![]() ![]() Turns out making games is weird, tricky and expensive, and eventually it’s like “wow, it would be great to keep doing this, but also feel a bit more secure, wouldn't it?.” Maybe even especially then.Īfter two decades of going it alone as an independent studio, Double Fine started talking with Microsoft about the future. Additionally, 2 Player Productions has remained on-site ever since, and never stops filming us, even when things get weird. We would turn to it again for both the Brad Muir multi-generational combat strategy project Massive Chalice, and later Psychonauts 2. While crowd-funding hasn’t completely changed the business model for games, plenty of great developers and indie designers have also used it to make the games that they knew their fans were craving. That game would eventually become Broken Age, a tale of two young teens caught in amazing circumstances, and as promised the entire process was captured, both the exciting highs and rocky hurdles, in a documentary series that you can watch for free. What set out as a request to fund a small $100k flash game quickly grew out of hand as 85,000 backers contributed $3.3 million, setting world records for crowdfunding, and resulting in both the game and the documentary growing significantly in scope. ![]() In 2012 that all changed for us.īroken Age, created with the support of generous backers, was a return to the adventure games the defined Tim's early years at LucasArts. It’s fun to experiment but making original games made also means pitching and boardroom meetings and focus-testing and convincing people your strange idea is going to make money. The hard part in all of this was getting funding for games, and getting them published. And those ideas sprung right from the minds of Double Fine team members. Iron Brigade started as ‘Custodians of the Clock” and Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster was built from a project called ‘Happy Song.” While there were also games like The Cave, which was headed up by tim's former LucasArts colleague and Monkey Island creator Ron GIlbert, there was a stretch of time where most games started out as Amnesia Fortnight projects.ĭouble Fine’s output was defined by these experiments, leading to smaller releases that covered a variety of genres. Many of these prototypes have become games in their own right, from the RPG Costume Quest to the puzzling adventure game Hack ‘n Slash. Anyone in the studio can pitch their idea and it's lead to all sorts of games! Perhaps it took a bit of time to truly resonate, but it’s endured as cult-classic with an energetic and diverse fandom over 15 years later.ĭuring Amnesia Fortnight, the team spends two weeks leaving all other work behind in order to create cool prototypes and fresh projects. That’s some inside baseball nonsense though it was sorted out in the end either by fate or luck. As skilled programmers, artists, and other game buds worked their butts off to bring the story of Razputin "Raz" Aquato, a series of publisher woes left the game’s fate up in the air. Psychonautswas first on the docket and it proved to be an arduous development period. The early days of Double Fine birthed some of our largest games. A studio was set up in San Francisco, named after a traffic sign, and shoved into an old clog-shop. How did it all start? Well Tim Schafer and a band of motley folks, including other LucasArts alums and assorted cool chums, decided that it was time to start their own game studio - One where original projects could thrive and the only limits were measured in imagination and megabytes. If you want to know about the studio, we’ll need to break it down into lovely little chunks of biographical truth and the occasional exaggeration. The history of Double Fine is full of excitement, battles against demonic hordes, game jams, giant robots, and at least one madcap dentist stealing brains. Tim always wanted to start a band called "Double Fine" so people would know whose Zone they were entering as they crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. ![]()
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