Psychonauts postmortem in Game Developer

[n0wak]

  SiN said:

Actually, I just hope there is a next game!!! I get the feeling there will be, but it really can't be another 4-year in development game. DF can't afford that.

I hear he's pitching it to publishers already

[Steve]

  n0wak said:

I hear he's pitching it to publishers already

details plz

[pupsti]

yeah-yeah... details. uhm...

[baconian]

  n0wak said:

I hear he's pitching it to publishers already

and that sentence deserved a why?

[Karimi]

"As soon as he did ,[hire me], things were back on track" , thats a bit arrogant.

Overall the article was interesting , but she didn't go into failure on the shelves and in sales which I think is a large part of the problem.

[pupsti]

  Quote

"As soon as he did ,[hire me], things were back on track" , thats a bit arrogant.

haha! i noticed the same sentence and thought the same thing.

[MrHoatzin]

It is true, however. That was her job, getting everything back on track. Why should she be falsely modest or veil her purpose in coy jargon?

[Kolzig]

If things really went that badly during the years 2002-2003 before she was hired, then I think she did an awesome job, when you look how Double Fine is now.

Great choice by Tim to hire her.

And according some videos where she was interviewed, she sounds like a very nice person.

[Spaff]

It didn't seem arrogant to me. Tim was doing a bunch of jobs, when he handed some over to her, he had more time to work on Psychonauts. That's the way I read it.

I don't think she was trying to say she got the show back on the road or anything.

Great article. I admire Tim for all the work he put into creating that 'corporate culture'. It worked.

I don't know if anybody here has heard of Innocent Fruit Smoothies, but the Innocent company actually has a really similar corporate culture to Double Fine. And they make fruit smoothies. And they pretty much have an info cow. Anybody?

-Yufster

[pupsti]

but come on...

  Quote

As soon as he did ,[hire me], things were back on track.

that sounds like. things were like *blink*... back on track.

something like... "things started to get back on track" or something would have sounded much better. or something.

[pupsti]

well im not british. so maybe i just... misunderstood... because of the language barrier... or something.

[Karimi]

It just seemed to me that crediting things going back on track to her arrival was a bit arrogant , yes it was her job so I guess it might just be me. But still , saying "I arrived and everything was set straight" (loose interpretation) seems to have a hint of arrogance. I might just be crazy though.

[SiN]

the line was more along the lines of "tim couldn't do his job, so things were going shit ... he hired me, leaving him time to do his job ... things went well".

  Quote

Overall the article was interesting , but she didn't go into failure on the shelves and in sales which I think is a large part of the problem.

not quite. post mortems talk about what went right and wrong with the development of the game ... not with whether it was a success or not. why it didn't sell well has nothing to do with the development process on the game, so it wasn't mentioned.

SiN

[jp-30]

  SiN said:

Actually, I just hope there is a next game!!! I get the feeling there will be, but it really can't be another 4-year in development game. DF can't afford that.

Given all the programming tools and production procedures now in place, there' sno way the next game will take as long. In the article somewhere didn't they say that the actual game creation clocked in at around 2 years?

And even with a commercial failure on their hands, there are still some strong reasons to do Psychonauts 2 marketing (and production) wise.

[SiN]

  jp-30 said:

Given all the programming tools and production procedures now in place, there' sno way the next game will take as long. In the article somewhere didn't they say that the actual game creation clocked in at around 2 years?

I do agree that DF's next game won't be another 4 years in development. However, whatever they make is certainly going to be expensive.

We all know that the next DF game is going to have great dialogue and a great art style. Thats great and all, but with that comes high production values. Lots of time developing content, and expensive voice actors means that whatever DF make will be expensive. I'm just worried that publishers will be a bit weary of signing DF on for that reason.

SiN

[peb]

I don't blame her for tooting her own horn here as I'm sure she wants to get the word out that Double Fine is now an efficient operation as opposed to before. I think if Esmurdoc stays (and I wouldn't see any reason why not), DF can present themselves as a well-oiled game-making machine to potential publishers (if they don't use Majesco). As great as Tim is at designing games, I don't think it's any surprise that he needed a more operations-oriented manager, a "bad cop" if you will. And now that they have the company-structure set, they can be much more efficient on their next game which will save time and money. I would guess that they could cut the costs on their next title by a couple million dollars.