Quoth the Jason, “The bloodletting begins.”
Greg Rice, Double Fine’s VP of business development and arguably their second most recognizable face, has left the company for a “new position elsewhere in the game industry.” A tweet string makes it pretty clear there is no bad blood behind the departure, though it seems somewhat prudent to speculate if the recent Microsoft acquisition would have changed his responsibilities within the company. And that’s what we do. Speculate.
Source: Gamasutra
GamesRadar got with Tim for the tenth anniversary of Brutal Legend, resulting in an interview that comes off as something of a postmortem for the studio's second project, and also arguably still it's last game of a giant scale. Read the article and renew your expertise of the game's wacky development history. Remember that hilarious lawsuit, what with all the laughter it caused?
Tim also talks about how you can play against him in Brutal Legend online every "Rocktober" 13th, but that probably would be more relevant if we'd reported on this article when it was published. We'll try harder next year, as far as you know.
Source: GamesRadar
Tomorrow is Rocktober 13th, the 10th anniversary of the release of Brutal Legend! To celebrate DoubleFine is hosting a livestreaming event where you can play against Tim Schafer and other members of the Double Fine team.
As Lee Petty Tweeted earlier today, "You can beat him! @TimOfLegend is old and nowhere near his fighting weight!"
Join the melee tomorrow between 1 and 4pm PST (9pm to 1am GMT).
Source: Double Fine
PC Gamer has put together a small oral history of sorts about what they -- and probably many of us -- consider the best Psychonauts level, "The Milkman Conspiracy." A quote:
That was only possible because writing all the dialogue came last. After the designers and gameplay programmers had finished, Schafer would assess every piece of the level, and write dialogue based on all the work that came before. "That was the most solid foundation for the jokes to get layered on top," Robson says. "Half of my memory of Milkman is playing it without any of that dialogue, so that stuff still almost feels like a sort of recent edition. And then after you're done with the level, six or eight weeks later, this dialogue appears all of a sudden in the game."
Now run and read it.
Over at PAX West, a thing which was going on last week, Double Fine was on hand to show off Psychonauts 2. Judging by this preview on Shacknews, Double Fine was giving the same demo they were giving back at E3, resulting in said preview offering exactly zilch in the new information department.
But despite the fact that Shacknews has let all of you down in a very personal way, PAX West wasn't a washout. That's because those stalkers at Destructoid chased Tim all around the expo until he "consented" to be interviewed at length. With a gun pressed against his cheek, Tim talks about all sorts of juicy stuff, like the fact the Microsoft acquisition is still an ongoing affair, the unclear fate of Double Fine's publishing arm, hints about the studio's post-Psychonauts 2 project, and how he really feels about virtual reality, now that the cameras are off and Rhombus of Ruin is Old News. And then there's this observation:
I love the Switch, and a lot of people at Double Fine are huge Nintendo fans and I think we always have been and will be. Early on in my career, Super Mario 64 was obviously very influential for me. And it always felt weird that I feel like I just cannot sell a game in Japan. Japanese games people would come to visit at LucasArts and they would look at Grim Fandango and they'd be like "Are these characters done?" One of them actually said that. I was like "Yeah, that's the final art," and he was like "They don't have skin." I always thought that we had very Japanese sensibility in our love of design and love of character. But, I guess our taste and aesthetic are more American than I realized. Some day we'll have a game that Japanese people will like.
Why do you resist Tim, Japan? Why have you not read the full interview, everyone else?
Source: Destructoid
Double Fine doesn't just make games, they sometimes bless them with love, and release them into the world, too. Not that we normally mention that, but why don't we? So breaking with tradition here's news on another new DF game, hot on the tail of RAD. This one is called "Knights and Bikes", from by London-based Foam Sword Games, and it has already been called "gorgeous" in the comments.
Source: @foamswordgames
DoubleFine's latest game, the post-post-apocalyptic rogue-like, RAD, is released today for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC. It's the latest project led by Lee Petty (Stacking, Autonomous, and Headlander), and I'm sure the obligatory Mojo review is just around the corner.
Source: DoubleFine
While some of us were ready to group Double Fine in with Telltale as companies we would never get to see (or touch as it might be) any new games from, a glimmer of hope has surfaced. Matt Booty, Xbox’s first-party studio head, mused thusly about Microsoft’s studio umbrella’s potential multi-platform releases:
Yeah, I think we would. I think that the question is less binary about, ‘should it be on Switch, should it be on PlayStation?’ and more, ‘does it make sense for the franchise?’ [..] With something like Minecraft, I think it was a no-brainer that we were never going to try and take anything from players that existed on those platforms, and certainly we’ve added platforms since that acquisition.
So there you go. The possibilities of seeing Double Fine titles fall under "dooes it make sense" in our world, followed up with a ringing "yes" endorsement, so consider that a full on guarantee.
Source: VGC
As you probably remember, Double Fine is now a Microsoft property, which means a whole host of things, potentially most so for those who invested in the Psychonauts 2 Fig campaign. Looks like Christmas will come early for said investors, with payments now being sent out in September, according to
Destructoid. This because publishing rights have shifted to Microsoft.
