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TVTranscript
00:00And my office. Here's my office here.
00:02Here we are. Come on in, won't you?
00:05From the offices of a new game studio.
00:07And this is our test department.
00:08Very exciting. Hello, testers.
00:10You know, everybody wants to start their own company eventually.
00:12An industry legend.
00:14This is the exciting manner in which I work, I guess.
00:19Tim certainly does not follow the herd.
00:21He goes his own way.
00:22Good or ill.
00:24That's something I admire.
00:25And his team of talented game developers.
00:27I'm an environment artist.
00:28I'm the animation supervisor.
00:30I'm an animator.
00:31And I'm the lead game master.
00:32I am the orderly.
00:34And I run a quiet, peaceful, insane asylum.
00:39We'll race the clock to shift their very first game.
00:43We put the bruce here.
00:44We're always battling against time.
00:46We've been working on the game for three and a half years.
00:48This is one of the worst crunches I've ever seen.
00:52Sort of appalling.
00:53We decided at the very last minute to start to test it.
00:56Okay.
00:56This is the story of Tim Schafer and the final week of Psychonauts.
01:01What could possibly go wrong?
01:27Hello.
01:28Welcome.
01:28Come on in.
01:29Come on in.
01:30Welcome to Double Fine.
01:32Please.
01:32Everyone is welcome at Double Fine.
01:35We've been here about a year and a half.
01:38We moved over one block nicer, one block fancier.
01:42Here's our production area.
01:43Hello, everybody.
01:45Say hi.
01:46That's Kelly.
01:48And Melina.
01:48That's Carolyn.
01:49I'm our executive producer.
01:50Hey, hello.
01:51I'm an executive producer.
01:52I'm kind of the acting production person.
01:55I do just about everything the company needs to allow Tim to be 100% creative as much as
02:02possible.
02:02Here's our art department.
02:04It's Chris.
02:05Hello, Chris.
02:06Hello.
02:07Playing the game.
02:08Excellent game of Psychonauts right now.
02:10Scott Campbell, our art director.
02:12This is a camera.
02:13I draw stuff and show Tim, and it's like a long process of, like, him liking it or not liking
02:18it or kind of liking it.
02:19What are you making of it?
02:21Who's that character?
02:22Okay.
02:22So, anyway.
02:24We're the gameplay programming department.
02:25Hello, gameplay programmers.
02:27Hello.
02:28This week, Tim Schaefer and his team of game developers are putting finishing touches on
02:33their first game, Psychonauts.
02:36We've been working on the game for three and a half years.
02:38A lot of the animation's been done for quite a while.
02:41This is our last week of working on Psychonauts.
02:44I think this week is the, this Friday night is the last, the last build.
02:49We just have to have this done CD.
02:53And so this is the final build.
02:54So this week is the last bit of time we have to.
02:57Touch it.
02:58Game developers call this.
03:01Crunch mode is in the very, very last phases of the game.
03:04And it's basically you just want to put as many hours into the game to test it.
03:10We've done everything creatively we're going to do to the game.
03:13Those are good.
03:14Yeah, it's too low.
03:15Oh, my God.
03:16That's terrible.
03:17Man, you can't ship it on too low.
03:18It would return the game if they saw that.
03:20And now we just have to play it for a certain amount of time and make sure no new bugs
03:24come
03:24up.
03:25So if you can't crash, you can't.
03:27Slow down.
03:28Nothing really bad can happen.
03:30Lies.
03:32We can't write any more dialogue or add any more ideas to it.
03:35But we can definitely make sure it's not going to crash or anything.
03:40We are going to be testing at least probably 12 hours a day, trying to find any last showstoppers,
03:47any bugs that we can't ship.
03:50And you can't push at all?
03:51That's cool.
03:52The goal is to have everyone playing through the game.
03:55There's a team of over 40 people.
03:56All of us and all of Majeska's resources are getting through the entire game and making sure
04:01the game is just ready to go out.
