Январь 2010 Февраль 2010 Март 2010 Апрель 2010 Май 2010
Июнь 2010
Июль 2010 Август 2010
Сентябрь 2010
Октябрь 2010
Ноябрь 2010
Декабрь 2010
Январь 2011
Февраль 2011 Март 2011 Апрель 2011 Май 2011 Июнь 2011 Июль 2011 Август 2011
Сентябрь 2011
Октябрь 2011 Ноябрь 2011 Декабрь 2011 Январь 2012 Февраль 2012 Март 2012 Апрель 2012 Май 2012 Июнь 2012 Июль 2012 Август 2012 Сентябрь 2012 Октябрь 2012 Ноябрь 2012 Декабрь 2012 Январь 2013 Февраль 2013 Март 2013 Апрель 2013 Май 2013 Июнь 2013 Июль 2013 Август 2013 Сентябрь 2013 Октябрь 2013 Ноябрь 2013 Декабрь 2013 Январь 2014 Февраль 2014
Март 2014
Апрель 2014 Май 2014 Июнь 2014 Июль 2014 Август 2014 Сентябрь 2014 Октябрь 2014 Ноябрь 2014 Декабрь 2014 Январь 2015 Февраль 2015 Март 2015 Апрель 2015 Май 2015 Июнь 2015 Июль 2015 Август 2015 Сентябрь 2015 Октябрь 2015 Ноябрь 2015 Декабрь 2015 Январь 2016 Февраль 2016 Март 2016 Апрель 2016 Май 2016 Июнь 2016 Июль 2016 Август 2016 Сентябрь 2016 Октябрь 2016 Ноябрь 2016 Декабрь 2016 Январь 2017 Февраль 2017 Март 2017 Апрель 2017 Май 2017
Июнь 2017
Июль 2017
Август 2017 Сентябрь 2017 Октябрь 2017 Ноябрь 2017 Декабрь 2017 Январь 2018 Февраль 2018 Март 2018 Апрель 2018 Май 2018 Июнь 2018 Июль 2018 Август 2018 Сентябрь 2018 Октябрь 2018 Ноябрь 2018 Декабрь 2018 Январь 2019
Февраль 2019
Март 2019 Апрель 2019 Май 2019 Июнь 2019 Июль 2019 Август 2019 Сентябрь 2019 Октябрь 2019 Ноябрь 2019 Декабрь 2019 Январь 2020
Февраль 2020
Март 2020 Апрель 2020 Май 2020 Июнь 2020 Июль 2020 Август 2020 Сентябрь 2020 Октябрь 2020 Ноябрь 2020 Декабрь 2020 Январь 2021 Февраль 2021 Март 2021 Апрель 2021 Май 2021 Июнь 2021 Июль 2021 Август 2021 Сентябрь 2021 Октябрь 2021 Ноябрь 2021 Декабрь 2021 Январь 2022 Февраль 2022 Март 2022 Апрель 2022 Май 2022 Июнь 2022 Июль 2022 Август 2022 Сентябрь 2022 Октябрь 2022 Ноябрь 2022 Декабрь 2022 Январь 2023 Февраль 2023 Март 2023 Апрель 2023 Май 2023 Июнь 2023 Июль 2023 Август 2023 Сентябрь 2023 Октябрь 2023 Ноябрь 2023 Декабрь 2023 Январь 2024 Февраль 2024 Март 2024
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29
30
31
Game News |

How Tim Schafer made Double Fine a creative hotbed

 How Tim Schafer made Double Fine a creative hotbed

In 1997, John Romero was driving around the US handing out blank cheques to some of the country’s greatest game designers. To Tom Hall, his old Doom comrade, he gave penthouse space in Dallas to make the brilliant JRPG Anachronox. For Warren Spector, he funded an office full of immersive sim nerds in Austin who went on to create Deus Ex. And in San Francisco, he approached Tim Schafer to make a point-and-click adventure under the auspices of Ion Storm.

Schafer, however, wasn’t ready to leave LucasArts, the company that had given him access to Skywalker Ranch, and to his mentor, Monkey Island’s Ron Gilbert. He turned Romero down. It’s a decision that might have suggested a lack of entrepreneurial spirit; that Schafer was ‘just’ a designer and writer, not a studio head. No shame in that. In the fullness of time, however, he would go on to reshape the business of games more than once with his own company, Double Fine.

(Image credit: Xbox Game Studios)

At LucasArts, Schafer’s games were distinguished by their worldbuilding. Though he couldn’t quite match Gilbert for puzzle design—his mentor’s thematically satisfying solutions would prove to be the best of the point-and-click genre—Schafer’s brain was wired to splice his unusual influences in creative ways. An overheard story in an Alaskan biker bar led to Full Throttle, which swapped the adventure genre’s weedy protagonists for a straight-ahead brawler. Grim Fandango blended film noir with Día de Muertos, hot rod culture, and underworld bureaucracy—a heady mix in a game intended for the mainstream.

