Tim Schafer

Tim Schafer
Occupation	Game designer
Spouse	Rachael Schafer

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

Most recently, Schafer designed a game for the Xbox, PS2, and PC called Psychonauts. Schafer is best known in the video game industry for his story-telling and comedy writing abilities.

Career

After graduating from UC Berkeley with a computer science major in 1989, Tim Schafer went to work 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.

The Secret of Monkey Island became one of the most acclaimed games of its kind. According to series creator Ron Gilbert, Schafer and fellow writer-programmer Dave Grossman were responsible for about two thirds of the game's dialogs. Monkey Island is noted for its humorous story, though was originally conceived as having a more serious tone; Schafer and Grossman wrote much humorous placeholder dialog, which persuaded Gilbert to turn it into a comedy. The same team created the sequel, Monkey Island II: LeChuck's Revenge.

In what was 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 PC Game of the Year award of 1998.

File:Grim fandango screenshot.jpg

A scene from the game Grim Fandango

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 press first previewed Psychonauts at the E3 trade show of 2002, where it won the Game Critics Award for Best Original Game[1]. The game was first released on Xbox in North America on April 19, 2005. An hour-long episode of Icons on the G4 Network documented the last week of production and explored Tim Schafer's career. (Original airdate: April 28, 2005).

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 producer Caroline Esmurdoc also won the award for Best New Studio. In October 2006, Tim Schafer received a BAFTA videogame Best Screenplay award for Psychonauts.

In a message posted on his company blog on June 13, 2006[2], Schafer asked fans to e-mail Microsoft in an attempt to get Psychonauts added to the list of Xbox 360-compatible Xbox games. The story got picked up by many video game news sites.[3] [4] 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. On December 12th, 2006, the Xbox 360 became backwards compatible with Psychonauts.

Future

On September 8, 2006 it was announced that Double Fine had entered into a publishing agreement with Vivendi Games for an as yet unnamed title. The game will be a "brand new creation" and will be published under Vivendi Games' Sierra Entertainment label.

Gameography

• Maniac Mansion (1987), LucasArts, Jaleco Ltd.
• The Secret of Monkey Island (1990), JVC, LucasArts
• Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge (1991), LucasArts
• Day of the Tentacle (1993), LucasArts
• Full Throttle (1995), LucasArts
• Grim Fandango (1998), LucasArts
• Psychonauts (2005), Double Fine, Majesco

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)

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)