04:03What happens if it's not done by Friday?
04:05Oh, I don't know.
04:07We're screwed.
04:08What could possibly go wrong?
04:11I don't know.
04:12I can't punch.
04:19Tim Schafer's first taste of gaming happens when the Magnavox Odyssey is released in 1972.
04:24Way back when I was a kid, my dad brought home Odyssey 1, which was the black and white
04:28variations of Pong.
04:30He quickly becomes one of the world's first hardcore gamers.
04:50And like many gamers of his time, Tim Schafer begins creating his own games.
04:54I started as best I could to actually make them myself when I had the computer, although
04:59my efforts were really unspectacular.
05:03In basic, I tried to do a Pong in basic, and it was really slow.
05:07So I tried to do Galaxian in assembly language, and I just realized that I wasn't really smart
05:12enough to do that.
05:13So I had this one game about a helicopter that was dropping babies, and you had to catch them.
05:17I got pretty far with that one.
05:21But when he attends college at UC Berkeley, Schafer tries to be more realistic about his future.
05:26I never really thought that games were what I was going to end up doing.
05:31So as I went to college, I did more computer classes, and I started to drift into writing.
05:37I was going to be a writer who had a really boring computer programming database job during
05:40the day.
05:41I was writing at night.
05:45He really is a really smart guy, a really funny guy, satirical.
05:48Off the top of my head, the first funny game I remember was Leisure Suit Larry, or Hitchhiker's
05:53Guide to the Galaxy.
05:53I guess Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy came out first.
05:55You can really tell that he has an opinion on everything.
05:58I'm trying to think if there's anything else funny in games, ever.
06:01And he's not afraid to tell you about it.
06:03I think it was Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
06:05No, that can't be right.
06:07Sometimes in a world where everybody seems to kind of be afraid to say what they think,
06:12or do what they think, or follow the herd.
06:15Help me out.
06:15Anything funny before Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?
06:17Tim certainly does not follow the herd.
06:20He goes his own way.
06:20Yeah, I would say the first humor in games I remember was Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
06:25And that's something I admire.
06:27But it turns out that Fate has a different plan for Tim Schafer.
06:31I graduated, and I was on my second interview at this database company.
06:33And right then I saw this job listing at LucasArts, which was then called Lucasfilm Games.
06:38It was even more kind of glamorous and appealing.
06:40And I loved the first Lucasfilm games, like Rescue on Fractalus and Ballblazer.
06:45But a friend of mine had slipped me a pirated copy of it, so I called it Ballblaster during
06:48my interview.
06:49I was like, yeah, I really like your game Ballblaster.
06:53And they were like, Ballblaster, huh?
06:54That's what it was called when it was pirated.
06:56So I don't know how I got that job, but somehow I got that job.
06:59Now, with his foot in the door, Schafer will take his first step into gaming history.
07:09At a unique summer camp.
07:10Don't you train psychonauts here?
07:12One cadet must stop an evil genius from leaving the world brainless.
07:16One of our favorite games ever, says official Xbox Magazine.
07:19In other words, Psychonauts!
07:22Rated T for Teen.
07:33Let's see if we can get to zero bugs by dinner.
07:48It looks like we should be able to get done what's on the list by dinner.
07:58Yeah, so we're going to lock down, and it's got to fit a very strict set of rules.
08:04I'm going to make that clear.
08:05We're going to fix all the bugs.
08:07All of this.
08:07All right, kind of short list of bugs.
08:08When they're even shorter, it's what to buy dinner.
08:11It definitely looks doable, and we're setting dinner as our lockdown.
08:14So after dinner, everyone's got a controller in their hand.
08:17Everyone's playing the game, and they're testing straight through until Friday.
08:20So we are in lockdown after dinner tonight.
08:22Yeah.
08:25Any questions?
08:28What's for dinner tonight?
08:30I don't know.
08:31What do you want for dinner?
