Game Designer Tim Schafer Says Creatives Need to ‘Fight’ for Their Vision

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Tim Schafer knows what goes into getting a creative vision all the way from inception to deliverable, and — spoiler alert — it takes more than a winning idea. It takes moxie, skill and some business savvy, he told TheWrap for this week’s Office With a View.

Starting at LucasArts in 1989 before founding his own company, Double Fine Productions, in 2000, where he still presides as CEO, Schafer has seen the video game industry evolve over three decades. Across those years, Schafer racked up credits on legendary LucasArts titles like “The Secret of Monkey Island” and “Day of the Tentacle” and spearheaded Double Fine originals such as “Psychonauts” and “Brütal Legend.”

“Psychonauts” in particular was such a big deal that its sequel, “Psychonauts 2,” was the subject of a massive game-development documentary, the “Double Fine PsychOdyssey.”

Over that career, Schafer has seen the ups and downs of being a high-profile creative. He’s enjoyed the slam-dunk successes of the “Psychonauts” games while actively running a game studio. He’s also found himself in tough spots, having faced the challenges of delivering on Double Fine’s record-smashing “Broken Age” Kickstarter as well as getting into a brief dustup with Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick over “Brütal Legend.”

Throughout these highs and lows, Schafer’s gathered knowledge and wisdom on what it takes to get a creative work from idea to reality. He spoke with TheWrap to share insights on how one gets one’s vision out in the world, as well as the skills and mindset needed to turn a dream into a finished product.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How do you go from vision to reality in today’s world? What are some of the key lessons you’ve learned about how to get your ideas made?
It’s not enough just to have great ideas and it’s not enough to have skills and craft to make them into art. You also have to be a harsh judge and edit your own stuff. But the final step — being able to fight for your ideas is so important. And early on in my career, I remember feeling kind of put upon by that.

“Why don’t people just respect all these ideas that I’m having?” No, you’ve got to actually deliver them. You’ve got to bring them through the machinery. Because there needs to be an infrastructure to make these massively complicated games and that means money. And when there’s money involved, you need to be able to justify and fight for your idea. So it’s better to just learn how to do that instead of feeling sorry for yourself.

You mentioned having to make the business case. When you’re in charge, how do you balance staying true to your vision with staying in business?
You have to be able to switch modes: “Now I’m in a mode where I’m open to any and all crazy ideas. And now I’m shutting that down and I’m in a mode where I’m just trying to be selective about those ideas.” And then I’m thinking through “Could I get this made?”

In the old days, it would be “Could I pitch this to a publisher?” But nowadays, it’s more “Is this a Double Fine game? Could this be made into a high-quality thing that people would actually like?”

Luckily, now that I’m not pitching to publishers anymore, it’s just a matter of “Would this fit, would this be good on Game Pass? Would this look good on Xbox?”

You have to switch modes. And it’s just as important when you’re in creative mode to not think about practical considerations. You’ve got to free your mind of all that stuff and just be as creative as possible and then switch into a mode where you are like, “Okay, programmers, tear this apart.”

Do you have any advice for people who have a story they want to tell or an experience they want to deliver, but they don’t know how to get the ball rolling?
One creative tip is free writing, which is just writing in a journal without stopping or editing yourself. Barfing into this journal every day, or as often as you can, getting all your ideas out there and knowing when to push them forward and when to let them simmer in your head. And practice pitching people, even if it’s just you and your friends.

Tell everyone you know about the idea over and over again and see if anyone gets excited about it. If no one goes “Oh, that’s interesting,” if no one gets excited about your idea, then maybe it’s not ready yet.

How do you make connections in the industry when you’re just getting started?
For me, I spoke at a trade show. In 2000, I gave a talk on character creation for video games. And it happened to be the year that Microsoft was launching the Xbox and Ed Fries, who ran the Xbox studio, was in the audience. He saw my talk and he told me, “I’m really interested in talking to you about games.” And that was the connection that led to our first contract for “Psychonauts.”

Trade shows can be very helpful in that way. And you might not think you’re qualified to give a talk, but if you’ve been doing any work in this area, you probably know more than your average person.

What pitfalls should creatives be keeping watch for as they push a vision?
Everyone in the industry is a human being and you can work with them to unify your visions. You don’t need to fight with people. When your publisher asks you to do something, you can say “Yes” and then just put it really low on your list of things to do instead of saying “No.” So that’s one tip: Always say yes, no matter what you’re gonna do.

I do regret spending all my money to launch a company. I mean, I don’t regret it now. It all worked out in the end. But I put my whole life savings into it, and I paid everybody’s salary from the beginning. You’ll have a lot of money that seems like an infinite amount of money to a single person but, to a group of people, it goes incredibly fast if you’re paying salaries. So all the money I’d made off of “Full Throttle” was gone in five months, paying people’s salaries, and it took longer than that to sign the contract with Microsoft the first time.

There are other ways around that: I could have offered people stock or worked cheaply by myself for a while or not have brought people on board until I had a contract. Spending other people’s money is always a better idea if you can do it.

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