Of course, who knows if it will amount to a happy Christmas or not -- a 139% return is nothing to sneeze at, unless, of course, Psychonauts 2 beats all estimates. That seems unlikely to me, but consider that only one handsome man’s opinion.
Did you invest? Sound off in the comments if so, though I never considered the Mojo crowd the investor type.
Source: Destructoid
DoubleFine has revealed a post-E3 update for Psychonauts 2 (put together by the folks at 2 Player Productions) and also revealed that the game's release has been pushed back to 2020. As they said to backers:
We know it’s always disappointing when you have to wait a bit longer, but we also know that you are an amazing, supportive bunch, who - just like us - want the game to be as good as possible. So we’re hopeful you’ll understand! <3
I think we do, but if you're struggling, checkout the update to kill 15 minutes and 1 second while you wait for next year:
Earlier in the week, Tim demoed to convention goers the first level from Psychonauts 2, which also featured in the gameplay trailer that debuted around that time. I’ve collected links to a few of the previews that resulted, settling once and for all the question of whether I can type a phrase into Google News:
The previews also indicate that the game has been quietly pushed back to 2020. Not hugely surprising, and after all a five year development schedule is an elemental bona fide of any Psychonauts installment.
I leave you with three videos. The first is the new trailer which we’ve linked to a few days back but which is now embedded for your convenience. The second is nine minutes of footage from the game narrated by Tim, and the third is an hour-long “E3 Coliseum” panel for the game featuring Tim and Jack Black.
It’s true: Double Fine is now officially part of Xbox Game Studios, and… I don’t even know. Check what Tim has to say, and Mojo will be back with more. Meanwhile, check out some Psychonauts 2 goodness.
Psychonauts has seemingly been made available for every platform under the sun at this point, but it hasn't been printed as a physical release since the Majesco days.
That will change this Friday, June 7th, when Limited Run Games will be releasing a PS4 port of Double Fine's classic in both standard and collector's or "Psycho-Portal" editions -- the latter including a SteelBook case, a reversible poster, and a soundtrack CD. So that's pretty nifty. What with the run being limited and so forth, you'll want to act fast on Friday morning if you're in the market for this, which you are, definitionally, by being Mojo reader.
Source: https://twitter.com/LimitedRun
Double Fine's upcoming Roguelike, RAD, has a competition running to have your graffiti artwork featured in the game.
You could also win a RAD Skateboard, a RAD Lunchbox, a RAD Floppy Disk, a RAD Action Figure, and Digitally RAD Copy of the Game, provided you live in the USA and submit your entry by the end of June.
Why not give it a shot? Submit your RAD artwork here
(Question: Will it ever get tiresome saying RAD all the time? Answer: Yes.)
Source: Bandai Namco
Some sad news is making the rounds today, reporting the death of programmer Stephen Ash, a veteran of LucasArts, Double Fine, Ion Storm Dallas, Factor 5 and his most permanent home, id Software.
Ash's career at LucasArts included work on Grim Fandango, and like a number of developers on the Grim team, he was one of the earliest employees of Double Fine, where he developed the physics system for Psychonauts. Tim acknowledged his contribution and passing in the following tweet:
Saying goodbye to Stephen Ash, a brilliant programmer and kind, soft-spoken person. Everybody wanted Steve on their project. We were lucky to get him on Psychonauts in the early, unheated warehouse days of Double Fine, to help get our first engine off the ground. Thanks, Steve!
Source: Gamasutra
Psychonauts 2 excitement is building, and E3 looks to be the epicenter for some long-awaited information on the title. During the conference, we'll see Jack Black (courtesy of his Jablinski Games YouTube series) and Tim demo the game, and the final release date -- set for this year -- should also be revealed.
Additionally, Rad, which to this quasi-reporter-ish looks almost as exciting, has an official release date of August 20th.
Thanks to Jason for kindly letting me post this on his behalf.
Source: Dual Shockers
I mean, it's from The Onion, but seeing things are slow, why not take three minutes and check out their exclusive preview of Psychonauts 2's legal disclaimer screen?
Like I said, slow times. Mojo is still investigating if rumors of Jason getting a haircut hold any truth. We will be back with more.
Faithful reader, Rum Rogers, was recently out on one of his . . . colorful . . . web surfing voyages when, out of the blue, popped this rather adult looking ad:
Always a man who wants to get to the bottom of things, so to speak, Rum dug a bit deeper, and found that the aforementioned logo, which at least was a somewhat modified version of Ben, was not one of a kind:
We got nothing, other than utter bafflement.
… which incidentally is the name of their new game. Headed by Lee Petty Rad looks to live up to its name…
The game will be available for pretty much every platform under the sun; no release date is given other than this “summer.”
If you remember, Double Fine's Costume Quest is now an animated series. It released three days ago—say one thing about Mojo, say we're on that breaking news cycle, like a petulant man-child on Twitter—and you can watch it here.
Anyone seen the show? What did you think of it?
It's crazy to think that Costume Quest released nine years ago. You could do worse than pass a few hours punching ogres for candy. I'm going to be playing Costume Quest 2 this Halloween.
Source: Amazon Prime