Captious thoughts on the interviewer's faculty and some reflections from Tim himself can be found in the Double Fine forum thread this was posted in.
Source: Double Fine forums
Tim Schafer has been spotted wearing his "boss" hat while discussing business decisions, contrasting his usual "game designer" attire and Schaferesque wit. Luckily, serious Schafer is by no means inferior to his blockbuster self, particularly when he drops wisdom regarding the video game industry:
“One of the most frustrating things about the games industry is that teams of people come together to make a game, and maybe they struggle and make mistakes along the way, but by the end of the game they’ve learned a lot — and this is usually when they are disbanded."
Source: Wired
Costume Quest is discounted by 50 percent, Brütal Legend is discounted between 69-81 percent (depending on platform), Psychonauts is discounted by 50 percent, Stacking is discounted by 50%, Iron Brigade is discounted by 33-50 percent, Double Fine Happy Action Theatre is discounted by 50 percent, and Once Upon a Monster is discounted by 15 percent.
Double Fine Adventure (codenamed Reds) is being steadily worked on, and art is being made and shown off for it all the time. If you're not a backer, you still have time to rectify that and become one so you can get access to the private backer forum and see the progress for yourself.
Or (or, even better, and) you can buy the Double Fine Adventure Lumberjack Print in pure Bagel style* for yourself for a mere $30.
There's been a bit of news of the fluff variety, so like last month, I'm going to include all the tidbits in one post.
The development period for Telltale's The Walking Dead is brisker than usual for the series, as Nick Herman updated his twitter with news that the episode 4 playtest has already been completed.
On the subject of Telltale, a rumor that a second season of Back to the Future: The Game is coming comes straight from Christopher Lloyd, who announced at the Fan Expo in Canada that he's once again playing Doc Brown in an upcoming game in the series.
Finally, over at Double Fine, the lead artist of Middle Manager of Justice, Mark Hamer, posted about the art of the game, including some concept art. Along with this comes the news that this game started out as one of the Amnesia Fortnight titles which was refined from it's original seriousness and rigidity into the quirky title that it is today (or will be when it's released shortly).
The Escapist is reporting that Double Fine accidentally released their iOS Super Hero sim onto iTunes in every region in an unfinished state on September 5th. Unfortunately, due to the difference between Mojo Time™ and real time, we weren't able to get the news out in time for Mojo readers.
But those who were lucky enough to download the unfinished build before it was pulled have now become beta testers. The game's project leader, Kee Chi, states that if you find any bugs to send bug reports to Double Fine. Any items bought during the beta will still be available in the full game. But Chi cautions that this is not the experience Double Fine wanted players to experience and recommends waiting until the completed version is released in the upcoming weeks.
In a nice interview with Eurogamer, Tim Schafer shares his feelings on what he now looks back on as a wrongheaded promotional strategy for the studio's softly successful Brutal Legend, revealing some interesting mindsets behind the three companies involved with regard to the title's RTS elements:
Schafer admits that he's not entirely blame free and that Vivendi, EA and Double Fine all took part in its notorious bait-and-switch.
"Vivendi was like 'No. Absolutely not. We'll never say RTS, ever. Even if someone asks us if it's an RTS we'll say no.'"
"EA mostly just didn't emphasise it," Schafer says. "They never told us not to talk about it. In fact, they did a whole press event at a bar in San Francisco that was all about the multiplayer. We released our multiplayer tutorial trailer before the game came out, so they weren't hiding it at all."
As far as Double Fine goes, it released a hugely misleading demo that focused on the game's driving and melee combat. This was entirely due to accessibility reasons regarding the game's steep learning curve. "The demo was kind of an accident," explains Schafer. "The mechanics ramp up slowly over time, so the demo is usually the first mission, so you just don't know those complicated RTS mechanics yet."I think Tim's sense that openness is the way to go is correct, but it's hard to say how much, financially, it would have helped Brutal Legend. It's known now that the game was effectively built around the stage battles concept, but as Double Fine expanded the single player campaign they were able to give it an open world and imbue it with some of the depth of a dyed-in-the-wool action/adventure epic.
When you're playing through Brutal Legend as a story, though, as you can't blame anyone for doing, you don't really have the context that the stage battles are meant to be the core and that in a sense the single player campaign is a (elaborate, extremely lovingly crafted) kind of training for the multiplayer, and for many the experience came off as an open word action/adventure that had a bizarre identity crisis midway through.
