Double Fine founder and creator of numerous cult classics including Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, and Psychonauts, Tim Schafer, has said - yet again - that publishers aren't willing to invest in new intellectual properties, which is exactly what his studio specialises in.
"Publishers often don't want to release anything new, I mean they're scared of new IP, and Double Fine specalises in new IP," he said, "That's always been our challenge, is getting a publisher to invest millions of dollars in something brand new like Brutal Legend."
Since the release of Brutal Legend Schafer and company have stepped away from the world of big budget game development, choosing to instead focus on creating smaller titles delivered through digital channels.
Since adopting the new strategy Double Fine has produced two well-recieved titles including Costume Quest and Iron Brigade. It's next title, Double Fine Happy Action Theater, is created entirely for Microsoft's Kinect and is published by Microsoft Game Studios.
According to Schafer publishers are far more willing to explore new properties within this model.
"It has helped to have games that are smaller, like digital download games are smaller so the budgets are smaller, like Happy Action Theater. The whole reason it got made was that I was asking for very little money to get it made," he explained.
"And once it proved the power of it, money was invested in it, but the original thing that we were asking for was very small."
Tim Schafer is a pretty cool guy, he dines with the Cookie Monster and doesn't afraid of anything.
Comments
28 comments so far...
iucidium on 6 Feb '12 said:
Activision have literally created a choke point in gaming where their products are most popular yet aren't superior. Everybody else is now following suit hoping to make the same returns they do - but aren't. Expect Activision to have patents on their game soon to further cripple innovation. Sorta like what is going on with America using IP as its new money maker.
JD_Method on 6 Feb '12 said:
Sadly, Tim Schafer is known for making fantastic original titles that end up selling like dog s**t sandwiches.
It's a shame. I do love the guy and his work.
Barca Azul on 6 Feb '12 said:
I have to say I haven't had a bad purchase from him. He makes great games. Sadly CoD sells millions and people are not willing to take a chance on games.
I loved brutal Legend, great game and fantastic soundtrack!
moogiesboy on 6 Feb '12 said:
'Publishers are scared of new properties,' says Schafer
And in other news; Bears s**t in the woods.
WHERESMYMONKEY on 6 Feb '12 said:
Double fine have made 4 download only games so far. Stacking, Iron Brigade, Costume Quest and Happy action theatre. They are all brilliant in their own ways.
the increasing volume of references to Raz from pychonauts and theat they've managed to buy back the ip makes me think we might be seeing a sequel. Well i hope there is.
Think Shaefer is brilliant and the industry needs more guys like him. Now if he and SUDA 51 collaborated on a game i think i could die an incredibly happy man.
MrPirtniw on 6 Feb '12 said:
I want to work for Double Fine so bad. That or Oddworld Inhabitants. Tim's a Brutal Legend and it was his early games that really got me into gaming in the first place. I think Day of the Tentacle was the first PC game I ever played.
LordVonPS3 on 6 Feb '12 said:
Schafer... That you bother to say stuff like this just shows you're not a very good businessman. There's 2 things substantially wrong with your idea of a business model.
1.) That you envisage games like Brutal Legends costing you millions to make. Try starting a new IP as something much simpler in every regard that costs several orders of magnitude less to make.
2.) That you continue to bang on publisher's doors asking them to publish your new IPs. Try starting off on the PC, whether Windows or Linux or the iPod Touch / iPhone / Android, etc... It won't cost you an arm and a leg to get on the ladder and once you're on the ladder you'll still have something to climb with.
If you find success with a new IP, publishers will come to you. You'll have the money to publish your own stuff / sell direct to retailers and you'll have the money to take even bigger risks - if that's where you want to go. The other possibility is selling your business. If and as you haven't yet found success, well then, carry on...
