One of the other biggest changes for Schafer personally was Double Fine’s acquisition by Xbox, a move that opened a number of new doors for the studio. As Schafer puts it, Double Fine historically tends to make “weird” games that tend to be difficult to find funding for. But with Xbox’s support, he’s not only had the funding, but he’s also had the boon of Xbox Game Pass to put those weird games in front of people who might not have ever tried them at full price.
“Game Pass lets us reach people who maybe would've been too nervous to drop 70 bucks for a physical copy of a thing,” he says. “But they see it and it looks really compelling and they're like, ‘Oh, I'll just download it and play it.’ That's a great place for us to be, so that changes us, and I think it'll lead to us being more like ourselves and more creative…It's allowed me to move forward projects that I had on the back burner, thinking, ‘I would never be able to pitch this to a publisher. It's just too strange-sounding.’ And now we can make those games, so they're going to get weirder, that's all.”
It’s worth pointing out that Schafer isn’t referring to Psychonauts 2 here – it was already in development when Double Fine was acquired. But he does add that Xbox’s support meant being effectively asked, “How would you finish Psychonauts if you had resources?” His answer was to put the boss fights back in and polish it far more than he’d been able to otherwise, and that’s what the team did.
Instead, Schafer’s “weirder games” remark is referring to Double Fine’s future output, which he’s not able to talk about just yet. He does confirm that the studio still does internal game jams, and he’s got a whole list of game ideas in his head that he wants to work on some day. I ask him if he’s thinking of revisiting some of his old games at any point, and while he’s not opposed to the idea entirely, that’s not what he’s up to right now.
We've been looking towards the past and taking care of our past, and archiving it and preserving it in these remasters. But now, we're really excited about doing all new stuff. We're doing new games in the studio, and everything is 100% new.”
Schafer briefly ponders doing something like Animal Crossing – a game about tending and caring for something – but Nintendo already nailed that, he says, so maybe not. Above all, whatever Schafer does next, his biggest concern is keeping his creativity alive.
“There's types of games I would like to make, and it's more like I think the biggest effort is, I've always been mindful of not losing that fire in your belly. How do you tend that, how do you stoke that? How do you not suffocate that, how do you let in enough air? All these metaphors for, ‘How do you make sure you still love what you do?’ And it always involves moving towards a project that excites me the most, because there's a lot of pressure to get pulled into maybe business development or other areas of your job that are important, but will make you wake up one morning and that fire's gone. So, I've always avoided that, so I would just maintain pursuing that, and just always chasing what inspires me and everyone at Double Fine.”
So he’s making new games, he’s working to spread transparency around positive working cultures, and he’s deriving inspiration from other developers – where does that eventually take award-winning developer Tim Schafer? In ten years, what does Tim Schafer making video games look like?
“Um, I'm sitting in a hot tub, I got my feet up,” he says. “I'm having a blast now because I'm prototyping some ideas, just a couple people. And no one's really looking at it, talking about deadlines or anything. I'm just messing around with what a game could be, and that's really fun. Because they're not like, ‘Oh my God, we're going to run out of money in three months.’ I've got people working on new games, and I'm working on new ideas, and that's a really fun place to be.
“I'm always trying to build up Double Fine so it could survive if I got hit by a bus, but I don't plan on getting hit by a bus anytime soon. I think I've just been very dedicated to making sure it's always fun for me still. I think by holding on to the parts of the job that I like, like writing, and not giving those up, which can cause trouble. But I still maneuver things to Double Fine so that I really enjoy my job, and I work with people I like, and that it enriches me more emotionally more than it drains me. So, I think that allows me to stick around.”
Tim Schafer Opens Up About Life With Xbox, Building Better Work Cultures, and What's Next - IGN
Last edited by Ryuu96 - on 06 March 2023