However assumptions or marketing colored one's expectations, the final game was certainly an unusual hybrid of gameplay types that many people didn't know what to make of, and considering the absolute distaste a large sect of gamers apparently reserve for even the most simplified of RTS mechanics out of principle (just glance at the Eurogamer comments), one can kind of see where the cynical Vivendi marketers were coming from.
Personally? I don't fault the vision of the game at all, and blame the response on its scale, which seems to have grown almost too much over development. Here is what should have been a great cult game that got packaged as a blockbuster thanks to the extra single player tinsel, a celebrity cast, an expensive soundtrack and tons of marketing that proved to give the mainstream the wrong idea. Had Brutal Legend been of a similar scope to Iron Brigade, I suspect it would have been understood.
"Nothing new has happened there, but it's still something that's an ongoing process. I'm still interested in that."
Source: Eurogamer
Which means that you can now purchase and download it as a PSN title. The PS2 version of Psychonauts is not the one I'd recommend to anyone with the option (which ought to be pretty much everyone, what with it on Steam), but it's always lovely to see the game get a little boost in availability and distinction. Quoth Chris Remo:
To truly become a PlayStation 2 Classic, we wanted to ensure Psychonauts had all the time it needed to grow into its status as a classic, like a fine artisanal Tuscan cheese. But less smelly.
Source: Playstation.Blog
Another year of PAX Prime has come and gone. The companies that Mojo covers were represented there, so I thought I'd make a big post covering everything Mojo-related that happened there. But then I realized that the pickings were small for the Mojo crowd this year, so a long post isn't needed.
Telltale had their live recording of their Playing Dead webseries that looks inside the making of The Walking Dead game with questions asked by fans and answered by the writers and developers of the game. They also had some neat swag called the Undead Survival Kit that they were giving away to a lucky few attendees. That's it, unfortunately. It was all Walking Dead oriented. No news on King's Quest or even Fables, which was said to be arriving by quarter three of this year. Since this month would be the last month of the Q3 2012 release window, I think it's safe to say Fables will miss it's original announced release date.
Double Fine was also represented there, with footage shown from the 2 Player Productions documentary about the Double Fine Adventure. They also showed off Ron Gilbert's upcoming adventure with platforming elements, The Cave. There's a load of new screenshots at Mr. Gilbert's blog. The big news is that The Cave isn't just coming to PlayStation 3, PC, and Xbox 360. It's also coming to the Wii U eShop.
Double Fine also showed off their sequel to Happy Action Theater, which has been renamed Kinect Party (it's a wonder publisher Microsoft let them use a clever original title for the original in the first place). Interestingly, in an interview with Eurogamer, Double Fine mentioned they'd like to do an "after dark" version with minigames that aren't child friendly such as "a level that made players shoot explosive diarrhea from their bottoms anytime they'd bent over", "a system that allows you to attach objects to characters such as extra limbs or body parts, and some of them are not meant for family", and most interestingly "having scary things happen only when one player would be present. Then people would drag their friends over to show them the offending terror only for it to not happen with another person present. Then they'd look crazy". Letting the Double Fine go crazy with uncensored Kinect minigames would certainly be interesting, to say the least.
... or something like that, with Middle Manager of Justice.
This will be a free-ish iOS game -- meaning you'll optionally pay for upgrades and what not through micro transactions -- revolving around you taking on the role as a manager of an office full of superheros and taking part in RPG-like turn based superhero battles. Really, just read Kotaku's preview. Much better than having to read my recap of the preview.
The whole thing looks like the type of Double Fine fun we expect from the company. Office manager for superheros? It's hard to see how that can fail, as long as it's not too dependent on the micro transactions.
Update! Hey, there a website! And a trailer!
Source: Kotaku
Giant Bomb has a first look at some of the minigames in Double Fine's sequel to Happy Action Theater, Happy Action TV, as part of their Quick Look EX series in a video that is 38:49 in length.
Double Fine's going even crazier with the sequel, adding voice recognition, putting costumes and objects on the images of the players, adding a picture editor that lets you add filters and borders, and the ability to post pictures from the game directly to Facebook, and more. The dubstep mode looks especially crazy and fun. There are 18 new minigames and the good news is that if you own the first Double Fine Happy Action Theater, the 18 minigames from the original will be playable right in the new game, making it especially convenient for children (and parties!).
Happy Action TV will be playable at Pax Prime, which is happening from August 31 to September 2 in Seattle (if you were lucky enough to get tickets months ago for the few days they were available).