KK-Headcharge78 on 6 Feb '12 said:
Blaming COD demonstrates a total lack of understanding in how this market works, it is far wider than one game in one genre. If you can only see negatives in one of the largest selling franchises and it's knock on positive effects on the industry you are a cretin, similarly if you equate those trying to copy COD as somehow being Activisions fault then your lack of commercial understanding is staggering. Have all other genres closed down, is it just military FPS's now? No, the simple fact is that with the new demographics coming into games, the platforms now offering a gaming experience, the rise of emerging markets, the rise of social networks, the comparative breadth, number and variation of games released, the more high profile of gaming in general and a higher level of publisher competition are several of the reasons why it's tough to steer off the beaten path with new games.
solamon77 on 6 Feb '12 said:
I'm so glad Shafer is still out there coming up with new ideas. I have bought every single one of his games since Full Throttle and will continue to do so for as long as he makes them. Problem with Tim's game's are that at the $60 price point, a lot of people won't try something new. After all, we've all beens sold broken crap by the games industry far too many times which had made most of us very careful about what we buy.
ladycroft142 on 6 Feb '12 said:
Few companies are willing to take a chance on creativity, which is why we’ll all be stuck playing Call of Duty 42 and Super Mario Virtual Reality Land.
silent moose on 6 Feb '12 said:
Im hoping that the fact that skyrim outsold call of duty at christmas means we'll be seeing more rpgs and less shooters. Although it has been suggested that this will lead to the word skyrim developing into a super brand like how call of duty became modern warfare, so the next elder scrolls might just be called skyrim 2 and the whole excruciatingly painful cycle starts all over again. I sure hope not because this for me would be like the apocalypse.
TheLastDodo on 6 Feb '12 said:
Totally serious question KK.
What are these positive knock on effects?
Beyond giving gaming more mainstream publicity than it had, I'm struggling.
Megatrons_Fury on 6 Feb '12 said:
@KK-Headcharge78
Sorry man but the original post is very close to the mark, the only thing wrong is that its not just COD its the first person shooter genre and MMORPG's that have caused the choke in the industry, add to that the awfull 5 years of suckfest guitar hero games and band hero and whatever else bloody hero they could find and the yearly sports titles have come to leave a long term harmfull legacy for videogames.
When you also add into the mix the casual era of 2005 - 2009 when Nintendo decided to open the doors to a new market that ultimately would come to give up and move on or drastically reduce spending we are left with the same old yearly problems of superb games at the start of any calender year that sell like AIDS in a can followed by the gradual slip into nothingness for late spring - summer and then the deluge of the same old crappy so called triple A remakes and sequels from the 2-3 super publishers that if you dont love then you seem to be hanged from a tree by the rest of the so called gaming community.
Last year my favourite games were absolutely nothing like the top ten lists most websites throw around, COD and BF3 wouldnt even make my top 25, im an old dog i need something more than being drip fed the same old thing in a new cover sleeve a lot of people share this view but year on year i notice less and less originality or at the very least genre mixing or varying degrees of seperation from the norm.
Tim Schafer is spot on as are most other developers, believe me some of my friends work at games developers and both they and their bosses hate the projects they are working on, its why so many leave each year and go into indie developing, the pay is a lot less but its so much more fun. Its not about being elite its about being true to the things that made you sit up and love videogames in the first place.
I feel so sorry for anyone of the age range of 18-25 as you lot although able to play some of the stuff that made the industry so great through emulators or remakes etc etc just totally missed out on the scene itself, the next generation are going to get it even worse, they wont even have high street shops to go to on console launch days etc or even get manuals and inside the next 10-15 years even a damn box for their games. what a horrible day that will be. I always wondered what my parents meant when they said about missing out on the best decades of music and that my generation would never get to have something like that ever again and 80's cool cheesy music aside i now see exactly what they were on about.
The industry is in serious trouble, much like every industry thesedays, if not because of the recession because of the times we live in where nobody is ever happy with anything, everyone takes the easy safe option and creativity has been nearly killed by the chase for the next franchise.
The guy or girl who made the first post on this thread gets it, sometimes things are black and white other times they are shades of grey.
KK-Headcharge78 on 7 Feb '12 said:
Fury- that was my point it ain't just COD, there are many big sellers but people hone in COD as if it is all out there on it's own. People forget the other big franchises too easily. Ironically the haters of COD do as much to endorse it now as those who like it.
