Tim Schafer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Tim Schafer | |
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 Tim Schafer in 2005 speaking at the DICE summit in Las Vegas.
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| Born | July 26, 1967 Sonoma, California |
| 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.
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[edit] Career
After graduating from UC Berkeley with a computer science major in 1989, Tim Schafer went to work at 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 shares design and programming credit on the pirate-themed adventure game The Secret of Monkey Island with Dave Grossman and Monkey Island series creator Ron Gilbert. Schafer and Grossman often wrote humorous placeholder dialog while scripting the game's interactions. Although originally conceived as a serious game, Gilbert decided to use much of the placeholder material and turn it into a comedy. The same team created the sequel, Monkey Island II: LeChuck's Revenge. Schafer later co-designed Day of the Tentacle (with Dave Grossman), an adventure game visually inspired by cartoon animation such as Looney Tunes.
His first solo project was the post-apocalyptic biker adventure Full Throttle. 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 unknown 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.
[edit] Future
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 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.
Schafer has publicly confirmed he's working on a new game, though no official announcements have been made.[2] According to an investor presentation made by Vivendi Games in June 2006, the publisher has signed a deal with Double Fine for an unspecified game.[3]
[edit] 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
[edit] Trivia
- Tim Schafer's latest game Psychonauts was made available in North America on April 19, 2005. The PS2 version was delayed until June 1, 2005, due to the development company Budcat porting the game instead of Double Fine themselves.
- 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).
[edit] External links
- Tim Schafer at MobyGames
- Tim Schafer's company weblog
- A brief autobiography
- 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)
