Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with tech Stuff from half
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer and
Speaker 1: how stuff Works and I love all things tech. And
Speaker 1: in our last episode, we learned about how game designer
Speaker 1: Tim Schafer got his start in the business, first with
Speaker 1: a decade of work at Lucas Arts, creating adventure games
Speaker 1: like Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle, and then
Speaker 1: as he launched his own game studio called Double Fine Productions.
Speaker 1: We left off talking about how the second title from
Speaker 1: that studio, Brutal Legend, had a laborious development process that
Speaker 1: culminated in a struggle to find a publisher. The studio
Speaker 1: had produced two games at this point, Psycho Nuts and
Speaker 1: the aforementioned Brutal Legend, and they both received a favorable
Speaker 1: response from critics, but they only enjoyed somewhat luke warm sales.
Speaker 1: But let's take a quick step back into those early
Speaker 1: days at Double Fine since I didn't really get to
Speaker 1: dive into too much detail at the end of the
Speaker 1: last episode, and this is going to help us understand
Speaker 1: the journey Tim Shaefer and his company have been on
Speaker 1: since its founding. When the company looked for its first
Speaker 1: office space in the San Francisco area in two thousand one,
Speaker 1: they found there weren't many affordable options. This was right
Speaker 1: toward the end of the dot com bubble inflating, so
Speaker 1: you had a lot of young companies flush with cash
Speaker 1: and they were just taking up office space left and
Speaker 1: right in the Bay area. So originally, Double Find Productions
Speaker 1: rented out an old warehouse on Clara Street, which was
Speaker 1: in a kind of rough neighborhood. The warehouse had no heat,
Speaker 1: and the space heaters they tried to plug in drew
Speaker 1: too much power and would trip the circuit breakers, so
Speaker 1: they couldn't use them. There was a rat problem apparently,
Speaker 1: and the neighborhood was home to troubled individuals and criminals.
Speaker 1: It just was not a good scene. And yet this
Speaker 1: was where the company began to work on its first game,
Speaker 1: the platform er Psycho Knots, set in the various imaginations
Speaker 1: of different characters. For about two years, Double Fine Productions
Speaker 1: stuck around in this warehouse, but in two thousand three
Speaker 1: the price of office space fell dramatically. The dot com
Speaker 1: bubble had burst by then, and many startup companies that
Speaker 1: had driven up the rental prices now no longer even existed,
Speaker 1: so it opened up a vacuum in the office space
Speaker 1: market in San Francisco, and Double Fine Productions was still around,
Speaker 1: so they were able to move into a nicer space.
Speaker 1: They still had not yet launched their game. However, that
Speaker 1: same year, the company experienced a really nasty internal shake up,
Speaker 1: all due to a failed attempt to make game design
Speaker 1: more efficient. During the development process, certain people became level
Speaker 1: designers on Psycho Knots, so it was their job to
Speaker 1: come up with a concept for a specific level within
Speaker 1: the game. They were to write out all the action
Speaker 1: pathways that you could potentially take through that level, and
Speaker 1: they were also supposed to describe all the different game events,
Speaker 1: and then they would hand over this work to an
Speaker 1: artist to bring those ideas to life, and the artists
Speaker 1: were given the job of creating the visual geometry for
Speaker 1: the levels. But that rubbed the designers the wrong way,
Speaker 1: who felt their ideas were being superseded by the artists.
