0:11:39.000 --> 0:11:43.120 they have daily meetings to discuss deadlines, obstacles, and progress 0:11:43.200 --> 0:11:46.920 on those deliverables. The change to scrum helped Double Find 0:11:46.960 --> 0:11:49.600 focus on what needed to happen and allowed for more 0:11:49.679 --> 0:11:53.400 regular progress on the game development, but there were still 0:11:53.600 --> 0:11:58.480 many setbacks. The team depended heavily on middleware, so this 0:11:58.559 --> 0:12:01.400 is software created by other companies to do much of 0:12:01.400 --> 0:12:04.080 the work for Brutal Legend. So a lot of the 0:12:04.160 --> 0:12:07.880 elements that allowed the developers to build game elements in 0:12:07.960 --> 0:12:11.839 the game came from middleware, and about half the middleware 0:12:12.000 --> 0:12:15.600 worked great, but the other half didn't, and that slowed 0:12:15.640 --> 0:12:18.680 things down. In addition, while the team had made Psycho 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:21.760 Knots for the Xbox, Brutal Legend was supposed to come 0:12:21.760 --> 0:12:24.880 out on the Xbox three sixty and the PlayStation three, 0:12:24.920 --> 0:12:29.079 which required new tools, new processes, it required new training 0:12:29.160 --> 0:12:31.800 so that the game could run on this more advanced hardware. 0:12:32.240 --> 0:12:35.440 And then there was that lawsuit that Activision brought against 0:12:35.440 --> 0:12:38.280 Double Fine and e A Games. It would eventually be 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:41.199 settled out of court, but the stress took its toll 0:12:41.360 --> 0:12:44.120 on Tim Shaefer and the executive team. This is what 0:12:44.240 --> 0:12:47.360 led to Schaefer declaring the entire company would participate in 0:12:47.520 --> 0:12:51.560 Amnesia Fortnite, in which everybody split up into four teams 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:54.520 and each team attempted to make a game. What's more, 0:12:54.840 --> 0:12:58.079 people could step outside their normal roles at Double Fine 0:12:58.160 --> 0:13:00.880 and try their hand at something else, so a game 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:04.439 designer could become an artist, and artists could become a designer, etcetera. 0:13:04.679 --> 0:13:07.000 And so the four teams got to work creating games 0:13:07.040 --> 0:13:10.400 completely unrelated to Brutal Legend other than the fact that 0:13:10.440 --> 0:13:12.720 it was using the game engine, and it ended up 0:13:12.720 --> 0:13:16.080 being an incredible success. The teams were happy to work 0:13:16.080 --> 0:13:19.760 on something new and try on new responsibilities. Each team 0:13:19.800 --> 0:13:25.880 produced a playable prototype game. The four prototypes were called Tiny, Personal, Ninja, 0:13:26.320 --> 0:13:32.120 Happy Song, Threnched, and Operation Your Desk Is Disgusting. Everybody 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:34.599 was able to go back to work re energized. E 0:13:34.800 --> 0:13:37.480 A published Brutal Legend, and the team began to rev 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:41.880 up to develop Brutal Legend too, But then they had 0:13:41.920 --> 0:13:44.800 the rug pulled out from under them again. Electronic Arts 0:13:44.880 --> 0:13:47.720 canceled the game. They didn't even want to push out 0:13:47.760 --> 0:13:51.200 the patches that Double Fine had created for the original 0:13:51.240 --> 0:13:55.440 Brutal Legend game. Schaefer held another Amnesia Fortnite, which would 0:13:55.600 --> 0:13:59.360 end up becoming a regular tradition at Double Fine, and miraculously, 0:13:59.760 --> 0:14:03.319 all all four prototypes they came out of this exercise 0:14:03.880 --> 0:14:06.880 ended up getting picked up by publishers, so they became 0:14:06.960 --> 0:14:11.400 actual games, not just projects within Double Fine. Those four 0:14:11.480 --> 0:14:16.760 games were called Costume Quest, Stacking Iron Brigade, and Sesame 0:14:16.840 --> 0:14:21.800 Street Once Upon a Monster. The morale exercise literally ended 0:14:21.880 --> 0:14:24.400 up saving the company, as Double Fine wouldn't have been 0:14:24.400 --> 0:14:27.320 able to make payroll once the sequel to Brutal Legend 0:14:27.400 --> 0:14:31.640 got the acts, so to speak, an actual acts, not 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:35.280 a not a guitar. You know, heavy metal squidly did 0:14:35.400 --> 