Tim Schafer: "Because of Game Pass, I can see where we fit in"

There was a lot of people who were really surprised when it was revealed that Double Fine had been bought by Microsoft. It didn't seem like an obvious fit for MS, a company that mainly was famous for action and racing. But in a Games Industry article about Xbox Game Studios, the Double Fine founder Tim Schafer himself explains how they fit in:

"Because of Game Pass, I can see where we fit in. There are not a lot of studios making brightly coloured, funny, family-friendly games. Well, we try to be funny.

"It does make me think about some of the crazy game ideas we've had, and some of them you're just like... I can never pitch this to any publisher. I would never get this signed. But I am now opening up that folder of documents again, and going 'oh I really love this idea, I bet I could do that now'."

Schafer also went on to explain how Game Pass has changed how he thinks about making games since he no longer needs to worry about buyers:

"You can be a game of any type and length on Game Pass. I think the game talks to you while you're making it and tells you what size it needs to be. When you're talking about a single purchase, there is a value proposition. 'Well, this game I can play for thousands of hours, whereas this one I can't'. People do think about that.

"But this is the oldest question in games. I've been doing this for 30 years and back at LucasArts we were having this same exact conversation about the fact we always put '40 hours of gameplay' on the back of the box. And we'd be like: couldn't we just make smaller games and explore a little idea rather than this giant idea? Now we can do both. We can have it all."

The next game from Double Fine is Psychonauts 2, which launches for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One later this year.