Tim Schafer | |
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.jpg) Schafer in 2016 | |
| Born | Timothy John Schafer (1967-07-26)July 26, 1967 (age 58) Sonoma, California, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Game designer,game programmer,game writer |
| Spouse | Rachael Schafer |
Timothy John Schafer[1][2] (born July 26, 1967)[3] is an Americanvideo game designer. He foundedDouble Fine Productions in July 2000, after having spent over a decade atLucasArts. Schafer is best known as the designer of critically acclaimed gamesFull Throttle,Grim Fandango,Psychonauts,Brütal Legend andBroken Age, co-designer ofDay of the Tentacle, and assistant designer onThe Secret of Monkey Island andMonkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. He is well known in the video game industry for his storytelling and comedic writing style,[4] and has been given both a Lifetime Achievement Award from theGame Developers Choice Awards, and aBAFTA Fellowship for his contributions to the industry.
Tim Schafer was born on July 26, 1967, inSonoma, California, the youngest of five children. His father was a doctor and his mother was a nurse.[5] While studying computer science atUC Berkeley, Schafer became interested in writing, and took inspiration fromKurt Vonnegut, who while a publicist atGeneral Electric wrote short stories in the evenings. Schafer opted for a similar course, interning to help developdatabases for small companies while trying to position himself for an opening in a larger corporation such asAtari andHewlett-Packard, but he was rejected by these.[6] He saw an offering atLucasfilm Games, looking for programmers who could also write game dialog, which piqued his interest.[6]
During his application process for the job, he had a somewhat disastrous phone interview withDavid Fox in which he mentioned being a fan ofBallblaster. Fox informed him that the Lucasfilm Games title wasBallblazer, and that only the pirated version was known asBallblaster, but despite the misstep, Fox asked Schafer to submit his resume for further consideration.[6][7] To make up for the phone interview, Schafer sent in a comic of himself applying for and getting the job at Lucasfilm Games, drawn as a text adventure.[6][7][8]
Schafer was hired by LucasArts in 1989, and his first position was as a "scummlet", a programmer who helped to implement features and ideas proposed by the lead game developers within the LucasArtsSCUMM engine. He, alongsideDave Grossman, helped to playtestIndiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Action Game and implement theNES version ofManiac Mansion. Schafer and Grossman, along with two others, were taught byRon Gilbert as part of a "SCUMM University" on how to use the engine to set up rooms and puzzles.[6]
Later, Gilbert approached Schafer and Grossman, offering them the chance to work on his new project, which would ultimately become the pirate-themedadventure gameThe Secret of Monkey Island.[6]
According to series creator Gilbert, Schafer and Grossman were responsible for about two thirds of the game's dialogue.[9]The Secret of Monkey Island became one of the most acclaimed games of its kind. The same team created the sequel,Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge.[10]
In his first lead role on a game project, Schafer co-designed (with Dave Grossman)Day of the Tentacle, a time-travel comedy adventure and the sequel to Ron Gilbert'sManiac Mansion.[11] Schafer's first solo project, the biker adventureFull Throttle, was released in 1995.[12] He went on to design the highly acclaimedGrim Fandango, anoiradventure game set in theAztecafterlife featuring characters similar to thepapier-mâché skeleton decorations from the Mexican holidayDia De Los Muertos.Grim Fandango won many awards, includingGameSpot's Game of the Year award of 1998,[13] andComputer Adventure Game of the Year at the2nd Annual Interactive Achievement Awards.[14]
Schafer worked on an unannouncedPlayStation 2 action-adventure game at LucasArts, but it never entered production.[4] Prior to his departure, a number of other developers were leaving LucasArts as the studio shifted away from adventure games. Schafer was approached by his colleagues with the idea of leaving the company to develop PlayStation 2 games on their own; Schafer was initially wary of this believing he felt secure in his position at LucasArts.[15] He left the company in January 2000,[16] to foundDouble Fine Productions, where he created theplatform gamePsychonauts.[4] The game was first released on Xbox in North America on April 19, 2005. While the game was met with critical acclaim, including aGame of the Year award fromEurogamer, it sold poorly at its initial release and led to financial troubles for its publisherMajesco Entertainment.[17] Double Fine reacquired full rights toPsychonauts by 2012, allowing them to release the game with improvements for modern systems, and in that year, Schafer stated that "We made more onPsychonauts [in 2012] than we ever have before."[18]
On March 7, 2007, he hosted the annualGame Developers Choice Awards. He later hosted it again in 2009. To coincide, Double Fine released a freeFlashminigame entitledHost Master and the Conquest of Humor, a pastiche of Schafer's LucasArts games in which the player takes on the role of Schafer backstage at the GDC Awards.[19]
