Tim Schafer, head of Double Fine, part of Xbox Game Studios, spoke to IGN about the benefits of Game Pass for developers, among other things. According to him, the Double Fine team “historically” aimed to make strange games, but they always had to think about how to “sell” these games to publishers. And the publisher was only willing to take on projects that he could sell to the players, which is why Double Fine had to compromise.
By becoming part of the Xbox team, Tim Schafer says Double Fine not only has good funding, but also the opportunity to make the most unusual games for the Game Pass audience:
Game Pass allows us to connect with people who might be too worried to give $70 to buy a game. But they see these games on Game Pass and they’re like, “Oh, I’ll just download this and play it right now.” Game Pass is a great place for us and I think the subscription releases will lead to us becoming more like ourselves and more creative… It allowed me to push projects that I had in the background because I thought: never we can’t sell these games to a publisher, they’re too weird. And now we can make these games, so our games will get even weirder.
In an interview, Tim Schafer isn’t talking about Psychonauts 2 – the game was already in development when it was acquired by Double Fine. Accordingly, we can expect “even stranger” projects from the studio in the future.
