The Third Most 'Gamous' Person: A Chat With Tim Schafer

Tim Schafer has lived many lives in the game industry.

He's the man behind your favorite old school LucasArts adventure games like The Secret of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, and Grim Fandango. In 2003, Tim founded Double Fine Productions, a game studio in San Francisco that's spearheaded major shifts in the game industry. Last year, Double Fine launched a Kickstarter project that opened the floodgates to game crowdfunding, which could prove to be a pivotal shift in how we make games.

In other words, Schafer is a living legend. I recently had the chance to sit down with him before he jetted off to keynote the Nordic Game 2013 Conference in Sweden.

MOTHERBOARD: You’ve been in town for the TwoFiveSix Conference, which is the 256th games conference this year, right?

Yes, that’s [Kill Screen’s] Jamin Warren’s very first one, so hopefully it’ll turn into a big thing and he’ll ask me to return for the next one.

He did a great job, didn’t he?

I thought it was really neat how he paired up people and chose people I wouldn’t normally see. I wouldn’t walk across GDC [Game Developers Conference] for a talk on sports statistics, but you had a guy doing sports stats paired up with the Major League Gaming e-sports guy and it was fascinating. I thought it was really neat. And then him moderating it–-way more energy than a regular talk, where you’d tune out and fall asleep. But being interviewed--and Jamin doing a little improv--made the day go by quick.

I remember you said something about Jamin being the Ira Glass of videogames.

In his voice a little bit, and also his interview style when Ira does an interview on stage. Jamin was pretty similar. I’m glad we have him.

If Jamin is Ira Glass, who’s going to be our Ed Sullivan? With Jimmy Fallon taking over "The Tonight Show," that might have an impact on bringing new games to the mass audiences?

Isn’t Jimmy Fallon the Jimmy Fallon of games?

Fair point. But as far as really bringing about a videogame Beatlemania; realigning videogames to the center of popular culture–like we’re a part of it, but off to the side. The kid’s table.

It’s such a strange place! Anytime you meet someone who doesn’t play videogames they always say, “Oh yeah, you know, I used to love that… what’s it called? Pac-man!” It’s strange to think of how much cultural penetration there was when Pong and Pac-man came about and then, all of the sudden, everyone all at once didn’t care anymore, until the young Nintendo kids grew up. Now, it seems like it is everywhere, and everyone is playing, but maybe that’s because I just always deal with people who are in the industry and all my friends are in the industry. And of course, all of them are playing games and making games.

We always talk about how to “broaden the market” and it’s hard to imagine how all these people would be thinking, “Oh, I can’t wait to get home and play my game” and everyone thinks that’s going to happen, but people are reading books or watching shows that appeal to them. Maybe if they were going to play a game that was like the books they were reading, they would go home and play something.

So maybe Nicholas Sparks should make games?

Who’s Nicholas Sparks?

The Notebook.

[laughs] Well, maybe! That’s the thing--a lot of the genres people in games would make fun of are big in movies or novels. But even things as basic as comedy; it’s so huge in film but nowhere in games. There’s definitely more places to go.

I just played Guacamelee.

Haven’t played it yet! But I heard it has a lot of calaveras stuff in it.

Yeah, but it’s also rife with self-referential material--meme jokes and videogame culture references. And that seems to be where humor lies in videogames right now, with the exception of you, who's actually funny, in my opinion. But there’s this weird cannibalistic nostalgia loop going on and I think it’s a barrier for people outside of “gamer” culture to enjoy the work.

I think there’s just so many people who still really enjoy pressing that little gland in their brain that makes us feel like we’re twelve years old. Hearing chip-tunes music might give you that sensation of being a kid and playing Atari on a Saturday morning in the same way that I love watching Close Encounters or E.T. You get this comforting, “Oh my God, I’m eating cereal in my parents basement and I feel really cozy,” at least for those of us that had childhoods like that. Probably some people just don’t want to remember their childhood at all, so they play Call of Duty.