Speaker 1: So you suddenly had this this this struggle between designers
Speaker 1: and artists about how a vision should be realized. The
Speaker 1: level designers and the artists used the same set of tools,
Speaker 1: which turned out to be a bad thing, because soon
Speaker 1: there was this ugly pattern of levels being written and
Speaker 1: overwritten and redesigned repeatedly by both designers and artists competing
Speaker 1: to get their version into the game, and it led
Speaker 1: to unplayable levels. And then one day in two thousand three,
Speaker 1: all but one of the level designer were fired after
Speaker 1: this process had nearly torn the project apart. There was
Speaker 1: no producer on the game at that point, and Tim
Speaker 1: Schaefer was busy handling corporate level issues, so he couldn't
Speaker 1: dedicate his time to overseeing the project directly. He was
Speaker 1: trying to be all things to all people, the lead
Speaker 1: developer on a game while also being the head of
Speaker 1: that company. The one remaining level designer left on staff
Speaker 1: was Eric Robson, who was put in charge of artists,
Speaker 1: and a new department was created called world Builder and
Speaker 1: that became responsible for level design. Things went a little
Speaker 1: bit more smoothly from that point forward, but the shakedown
Speaker 1: and staff understandably upset many on the team. Now at
Speaker 1: the time, Microsoft was signed on to be the publisher
Speaker 1: of Psycho Knots. It was meant to be an Xbox
Speaker 1: exclusive game, Microsoft requested a demonstration of the quote fund
Speaker 1: factor end quote of the game, or else it was
Speaker 1: going to cancel this agreement and say, all right, we're
Speaker 1: not gonna undo your development anymore. So the development team
Speaker 1: got to work and built out a level. It was
Speaker 1: specifically the black Velvetopia level in Psycho Knots. If you
Speaker 1: played the game, maybe you're familiar with it. Microsoft appeared
Speaker 1: to be satisfied and the arrangement continued for a short while.
Speaker 1: In February four, just as things were really coming together,
Speaker 1: Microsoft canceled its agreement to publish the game, and this
Speaker 1: was a huge blow to the team. As Tim Schaefer
Speaker 1: would explain in a talk at the Game Developers Conference,
Speaker 1: the way games get made typically follows this process. You
Speaker 1: have a developer that gets an idea for a game.
Speaker 1: They pitched their idea to a publisher, and if the
Speaker 1: publisher likes this idea, they agreed to fund the development
Speaker 1: of the game. The developer gets money from the publisher
Speaker 1: and they use that money to build out the agreed
Speaker 1: upon game. All that money goes to developing tools, paying
Speaker 1: people salaries, et cetera. Now, once the game is ready
Speaker 1: to ship, it's gone. Gold. The publisher takes this completed
Speaker 1: game and then sells it to customers, which can actually
Speaker 1: be a multi step process as you can go through
Speaker 1: various distributors like retail stores, but we're simplifying this for
Speaker 1: this example. Customers then by the game and the publisher
Speaker 1: once it has recouped the cost of funding, the game
Speaker 1: starts to share a portion of the profits with the developer,
Speaker 1: and so a developer only sees profit if the game
Speaker 1: sales go really well. Otherwise, the only money the developer
Speaker 1: gets is during the actual development phase of the game.
Speaker 1: That's not profit, that's just covering the cost of development.
Speaker 1: So when Microsoft canceled its publisher agreement with Double Fine,
Speaker 1: it left the studio without funding to complete the game.
Speaker 1: Ed Freeze, a Microsoft executive who had been in favor
Speaker 1: of publishing the game, had left Microsoft, and Double Fine
Speaker 1: found itself with no more supporters at the company. As
Speaker 1: Psycho Knots executive producer Caroline as Murdoch said to Game
Speaker 1: Developer Magazine back in two thousand five, the remaining executives
Speaker 1: at Microsoft appeared to view Double Fine as being late
Speaker 1: to delivery and too expensive and not worth the investment.
Speaker 1: So the studio had to look around for another publisher.
Speaker 1: For months, Schaefer and as Murdoch worked to keep the
Speaker 1: project moving forward even in the absence of funding. They
Speaker 1: tried to keep the development team focused on meeting deadlines.
Speaker 1: It was hard to do, as no one was even
Speaker 1: sure their work was ever going to be seen or
Speaker 1: experienced by anyone, and not everyone was on the same
Speaker 1: page and the development team there were disagreements about elements
Speaker 1: within the game itself. It was also hard to find
Speaker 1: a publisher willing to take a risk on a quirky
Speaker 1: game that did not rely upon an established intellectual property.
