Interview: Tim Schafer

Posted on 24. Sep, 2009 by James Dilks in Featured, Gaming, Interviews, PC, PS3, Previews, Xbox 360

Tim Schafer talks with the non-cynical enthusiasm of someone who is accomplishing exactly what he wants in his line of work. When I tell him that I’m playing Grim Fandango for the fourth time in preparation for writing an article about his work, he gives an excited laugh, and I can hear how happy he is to reminisce about the game.

It was a ‘fun and special’ time for him, he says. Ever modest, Schafer talks about how lucky he was to have artists like Peter Chan on board, who could fully realise the polyphonically influenced Land of the Dead from the start of development. ‘No-one had made a game about Mexican folklore before’, which is useful when you’re trying to make a ‘completely unique’ game. Schafer immersed himself in the game’s other influences too, on film noir; ‘I would go home and watch those movies every night’, and you can tell.

Manny Calavera: Grim Reaper, Salesman

When I ask whether his move away from straightforward adventure games is a signal that he thinks it is a dead genre, it’s a resounding ‘no’. Simply, he makes games that are made up of whatever he’s interested in at the time. ‘When we made Grim Fandango I was playing a lot of Mario 64 and Final Fantasy 7, so I wanted to make a game where you could take control of the character and move him around the environment yourself’. Brutal Legend came into being because of Schafer’s desire for large scale battles on a large scale battlefield. We know from previous interviews that the game is heavily inspired by the fantasy world created by heavy metal bands, and Schafer feels music is a very important part of the world he and his team have created. The soundtrack ‘fits each moment perfectly’ he claims. ‘It’s not just a list put together by a record company trying to push its music,’ he says, ‘these are the songs that we love. And it’s such a varied list, people may play the game and know and love bands like Motley Crue, but they’ll also get to hear bands they don’t know, like Running Wild who are one of the best bands in the world.’ Regardless of that claim, it’s an admirable approach to soundtrack construction.

How did Jack Black get involved in the project? ‘We’d heard that he was a fan of Psychonauts, so that gave us the courage’ – Schafer laughs – ‘to approach him and ask if he would like to do some voicework for Brutal Legend.’ It’s that simple, get famous movie stars to like your work and they’ll do anything for you. Black is, of course, a perfect fit for the game. He and Schafer mine similar seams of humour for their work, and Black’s comedy rock duo, Tenacious D, are great lampooners of those hard rock fantasy worlds. Casually, Schafer mentions that he flew out to LA and met Black in the Four Seasons, showed him their ideas for the game and he agreed to voice Eddie Riggs, the roadie protagonist, almost immediately.

Schafer also seems unperturbed by the recent squabble over publishing rights for Brutal Legend. ‘That was one for the lawyers to sort out,’ he says. With similar diplomacy, he says he hasn’t played Telltale’s attempts to revive a series he once called his own; Monkey Island. ‘But Dave Grossman, who worked on the original series, is involved, so that must be a good thing.’ He’s also refreshingly honest, having ‘A Tim Schafer Game’ on the cover of his games is a useful way of getting publishers to recognise your work, which helps when you’re trying to get something made. ‘Plus, it’s something I’ve had on almost all my games now, and once you’ve started it’s hard to take it off’. I can’t help but think that, whatever the reason, Schafer is a worthwhile face of a medium that so rarely reveals its artists.

Even when I ask a slightly convoluted question, pointing out the otherwise rare use of alternative perspectives in his games, (Manny’s newspaper collage view of the living world in GF, Psychonauts’ conspiracy theorist level,) he responds warmly. ‘Yes, it’s always something that has interested me, the way people perceive things in different situations. You can actually see what different characters think about you in Psychonauts, if you use clairvoyance on them, so you end up with some of them seeing you as an angel, and others as a devil.’ We agree that it’s something that could be used more in games, where so often characters and items have one model, and that’s it.

What would Schafer be doing if he wasn’t making games? Did he ever dream of playing in one of those ridiculous heavy metal bands that influenced Brutal Legend? Another guffaw, ‘No, I don’t think that was ever on the cards. Before I made games I thought I was going to write short stories. I was reading a lot of Kurt Vonnegut, and he worked for GE (General Electric) during the day and wrote stories when he went home. I thought I was going to work a computer science job during the day and write stories at night.’

That dream might not have been realised, but you get the impression that Schafer couldn’t be happier, and that he is a credit to the small group of people who make our games who we might actually recognise on the street.