Tim Schafer
Tim Schafer | |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Game designer |
| Spouse | Rachael Schafer |
Tim Schafer (born July 26, 1967) is an American computer game designer. After spending over a decade at LucasArts, he left the company in January 2000 to start his own company, Double Fine Productions. Most recently, Schafer and his company released a game for the Xbox, PS2, and PC called Psychonauts.
Schafer is highly regarded 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). His first job was to playtest the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade action game, followed by some minor contributions to the NES port of Maniac Mansion.
Schafer was assigned as a writer and programmer to the production of a pirate-themed adventure game The Secret of Monkey Island, which became one of the most acclaimed games of its kind. According to Monkey Island 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 humorous placeholder dialog, which pursuaded Gilbert to turn it into a comedy. The same team created the sequel, Monkey Island II: LeChuck's Revenge.
Schafer's first lead role was co-designer (with Dave Grossman) of Day of the Tentacle, a time-travelling adventure game visually inspired by cartoon animation such as Looney Tunes. The gritty biker adventure Full Throttle was his first solo project. He went on to design the much-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.
Following its release, Schafer did some conceptual work on an unannounced Playstation 2 action/adventure game. However, it never entered production, as Tim Schafer left LucasArts in January 2000 to found his own game production company, Double Fine Productions, where he created the platform game Psychonauts.
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.
An hour-long episode of Icons on the G4 Network focused on Tim Schafer's career and the final days of the production of Psychonauts. (Original airdate: April 28, 2005).
In a message posted on his company blog on June 13, 2006[1], Schafer rallied fans to get Psychonauts added to Microsoft's list of Xbox 360-compatible Xbox games. The e-mail campaign headlined on several video game news sites. One of the Microsoft employees working on the Xbox 360's backwards compatibility code soon after 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. Psychonauts was added to the Xbox 360's backwards compatibility list in December 2006.
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.[2]
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
References
- ^ "The Secret of Creating Monkey Island - An Interview With Ron Gilbert". LucasFilm Adventurer vol. 1, number 1 (online transcript). 1990. Retrieved 2006-12-24.
- ^ "Vivendi Games Partners With Double Fine Productions". Vivendi Games. 2006-09-07. Retrieved 2006-12-24.
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)