Schafer led the development of Double Fine's next game,Brütal Legend, released on October 13, 2009, after a tortuous development route due to having its original publisherVivendi Games drop the title following its merge withActivision in 2008 to be picked up later byElectronic Arts.[20] The game was Schafer's tribute to the music and art ofheavy metal and featured voice acting from actor/musicianJack Black and cameos from rock musicians includingLemmy Kilmister,Rob Halford,Ozzy Osbourne andLita Ford. Schafer said "ForBrütal Legend, I've always seen this overlap between medieval warfare and heavy metal. You see heavy metal singers and they'll have like a brace around their arm and they'll be singing aboutOrcs. So let's just make a world where that all happens. That all gets put together, the heavy metal, and the rock, and the battling, actually does happen. Let's not flirt around with this; let's just do it."[21]
DuringBrütal Legend's development, Schafer had Double Fine's staff take two weeks away from the game's development to participate in Amnesia Fortnights once a year starting in 2007. This was an internalgame jam where the company was split into four teams to make a pitchable game prototype, an idea he compared to what film directorWong Kar-Wai had used previously. AfterBrütal Legend's release, the game had generally positive reviews but did not perform as well as expected, and Electronic Arts cancelled the preliminary work Double Fine had started on the sequel.[22] To keep Double Fine above water financially, Schafer went back to the past Amnesia Fortnight projects and selected games they could reasonably expand into full releases. From these, four smaller games were picked up by publishers, and were the first games in Double Fine's history to have project leaders other than Schafer:Costume Quest,Stacking,Iron Brigade andOnce upon a Monster. The titles helped to keep Double Fine financially stable, and Schafer has continued to implement the Amnesia Fortnight as a yearly process; most of the games that result from these are led by someone other than Schafer.[23]
On February 1, 2012, Schafer returned to the role of director in theKinect-basedDouble Fine Happy Action Theater, a game concept he devised based onOnce Upon a Monster to be able to play a game with his two-year-old daughter that she would be able to enjoy as well.[24]
In February 2012, Schafer launched acrowdfunded project for an unnamedadventure game via the crowd-sourcedKickstarter, using the placeholder title "Double Fine Adventure"; Schafer stated that he had found publishers extremely wary of an adventure in the current video game industry, and decided to turn to crowdfunding to seek player interest. The game and accompanying documentary were projected to costUS$400,000 dollars. Contributions exceeded that amount by more than three times in less than 24 hours, making it the first Kickstarter project to reach a $2 million figure, and the second most successful project on the website at the time.[25][26] When the project ended on March 13, funding reached a level of $3,336,371 in Kickstarter[27] with an additional $110,000 from premium pledges.[28] Ultimately, the project culminated inBroken Age, released in two acts over 2014 and 2015.[29]
Schafer and Double Fine had been able to negotiate withThe Walt Disney Company, who acquired Lucasfilm in 2012, to obtain the rights to three of the titles that Schafer had directed there:Day of the Tentacle,Full Throttle, andGrim Fandango, by 2014. Double Fine subsequently released remastered versions of all three games over the following years.[30][31][32][33]
Schafer stood in support ofAnita Sarkeesian and other game developers that were being harassed by supporters ofGamergate, a loosely organized misogynistic online harassment campaign and a right-wing backlash against feminism, that started in August 2014.[34][35]
Schafer hosted the 2015 Game Developer’s Choice Awards on March 5; during the event one of his jokes referenced the #NotYourShield tag connected to the harassment Campaign.Gamergate supporters claimed #NotYourShield was used to demonstrate women and minorities supported their cause, but Schafer's remarks spoke to the wider assessment that the tag's use was largely composed ofsockpuppets. Following the event, Gamergate supporters targeted Schafer for harassment by claiming he had been making a joke that mocked the minorities using this hashtag.[36][37]
Gamergate supporters also found other opportunities to target Schafer for harassment, including a decision to expand the scope ofBroken Age after its Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign raised far more than the amount asked for, and a later decision to seek additional funding for the studio by offering the game's first half for sale onearly access. Since then he continues to be an occasional target of harassment from either GamerGate supporters or those who were swayed by the campaign's claims.[38][39]
Schafer joined with other industry leaders with crowdfunding experience to help create the crowdfunding platformFig in August 2015, serving on its advisory board until March 2020.[40] Through Fig, Schafer announced the sequelPsychonauts 2 in December 2015.[41]