Much has been said about the benefits Double Fine has been enjoying since they began pursuing multiple types of investment sources for their projects. Their non-exclusionary approach has resulted in smaller games funded by traditional publisher relationships (The Amensia Fortnight titles, Happy Action Theater, The Cave), crowdsourcing ("Reds") and the good fortune of an angel investor like Dracogen, a "fan with money" whose support led to the studio being able to self-publish their Psychonauts upgrade and Amnesia Fortnight PC ports on Steam.
In fact, it may not be long before Double Fine, in a downright Telltaleean twist, will be selling games directly through its web site. We already knew that there's been a big shift underway in the company's business strategy since Brutal Legend came out, and according to this article published last week on Venturebeat, the studio isn't turning back.
“We’re making a switch from console work-for-hire and going to direct to consumer and free-to-play projects,” said Justin Bailey, the vice president of business development at Double Fine. “That process has taken place over the last 18 months.”
[...]“It is complicated to keep straight, but we have crowdfunding, self-publishing, the mobile studio, and some legacy business,” said Bailey. “We are now majority-funded by crowdfunding or outside investment. By next year, hopefully that transition will be complete,” with almost no traditional publishers or work-for-hire deals funding the games.
Source: Venturebeat
Double Fine has announced that Iron Brigade will finally be available for PC. The game is set to be released on Steam on August 13th and will include the DLC expansion Rise of the Martian Bear.
If you own an Xbox 360 and still haven't bought the game, know that it has been discounted to 800 MS points. The Iron Brigade t-shirt has also gone on sale over at the Double Fine Shop. For just $15.00 you can be as cool as sound designer Camden Stoddard pictured below.
Source: Double Fine Action News
The Double Fine presentation from GDC 2012 has made its way to the GDC Vault where you can now watch it...as if you were there.
Creative Panic: How Agility Turned Terror Into Triumph is an hour long talk about Double Fine's Amnesia Fortnight and the four games it birthed given by Tim and the respective project leads (except Tasha Harris, who was reclaimed by Pixar). I like Tim's recollection of the cancellation of Brutal Legend 2: "Well, that's interesting - we're gonna go out of business."
Source: GDC Vault
It's been in the works since 2009, but The Art of Brütal Legend Book is finally coming. The book features artwork from Double Fine artists (and friends of Double Fine) including Scott Campbell, Peter Chan, Mark Hamer, Razmig Mavlian, Lee Petty, Levi Ryken, Nathan “Bagel” Stapley, and others.
It's being published by Udon Entertainment, and is expected to be released in November or December of this year.
To celebrate, Double Fine has marked down their prices for all of their copies of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of Brütal Legend, including the ones signed by Tim Schafer, which can now be picked up for a respectable $20 US (or $10 US if you don't like Schafer ink on your games).
According to Comics Alliance, Oni Press announced that they are going to bring the rest of "Scott C" Campbell's Double Fine Action Comics to trade paperback.
Starting in 2013, they will be bringing the first volume, Double Fine Action Comics Vol. 1, back into print, and will be following that up with Double Fine Action Comics Vol. 2. The first volume contains the first 300 strips and has a foreword by Tim Schafer, while the second volume contains the next 200 strips and has a foreword by Erik Wolpaw. A third volume, which is said to collect the remainder of the run (although it's unknown whether that's the original run, or if it includes the new comics as well), will be coming afterward.
As a side note, Double Fine Action Comics has been restarted after a long hibernation, so be sure to check that out if you haven't already.
Also, while I'm on the subject of the Double Fine Comics, I'll take the time to mention that Tasha's Comic moved to the personal blog of Tasha Harris after she left Double Fine for Pixar last September (the original run of the comic is still available at the Double Fine website as well). The other on-going Double Fine comics are Nathan Stapley's My Comic About Me and Gabe Miller's Dirt Nap. All are worth reading. The latter, in particular, is very engrossing. I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm addicted to it.
Source: GameTrailers.com
Ron Gilbert's much-anticipated new game is The Cave, a puzzle platformer an adventure game coming to PC and consoles in early 2013. Check out the announcement trailer below:
Looks awesome! You can read some first-look previews by Rock, Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer, Kotaku, Giant Bomb, Ars Technica, Joystiq, PC World, Destructoid, and The Verge, who describe the game as Maniac Mansion meets The Lost Vikings.
Source: Grumpy Gamer
