Tim Schafer, the guy who was in that one picture with the Grim Fandango characters, is going to be handed a Lifetime Achievement Award at IndieCade 2010 by a scantily-clad model named Ron Gilbert. Congratulations, Tim!
Source: Joystiq
Tasha Harris (the lead on Double Fine's next, the downloadable game Costume Quest) and Tim Schafer (just some guy who works at some company) have been somewhere in Britain, talking to the press and, unlike me, not getting ignored. So here's an interview with Eurogamer, and then there was this other one with NowGamer. ComputerAndVideoGames had a hands-on preview, and then, later, so did Videogamer.
So go forth and read, unless you don't know how.
Source: Kotaku
Move over, Lindsay Lohan: British tabloid gaming website Eurogamer.net are reporting that Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has responded to Tim Schafer's insult to him from earlier this year; this, in turn, made Schafer comment back.
Rumours that the story would appear on tomorrow's edition of The Sun are yet to be confirmed.
This all comes a few hours after it was announced that Ron "Monkey Island slash Deathspank creator" Gilbert would be joining Double Fine to work on a yet unannounced game.
Source: Eurogamer
Gamasutra reports that Double Fine "project lead" (presumably of one of their three unannounced games) Nathan Martz will be keynoting at the upcoming Game Connect Asia Pacific conference in Australia. They say:
Nathan Martz, project lead at Brutal Legend and Psychonauts developer Double Fine will present a keynote titled "The Culture, Creativity and Awesome of Double Fine," in which he'll explain how the nine-year-old independent studio has managed to navigate through the financial, creative and market-related challenges of the modern video game industry.
Sounds like a scream! The conference takes place from October 14-15, and surely there will be a write-up of Martz' speech worth reading around then.
Source: Gamasutra
You love Psychonauts. You probably love Inception, unless its popularity has made it unhip for you to love. Either way, you will love this.
Now who feels the sudden urge to replay Psychonauts?
Source: Gamespot
There are a couple of new interviews out in the wilderness, shedding further light on the dark, bleak, brown Unreal-powered slaughterfest that is Double Fine's Costume Quest*. The first is at GameTrailers, the second is at 1UP. Watch, and be afraid!
EDIT: And there's a nice written preview up at IGN too.
"For the 'Amnesia Fortnight' project we let people fill out a form where they got to rank which game they worked on and then we also let the leaders on each team rank who they wanted on their team. We had this amazing Excel spreadsheet that, somehow, using algebra, or possibly calculus, decided the intersection of those two ranks to put everyone on the team they most wanted to be on and also where they were most needed."
Source: MTV Multiplayer
If you didn't know already, there are FOUR Double Fine games in the pipeline, all digital download titles. We already know about Costume Quest, the adventure/RPG out this October and just revealed today, but now THQ has announced that they will be publishing another one of the Big Four DF Games.
The second title will be "a third-person adventure game scheduled to be released in early 2011" (from the press release). Now, we all know what publishers call "adventure" we call "action adventure" so I wouldn't get my hopes up in that particularly regard... however, I am personally predicting that something Psychonauts-based will be part of one of these four games.
"We are delighted to work with the creative genius of Tim Schafer and the entire Double Fine studio," said Martin Good, Executive Vice President, THQ Kids, Family, Casual Games, and Global Online Services. "Delivering high-quality content across a variety of digital distribution platforms is an important growth initiative for us, and we are pleased to do so with two titles whose potential appeal could encompass both hardcore and casual players."
Source: MarketWatch
Make no mistake, though, Costume Quest is very much a Double Fine, or Schafer-esque, game. Set on Halloween night across spookified suburbs, rundown carnival rides, and a local mall, the story follows a young boy searching for his little sister. Costume Quest feels familiar -- like a lost SNES role-playing adventure ported in high-definition 3D -- and laugh out loud funny -- like Double Fine's catalogue.