So that’s part of it. It’s those memories of nostalgia, and… I don’t know. I guess that’s why people harken back to things they love, things that are mostly not done anymore. But also there’s a lot of things I’m nostalgic for that aren’t being done still. Like stylized 3D character platformers, stuff like Super Mario 64--brightly colored, cheerful, stylized platformers.

When they made Jak and Daxter, I remember there was a feeling like Jak and Daxter was successful, but they wanted it to be more successful. And the frustration was that the kids they were aiming for still wanted to play Grand Theft Auto III with their older brother, even though they were like, 8, and you knew deep down they’d totally enjoy playing a cheerful platformer, but then they wanted to drive cars and shoot guns.

Hence Jak II and III with assault rifles on the box cover. Oh, and then shadow selves were big for a while.

Shadow selves, that was awesome. Anyway, with all the big AAA games coming out this year, I’m super excited about Grand Theft Auto V. I just love playing all of those. I’d love to make a GTA game that was about something else than those things games usually are--just experiencing a city in a different way, in the same way that New York City is fun for me to come visit. It’s actually enhanced by Grand Theft Auto. Like, anytime I see a hot dog vendor with the umbrellas, I want to drive through it. Being in a location you’ve only seen in the game, and then being there in real life, there’s this weird “Oh, I think I know what’s around the corner, Oh, yep” feeling.

That’s how I felt when I moved here, which was surreal because I was working at Rockstar Games at the time. It was weird not having any bearings on where I was, but since I had played GTA IV I felt like I had already been there.

Right! That’s the fun part for me. But I’m not exactly sure how I would do that, and I’m not putting them down, but I feel like all I’m doing is following an arrow on the ground to a group of guys, shoot them, then follow another arrow to the next group of guys I’ve got to kill. Nothing against killing guys, but it feels like there’s more than you could do.

It feels like there’s this momentum to build things bigger. More elaborate action set pieces for just that: killing guys. What could be a different approach to a game like GTA?

It could be easy to just add a new set of things you need to achieve, another set of verbs than just guns and cars. I mean, keep the cars.

I’m going to think of something really stupid and that’s gonna be the headline of the article isn’t it? “Tim Schafer Insists Grand Theft Auto Needs More Bunny Rabbits.”

At least when Kotaku reblogs the article.

[laughs] Then again, how would you make that game? How would you get the millions of dollars you need to make a GTA game without shooting or any of the things that have worked in the past, when you take out the thing that makes its core? I think you’d have to make a smaller one and do it on Kickstarter. Like I said, Kickstarter is always my answer.

But with all the engines out there now, ready to go engines like adventure game engines, maybe there will be an open-world city engine? “InstaCity” tools where you can make your own world to play in. Can you run around like GTA in the new SimCity?

I don’t think so.

Why hasn’t anyone done that? I guess making all of that procedural will make it hard to get the same fidelity of a GTA game. Then again, everything I thought was impossible is totally being done in the next five years I look forward to playing the InstaCity.

Thanks for the idea.

You’ll be rich! At least until you publish this article and someone else steals it.

Speaking of Kickstarter, how’s all the success being taken by the Double Fine crew? There’s a documentary, there’s the media attention, and then there’s the game in the works. Are you excited to get it out the door? Will you guys do another Kickstarter?

Yes and yes.  Everyone’s excited; the game looks great, it’s coming together great. I got so excited when all the money came in, I started designing a regular game. When it started with the limited budget, we were only planning on doing a simple project, like a flash game.

But then when we got the larger budget, like $4 million, so now we have to hone it down to get it done on the budget. The difference this time is that since the Kickstarter backers are watching us build the game, they keep getting upset when we cut stuff out of the game. “Don’t cut it! I paid for that!” But it’s such a normal process for making a game.