In June 2019,Microsoft announced that it had acquired Double Fine as part ofXbox Game Studios. Schafer stated that while he had not been looking to be acquired, he found the opportunity in his talks with Microsoft to be promising; the acquisition would not affect Double Fine's independence and would still allow the company to publish its pending titles on its own choice of platforms, and would provide the financial security needed for Double Fine to be able to concentrate on developing a quality product.[42] Through this support, Double Fine was able to retain several gameplay elements withinPsychonauts 2,[43] which was eventually released on August 25, 2021, to critical praise.[44]
In an interview at theGame Developers Conference in 2003, Schafer stated that he strives for integrating story into the gameplay, setting a creative goal of someday creating a video game without anycutscenes at all.[45] Furthermore, he said he often sets a story in an established world:
"[O]ften, the world is the initial inspiration for the game. One day I was listening to someone tell me their stories of spending the summer in Alaska. They had hung around this one biker bar, with these people with names like Smilin' Rick and Big Phil. And I thought, 'Wow, what a crazy world that is.' It's so apart from everybody's life, and yet it's right there, it's so mundane in a way. And that's where Full Throttle came from."[45]
The press first previewedPsychonauts at theE3 trade show in 2002, where it won the Game Critics Award for Best Original Game.[46]An hour-long episode ofIcons on theG4 Network documented the last week of the production ofPsychonauts and explored Schafer's career.[47] At the 2006Game Developers Choice Awards, Schafer andErik Wolpaw won the award for Best Writing forPsychonauts. Schafer and Double Fine Executive Producer & COO Caroline Esmurdoc also won the award for Best New Studio. In October 2006, Schafer received aBAFTA video game Best Screenplay award forPsychonauts.[48] In 2012, theAustralian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) organized the "Game Masters" exhibition, where Schafer was featured as the creator ofGrim Fandango, among a few other visionary designers, credited for having "pushed the boundaries of game design and storytelling, introducing new genres, creating our best-loved characters and revolutionising the way we understand and play games"[4] In 2015, he won the Vanguard Award at Bilbao'sFun & Serious Game Festival.[49] Schafer received the Lifetime Achievement Award from theGame Developers Choice Awards in March 2018.[50] He received aBAFTA Fellowship as "a true pioneer of game design, who has pushed the boundaries of the medium through his extraordinary talents" at theBritish Academy Games Awards in April 2018.[51][52] In February 2023, Schafer was recognized as "a beacon of creativity and innovation in the games industry" by being selected as a Hall of Fame Inductee at the26th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards by theAcademy of Interactive Arts & Sciences.[53]
| Name | Year | Credited With | Publisher |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Secret of Monkey Island | 1990 | co-writer, programmer, assistant designer | LucasArts |
| Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge | 1991 | co-writer, programmer, assistant designer | LucasArts |
| Day of the Tentacle | 1993 | co-designer, co-producer, co-director, co-writer | LucasArts |
| Full Throttle | 1995 | project leader, writer, designer | LucasArts |
| The Curse of Monkey Island | 1997 | additional design | LucasArts |
| Grim Fandango | 1998 | project leader, writer, designer, programmer | LucasArts |
| Star Wars Episode I: Racer | 1999 | "never actively tried to sabotage the project"[54] | LucasArts |
| Psychonauts | 2005 | creative director, co-writer, designer | Double Fine, Majesco |
| Brütal Legend | 2009 | creative director, writer, co-designer | Double Fine, Electronic Arts |
| Costume Quest | 2010 | studio creative director, co-writer | Double Fine, THQ |
| Stacking | 2011 | studio creative director | Double Fine, THQ |
| Iron Brigade | 2011 | studio creative director | Double Fine, Microsoft Studios |
| Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster | 2011 | studio creative director, writer | Double Fine, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment |
| Haunt | 2012 | voice actor[55] | NanaOn-Sha,Zoë Mode, Microsoft Studios |
| Double Fine Happy Action Theater | 2012 | director | Double Fine, Microsoft Studios |
| Middle Manager of Justice | 2012 | studio creative director | Double Fine, Dracogen |
| Kinect Party | 2012 | studio creative director | Double Fine, Microsoft Studios |
| The Cave | 2013 | studio creative director | Double Fine, Sega |
| Dropchord | 2013 | studio creative director | Double Fine, Dracogen |
| Broken Age | 2014 | director, writer | Double Fine |
| Spacebase DF-9 | 2014 | studio creative director | Double Fine, Indie Fund |
| Grim Fandango Remastered | 2015 | creative director | Double Fine |
| Massive Chalice | 2015 | studio creative director | Double Fine |
| Day of the Tentacle Remastered | 2016 | creative director | Double Fine |
| Headlander | 2016 | studio creative director | Double Fine, Adult Swim Games |
| Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin | 2017 | studio creative director, writer | Double Fine |
| Full Throttle Remastered | 2017 | creative director | Double Fine |
| Psychonauts 2 | 2021 | creative director, writer | Double Fine, Xbox Game Studios |
Like The Secret of Monkey Island, is it more exciting if I keep it a secret forever? Yeah, my full name is Timothy John Schafer.
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