0:14:38.520 we do? Double Fine continued to make games both for 0:14:38.640 --> 0:14:42.160 consoles and mobile platforms, with the occasional port to PC. 0:14:42.760 --> 0:14:46.280 Schaefer meanwhile, kept his hand on the helm of the company, 0:14:46.360 --> 0:14:48.240 which meant he didn't have a whole lot of time 0:14:48.240 --> 0:14:50.160 to do what he loved in the first place, which 0:14:50.200 --> 0:14:53.280 was making games. In two thousand and twelve, he did 0:14:53.320 --> 0:14:55.800 take the lead on a game concept he came up 0:14:55.800 --> 0:14:58.600 with while thinking about his daughter, who was about two 0:14:58.680 --> 0:15:01.040 years old at the time. He wanted a game he 0:15:01.080 --> 0:15:04.160 could play with her. His decision was to develop a 0:15:04.240 --> 0:15:08.320 game for the Xbox three sixty Connect system. The Connect, 0:15:08.480 --> 0:15:11.600 for those who do not remember, was a special peripheral 0:15:11.640 --> 0:15:14.240 device for the Xbox three sixty, and then there was 0:15:14.280 --> 0:15:17.240 another version that was later made for the Xbox One. 0:15:17.400 --> 0:15:21.680 It contains several sensors such as a microphone and special cameras. 0:15:21.880 --> 0:15:24.400 One of those cameras was an infrared camera that could 0:15:24.440 --> 0:15:27.520 help the connect since depth, and here's how it worked 0:15:27.520 --> 0:15:31.280 in a nutshell. The Connect had an infrared projector which 0:15:31.320 --> 0:15:34.720 projected light in the infrared spectrum, so that essentially a 0:15:34.760 --> 0:15:37.800 grid of reference points would overlay the area in front 0:15:37.840 --> 0:15:41.440 of the connect. So if you had your Microsoft Xbox 0:15:41.680 --> 0:15:43.880 three sixty in your living room and you had to 0:15:43.880 --> 0:15:47.120 Connect attached to it, it was actually projecting a grid 0:15:47.280 --> 0:15:50.920 of infrared light across your living room. The grids invisible 0:15:50.960 --> 0:15:54.160 to humans because we cannot see in the infrared range, 0:15:54.200 --> 0:15:58.160 at least not without technological help, but the infrared camera 0:15:58.320 --> 0:16:01.600 on the Connect could pick it up just fine. As 0:16:01.600 --> 0:16:04.360 objects moved within the view of the camera, they would 0:16:04.360 --> 0:16:07.800 deform the grid. The Connect could send the information onto 0:16:07.800 --> 0:16:11.960 the Xbox, which could interpret the movements as commands, including 0:16:12.000 --> 0:16:14.640 movements that were toward or away from the camera, by 0:16:14.760 --> 0:16:17.960 looking at the way the grid was deformed. The Connect 0:16:18.120 --> 0:16:21.760 never got a whole lot of traction in the gaming community, 0:16:22.040 --> 0:16:24.840 partly because many gamers felt that there were very few 0:16:24.880 --> 0:16:28.520 titles that made good use of the technology, But hackers 0:16:29.000 --> 0:16:31.600 loved the Connect as it gave them access to an 0:16:31.600 --> 0:16:34.760 inexpensive sensor array that could be used in all sorts 0:16:34.760 --> 0:16:38.280 of applications, from creating your own three D scanner to 0:16:38.840 --> 0:16:42.280 a sensor array for robotics. Anyway, back to the game 0:16:42.320 --> 0:16:45.000 that Schaefer wanted to make for his daughter. He called 0:16:45.040 --> 0:16:49.040 it Double Fine Happy Action Theater. Sometimes it's just called 0:16:49.080 --> 0:16:52.920 Happy Action Theater. The game includes many activities that take 0:16:52.960 --> 0:16:56.800 advantage of the connects capabilities without requiring the player to 0:16:56.880 --> 0:17:00.920 calibrate before gameplay with each session, which Schaefer felt was 0:17:01.000 --> 0:17:04.119 a barrier for kids who lacked the patients and attention 0:17:04.200 --> 0:17:06.760 span to stay in one place long enough to calibrate 0:17:06.800 --> 0:17:09.720 the system. So if you wanted to play the floors 0:17:09.800 --> 0:17:13.600 lava or create a montage of clones, you can. The 0:17:13.640 --> 0:17:18.359 game has an eighty on Metacritic, which aggregates reviews of 0:17:18.480 --> 0:17:21.360 games and the signs of score between one and one hundred. 