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Long read: The beauty and drama of video games and their clouds

"It's a little bit hard to work out without knowing the altitude of that dragon..."

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Double Fine's Tim Schafer

On Psychonauts, motion control and more.

EurogamerHe's too successful.
Tim Schafer

He could go to an industry that makes more money. Ball bearings... Something that suits his passions more. Weapons manufacturing?

EurogamerPsychonauts. You shopping that around?
Tim Schafer

I would love to do another one. It's not like I'm against doing sequels. I'm against not doing new things. If I had made a sequel to Full Throttle, like they asked me to, there wouldn't have been any Grim Fandango. And if I'd made a sequel to Grim there wouldn't have been a Psychonauts. So it's mostly just that I've got some other new idea I want to do instead.

Psychonauts was the first thing I made that I actually owned. That and Brutal Legend. So it's the first thing I could do a sequel to. The trick would be convincing a publisher it's been out there long enough, that it's had enough time to get around. People ask me for it all the time.

It's one of those games that's easily extendable. Everyone you meet, any interesting character you've ever run into, you ever thought of what it would be like to go inside their mind, that's another level of the game. It has endless possibilities. And I love those characters. And my nephew really wants me to make it.

EurogamerWhy don't you do it then?
Tim Schafer

I didn't say I wasn't doing it.

Full Throttle. We get it, Tim. You like bikes.
EurogamerWould you need a publisher or could you do it yourself?
Tim Schafer

I would love to do it ourselves but we'd need a few million dollars, which developers don't tend to have. I think Epic does.

The main thing that's stopped me is that we can only do one thing at a time. If we can get it to the point where we're making multiple games, then we can work on the sequel while we're exploring new IPs at the same time,

EurogamerHave you got a publisher for the games you're working on now?
Tim Schafer

Uh-huh.

EurogamerAre you saying who it is?
Tim Schafer

Not really right now. They're going to announce the games pretty soon.

EurogamerIs Brutal Legend something you would like to return to?
Manny needs a sandwich.
Tim Schafer

All the games, we always wrap them up. I'm always happy to leave them, really. They're not like, dying to be returned to. But some of them, like Psychonauts, there's obviously more you could do with it.

With Brutal, there's a lot of stuff we had to remove for the first game that I would love to see the light of day at some time, stuff that was really cool.

EurogamerLike what?
Tim Schafer

Other factions. There were whole factions we had to cut out, which were really hilarious and fun to play. But there just wasn't enough time to do that whole story. The world was about three times the size of what it was in the game.

I really wanted to do a sequel so I could work with Ron James Dio, but that sadly cannot happen. I had a whole plan for him.

EurogamerWhat happened there then?
Tim Schafer

He died.

EurogamerI know, but what was the gameplay around his character?
Tim Schafer

I wanted him to be... Well, I don't want to go into it. He just passed away. I feel a little strange talking about it.