Speaker 1: But eventually, in July two thousand, four months after Microsoft
Speaker 1: had already pulled out, Double Fine found a new publisher
Speaker 1: in Majesco Entertainment. While the company received funding once again,
Speaker 1: it came with some conditions, and one of those was
Speaker 1: there wasn't enough money to hire on additional staff to
Speaker 1: help finish the game. Another condition was that the promised
Speaker 1: deliverables were still in play, so that meant the development
Speaker 1: team had to do more work than they anticipated to
Speaker 1: get the game done on time, which resulted in what,
Speaker 1: as Murdoch said, was quote the most insane crunch I
Speaker 1: have ever witnessed end quote and crunches when you've got
Speaker 1: everybody working on a project over time in order to
Speaker 1: get it to ship on deadline. The team pushed themselves
Speaker 1: hard for nearly another year, with Psycho Knots going gold
Speaker 1: in two thousand five. According to as Murdoch, this was
Speaker 1: done without ever once missing a single payroll day, which
Speaker 1: is a testament to Schaefer and as Murdoch's work to
Speaker 1: manage money carefully during the arduous process. As Murdoch pointed out,
Speaker 1: one of the big problems during the development of Psycho
Speaker 1: Knots was that Schaefer had been unwilling to delegate responsibilities.
Speaker 1: He wanted to define the culture of Double Fine. He
Speaker 1: wanted to make it a special place to work, and
Speaker 1: he was worried that if he brought on executives to
Speaker 1: head up the various departments like HR, finance, operations, web development,
Speaker 1: et cetera, before he could define what the work culture
Speaker 1: at Double Fine should be like, that would cause big problems.
Speaker 1: They would end up defining the culture rather than Schaefer.
Speaker 1: So he decided he would do it all, but that
Speaker 1: meant he was constantly dealing with one emergency situation after another,
Speaker 1: and he couldn't focus on game development to the detriment
Speaker 1: of the company. And as tough as Psycho Nauts was,
Speaker 1: things would not go easier during the development of Brutal Legend,
Speaker 1: the real time strategy adventure game married fantasy elements with
Speaker 1: heavy metal music, and Double Find was having a real
Speaker 1: hard time finding a publisher. They shot the idea around
Speaker 1: for a while, but they finally were able to find
Speaker 1: somebody interested in publishing this game, and that was Vivendi
Speaker 1: Universal Games. But it didn't turn out to be the
Speaker 1: publisher that would eventually actually publish that game. I'll explain
Speaker 1: more in just a second, but first let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsor. The Brutal Legend team
Speaker 1: decided first to focus on the multiplayer part of the
Speaker 1: game because Double Find hadn't done a multiplayer game before.
Speaker 1: Schaefer had not done it before, and so they took
Speaker 1: nearly a year and a half to work on the
Speaker 1: multiplayer concept, after which Vivendi said to the team, hey,
Speaker 1: how about now you focus on the solo player experience.
Speaker 1: We want to see what that's going to look like.
Speaker 1: In October two thousand and six, Double Fine started work
Speaker 1: on the solo campaign and began casting the voice talent,
Speaker 1: including casting Jack Black as the game's protagonist. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until June two thousand and seven that the team had
Speaker 1: something to show Vivendi to give an indication of where
Speaker 1: the solo campaign was heading. By that time, the development
Speaker 1: team had changed the shape of the game significantly, which
Speaker 1: of course, had delayed things. The game missed its ship
Speaker 1: date twice and was delayed by nearly a year and
Speaker 1: a half. In that time, Vivendi dropped the game as
Speaker 1: publisher because Vivindi itself had been acquired by Activision, and
Speaker 1: then Electronic Arts stepped in as the new publisher. Double
Speaker 1: Find adopted the scrums system of development. Now. I covered
Speaker 1: this when I talked about agile systems in a recent podcast.
Speaker 1: Scrums involve sprints. These are work sessions during which teams
Speaker 1: focus on specific deliverables rather than the full project, and
Speaker 1: they have daily meetings to discuss deadlines, obstacles, and progress
Speaker 1: on those deliverables. The change to scrum helped Double Find
Speaker 1: focus on what needed to happen and allowed for more
Speaker 1: regular progress on the game development, but there were still
Speaker 1: many setbacks. The team depended heavily on middleware, so this
Speaker 1: is software created by other companies to do much of
Speaker 1: the work for Brutal Legend. So a lot of the
Speaker 1: elements that allowed the developers to build game elements in
Speaker 1: the game came from middleware, and about half the middleware
Speaker 1: worked great, but the other half didn't, and that slowed
Speaker 1: things down. In addition, while the team had made Psycho
Speaker 1: Knots for the Xbox, Brutal Legend was supposed to come
Speaker 1: out on the Xbox three sixty and the PlayStation three,
Speaker 1: which required new tools, new processes, it required new training
Speaker 1: so that the game could run on this more advanced hardware.