0:17:22.080 --> 0:17:24.200 A lot of the games are really more activities than 0:17:24.240 --> 0:17:27.160 any kind of actual gameplay, but they were the sort 0:17:27.200 --> 0:17:31.000 of things that would appeal to very young players. Also, 0:17:31.040 --> 0:17:34.200 in February two thousand twelve, Tim Schaeffer decided to try 0:17:34.240 --> 0:17:38.399 something different from the normal game development process. Double Fine 0:17:38.440 --> 0:17:42.800 had been encountering problems with publishers, both with Psycho Nuts 0:17:42.800 --> 0:17:45.840 and Brutal Legend, and so Tim Schaeffer decided to try 0:17:45.840 --> 0:17:48.960 something new and he launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund 0:17:48.960 --> 0:17:51.800 the company's next game, which was a point and click 0:17:51.840 --> 0:17:55.600 adventure style game that at the time was called Double 0:17:55.720 --> 0:17:59.240 Fine Adventure. They said their fundraising goal to four hundred 0:17:59.240 --> 0:18:03.280 thousand dollars. They hit their goal in less than eight hours. 0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:07.320 When the campaign ended, Double Fine ended up raising three 0:18:07.440 --> 0:18:11.840 point three million dollars. It was a record setting Kickstarter 0:18:11.960 --> 0:18:14.320 campaign at the time, and it was the beginning of 0:18:14.359 --> 0:18:18.040 another story filled with challenges and headaches, not to mention 0:18:18.160 --> 0:18:22.119 some serious criticism from the gaming community. Now this is 0:18:22.160 --> 0:18:25.480 the beginning of the story of Broken Age, which I 0:18:25.480 --> 0:18:27.800 will tell you in a second. But first let's take 0:18:27.840 --> 0:18:38.400 another quick break to thank our sponsor. The whole decision 0:18:38.440 --> 0:18:42.040 to go with a crowdfunding approach actually came from outside 0:18:42.040 --> 0:18:46.040 the company. A documentary production company called Two Player Productions 0:18:46.080 --> 0:18:49.960 approached Double Fine with the desire to produce a documentary 0:18:50.080 --> 0:18:53.679 about the process of game development. Two Player Productions funded 0:18:53.680 --> 0:18:58.520 their documentaries largely through crowdfunding. This inspired Schaeffer to take 0:18:58.600 --> 0:19:02.760 a serious stab at crowdfunding himself. He had previously considered it, 0:19:03.160 --> 0:19:06.440 but was discouraged from doing so because the general consensus 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:10.520 was that crowdfunding would work for really small independent games 0:19:10.520 --> 0:19:14.000 with modest budgets, you know, something in the tens of 0:19:14.040 --> 0:19:17.480 thousands of dollars, but it wasn't a viable option if 0:19:17.480 --> 0:19:19.639 you wanted to make something closer to a Triple A 0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:23.359 title video game. Schaefer decided to give it a shot anyway, 0:19:23.440 --> 0:19:26.359 and he launched the campaign in February two thousand twelve. 0:19:27.000 --> 0:19:29.920 At the launch of the kick started campaign, Tim Schaefer 0:19:29.960 --> 0:19:32.440 had said that he wanted to lead a small team 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:35.600 of developers to make an adventure game that was fun 0:19:35.720 --> 0:19:40.080 and compelling, but not necessarily epic in scope. This would 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:42.800 be a return to the puzzle based gameplay of classic 0:19:42.880 --> 0:19:46.240 titles like Grim Van Dango, Monkey Island, and Day of 0:19:46.280 --> 0:19:50.040 the Tentacle. Schaefer estimated that development time would take between 0:19:50.119 --> 0:19:54.000 six and eight months. In reality, it would take much 0:19:54.000 --> 0:19:56.800 longer than that. The plan was to launch the game 0:19:56.920 --> 0:20:00.360 in October two thousand twelve. At that time, the game 0:20:00.400 --> 0:20:03.480 was still working under the title Double Fine Adventure. It 0:20:03.480 --> 0:20:08.040 wouldn't get the name Broken Age until March and the 0:20:08.080 --> 0:20:11.320 game still wasn't ready to launch at that point. In July, 0:20:12.560 --> 0:20:15.960 Double Find made an announcement that raised many eyebrows. The 0:20:16.000 --> 0:20:18.800 company was going to release Broken Age in two parts, 0:20:19.080 --> 0:20:22.800 or acts. The kick started campaign would have effectively funded 0:20:22.840 --> 0:20:26.080 the first half or act of the game. The second 0:20:26.119 --> 0:20:28.919 act would draw its funding partly from the sales of 0:20:29.000 --> 0:20:32.280 the first act. In other words, campaign backers would only 0:20:32.280 --> 0:20:34.800 get half a game to start out with, though