What I learned at LucasArts was, you don't make your bets on ideas: ideas are cheap. You make your bets on people. Tim Schafer More Quotes by Tim Schafer More Quotes From Tim Schafer We want playing our games to entertain people on many different levels. Deeper down, I want to make a connection with the player, and it's the way, to me, of saying to the person playing the game that they're not alone in the world. Tim Schafer playing-games player people In the future, we will play games while floating naked in a tank of warm, sensory-depriving gelatin. Games will be distributed chemically, into the gelatin, and absorbed into the player's skin. The gelatin will be Lingonberry-flavored, and the games will encourage good citizenship. Tim Schafer skins player games Oh yeah - you have to write every day. Or every weekday. Because writing is a job. It's not eureka moments over and over. It's grueling work, panning for gold. You just keep at it and eventually you get a few grains. Or flakes. Or whatever gold looks like in rivers. Or maybe it's like fishing. Who cares? You just have to do it every day because you never know which day is going to be your productive day. Tim Schafer fishing writing jobs I love studying folklore and legends. The stories that people passed down for a thousand years without any sort of marketing support are obviously saying something appealing about the basic human condition. Tim Schafer support people years I think I just have an idea in my head about how big an adventure game should be, so it's hard for me to design one that's much smaller than Grim Fandango or Full Throttle. There's just a certain amount of scope needed to create a complex puzzle space and to develop a real story. At least with my brain, there is. Tim Schafer real adventure thinking Death makes sad stories of us all. Tim Schafer sad-story stories death I think every company is set by who founded it and who's in charge. Tim Schafer company thinking When you have a programmer-founded company it often gets really techy, if you have a producer or a business-person, it all really sets the flavor of the company, just the priorities and the way you deal with everything. Tim Schafer flavor priorities way I've always seen this overlap between medieval warfare and heavy metal. You see heavy metal singers and they'll have like a brace around their arm and they'll be singing about Orcs. So let's just make a world where that all happens. That all gets put together, the heavy metal, and the rock, and the battling, actually does happen. Let's not flirt around with this let's just do it. Tim Schafer flirting rocks singing Kinect is such a great new entry into the field because it takes away one of the big barriers to little kids to playing a game, which is the controller. You can't hand a basic video game controller to a child and expect them to understand what a left bumper is and to click in the right stick. Tim Schafer game great child you People talk about games and loneliness - it's a lonely activity. I didn't understand that. 'Gears of War' was the first multiplayer game for me that I enjoyed. But I wasn't sad. I liked being alone. I liked playing games by myself. I had lots of companionship at the house. Tim Schafer alone myself me sad The Internet has allowed a lot of access - people feel entitled to change the ending of games, for example. So there are a lot more voices coming at you all the time, which I think has its effect on creative decision making and possibly makes people more afraid to take risks. Tim Schafer you change time people When I'm playing 'Rock Band,' I'm like, 'Man, someday, later on in life when I'm a famous rock star...' Which gets a little harder to convince myself of as I reach middle age, but it still happens a lot. Tim Schafer myself man age life I enjoy everything. I actually do listen to everything. In high school, I listened to a lot of metal and punk rock. Tim Schafer high high-school enjoy school I'm a dad now, so now I just don't care what I look like. Once you've created life, you just don't care what anyone thinks. Tim Schafer look you dad life The last time I really got into new music that wasn't heavy metal was probably like... TV on the Radio? I think that was it. That's the last time. Tim Schafer new think music time I've now met, I would say, almost every single one of my rock idols. I feel like I should just drive off a cliff now. Tim Schafer say drive feel single I always think the recipe for success for a game or any sort of a fantasy experience is to think of a character that hasn't really been explored before, who is unique and has special abilities that not everybody has, and plop them into whatever is the most interesting situation to plop them into. Tim Schafer game experience success character Adventure games are all about details - if you happen to take this one object and use it with this other object, in a really weird place, at a weird time. If you happen to write a really funny dialogue line for that, even if it didn't solve the puzzle, people will appreciate that. Tim Schafer you time funny people I think when you play 'Psychonauts,' you are kind of playing inside of my head. Tim Schafer inside think you play