Speaker 1: And then there was that lawsuit that Activision brought against
Speaker 1: Double Fine and e A Games. It would eventually be
Speaker 1: settled out of court, but the stress took its toll
Speaker 1: on Tim Shaefer and the executive team. This is what
Speaker 1: led to Schaefer declaring the entire company would participate in
Speaker 1: Amnesia Fortnite, in which everybody split up into four teams
Speaker 1: and each team attempted to make a game. What's more,
Speaker 1: people could step outside their normal roles at Double Fine
Speaker 1: and try their hand at something else, so a game
Speaker 1: designer could become an artist, and artists could become a designer, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And so the four teams got to work creating games
Speaker 1: completely unrelated to Brutal Legend other than the fact that
Speaker 1: it was using the game engine, and it ended up
Speaker 1: being an incredible success. The teams were happy to work
Speaker 1: on something new and try on new responsibilities. Each team
Speaker 1: produced a playable prototype game. The four prototypes were called Tiny, Personal, Ninja,
Speaker 1: Happy Song, Threnched, and Operation Your Desk Is Disgusting. Everybody
Speaker 1: was able to go back to work re energized. E
Speaker 1: A published Brutal Legend, and the team began to rev
Speaker 1: up to develop Brutal Legend too, But then they had
Speaker 1: the rug pulled out from under them again. Electronic Arts
Speaker 1: canceled the game. They didn't even want to push out
Speaker 1: the patches that Double Fine had created for the original
Speaker 1: Brutal Legend game. Schaefer held another Amnesia Fortnite, which would
Speaker 1: end up becoming a regular tradition at Double Fine, and miraculously,
Speaker 1: all all four prototypes they came out of this exercise
Speaker 1: ended up getting picked up by publishers, so they became
Speaker 1: actual games, not just projects within Double Fine. Those four
Speaker 1: games were called Costume Quest, Stacking Iron Brigade, and Sesame
Speaker 1: Street Once Upon a Monster. The morale exercise literally ended
Speaker 1: up saving the company, as Double Fine wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: able to make payroll once the sequel to Brutal Legend
Speaker 1: got the acts, so to speak, an actual acts, not
Speaker 1: a not a guitar. You know, heavy metal squidly did
Speaker 1: we do? Double Fine continued to make games both for
Speaker 1: consoles and mobile platforms, with the occasional port to PC.
Speaker 1: Schaefer meanwhile, kept his hand on the helm of the company,
Speaker 1: which meant he didn't have a whole lot of time
Speaker 1: to do what he loved in the first place, which
Speaker 1: was making games. In two thousand and twelve, he did
Speaker 1: take the lead on a game concept he came up
Speaker 1: with while thinking about his daughter, who was about two
Speaker 1: years old at the time. He wanted a game he
Speaker 1: could play with her. His decision was to develop a
Speaker 1: game for the Xbox three sixty Connect system. The Connect,
Speaker 1: for those who do not remember, was a special peripheral
Speaker 1: device for the Xbox three sixty, and then there was
Speaker 1: another version that was later made for the Xbox One.
Speaker 1: It contains several sensors such as a microphone and special cameras.