It’s not even bad; editing is good. But that’s just a painful part of the process. I write free-verse and then I try to make it semi-decent and cut out the bad stuff- you look smarter by editing. If you write twenty jokes and you pick the best three, it just seems like you're a genius. “Every joke he makes is great!” but really you just cut seventeen jokes. Did I get the math right? Luckily I don’t make a living from math.

So the editing process is normal, but having people observe the process–who will see stuff we took out of the game–might miss a certain room in the game. It’ll be interesting to see how people take it. That’s what we wanted to make the documentary for; to show people everything.  The painful meetings where someone wants to cut something and someone else doesn’t, and people get mad. That happens when you make a game.

Well you said you have a no jerks policy at Double Fine.

Well, mostly.

[laughter] So how heated and painful are those meetings?

Well the way it works is, you can have some heated arguments when you have so many creative, opinionated, passionate people. But what I’ve noticed over the years is they resolve well because, deep down, everybody just wants the game to be really great. So as long as that’s the goal, then we usually can resolve it.

But sometimes, you’ll be in a situation where that’s not the goal: where someone wants a promotion, or they want to get their name out there so it’s a fight to do things their way, or they just don’t like someone so they shoot down every idea they have. Those never get resolved, and usually someone gets fired or quits. Those are more political fights that I was talking about, that we try to weed out in the hiring proces–like if someone’s gripey about their past employers or little signs like that, or blaming other people for their troubles. Keeping people like that out keeps Double Fine focused on making the game great.

You’ve had some great collaborators over the years, Scott Campbell and Ron Gilbert for example. How did you form these relationships and who do you look for when you’re looking for someone to collaborate with?

Well a lot of us have worked together for twenty years–like Peter Chan, and Ron obviously was one of the first people I met in the industry, like in ’89. And Scott I met when he was at LucasArts making an educational Star Wars game with baby Star Wars characters. But I went to one of his gallery shows and his fine art was just amazing and I thought, “that’s something that would be good in games.” Same with Nathan Stapley; in that case, I was looking for outsiders whose art doesn’t look like it belongs in games. That was really easy, because games tend to look the same a lot.

Orange and blue light.

You forgot shiny! Indie games are branching out aesthetically, but there’s even things that indie games are gravitating toward–8-bit retro stuff for example–even while some of them are very experimental.

So anyway I’m just looking for experimental artists and pairing them with hardcore production people who can get things done. We’re really small and we don’t have a lot of turn over. Like right now, we’re not hiring anyone so I guess we’ll have to kill someone before another person comes on. But most of the time, it’s kind of what you’d expect. Looking at amazing portfolios, or if it’s an engineer we put them on the phone with the team and ask them all the tough engineering questions.  Then we bring them in to see if they’re tolerable to go to lunch with. [laughter]

We really value humility. People who brag a lot or who take credit for other people’s work aren’t good, but people who are really humble and positive and smart–and if they’re curious about how things work–that’s a good sign.

You’re probably the closest thing we have to a gaming “celebrity,” there are a lot of people who either can’t handle it or aren’t funny. How come you’re the only one?

Well it’s been really slow; it’s not like it was overnight. I’ve been around since ’89. It’s kind of like the story of the boiling frog; it’s not killing me; it’s pleasant. I really like it, every interaction I have as a result of being in the game industry is a positive one. People come up to me at conferences, and they’re always just the most happy, “I love your games, and I want to work on games!” It’s always just a love fest. Maybe it would be different if I made a game like Call of Duty, where you’d have fans that don’t love your stuff but play it anyway, or they like your game but they don’t love your game. Or they just don’t feel anything. All of our fans feel a personal connection to the games and the people who made it.

Plus I was really lucky to be around when there was no internet, so I could make all my mistakes offline. If I was 22, and Twitter was around, I would probably be flaming my fans or making mistakes and speaking up and saying obnoxious things I’d have to retract later, but I got all of that stuff out of my system at Lucasarts. I made tons of mistakes in my twenties and did stupid stuff, now all the stupid stuff you do is on Twitter.

The Blow/Fish effect.