08:34Tea, too.
08:36Okay, that's the biggest concern.
08:38I think we're done.
08:42As Tim Schafer takes his first baby steps in the gaming industry, he finds he has some
08:47catching up to do.
08:48The job description that I applied for was called Assistant Designer Slash Programmer.
08:55And then I found out once we got there that they were actually called Scumlets, which was
08:59the lowest rung on the programming totem pole there.
09:02We were just the junior programmers who used Scum, which was the script creation utility for
09:07Maniac Mansion.
09:08The rookie game developer quickly starts making new friends.
09:11They had nothing for us to do for like three months.
09:13It was all up to just whatever we'd come up with each day to try to learn the language.
09:16And Dave Grossman and I came up with a lot of just joke stuff.
09:19Which then leads to his first project.
09:21It turns out Ron Gilbert was starting his Monkey Island game.
09:24And he was like, okay, I want it to be kind of maybe a comedy day.
09:28So they took me and Dave and set us to work on it.
09:30Tim was one of those guys who was just a hard-working scripter for the Scum games.
09:35But he was just this really fun guy who could tell great stories.
09:39And he was just quick-witted.
09:40You know, he didn't say anything.
09:42He's got a comeback for you.
09:49He was one of those people that you could tell was going to just drive some amazing creative visions.
09:58We started working on the McAllen game.
09:59Ron had the design in his head and there were some flowcharts and there was some background art.
10:04We started just to get the thing up and running, throwing in characters and just making them say dumb things
10:08that we thought was funny.
10:09And we were all for the original scumlets in this room.
10:12And we would just write dialogue that would crack us up.
10:16Tim Schaefer is hilarious in real life.
10:18All his observations, the whole way of you in the world, it's just kind of like a little twisted.
10:27Just definitely funny.
10:29You know, every afternoon Ron would come in maybe and he'd check out the new dialogue we'd written.
10:34And we didn't think it was actual game dialogue.
10:36We just thought we were writing stuff to entertain each other.
10:40And it turns out he's like, no, we're using this.
10:43This is it.
10:44This is the game.
10:45Ron would come in in the afternoon.
10:47He'd either laugh or not.
10:48And that was like a big deal.
10:49He was really involved in the game.
10:50Me, I would do a third of it.
10:52Dave would do a third of it.
10:53And I would do a third of it on the first game.
10:54Programming on the Ryan Dialogue.
10:56Tim Schaefer and his co-workers come up with a storyline about a wannabe swashbuckler named Guybrush Threepwood.
11:01And his quest to become a mighty pirate.
11:03Your favorite moments in the Monkey Island games were largely a result of Tim's hard work and cleverness.
11:09It was really inspiring to be working with someone, having just as much fun.
11:14In 1990, development on The Secret of Monkey Island wraps up.
11:18And Lucasfilm Games releases the quirky new adventure game for the PC.
11:21But its launch hits a small snack.
11:25Lucas Arts was a small company then.
11:27And right at the end of it, they found out that there was a big order that they could fill.
11:30But they didn't have the manufacturing capacity to do it.
11:33They were saying, hey, let's all go down to the factory and pack it ourselves.
11:36And we all put everyone in the car.
11:37And we drove down to this warehouse.
11:38And we all went in there.
11:39And we were all putting manuals together.
11:41And we were all just stuffing boxes and shrink wrapping them.
11:44So the original Monkey Island shipment was done by the programmers and the artists and all of us in the
11:49company.
11:50With love.
11:53As copies of The Secret of Monkey Island head out to stores all over America,
11:57Tim Schaefer and his co-workers leave the fate of their careers in the hands of gamers.
12:12Hi, um, can I place an order for delivery?
12:14This is Kelly at Double Fine.
12:17I'd like to get two orders of chicken curry,
12:19three orders of matron mushroom,
12:22six orders of saag paneer,
12:24seven orders of chicken tikka masala.