Speaker 1: One of those cameras was an infrared camera that could
Speaker 1: help the connect since depth, and here's how it worked
Speaker 1: in a nutshell. The Connect had an infrared projector which
Speaker 1: projected light in the infrared spectrum, so that essentially a
Speaker 1: grid of reference points would overlay the area in front
Speaker 1: of the connect. So if you had your Microsoft Xbox
Speaker 1: three sixty in your living room and you had to
Speaker 1: Connect attached to it, it was actually projecting a grid
Speaker 1: of infrared light across your living room. The grids invisible
Speaker 1: to humans because we cannot see in the infrared range,
Speaker 1: at least not without technological help, but the infrared camera
Speaker 1: on the Connect could pick it up just fine. As
Speaker 1: objects moved within the view of the camera, they would
Speaker 1: deform the grid. The Connect could send the information onto
Speaker 1: the Xbox, which could interpret the movements as commands, including
Speaker 1: movements that were toward or away from the camera, by
Speaker 1: looking at the way the grid was deformed. The Connect
Speaker 1: never got a whole lot of traction in the gaming community,
Speaker 1: partly because many gamers felt that there were very few
Speaker 1: titles that made good use of the technology, But hackers
Speaker 1: loved the Connect as it gave them access to an
Speaker 1: inexpensive sensor array that could be used in all sorts
Speaker 1: of applications, from creating your own three D scanner to
Speaker 1: a sensor array for robotics. Anyway, back to the game
Speaker 1: that Schaefer wanted to make for his daughter. He called
Speaker 1: it Double Fine Happy Action Theater. Sometimes it's just called
Speaker 1: Happy Action Theater. The game includes many activities that take
Speaker 1: advantage of the connects capabilities without requiring the player to
Speaker 1: calibrate before gameplay with each session, which Schaefer felt was
Speaker 1: a barrier for kids who lacked the patients and attention
Speaker 1: span to stay in one place long enough to calibrate
Speaker 1: the system. So if you wanted to play the floors
Speaker 1: lava or create a montage of clones, you can. The
Speaker 1: game has an eighty on Metacritic, which aggregates reviews of
Speaker 1: games and the signs of score between one and one hundred.
Speaker 1: A lot of the games are really more activities than
Speaker 1: any kind of actual gameplay, but they were the sort
Speaker 1: of things that would appeal to very young players. Also,
Speaker 1: in February two thousand twelve, Tim Schaeffer decided to try
Speaker 1: something different from the normal game development process. Double Fine
Speaker 1: had been encountering problems with publishers, both with Psycho Nuts
Speaker 1: and Brutal Legend, and so Tim Schaeffer decided to try
Speaker 1: something new and he launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund
Speaker 1: the company's next game, which was a point and click
Speaker 1: adventure style game that at the time was called Double
Speaker 1: Fine Adventure. They said their fundraising goal to four hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. They hit their goal in less than eight hours.
Speaker 1: When the campaign ended, Double Fine ended up raising three
Speaker 1: point three million dollars. It was a record setting Kickstarter
Speaker 1: campaign at the time, and it was the beginning of
Speaker 1: another story filled with challenges and headaches, not to mention
Speaker 1: some serious criticism from the gaming community. Now this is
Speaker 1: the beginning of the story of Broken Age, which I
Speaker 1: will tell you in a second. But first let's take
Speaker 1: another quick break to thank our sponsor. The whole decision
Speaker 1: to go with a crowdfunding approach actually came from outside
Speaker 1: the company. A documentary production company called Two Player Productions
Speaker 1: approached Double Fine with the desire to produce a documentary
Speaker 1: about the process of game development. Two Player Productions funded
Speaker 1: their documentaries largely through crowdfunding. This inspired Schaeffer to take
Speaker 1: a serious stab at crowdfunding himself. He had previously considered it,
Speaker 1: but was discouraged from doing so because the general consensus
Speaker 1: was that crowdfunding would work for really small independent games
Speaker 1: with modest budgets, you know, something in the tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars, but it wasn't a viable option if
Speaker 1: you wanted to make something closer to a Triple A
Speaker 1: title video game. Schaefer decided to give it a shot anyway,
Speaker 1: and he launched the campaign in February two thousand twelve.