Dodo- you point out the obvious one but the other knock on effects are without COD the general FPS genre would not be what it is as it has drawn many players into it (consumer migration) this in turn encourages devs to create rivals to it, good ones,like BF(would EA be busting balls to catch up and deliver over the odds?), MOH and bad like Homefront. The argument of 'not another FPS' is moot, do people wish for no more driving games, sports games, RPGs??? It has played a huge part in bringing MP to the masses along with others like Halo, again some don't like MP but without the choice I feel gaming would be worse for it.
Its cool for people to hate COD because they don't like it but that doesn't negate it's positive impact (as well as some negatives) particularly not when it comes as part of some gamers moral crusade against the big franchises, without them we would have no industry, Mario anyone?
When you think about shooters it's a rich area: Gears, Halo, Killzone, Bioshock, BF, COD, Crysis etc etc... I cannot understand why people think it is somehow lesser to other genres, confusing personal taste with common perception seems common.
TheLastDodo on 7 Feb '12 said:
LMAO Any opportunity to take a sly dig at Homefront
ricflair on 7 Feb '12 said:
KK, I think that was kind of dodo's point: that the publishers see the success of CoD and flood the FPS genre trying to emulate it's success.
As much as CoD's not really my thing, though few shooters really are, I can't blame CoD for it. The games are released, are popular and people buy them, it's up to the other publishers to put some backing into something more creative and not just copy and change slightly. Or just outright copy.
Games are odd though, a bit like movies in that nowadays they cost a fortune to make, whereas you can make an album in you bedroom studio if you wanted to and it still do well. There's so much investment involved and publishers are in general risk averse. I think purchasers can shoulder a lot of that blame too.
Still, good games that are marketed well still sell, maybe not in CoD numbers, but enough to make the publishers some cash. I can think of loads of games that I've really loved that unless I read gaming sites, would never have heard of.
Fr33Kye on 7 Feb '12 said:
Some great ideas cost a lot of money. And what if the game they want to make isn't suited for mobile devices? Double fine want to make the games that they want to make, not every game is right for every platform and not every game is do-able with little funding. He even says in the article that with Happy action theatre they asked for a small amount, showed what they had, then got the funding. Double fine seem to be in an a pretty good space and you patronizing schafer for wanting to make the games he wants to make is just ridiculous. Maybe the brutal legend we know is the only way double fine wanted it to exist? It's not so easy compromising your design and vision and making every idea do-able with a few dollars.
Fr33Kye on 7 Feb '12 said:
The fps genre is actually pretty varied! It's not any less than the others, if anything it's better than many other genres. I cannot tell you how much it annoys me when jrpg lovers claim all fps are the same. I can't even claim that they are stagnating. Many are unique and interesting with varying gameplay, art styles and storytelling. I mean look at the darkness 2 and bioshock infinite, how could anyone look at those and claim all fps are the same or that the genre is creatively devoid?
Anyway the problem is capitalism, so let's put an end to it once and for all. WHO'S WITH ME!?!
OH and i hope double fine keep doing what it is they do.
TheLastDodo on 7 Feb '12 said:
I was more leaning towards what have Activision done with the billions they make from CoD, you can't say it goes back into the games industry, it certainly doesn't go into improving CoD (and by improve I mean something as simple as giving the community dedicated servers that they've been asking for like the past 3-4 years), it doesn't go into creating new IP's either (they've got Prototype, thats it), which they'll regret when the masses inevitably get bored of CoD and Activision have nothing to fall back on.
I don't blame Activision for the idiots at Capcom trying to turn RE into CoD, that's all on Capcom. They're in for a big shock if they think the average CoD player is going to rush out for RE6, you just need to find a way to distinguish yourself from whats out there, CoD has done that, well done Activision, BF has carved out a significant niche in the FPS market with BF3, it's sold 10m in just under 4 months and chances are it will keep growing with each iteration now it's becoming known in the mainstream. CoD and BF are in the same genre but both excel in different areas, besides sharing the same weapons they're about as far removed from each other as can be
What every game needs is to come up with something that can't be found anywhere else.