12:26Yeah, and can we get it made extra spicy?
12:28And then I'd like to get 25 orders of naan,
12:32three orders of samosa,
12:33and two cucumber shouts.
12:36Um, Kelly?
12:41Yeah.
12:54Yeah, but then we'd starve for the team.
12:57I kind of cheated.
12:58I added some bugs to the lockdown list.
13:02This is doable tonight.
13:04So I think we'll finish this before we go home tonight.
13:08Late.
13:11Late.
13:11Probably go after midnight.
13:15That was pretty important.
13:17And we'll do whatever we need.
13:19We will cater in food.
13:22We'll bring in massage therapists,
13:24and we'll liquor them up.
13:29And bring in sugar.
13:30That makes people happy.
13:32Are you so not going to win against the girl?
13:37During crunch time,
13:39it's common for developers to work 12-hour shifts.
13:42At Double Fine, it's no different.
13:44The game itself motivates the team.
13:50They're motivated first and foremost by pride in their work.
13:53Tim motivates people as well.
13:57When he sees something cool and unique,
13:59he tells them.
14:00Nice.
14:01Okay.
14:01Sweet.
14:02Okay.
14:03Okay, that's one bug.
14:04That makes people happy.
14:08Well, it's 8.44.
14:11Yep.
14:11Leaving for the night.
14:12I feel a little bit bad
14:14because the other programmers are still there.
14:18They're still working.
14:18If you've already put in a 12-hour day,
14:21then you have to take care of it.
14:23Your body.
14:23There's a lot of sick people here,
14:25and it's not surprising.
14:27Have I tired?
14:29Kind of.
14:30We've been crunching for quite a while.
14:33It helps to know that this is our last week.
14:37I work about 80 hours a week,
14:39or I haven't been.
14:40This is like the most un-librous part of my job.
14:43And it's not necessarily a requirement.
14:44There's just so much miscellaneous s***.
14:48Sorry.
14:48Don't worry about it.
14:49So much stuff that they just throw at me to do.
14:53You've got to keep the team caffeinated
14:54so they'll stay up all night to check it out.
14:58I'm a caffeine addict.
14:59I'll pick the habit once the game's over, I guess.
15:07The 1990 release of Monkey Island
15:09is a huge success for Lucasfilm games.
15:11One of the hardest things to do in a game
15:12is get humor across,
15:14because as the game creator,
15:15you can't control the pace of the game.
15:17So much humor depends on pacing.
15:18And so the fact that the Monkey Island series
15:20is just hilarious,
15:22like it's just a testament to the skill of the designers.
15:24And just like in Hollywood,
15:28a sequel starts right away.
15:30After Monkey Island 1,
15:31we started making LeChuck's Revenge right away.
15:34Monkey Island 2, LeChuck's Revenge,
15:37is an even bigger hit than the original.
15:39Its success gives Schaefer and Dave Grossman
15:41a chance to finally head up their own game.
15:43They told Dave and I that we could do our own game.
15:46Ron had kind of an idea for a sequel to Maniac Mansion.
15:50But now, I know that I must go back to the mansion.
15:56We started with that,
15:57and just kind of ran away.
15:58The name of this new adventure game is...
16:01The other type was the first game
16:02I was the project leader on.
16:04So we were in charge of the show for the first time,
16:06Dave and I.
16:07We brought up the design,
16:08and got some programmers to help us with it,
16:10and we had a team of just like three animators.
16:12Tim Schaefer and his team
16:14craft another hilarious storyline,
16:16this time involving a gang of misfits
16:18who travel through time in specially modified port-a-potties,
16:21known as...
16:22The Cromajon!
16:24Dave and I just kind of ran with him.
16:26After we took the characters we liked,
16:27and then put in the heavy metal band, Rhodey.
16:30Bernard, float over here so I can punch you.
16:33I'm a crazed med student.
16:34What have you done this time,
16:35you meddling milk toast?