Speaker 1: At the launch of the kick started campaign, Tim Schaefer
Speaker 1: had said that he wanted to lead a small team
Speaker 1: of developers to make an adventure game that was fun
Speaker 1: and compelling, but not necessarily epic in scope. This would
Speaker 1: be a return to the puzzle based gameplay of classic
Speaker 1: titles like Grim Van Dango, Monkey Island, and Day of
Speaker 1: the Tentacle. Schaefer estimated that development time would take between
Speaker 1: six and eight months. In reality, it would take much
Speaker 1: longer than that. The plan was to launch the game
Speaker 1: in October two thousand twelve. At that time, the game
Speaker 1: was still working under the title Double Fine Adventure. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't get the name Broken Age until March and the
Speaker 1: game still wasn't ready to launch at that point. In July,
Speaker 1: Double Find made an announcement that raised many eyebrows. The
Speaker 1: company was going to release Broken Age in two parts,
Speaker 1: or acts. The kick started campaign would have effectively funded
Speaker 1: the first half or act of the game. The second
Speaker 1: act would draw its funding partly from the sales of
Speaker 1: the first act. In other words, campaign backers would only
Speaker 1: get half a game to start out with, though they
Speaker 1: were assured they'd have access to the full game once
Speaker 1: it was ready to go. The first half would go
Speaker 1: on sale in early when the second half promised for
Speaker 1: lateen but then pushed to early So what the heck
Speaker 1: was going on? Well? Basically, the runaway success of that
Speaker 1: funding campaign inspired the team to make a more ambitious
Speaker 1: project than they had originally pitched. They had originally thought
Speaker 1: they would use three hundred thousand dollars to fund the
Speaker 1: game and the other hundred thousand dollars would fund the documentary,
Speaker 1: but they made three point three million. There was so
Speaker 1: much support and excitement for an adventure game that Shaefer
Speaker 1: and his team wanted to step up their work and
Speaker 1: create something really special. And, as Shaefer would later say,
Speaker 1: he just designed too much game, and so they began
Speaker 1: to increase the scope of the game, which took more
Speaker 1: time and created more challenges during the development cycle, and
Speaker 1: eventually the scope and work outgrew the funding for the
Speaker 1: game so and not only did they increase it, they
Speaker 1: went beyond the three point three million that they actually gathered,
Speaker 1: and that's when Shaefer and his team had to make
Speaker 1: the tough decision to split the game into two segments
Speaker 1: and use sales of the first half to fund the
Speaker 1: completion of the second half. In addition to making the
Speaker 1: game grander and scale, Shaver made the decision that they
Speaker 1: would use some of the funds to develop the game
Speaker 1: for other operating systems such as mac os, ten, lenox iOS,
Speaker 1: and Android. In addition, you can watch the two player
Speaker 1: productions documentary for free online. There are twenty episodes on
Speaker 1: YouTube and they range from about twenty five minutes long
Speaker 1: to more than an hour long, and it's pretty fascinating stuff.
Speaker 1: I recommend checking it out. According to Schaefer, Double Fine
Speaker 1: ended up spending about twice as much money developing the
Speaker 1: game as it had raised during the kickstarted campaign, so
Speaker 1: somewhere in the six million dollar range, and that sales
Speaker 1: of the game would mean the company would essentially break
Speaker 1: even on Broken Age. The game allows players to take
Speaker 1: control of two different characters who are in two very
Speaker 1: different environments. After the act break in the game, the
Speaker 1: two characters find their roles somewhat switched, and players get
Speaker 1: to experience what it's like when one character is thrust
Speaker 1: into the other character's world. The game got good reviews,
Speaker 1: though some people express frustration with the nature of the
Speaker 1: puzzles in the game. And if you listen to the
Speaker 1: first episode I did on Tim Schaefer, you know that
Speaker 1: those puzzles are his favorite part of adventure games. He
Speaker 1: loved the experience of experimentation figuring out what you have
Speaker 1: to do to progress further. But not everyone is crazy
Speaker 1: about that type of gameplay, and these days games tend
Speaker 1: to hold a player's hand a lot more in long
Speaker 1: tutorials and hint options. The crowdfunding experiment was a success,
Speaker 1: and Double Fine repeated it by going that route again
Speaker 1: to fund a game called Massive Chalice. They launched the
Speaker 1: crowdfunding campaign for Massive Chalice in while Broken Age was
Speaker 1: still in development. They opted not to show quite as
Speaker 1: much exclusive material to backers. After having faced criticisms in
Speaker 1: the game community for giving so much material to people
Speaker 1: who had funded Broken Age. The game met with some delays,
Speaker 1: but was released in November. Now, Schaefer was not directly
Speaker 1: involved in that particular game, so I'm not going to
Speaker 1: cover it any further, since this is really more about
Speaker 1: Schaefer than Double Fine. Schaefer has said that one big
Speaker 1: benefit of the crowdfunding approach is that it makes it
Speaker 1: easier to actually land a publisher. When publishers see that
Speaker 1: players are willing to financially support game development, they are
Speaker 1: more eager to become part of the process. After all,
Speaker 1: they stand a profit from sales of the game, so
Speaker 1: crowdfunding can help a developer pitch their next project to
Speaker 1: a publisher. Moreover, publishers are more likely to back a
Speaker 1: game that has received crowdfunding because it shows a certain
Speaker 1: level of dedication from the developers, and it removes some
Speaker 1: of the risk they would otherwise shoulder if they were
Speaker 1: to fund the game entirely by themselves. In twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: Double Fine released a remastered version of Grim van Dango,
Speaker 1: Shaefer's masterpiece game from Lucas Arts, and again, if you
Speaker 1: haven't played that game, I recommend giving it a try.
