A couple of weeks ago, I sat down with one of video gamingās most creative people to talk aboutā¦ money. Money. Business. And how things are so different and so much better in this, Tim Schaferās 25th year making video games.
We were at DICE, a gaming convention in Las Vegas. Itās really more of a āsummit.ā They actually call it that. DICE happens in a big hotel on the Strip, though itās a relatively small affair. It attracts just a few hundred attendees, not thousands, like the ostensibly similar Game Developers Conference.
Heads of game studios go to it. So do publishing executives. This is where the head of Gearbox plays poker with one of ex-heads of BioWare, where a Ubisoft studio chief or the inventor of the Oculus Rift will give a talk about whichever important part of the game industry they run. Go into the lounge and youāll see Warren Spector is hanging out over in the corner.
āWhen I used to come to a show like this, Iād be like, āOk, Iāve got to network, Iāve got to meet people, Iāve got to shake hands,ā Schafer told me when we took a seat in a quieter part of this yearās venue, the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. āI felt like I had to do that for my survival.'ā
Schafer: āWhen I used to come to shows like this, Iād be like, āOk, Iāve got to network, Iāve got to meet peopleā¦ I felt like I had to do that for my survival.ā
A guy sits down at your lunch table and starts talking about the summit. It turns out he runs a massive middleware company.
The head of PlayStation worldwide studios chats with folks not that many feet from where the Microsoft people are having their own conversations. Off in hotel suites, developers show publishers games. At this yearās DICE, one tired developer I ran into said heād run his demo through more than 30 times in two days.
Then the Kickstarter happenedāthe one Schafer launched after he landed in Las Vegas for DICE two years ago, the one where he asked for $400,000 to make a traditional adventure game like heād been making for decades and people gave him $3.3 million instead.
Something else important happened recently, too: Double Fine stopped relying on game publishers and switched to publishing its own latest, biggest games.
āNow I come here and Iām just enjoying seeing my friends from the industry and talking about deals and stuff, but itās not likeābecause we have multiple projectsāitās not like we have to sign a game in the next three months or weāre going to die.ā
Thatās good news, everyone.
Thatās good news that a studio that so many people root for sounds like itās no longer on the brink.
For a long time Tim Schaferās storyline was this: creative guy, made cool adventure games such as The Secret of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango and Full Throttle with talented colleagues at LucasArts, started his own studio called Double Fine, made the beloved Psychonauts, the less beloved Brutal Legend and just sort of hung on since those games just didnāt sell.
Double Fine did what so many independent studios had done, especially on consoles and even on PC. They went to the EAs and the Activisions, the Microsofts, the THQs, and so on. They went to publishers to get financing for their games. This was the process. It sounds fine in theory, miserable in practice. Schafer walked me through it:
āThe old model is you pitch a game, you try to get as much money for it as you can for development. You set aside some money in that budget for the time in between.
āYou either go late or it takes longer than that to sign your next game. And so you use up all that money. And then youāre back to zero.
āYou have to take the next publishing deal that you can get. And theyāre like, āWell, itās got really terrible terms,ā and weāre like, āWeāll take it, weāll take it,ā just to stay in business. We donāt want to miss payroll. So we take itāand that one is the bad deal, which has terrible recoup termsāand [they] take our [intellectual property] or something. But, at the end of it, weāre back to zero again.
āYou never really go anywhere unless you have a huge, huge breakout hit, which is very unusual, and you canāt really bank on that happening. It was like an airplane flight where you would have long periods of smooth sailing and then absolute terror at the beginning and end, and we were like, āOh my god how are we going to sign our next game?'ā
Not that I missed the value of what he was saying, but I had to interrupt. I had to ask Schafer if he was afraid of flying or something. What kind of flights was he flying that were this terrifying?
He laughed. āThatās what they say itās like for pilots: a whole lot of stress at the beginning and end and a whole lot of boredom in between.ā
Not that making games is boredom. But, yeah, I got his drift.