Fr33Kye on 7 Feb '12 said:
I dont think resident evil 6 looks anything like cod but what i find odd is the notion that horror can't sell extremely well. I mean, horror is pretty popular in pop culture. People love horror movies, capcom could probably sell massive amounts of units just scaring the f**k out of people. With enough hype even horror movie fans, who may not necessarily play videogames, will want to give it a shot.
ricflair on 7 Feb '12 said:
Maybe it's that there are so many of them, I dunno sometimes it's just feels like a flood of them, but I guess as franchises a lot of them are pretty massive, so get a lot of the attention. But I think it's like platformers being the genre of choice back in the 90s, it's just overall I preferred the platformers and still do!
I think a lot of it is an inherent limitation of the genre. I don't think you can do as much with the character in the first person as you can do in the third - you can't have the array of moves and control options because it just doesn't work in the first person as well. A few have tried it and come up with some great stuff, but the more we go a long the harder it is to bring something truly new to the table in terms of gameplay.
Although he's not talking just about FPSs, and you just have to look at the number of sequels that came out at the end of last year - Gears, Resistance, Skyrim, SR3, AC, MW3, BF3, Uncharted, Zelda... all great games (well the ones I've played) yet feeling very much like I'd played them before, apart from the use of M+ on Zelda really. Although I think publishers have been a bit more open to different things in terms of PSN/XBLA games, but then I guess they come a long with a much smaller budget and risk.
Fr33Kye on 7 Feb '12 said:
I dont think the fps has hit it's ceiling though i sometimes think platformers have hit theirs, with the core not really changing just things being added on top. Though sideways New York is pretty different in some aspects, i'd be hesitant to call it a 2d platformer, and littlebigplanet is a 2d platformer with 3 different levels of depth. I doubt either have reached some sort of limit, but i think we have reached a point where we might not need to worry about a limit. The focus should be on unique experiences that stand up on their own. Sequels are sort of bound by the staples of their franchise so they should all feel like familiar experiences. And the whole motion control is something to be wary of when a publisher can add motion control to perform the same actions you have always done in the game and call it innovation. Not saying that's the case for zelda btw, just saying that might be a concern for games. Motion controls dont have to JUST be for something impossible with any other control scheme btw, it just has to provide an EXPERIENCE not possible with a control scheme.
Old Skool Gamer on 7 Feb '12 said:
True.
ricflair on 7 Feb '12 said:
I think 2D platformers did hit saturation point in the 90s, I guess that because we don't get as many of them as now it's not such an obvious thing. Although I'd say that often the key element of a platformer is the level design and mechanics that it introduces - which is where the Galaxy games shined for me. Not played much of the LBP games after not liking the controls, but apparently that's where the gameplay shines.
But you'd still get outstanding platformers, even amongst the generic s**t and the same is true to some extent with FPSs, I just can't remember one that felt really different recently, apart from Deus Ex and Crysis to a degree as they both left you open to approach levels how you want. And I'm talking about campaigns here - I think that's a problem for me in that FPSs try so much to be epic and cinematic and that doesn't do much for me, and the bigger the name of the game, the more clichéd the campaign!
Oh and Borderlands was great too and felt like something different. So yeah, it quite possibly seems worse than it is!
TheLastDodo on 7 Feb '12 said:
Bulletstorm was different, sure it was very dude bro but I loved the 'Kill with Skill' idea, it even penalised you for playing it like a regular shooter.
ricflair on 7 Feb '12 said:
That's true. I didn't like the game as much as I thought I would, especially after loving the demo, but it was a different approach.
gmcb007 on 7 Feb '12 said:
Well thats what publishers do best: Minimum effort, Maximum Profit.
Ali_ on 7 Feb '12 said:
Publishers are all short sighted morons. The irony is, they constantly moan about lower profits despite churning out the same games year after year which are selling in ever slower numbers. Don't they ever stop to think why?