Sky box

Schafer’s worlds were like nobody else’s, and when he did step away from LucasArts to form his own studio—named after the ‘double fine zone’ on the Golden Gate Bridge—that imagination was the key draw. Psychonauts was inspired by a rhetorical question—"What colour is the sky in your world?"—and depicted the brains of its characters as playable levels.

The results are still breathtaking examples of character-driven design. A mid-century minimalist cube stood in for the head of repressed researcher Sasha Nein, where buried emotions threatened to burst violently to the surface. And a constant psychedelic ’60s party grooved inside the mind of glamorous agent Milla Vodello—a distraction from the children she wasn’t able to save from a traumatic accident.

(Image credit: LucasArts)

Brütal Legend, the follow up, was no less ambitious—bringing heavy metal vinyl covers to life in a fantasy landscape torn apart by warring musical subcultures: the Black Sabbath headbangers scrapping with Marilyn Manson demons and Type O Negative goths. The metal community recognised itself in the game and rallied behind it: rock stars Ozzy, Lemmy, and Rob Halford, and of course, Jack Black all had starring roles.

By then, common themes were revealing themselves in Schafer’s work—roaring motors, powerful women, and mental illness. The studio was, at that time, just like one of Psychonauts’ levels—a physical manifestation of Schafer’s brain and every idea that passed through it. But what followed would smash it apart, in the best way possible.

Break up

The backdrop to Double Fine’s early years had been the rise of the Xbox 360 and PS3, powerful consoles that demanded games of huge scale and detail, created by teams in the hundreds.

AAA development was consequently becoming the preserve of a handful of top studios, and while the indie scene was booming, the middle ground was squeezed. Famous contractors like Double Fine, based in US cities with a high cost of living, were struggling from project to project—and when EA passed on a Brütal Legend 2, closure was a real prospect.

(Image credit: Double Fine)

Instead, the studio made the decision to split its team into four. By building smaller games, each with their own budgets, it could occupy all of its staff—and stood a better prospect of surviving the cancellation of any one project.

The split had a positive effect on Double Fine’s creative culture. It prevented the studio from falling into the ‘auteur’ trap of fellow studios with distinctive and popular leaders—allowing other talented developers to step out from under the shadow of Schafer.

One was Brad Muir, game designer on Brütal Legend, who took that game’s action-RTS hybrid and made Iron Brigade, a frantic tower-defence shooter about mobile Great War trenches. His direction brought a tactical bent and mechanical focus to Double Fine that culminated in Massive Chalice, an eerie and brutal XCOM-alike. Muir’s handiwork can now be seen in Valve’s most strategic games, Artifact and Dota Underlords.

The split had a positive effect on Double Fine’s creative culture

Heavy petty

Another emerging leader was artist Lee Petty. Where Schafer had distanced himself from point-and-click, embracing 3D action that would never have flown at LucasArts’ adventure division, Petty sought to reconfigure the genre for a new age. Stacking cast players as a Russian doll who could hop into other dolls and use their unique abilities to solve puzzles—each character a ‘verb’ akin to Monkey Island’s ‘push’ or ‘pull’. Petty revisited the idea for Headlander, a sci-fi metroidvania.

Schafer's writing—both sharp and kind—has continued on in Costume Quest and Broken Age. But the new company structure has allowed others to shine simultaneously, even giving a temporary home to Ron Gilbert for adventure-platformer The Cave.

(Image credit: Double Fine)

Over the last decade, the game jam process that birthed Iron Brigade and Stacking has become public, with fans voting on pitches that have since entered full production at Double Fine.

In fact, the studio has become one of the most exposed in the world, its every step and stumble filmed in documentaries by the marvellous 2 Player Productions. The scrutiny has been hard on staff, but it’s also saved them from misunderstandings: when Double Fine became the first high profile studio to crowdfund a game, then overscoped and decided to split Broken Age into two parts, fans who’d watched its difficult conception understood and accepted the delay.

It’s splitting things, ultimately, that’s shaped Double Fine and its reputation. Only fitting for a company with a two-headed baby as its logo.



Читайте также

Состоялся релиз God Sacrifice на iOS и Android — игрокам обещают 100 свитков гача-призыва

AI is poised to tackle some of the world's most important issues, including making beer taste better

City of Outlaws это GTA здорового человека на Android

Москва

В хоккейном ЦСКА сменился главный тренер

Новости тенниса



Game24.pro — паблик игровых новостей в календарном формате на основе технологичной новостной информационно-поисковой системы с элементами искусственного интеллекта, гео-отбора и возможностью мгновенной публикации авторского контента в режиме Free Public. Game24.pro — ваши Game News сегодня и сейчас в Вашем городе.

Опубликовать свою новость, реплику, комментарий, анонс и т.д. можно мгновенно — здесь.



Персональные новости

Каждый пятый российский зумер планирует переехать из города-миллионника в Москву

Российская компания ЭНКОСТ выходит на рынок Казахстана

Выпуск ЦФА на платформе «Атомайз» поможет снизить нагрузку на экологию

США включили ряд российских блокчейн-платформ в список SDN