Tim Schafer

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Tim Schafer
Tim Schafer in 2001
Born	July 26, 1967 (1967-07-26) (age 41) Sonoma, California
Occupation	Game designer
Spouse(s)	Rachael Schafer

Tim Schafer (born July 26, 1967) is an American computer game designer. He founded Double Fine Productions in January 2000, after having spent over a decade at LucasArts.

Schafer is currently directing a game for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 called Brütal Legend. Schafer is best known in the video game industry for his story-telling and comedy writing abilities.

Contents 1 Career 2 Recognition 3 Future 4 Gameography 5 References 6 External links 6.1 Interviews

[edit] Career

While studying computer science at UC Berkeley, Tim Schafer worked at George Lucas' game production company LucasArts (then called Lucasfilm Games and located at Skywalker Ranch).

After play testing the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade action game and assisting with the NES version of Maniac Mansion, Schafer was assigned as a writer and programmer to the production of the pirate-themed adventure game The Secret of Monkey Island.

According to series creator Ron Gilbert, Schafer and fellow writer-programmer Dave Grossman were responsible for about two thirds of the game's dialogs. ^[1] Monkey Island is noted for its humorous story, though was originally conceived as having a more serious tone; Schafer and Grossman wrote much more humorous placeholder dialog, which persuaded Gilbert to turn it into a comedy. 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.

In his first lead role on a game project, Schafer co-designed (with Dave Grossman) Day of the Tentacle, a time-travel comedy adventure loosely based on Maniac Mansion. Schafer's first solo project, the biker adventure Full Throttle, was released in 1995. He went on to design the highly acclaimed Grim Fandango, a noir adventure game set in the Aztec afterlife featuring characters similar to the papier-mâché skeleton decorations from the Mexican holiday Dia De Los Muertos. Grim Fandango won many awards, most notably GameSpot's Game of the Year award of 1998.^[2]

Schafer worked on an unannounced PlayStation 2 action-adventure game at LucasArts, but it never entered production. He left the company in January 2000 to found Double Fine Productions, where he created the platform game Psychonauts. The game was first released on Xbox in North America on April 19, 2005. It, too, won much critical acclaim, including a Game of the Year award from Eurogamer.

In a message posted on his company blog on June 13, 2006, Schafer asked fans to e-mail Microsoft in an attempt to get Psychonauts added to the list of Xbox 360-compatible Xbox games.^[3] The story got picked up by many video game news sites.^[4][5] A Microsoft employee working on the Xbox 360's backwards compatibility soon posted on the IGN Insider forum that "rest assured, we are working on Psychonauts" though gave no indication when the software emulation would be finished. Half a year later, on December 12 2006, the Xbox 360 became backwards compatible with Psychonauts. And a year after that, on December 4, 2007, Microsoft made Psychonauts one of the initial launch titles made available for direct download through their Xbox Originals program.

On March 7, 2007, Tim Schafer hosted the annual Game Developers Choice Awards. He later hosted it again in 2009. To coincide, Double Fine released a free Flash minigame entitled Host 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.

[edit] Recognition

• The press first previewed Psychonauts at the E3 trade show of 2002, where it won the Game Critics Award for Best Original Game.^[6]
• An hour-long episode of Icons on the G4 Network documented the last week of Psychonauts' production and explored Tim Schafer's career. (Original airdate: April 28, 2005).^[7]
• At the 2006 Game Developers Choice Awards, Tim Schafer and Erik Wolpaw won the award for Best Writing for Psychonauts. Tim Schafer and Double Fine Executive Producer & COO Caroline Esmurdoc also won the award for Best New Studio.
• In October 2006, Tim Schafer received a BAFTA video game Best Screenplay award for Psychonauts.^[8]

[edit] Future

Schafer is currently working on a new game called Brütal Legend. The game is slated for a 2009 release on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.^[9] In an April 2009 interview on The Jace Hall Show, Schafer had this to say about Brütal Legend: "For Brütal 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 about Orcs. 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."^[10]

[edit] Gameography

• 1987 Maniac Mansion, tools programmer, SCUMM (LucasArts)
• 1990 The Secret of Monkey Island, co-writer (JVC, LucasArts)
• 1991 Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, co-designer (LucasArts)
• 1993 Day of the Tentacle, co-designer, co-producer, co-director, co-writer (LucasArts)
• 1995 Full Throttle, writer, designer, project leader (LucasArts)
• 1998 Grim Fandango, project leader (LucasArts)
• 2005 Psychonauts, creative director, co-writer (Double Fine, Majesco)
• 2009 Brütal Legend, (Double Fine, Electronic Arts)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Tim Schafer at MobyGames
• Tim Schafer's company weblog
• What does the game industry have against innovation? (a news feature centered on Psychonauts, with comments from Schafer)
• "Tim Schafer on Taking Risks" (D.I.C.E. Summit 2005)
• "Tim Schafer on Memorable Character Design" (GDC 2004, audio recording)
• Trip to Double Fine from The International House of Mojo
• Return to Double Fine from The International House of Mojo

[edit] Interviews

• Millennium Gaming: 20 Gaming Visionaries Usher In The Next Millennium of Gaming at GameSpot (1999)
• A Conversation with Tim Schafer by Celia Pearce at GameStudies (2003)
• Rebel With a Cause: Traveling through the mind of Tim Schafer at 1UP.com (2006)