[laughter] Wait, the blowfish?

John and Phil.

Oh! I wonder about that because I’ll read Phil’s tweets and say, “oh my God I can’t believe he said that” but I don’t think it’s cause he’s young and stupid. In a way I think it’s the public persona he’s choosing to adopt. I think he has some self-awareness about that, cause he gets a lot of attention for it–and look, we’re talking about him right now. So maybe it’s just totally working!

It’s such an interesting development in videogames, because public personas play a big part in popular culture and videogames haven’t really debuted to the mass media yet. It seems like the indies always get written as pretentious or bombastic, but then there’s a lot of silent developers as well. Is there a happy medium? How should developers be presenting themselves as videogame personalities?

I think you can get down the rabbit hole of like shadow boxing. Like on Twitter, you’re shouting into a canyon full of thousands of people, and you think they’re all thinking one thing because of one tweet, and so you need a response to that. But really no one is talking to you, and no one is really saying this to you, you’re almost just arguing with your own inner demons. Like when someone calls you a loser, it’s like it activates some thing in your head that tells you “you’re a loser” like you’re fighting with that thing, and you should really stop fighting in front of everybody, cause it’s embarrassing. Just get that under control.

It’s hard when you’re exposed to the public in a raw, internet way. If a news article comes out about your game, and there’s a bunch of positive stuff about it, but then there’s that one super testy, negative comment, and you’ll be tempted to respond to that.  “Hey, you didn’t think about this,” when really that’s like half of a percent of the people who responded, and it’s probably just someone trolling you anyway. Instead you should always spend your mental energy on the positive comments, who really like what you’re doing.

Also, remember you’re never really famous. Like, walk down the street, 'who’s the most famous person in games?' It’s gotta be like Will Wright or Miyamoto. People that everyone in the games industry would know. Anyway walk down the street and ask someone who their favorite game developer is. They wouldn’t even be able to pick one. They might know who Will is, if you went down and asked ten people in a row. But if you ask them about Brad Pitt or Angelina, people will know what you’re talking about. There’s a huge difference between actually being famous and being game-famous.

Gamous?

Gamous. And that’s an important thing to stay humble about; the most famous person in games is not famous at all.

Well hopefully someday, right? Don’t we want games in the spotlight?

Yeah, but probably not. The thing I think about is like, even among the most famous film directors, there’s only like a handful of recognizable names there too.  Scorcese or Spielberg, but that’s probably the maximum game developers could get. People that are really famous are glamorous or beautiful. But Spielberg is famous for what he is doing,

That’s a great analog to what’s going on. Didn’t Jamin and Robin Hunicke just talk about comparing videogames and designers to American New Wave cinema? Those film directors are still household names. Could that be good for games being recognized by the larger culture?

Yeah, except for the people doing level design or all of the hard stuff. Like the game designers and the people actually coming up with ideas and doing work.

But the best movies, most people don’t know a single screenwriter. That’s kind of the best we can hope for, is the level of those film directors. It’s funny, you read in science fiction about the future, there’s always some rockstar game developer, you know what I mean? Cause in the future there going to be like rockstars. They’re not. At the best they’ll be like those movie directors. Which is fine, that’d be great.

Well it keeps a good level of being relevant to the culture at large and not being obsessive or having videogame developers on TMZ. That’s such a weird thing anyway.

Well, maybe just the beautiful ones, like me.

Another example is people are always asking “how can we make our awards more like the Oscars” and I’m like, “until Brad Pitt is working in games, no one is going to watch our award shows on TV” The most we could hope to accomplish with our shows is the Director’s Guild Awards. Forget movies.

Check in later to hear about new consoles, new business models, AAA vs. indies, good guys, bad guys, damsels, daughters, and just plan old videogames.

Plus Tim and Colin will make Vine videos.

Part 2 is up here!

You can follow Tim on Twitter @TimOfLegend.

You can follow Colin on Twitter @scallopdelion.