I told Schafer what I thought his storyline was. I told him that Brutal Legend and Psychonauts didnāt seem like the successes they needed to keep running and that the Kickstarter that birthed thejust-releasedBroken Age saved them.
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The sales of Brutal Legend, formerly published by Activision EA but now published by Double Fine, helped pay for more Broken Age, Schafer told me.
Schafer: āWe made more money off Psychonauts in the last two years than we ever did beforeāmostly because we didnāt have the publishing rights.ā
āPsychonauts has been out so long and developed such a cult following that every time thereās a Steam sale itās generating a bunch of money for us,ā he said. āThe scale of those sales makes the most sense for a company of our size. It might not be a blip on the radar for a company like Microsoft or EA or a huge company like that, but, for us, it allows us to make a thriving business off of creative ideas and inspiration-driven development.ā
He checks in on the sales of his studioās older games from time to time. āWe made more money off of Psychonauts in the last two years than we ever did beforeāmostly because we didnāt have the publishing rights.ā
Self-publishing is great and all, but Double Fine canāt publish all of the best games Schafer ever helped make. Disney still owns a bunch of them and has since the entertainment giant bought George Lucasā media empire. That LucasArts library includes adventure game classics such as Grim Fandango and Full Throttle that were made by Schafer and friends. Schafer has been dreaming of getting control of those games long before Disney was involved but has yet to make any headway.
āSince the day I left Lucas Iāve tried to get those rights back,ā Schafer told me. The games are out of print and, like LucasArts before it, Disney doesnāt have any announced plans to bring them back.
Schafer: āIf someone is going to do a nice version of Grim [Fandango], I think it should be us.ā
āLarge companies donāt like to let go of things even if theyāre not using them, which is frustrating, but we try, because I would not like them to be in other peopleās hands and I would like to do something with them or at least have them available.
āI would like to have them be available so people could buy them instead of pirate them if they wanted to. They donāt even have that option now. And I think if someone were going to do a nice version of it, it should be us. If someone was going to do a nice version of Grim [Fandango], I think it should be us.ā
Schafer understandably didnāt want to tell me the exact status of any conversations heās had with Disney about getting the rights to Grim Fandango and the like. āWe want to do it and we have talked to them,ā he said. āWeāve always talked to whoever had the rights and weāll see. Iāll never give up. Someday someone will slip and accidentally give meā¦ā He trailed off.
Double Fine can publish and has published Broken Age, or at least the first part of the adventure game they made with all that Kickstarter money. āIt feels so good to ship Broken Age,ā he said. Next up for him is finishing the gameās second part.
And then?
Double Fineās Brad Muir is overseeing the studioās other Kickstarted game, Massive Chalice. Teams at the studio are making Spacebase and Hack-and-Slash, two projects that came from an āAmnesia Fortnightā gamejam at the studio. Schafer and I had spoken on the eve of Double Fineās next Amnesia Fortnight, this one a collaboration with Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward, and he was expecting a surprise project or two to come out of that.
Schafer isnāt sure what game heāll personally make after Broken Age. āI have ideas for games that are more systems-based,ā he said, noting that Broken Age reminded him how much work goes into making each second of an adventure game that players can burn through. Games with systemsāsay, a battle system between story moments in a role-playing gameācan make a game beefier and make it fun in a different way. Not that heās making an RPG. He really has no idea, he told me. āWeāll always do something that has narrative and strong story to it.ā That much is guaranteed.
In September of this year, Schafer will hit his 25th anniversary in game development. āIāve gone through so many different phases,ā he reflected. He made computer games. He made console games. He lived through movements toward more serious gamesāespecially on PCāand through eras more focused on amusement.
āIāve always been focused on coming up with original ideas and trying to get them made,ā Schafer said as we wound down our conversation in Las Vegas and he got ready to catch up with more friends. āThat really hasnāt changed at all.ā Maybe lately, itās gotten a little easier.
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