16:38That game, to me,
16:39was like things that I loved about LucasArts back in the day.
16:43Those games were fun.
16:45Uh, uh, uh.
16:47Those games had attitude.
16:49Look, Hoagie, it's a hamster.
16:51Just what I need for Dissection Lab tomorrow.
16:54I think I need that for the band, Laverne.
16:56We could bite its head off or whatever.
16:59Something different in a crowd back then.
17:03It was a lot of fun.
17:05Dan of the Tentacles is one of the most fun movies to make.
17:07Day of the Tentacle has PC gamers in stitches
17:09when it's released in 1993.
17:11But by now, adventure games are facing a serious decline.
17:15LucasArts decides that something must be done
17:17to save the genre.
17:24The schedule has been a really hard one to keep.
17:28And again, it's a very, very big game.
17:30The levels, at least, have been entirely built.
17:33And it's clear, I mean, anyone can look on our task list
17:35and see that what remains to be done
17:37are little, polished, devil-in-the-detail bugs.
17:4123, there's 23 bugs in there.
17:43No, it's not so bad.
17:44Hmm, I mean, I'm not doing right.
17:46I have to ask Bert to the question.
17:51Hey, um,
17:52there's a bug where if you jump in the air
17:54and you bomb bomb and then you cancel,
17:56that you don't punch when you're on the ground?
17:58Right, you need to be on the levitational wall.
18:00Oh, okay, I think I know what you're doing.
18:20It's not good, because then you lose your punch.
18:23I think that's a bad bug.
18:25Oh.
18:30There's nothing, nothing whatsoever.
18:32And you died at that?
18:33Yeah, and it took me back, you know, the six men.
18:36The fact that, you know,
18:38that the bugs are pretty minor for the most part
18:41means that we're almost done.
18:43Yeah, that's good news.
18:45Okay, so you lost all your lives
18:48on the way that you saw.
18:51Yeah, at this stage, like, the worst things
18:53are, you know, people getting stuck here
18:55in some place that's really hard to get to.
18:57I can go back to a picture where I've saved you.
19:00Uh, you should do that, yes.
19:02Or we have this sound stuttering.
19:05Can you hear, Pop?
19:05Agent 9, I'm here for the advanced training.
19:09So we really want to try and catch that stuff.
19:12Out of here, Pop.
19:12There's no turning back.
19:14Julie.
19:18You thought the demon killed the demon.
19:19No, I thought the demon had died.
19:21That's a bad bug.
19:22All right, yeah.
19:26Yeah, well, what I was thinking is
19:28we could write a speculative fix for it.
19:30But I hate to change it,
19:31because all the boss fights are breaking.
19:32We would want to check in with all of those.
19:34Yeah.
19:35We try not to fix bugs,
19:36unless they're really, really important,
19:38because every time you fix a bug,
19:39you enter the possibility of causing another bug.
19:42So try not to destabilize code like that.
19:44Now that you've pointed it out,
19:45now I know it's really important.
19:48We fix them,
19:48and then we check just that area a lot.
19:49We can leave it on the list,
19:51write a fix for it,
19:52and then see if it's worth it.
19:53Dialogue's very important to me,
19:54so I don't want to get that one right.
19:56Yeah.
19:57Well, now I leave it to you to decide.
19:59Okay.
20:00Let's see, what causes the bugs?
20:02Bugs are caused by small electric ramblings
20:05that live in the wiring of old buildings.
20:07And there's no one who can stop him,
20:09except for you and me.
20:10Oh, my God!
20:11Let's make out!
20:13Oh, we've got this modern building here.
20:16There's a glitch,
20:17and it's a pretty big glitch.
20:22The year is 1993,
20:24and the popularity of adventure games is fading.
20:26We may not live to see yesterday.
20:29This is all your fault, Bernard.
20:31The Death Notebook actually did better
20:33than the Monkey Island games,
20:34but they wanted more.