Source: UGO
What could be the first detail about Double Fine's next game - their follow-up to Brutal Legend - has been revealed. It's a trademark finding, spotted by this Tumblr guy, and hints that the game is called "Costume Quest". Same guy (girl?) also noted that LucasArts filed a trademark registratin for something called "Bounty Hunter",
My highly-sought analysis is this: the Double Fine game is probably about deciding what costume to wear each morning before going to work, and probably satisfies every gamer's wish to be a clown; and the LucasArts "Bounty Hunter" game isn't about chocolate. Click here to re-read everything I just wrote.
Source: Tumblr
Junkboy at "Pixelation" has mocked up retro screenshots of modern games for Swedish gaming magazines, including one featuring a point-and-click style Brütal Legend.
Here are a bunch of demake mockups that I've made for swedish gaming mag Level over the last years. Many of these were made quick and dirty (relatively speaking) in order to make deadlines, so they're not all that pretty to look at. But I figured I should post them somewhere so they don't just gather dust on my hard drive. Any feedback is of course appreciated.
Head on over to the gallery to check out all the other 'demakes'.
Source: Pixelation
It's Double Fine's tenth birthday, which we totally reported so shut up, and to celebrate their art director and really talented dude Scott Campbell has posted a lovely commemorative piece.
Which Kotaku spotted before we did.
It's a pretty cool showing of all the almost-made-it-in-the-game characters Double Fine created along with their main studio leads (2HB, Raz, Eddie) and a cameo from Dogen. But you don't need me to tell you since you've already seen it by now. Right? Right.
Source: Kotaku
Today is the tenth anniversary of Double Fine's founding, and also Tim Schafer's birthday. Yes, ten years and two games ago the cancellation-prone San Francisco based game studio was formed in an empty clog shop, and all of us were salivating over rumors that Tim and the Grim Fandango team were working on some console game for Microsoft. Those anti-adventure traitors.
Thankfully, recent news indicates that we're getting not one but none four new games from the developer, and possibly fairly soon. Which is awesome.
Happy first decade, double-headed baby! You don't look a day over 120 months.
The Sixth Axis have listened to and then duly summarized Tim Schafer's keynote at Develop 2010. It is a good read, with a very interesting section on the benefits of making smaller games. Warning, though: "Tim Shafer" shows-up again. Who is this Tim Shafer? And why does he keep on popping-up in news stories about Tim Schafer? Find out nothing about this mystery man by clicking here.
Source: TheSixthAxis
And that man is Tim Schafer.
Not much was revealed at the Develop conference today, but apparently Double Fine nixed development of a Brütal Legend 2 in favor of making smaller games. Four of them.
According to IGN, Lee Petty, the man behind much of the Brütally awesome art of their previous game, will work on a retro title "with a twist." Programmer Nathan Marts, meanwhile, is doing something more technologically "cutting edge." Brad Muir and Tasha Harris are also heading up projects. The games all have publishers.
So. This is kind of cool. While Psychonauts and Brütal Legend were awesome, I can't help but think that this new approach will benefit both Double Fine and us. Four games? Come on!
More to come soon, I'm sure.
Source: IGN
Did you know it's Double Fine's tenth anniversary this year? And that Tim Schafer is speaking in Brighton UK tomorrow for the Develop conference which I couldn't be at because I'm in China? Well Eurogamer noticed, and grabbed Tim for an interview. It's really interesting, and contains plenty of hints about Double Fine's new games, plural.
Apparently they've got a publisher for them, and they will be announcing them "soon" - possibly even tomorrow at the conference if Tim's subtle hints are to be interpreted correctly. While a sequel or more DLC for Brutal Legend seems unlikely, Psychonauts 2 is definitively not ruled out. It also might be a downloadable title using the BL engine.
Oh, and he calls Bobby Kotick "a total prick". And spot the mistake Eurogamer made with the Full Throttle screenshot.
UPDATE: After Tim called Activision head Bobby Kotick a dick, a man who doesn't like videogames, and a total prick, Activision have fired back a response: "He does too like videogames!"
UPDATE 2: Tim responds to Activision's response. He wishes he kept his mouth shut and calls his comments about Kotick "an accident", then infers that the Activision head is Darth Vader. So close, Tim, so close.
Source: Eurogamer