they 0:20:34.800 --> 0:20:37.120 were assured they'd have access to the full game once 0:20:37.119 --> 0:20:39.280 it was ready to go. The first half would go 0:20:39.320 --> 0:20:43.000 on sale in early when the second half promised for 0:20:43.080 --> 0:20:48.720 lateen but then pushed to early So what the heck 0:20:48.760 --> 0:20:53.040 was going on? Well? Basically, the runaway success of that 0:20:53.240 --> 0:20:56.520 funding campaign inspired the team to make a more ambitious 0:20:56.560 --> 0:21:00.000 project than they had originally pitched. They had originally thought 0:21:00.160 --> 0:21:02.240 they would use three hundred thousand dollars to fund the 0:21:02.280 --> 0:21:05.159 game and the other hundred thousand dollars would fund the documentary, 0:21:05.200 --> 0:21:07.439 but they made three point three million. There was so 0:21:07.520 --> 0:21:10.800 much support and excitement for an adventure game that Shaefer 0:21:10.800 --> 0:21:12.840 and his team wanted to step up their work and 0:21:12.880 --> 0:21:16.440 create something really special. And, as Shaefer would later say, 0:21:16.440 --> 0:21:20.120 he just designed too much game, and so they began 0:21:20.200 --> 0:21:22.480 to increase the scope of the game, which took more 0:21:22.520 --> 0:21:25.960 time and created more challenges during the development cycle, and 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:28.959 eventually the scope and work outgrew the funding for the 0:21:29.000 --> 0:21:31.280 game so and not only did they increase it, they 0:21:31.320 --> 0:21:34.320 went beyond the three point three million that they actually gathered, 0:21:34.520 --> 0:21:36.239 and that's when Shaefer and his team had to make 0:21:36.280 --> 0:21:38.919 the tough decision to split the game into two segments 0:21:39.280 --> 0:21:41.280 and use sales of the first half to fund the 0:21:41.320 --> 0:21:44.119 completion of the second half. In addition to making the 0:21:44.119 --> 0:21:47.199 game grander and scale, Shaver made the decision that they 0:21:47.200 --> 0:21:49.440 would use some of the funds to develop the game 0:21:49.480 --> 0:21:54.560 for other operating systems such as mac os, ten, lenox iOS, 0:21:54.640 --> 0:21:57.560 and Android. In addition, you can watch the two player 0:21:57.600 --> 0:22:01.880 productions documentary for free online. There are twenty episodes on 0:22:01.920 --> 0:22:05.040 YouTube and they range from about twenty five minutes long 0:22:05.160 --> 0:22:08.040 to more than an hour long, and it's pretty fascinating stuff. 0:22:08.040 --> 0:22:11.320 I recommend checking it out. According to Schaefer, Double Fine 0:22:11.440 --> 0:22:14.280 ended up spending about twice as much money developing the 0:22:14.320 --> 0:22:17.280 game as it had raised during the kickstarted campaign, so 0:22:17.320 --> 0:22:20.240 somewhere in the six million dollar range, and that sales 0:22:20.280 --> 0:22:22.480 of the game would mean the company would essentially break 0:22:22.600 --> 0:22:25.960 even on Broken Age. The game allows players to take 0:22:25.960 --> 0:22:28.600 control of two different characters who are in two very 0:22:28.640 --> 0:22:31.840 different environments. After the act break in the game, the 0:22:31.880 --> 0:22:35.200 two characters find their roles somewhat switched, and players get 0:22:35.200 --> 0:22:37.399 to experience what it's like when one character is thrust 0:22:37.520 --> 0:22:41.200 into the other character's world. The game got good reviews, 0:22:41.440 --> 0:22:43.800 though some people express frustration with the nature of the 0:22:43.840 --> 0:22:46.000 puzzles in the game. And if you listen to the 0:22:46.000 --> 0:22:48.439 first episode I did on Tim Schaefer, you know that 0:22:48.480 --> 0:22:51.280 those puzzles are his favorite part of adventure games. He 0:22:51.359 --> 0:22:55.199 loved the experience of experimentation figuring out what you have 0:22:55.320 --> 0:22:58.720 to do to progress further. But not everyone is crazy 0:22:58.760 --> 0:23:01.520 about that type of gameplay, and these days games tend 0:23:01.560 --> 0:23:04.080 to hold a player's hand a lot more in long 0:23:04.160 --> 0:23:08.920 tutorials and hint options. The crowdfunding experiment was a success, 0:23:09.080 --> 0:23:11.960 and Double Fine repeated it by going that route again 0:23:12.040 --> 0:23:15.359 to fund a game called Massive Chalice. They launched the 0:23:15.359 --> 0:23:19.639