20:36And they were just trying to keep adventure games alive,
20:37in a way,
20:38because you can see the market growing,
20:40and adventure games kind of staying the same size.
20:44So LucasArts calls their developers
20:45to revitalize the ailing genre.
20:47They're really encouraged just to try new things
20:50with adventure games,
20:50and that's where Full Throttle came from.
20:58The theory I had at the beginning of that was,
21:00you know,
21:00our characters so far have been funny,
21:01but the joke is mostly on them.
21:05It's like characters who are the butt of all the jokes,
21:07and you're kind of laughing at yourself
21:08when you play it, kind of.
21:10I thought maybe people who were playing adventure games
21:12would want to be a character
21:13who's actually not a goofball,
21:15but cooler than them,
21:16and bigger than them,
21:17and tougher than them.
21:20You could ride a big, huge motorcycle,
21:22and lead a gang of bikers.
21:28The idea of making a character who was heroic.
21:30Yeah, and you're in my way.
21:33Come on, kitty!
21:36Let's get down!
21:39Making cool, tough,
21:41and so you'd aspire to be.
21:47But also stripping down the interface,
21:49which is something I was really into.
21:50Like, I didn't see any reason why you had to
21:53click, you know, up and down on the screen
21:55and do the verbs and drag them onto,
21:56you know, why not just have this cool little tattoo
21:59that pops up wherever you are.
22:00Not as many inventory items.
22:02I'm not putting my lips on that.
22:04Just make it a much more streamlined interface
22:06and game-playing experience.
22:11With Full Throttle,
22:12Shaper forges ahead into new territory.
22:17The story of Full Throttle is a little more dark,
22:20and some violence happens in it.
22:22There's betrayal and all these darker elements to it.
22:25It's almost like a little noir storm.
22:27You know what might look better on your nose?
22:30What?
22:32The bar.
22:34I think it was right.
22:35That kind of paid off in that game.
22:36Someone did say something about killing you
22:39and making it look like an accident.
22:41They didn't do too good of a job there.
22:43It was the biggest hit we'd had at that point
22:45with the adventure games.
22:46It was a huge hit,
22:48and I was really happy with that.
22:51After shipping Full Throttle,
22:53Shaper is tempted to venture into new territory himself,
22:56but the idea doesn't last long.
22:58For a while after Throttle,
23:00I was really into Warcraft,
23:01and I was going to do a Warcraft game.
23:03I remember I was like,
23:03I had this idea for one that I wanted to do,
23:05and then after working on that for a while,
23:07I realized, like, wait, what am I talking about?
23:09I make adventure games.
23:12Shaper's next game will be his final project with LucasArts,
23:15and he's going to go out with a bang.
23:19As Psychonauts gets closer to completion,
23:21the pressure to get the game out the door mounts,
23:23but the team believes in their product,
23:25and to them, every hard hour is worth it.
23:30This is some of the concept art of Scott,
23:33Scott Campbell, who drew this.
23:35I did all the characters.
23:38Here's drawings of all the camp kids in camp.
23:42Here's an early drawing of Raz.
23:45So here's some other Raz's right here.
23:49This is what he used to look like.
23:51He was this kid with a stocking cap,
23:53and we modeled him and put him in the game.
23:55He's, like, kind of baggy pants
23:57and some baggy jacket and stuff like that,
23:58and, like, he was totally not very limber,
24:00and everyone thought he was a girl, too.
24:02Because they thought his long stocking cap was a ponytail,
24:05it just didn't test well.
24:06We had to go back and redesign it.
24:08It sounded terrible when we first heard about it,
24:11because, like, you want to remodel
24:12the main character of the game
24:14after we've done all this animation for it,
24:17but it's definitely the best thing to do.
24:21This right here is Raz's love interest.
24:25Lily is her name.
24:26She's cute.
24:26She's wearing, like, a plaid sweater.