Speaker 1: The puzzles can be devilishly tricky, but the art style
Speaker 1: and the humor of that game are absolutely fantastic. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that every pitch will be accepted or
Speaker 1: that developers will get all they want just because you've
Speaker 1: had some crowdfunding success. That was the case with Psycho Knots.
Speaker 1: To Schaefer really wanted to return to the world of
Speaker 1: Psycho Knots and create a game that would be a
Speaker 1: worthy successor to Double Finds first title. Schaefer couldn't find
Speaker 1: a publisher that was willing to invest the amount he
Speaker 1: felt would be necessary to bring this sequel to life,
Speaker 1: and so Double find held another fundraiser. This time, they
Speaker 1: used an investment platform called fig and raised nearly four
Speaker 1: million dollars. In addition to that money, Double find invested
Speaker 1: some of its own cash into the project, and there
Speaker 1: was a third party that also invested money into it.
Speaker 1: Schaefer wanted to avoid the problems of broken Age, in
Speaker 1: which a game that was originally intended to be of
Speaker 1: a modest size grew after receiving more funding than was anticipated,
Speaker 1: and so he attempted to establish the expectations of the
Speaker 1: game's scope. Psycho Nuts too from the outset and based
Speaker 1: the budget on that estimate, Taking into account the additional
Speaker 1: funds from Double Fine and the third party, and the
Speaker 1: campaign's length was set to thirty eight days, and Double
Speaker 1: Fine met their goal with five days to spare. While
Speaker 1: Double Fine originally hoped to bring the game to market
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen, the company announced in late twenty seventeen
Speaker 1: that a twenty nineteen launch is more likely. Schaefer, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: has recently said that he does think he's made his
Speaker 1: best game yet. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from BAFTA.
Speaker 1: That's the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. It's
Speaker 1: the highest honor the organization bestows upon individuals. That's what
Speaker 1: prompted Shaffer to say that while the award is deeply appreciated,
Speaker 1: he estimates his best work is still ahead of him.
Speaker 1: Schaefer sees value in both independent game developers and the
Speaker 1: big studios. He has said that any developers tend to
Speaker 1: lead in innovation. They take on risks and try new
Speaker 1: things on modest games that don't cost as much to
Speaker 1: make and have fewer executives making demands over what should
Speaker 1: and should not be in the game, and then the
Speaker 1: bigger studios can take some of that innovation and boost
Speaker 1: it into the stratosphere in big budget titles. And it's
Speaker 1: point out that there's been some really cool innovations in
Speaker 1: games in recent years, including the big budget games such
Speaker 1: as the Nemesis system that's in the Shadow of Mord
Speaker 1: or games in which the player can encounter antagonists whose
Speaker 1: behavior changes as the player makes various choices within the game.
Speaker 1: Schaefer has also advised independent gamers to avoid building in
Speaker 1: too many expectations for fame and glory with their games.
Speaker 1: He said that we need those independent perspectives, but it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily realistic to expect to become rich off a
Speaker 1: new innovative title. So will we see yet more adventure
Speaker 1: style games from Schaefer in the future, or will he
Speaker 1: switch gears and take a personal interest in an entirely
Speaker 1: different style of game. Whatever the answer, we should expect
Speaker 1: games touched by Schaffer to include wicked humor, fiendishly clever puzzles,
Speaker 1: and the occasional heavy metal guitar solo. Squidly did they
Speaker 1: do that wraps up the story on Tim Schaefer so far.
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