Tim Schafer
| Tim Schafer | |
| Known for | Director and writer of Grim Fandango, Broken Age. and Brütal Legend, director and co-writer of Full Throttle, Psychonauts, and Psychonauts 2, director of Double Fine Happy Action Theater, co-director and co-writer of Day of the Tentacle, co-writer of Monkey Island 1 and 2, and Costume Quest Founder of Double Fine Productions |
|---|---|
| Birth | July 26, 1967 |
| Death | |
Timothy John Schafer (born July 26, 1967) is a video game writer, programmer, director, and producer.
Early life
Tim Schafer was born as the youngest of five children in Sonoma, California on July 26, 1967. His father was a doctor and his mother was a nurse.
While attending the University of California Berkeley, he became interested in writing. He interned at small companies, helping to develop databases, while submitting applications to larger companies.
LucasArts (1989–2000)
After being rejected from Atari and Hewlett Packard, he became aware of a job opening at Lucasfilm Games. The company was looking for programmers who could also write dialog, both jobs of which he was interested in performing professionally.
During a phone interview with David Fox, Schafer mentioned that he was a fan of Ballblaster. Fox told Schafer that the game was known as Ballblazer, and only the pirated version was known as Ballblaster. To make up for the phone interview, Schafer submitted a comic of himself applying for and being accepted for the job at Lucasfilm Games, in the style of a text adventure.
He was ultimately accepted for employment at Lucasfilm Games in 1989. His first duty was to help with the Nintendo Entertainment System version of Maniac Mansion. His job consisted of programming using the scripting languages SCUMM, or Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion. He was credited as a "SCUMMlet".
He was then a programmer, assistant designer, and co-writer of The Secret of Monkey Island in 1990, alongside Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman. After the studio became known as LucasArts, Schafer continued in his role alongside Gilbert and Grossman as a programmer, assistant designer, and co-writer of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge in 1991.
In 1993, he was the co-writer, co-designer, and co-director, and co-producer of Day of the Tentacle alongside Dave Grossman. He was then the project leader, designer, and co-writer, with Dave Grossman, of Full Throttle in 1995. Schafer contributed additional design work for The Curse of Monkey Island in 1997.
Other than a credit that jokingly claimed he "never actively tried to sabotage the project" in Star Wars Episode I: Racer in 1999], Schafer's last role at LucasArts was as the director and writer of Grim Fandango in 1998.
Double Fine Productions (2000–present)
Tim Schafer left LucasArts and formed his own video game studio, Double Fine Productions, in 2000. He acted as the creative director on all of the studio's games.
He was the designer and co-writer, with Eric Wolpaw, of Psychonauts in 2005. Schafer was then the writer and co-designer, with Erik Robson, of Brütal Legend in 2009.
During the development of Brutal Legend, he instituted an Amnesia Fortnight, where the Brutal Legend team stopped work on that game and worked on prototypes for new game ideas for two weeks. He served as the co-writer for two of games that were greenlit from the Amnesia Fortnight sessions. He was co-writer, with Elliott Roberts, on Costume Quest, in 2010, and was the co-writer, with Whitney Hills, of Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster in 2011.
In 2012, he worked on a project outside of his studio when he supplied voice acting as the announcer of Haunt, a family-friendly horror-themed Kinect game for Xbox 360 by NanaOn-Sha and Zoë Mode.
Also in 2012, Schafer was the director of the Kinect party game Double Fine Happy Action Theater. His next role as writer and director was for a point-and-click adventure game crowdfunded through Kickstarter. The resulting game, Broken Age, was released in 2014.
He negotiated with The Walt Disney Company, which purchased LucasArts in 2012, to create remastered versions of three of the games he co-created during his time at the studio. Grim Fandango Remastered was released in 2015, Day of the Tentacle Remastered was released in 2016, and Full Throttle Remastered was released in 2017.
He wrote the virtual reality continuation of the Psychonauts story, Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin in 2017. A Psychonauts sequel was crowdfunded through Fig. In 2019, during production, of Psychonauts 2, Double Fine Productions was acquired by Microsoft and was placed under Xbox Game Studios.
Psychonauts 2, which was written by Tim Schafer, was released in 2020. Schafer credits the Microsoft acquisition for allowing the team the budget and freedom to release the game as intended.