24:28She's got her little hand stockings,
24:30kind of like those kids love in Japan.
24:32And she's one of the girls at camp.
24:34She doesn't really care about stuff.
24:36Hey, brainiacs, settle down.
24:39Why?
24:39You worry I'm going to hurt your boyfriend?
24:42No.
24:43She's kind of over it,
24:44but she's really amazing psychic.
24:46Duh.
24:46My name is Steven Peck,
24:48and I'm the lead game tester of Psychonauts.
24:50Just because Psychonauts have become a huge part of my life,
24:52I decided to get a couple of the characters tattooed on my leg.
24:55No!
24:57It's not safe!
25:01It's super exciting for me
25:03because I've never seen something
25:05I've drawn on somebody's body before.
25:17I kind of specialize in a lot of the camera,
25:20camera controlling.
25:21A lot of times,
25:22we kind of have to adjust the camera to fit the moment.
25:25What?
25:26For instance,
25:27if you're in a boss fight with a big boss monster.
25:29The full destructive force of an angry critic!
25:34You kind of want a lower camera to make him look bigger.
25:38Your fighting is weak,
25:40uninspired,
25:40and flat as a bad kid.
25:43Make it tighter FOV to make him look more menacing.
25:46Enough forceplay, Rasputin.
25:47Destroy him!
25:49Ah, they got that in.
25:51Nice.
25:52Wow.
25:53Now that we're near the end,
25:55we're running short on sleep,
25:56but we're almost there.
25:57We're all really excited to have it almost out.
26:04Despite full-throttle success,
26:07adventure games continue to decline.
26:10Once again,
26:10Tim Schaefer and his team at LucasArts
26:12band together in another bit to turn the tide.
26:16To guarantee that this new game will be truly unique,
26:19Schaefer looks south of the border.
26:21I was often really inspired by art,
26:23and I had this book of Day of the Dead,
26:25paper machining, sculpture,
26:27and I just love the characters in it
26:28because they're these little paper machete skeletons,
26:30and they had little paper machete houses
26:32and cardboard houses that they lived in.
26:34I just love the idea of seeing a whole town of these people
26:36jumping and running around and coming to life.
26:41LucasArts also wants this new game
26:43to take advantage of the latest advances in PC technology.
26:46We'd always done 2D games,
26:48and 3D was a new hot thing.
26:50Everybody, you know,
26:50you were lame if you were still doing 2D,
26:52but I didn't like the way it looked.
26:54It always looked like the characters were these cardboard boxes
26:57that were duct taped together.
26:59When I looked at these calaveras,
27:01these little paper machete skeletons,
27:02that's like exactly what the texture map technology is
27:04we have these days.
27:06This is where there's an intersection of technology and art,
27:09where it's an art style, not a limitation.
27:11After putting 2 and 2 together,
27:13Tim Schaefer comes up with Grim Fandango.
27:16The search for Grim Fandango was inspired a lot by Big Sleep.
27:20Also movies like Glenn, Gary, Glenn Ross.
27:21I am ready to take you now.
27:23Take me?
27:24Take me where?
27:25It was a film noir story.
27:27I don't need to be nervous.
27:28Nervous?
27:29Just your appearance.
27:30It's a little intimidating.
27:32Intimidating?
27:33Me.
27:33There were sad parts in Grim Fandango
27:36that were probably more emotional than most games.
27:40Because, again, it's about a character you care about.
27:43They don't qualify for anything good,
27:45so I can't sell anything good.
27:46I can't work off my time, and I'm stuck.
27:49Stuck selling walking sticks to a bunch of burros for eternity.
27:54Tim will end up working on Grim Fandango
27:56longer than any other game he's done before.
27:59It's funny.
28:00Secret of Monkey Island took 9 months to make.
28:02Secret of Monkey Island 2 took a year.
28:04Dead of Tentacle took a year and then a half to do the voice stuff.
28:08Full Tile took a whole year,
28:09which we thought was pretty grueling.
28:11And then Grim Fandango took 3 years.
28:14When the game finally ships in 1998,
28:16the effort put into it shows.
28:18I played Grim Fandango.
28:19My kids actually really loved it, too.
28:21They called it the Skelkin Game.
28:23It was one of those games of, like,
28:25where does he come up with this stuff?
28:27And it was so well-written and so well-acted.
28:30Ah!
28:31Pump another one.
28:33Lousy, bony fingers!
28:35There was a really obvious, passionate dedication to quality.
28:41The musicians, just an amazing soundtrack,
28:43all different music types, all these live instruments.
28:46A whole new step of animation that we'd never tried before.
28:50I like to think that people just responded to someone caring that much about a game.
28:54I was a huge Grim Fandango fan.
28:56That's definitely in my top ten list of all time.
28:58We won Game of the Year on GameSpot,
28:59and it got really good reviews, and it really stood out for people.
29:03It was a unique title.
29:04And it sold pretty well.
29:06In some ways, it was right at the end of Adventure Games,
29:08and it came out.
29:09People thought it was really good,
29:10and they thought it didn't sell very well,
29:12so that became this kind of, like,
29:13well, if it was that good, it didn't sell well,
29:15then Adventure Games must be dead.
29:16Yeah, well, you don't have a tongue,
29:18but that doesn't seem to shut you up, now, does it?
29:22It made its financial plan,
29:23and I got a royalty check from it.
29:25It made money, so it's kind of too bad
29:26that people want to remember it that way.
29:29Despite Grim Fandango's success,
29:31Adventure Games continued to wane in popularity.
29:33Ah, cheer up, buddy.
29:34Another day, another death.
29:36Am I right?
29:37Meanwhile, Tim Schaefer will soon make
29:39a career-changing decision
29:40that will take him on the rollercoaster ride of a lifetime.
29:50There's just one day left
29:51to make sure that Psychonauts is ready to ship.
29:54The journey's been hard, and it shows.
29:57No, someone keeps on plugging them.
29:59It's probably Tim Schaefer.
30:01Sure, it's Tim Schaefer.
30:02The team.
30:03Oh, it looks like they're going to kill me all the time.
30:05It's early.
30:07I keep trying to watch TV,
30:08and it keeps connecting the Xbox.
30:10You're a master.
30:11I know.
30:11You're fixing all the bugs
30:13and fixing any last-minute touch-up stuff.
30:16It's been hard.
30:17My boyfriend proposed to me on a build night,
30:20and then he had to bring me back to work.
30:24If you just sit here
30:25and stare at the desk for a long time,
30:28you can really get migraines,
30:30and your eyes start to kind of fade.
30:33You know, it's just really unhealthy sitting in one place.
30:36This is one of the worst crunches I've ever seen.
30:40Definitely.
30:41Sort of appalling in how intense it is.
30:44The people, you know,
30:45they seem to keep their spirits up,
30:47joking about it at four in the morning.
30:48It's time to make the beer and ice cream run.
30:56You're like a bunch of angels.
30:58Yeah.
31:00It's pretty bad.
31:01It's crunch.
31:05At the turn of the century,
31:06Tim Schaefer makes a drastic change.
31:08After Grimm,
31:09I kind of went home for a couple months.
31:12Then I came back into work at LucasArts,
31:14kind of groggy,
31:15and then it started to feel at that point
31:17like it would be a good time
31:18to maybe try it on our own.
31:20So some of the team kind of talked about it,
31:22and we wanted to be in control of our own destinies,
31:24and then one day we just left.
31:28When he left LucasArts,
31:29it was definitely like,
31:29whoa, what's going on?
31:30You know, everybody wants to start
31:31their own company eventually.
31:32So we did.
31:34After more than eight years at LucasArts,
31:36Schaefer finally leaves for greener pastures.
31:40It was just kind of a leap of faith.
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