San Francisco Weekly May 23, 2012 : Page 9the Día de los Muertos iconography that became the backbone of Grim Fandango . Schafer was working at Cal’s computer store and finishing his computer-science de-gree when he landed a job at LucasArts, then headquartered at Skywalker Ranch. His first job was play-testing, but before long, Gilbert had roped him and Grossman — who started the same day as Schafer in 1989 — into design-ing the goofy pirate game he’d dreamed up. “He was always hilarious,” Grossman says of Schafer. “But he wasn’t so self-assured then. These days, he has a little rock and roll around him.” “Skywalker Ranch was kind of a dream,” Schafer says. “It was beautiful … and iso-lated. There was no Internet that we knew of. It was just us entertaining ourselves.” That pirate game became the first Monkey Island . After its success, and that of Day of the Tentacle , Schafer convinced LucasArts to let him lead production on Full Throttle , a dystopian graphic adventure in which Ben Throttle, the leader of a biker gang, must clear his name after being accused of murder. Schafer worked hard to make the game more accessible than his first efforts. “We had this theory that maybe if your hero is tough and cool, and if there’s a lot of hot rods and explo-sions, people will like it,” he says. His team didn’t sell millions. Grossman doesn’t agree that Grim Fandango was the nail in the coffin of adventure gaming, though he concedes that the game “might have killed it at LucasArts. It was pretty ambitious and expensive, and I don’t think it made very much money back. People looking out for the bottom line were wondering, ‘Should we be making these?’” Schafer left LucasArts in 1999, in part because the company was planning a Full Throttle sequel without his input. (It was later canceled.) The publisher’s last graphic-adventure game was 2000’s Escape from Monkey Island . At LucasArts, Schafer had the luxury of working in-house for a publisher, but that changed when he founded Double Fine Pro-ductions in 2000. The price of independence: struggling to survive from game to game. sfweekly.com | CONTENTS | LETTERS B rütal Legend seemed like a slam dunk. Just as heavy metal was kicking ass worldwide again, Schafer pitched his headbang-ing action-adventure to publishers, and Vivendi Games picked it up. The game’s $20 million budget helped Schafer lure major talent, including rocker/funnyman Jack Black as Eddie Riggs, a roadie who is sucked into a cartoonish heavy-metal universe. Paul simon san Fran cisco sym Ph o ny with the c o n c e rt s ta r r i n g | SUCKA cyndi • the lauPer wallFlowers Janelle monáe the driFters dJ masonic the Brenna whitaker little Big Band suPer diamond avance scott carter & new Breed dr. BoBBy rodrigueZ latinJaZZ grouP notorious and more! Pa rt y Fe at u r i n g FREE CITY | NIGHT+DAY | STAGE | FILM | EAT | PARTY PASSES ON SALE NOW! also made the game shorter, and the puzzles easier, which disappointed some longtime fans. Still, the changes paid off: Full Throttle sold 1 million copies after its 1995 release. “Every game has compromises,” Schae-fer says. “George Lucas used to say if you get 40 percent of what you want, that’s a success. I always feel like I get 85 to 90.” By then, Schafer’s following included future big-name developers. “I never really enjoyed the adventure game genre, with the notable exception of anything by Tim,” said Will Wright, creator of The Sims . “Ev-ery game he has designed I have loved and played all the way from start to finish.” Next, LucasArts handed Schafer $3 mil-lion to make Grim Fandango . The game’s main man is Manuel “Manny” Calavera, a travel agent at the Department of Death who helps souls book passage for the four-year journey through the land of the dead. Styled after noir films such as The Maltese Falcon , Grim Fan-dango won top awards from critics and sold roughly 500,000 copies, according to Schafer. But some blamed Grim Fandango for kill-ing the genre it exemplified, if only because it MUSIC Ron Gilbert was something of a mentor to Schafer at LucasArts and now has joined Schafer at Double Fine. There, he meets allies and demons voiced by Motörhead’s Lemmy Kilmeister, Halford, Osbourne, Brian Posehn, and Tim Curry. Of course, not all $20 million went to Double Fine. Typically, when a smaller studio produces a game for a big-name publisher, the studio receives some money up front and then more when it meets major milestones. Some of the cash pays actors, production costs, marketing, and so on. And, once the game is published, there’s no guarantee the studio that created it will see any of the profit. “Publishers might pay themselves back at a royalty rate, like 20 percent,” Schafer says. “Once they make their money back, they consider that breaking even and begin splitting the money with you.” He continues, “The hard thing is, they don’t pay themselves back at 100 percent, so it takes a long time for them to recoup the cost. It causes developers to end their development process with noth->> p10 Take in the live simulcast of the conclusion of Paul Simon on stage at Davies Symphony Hall. Then, party the night away to performances by Cyndi Lauper, The Wallflowers, Janelle Monáe, and more on five stages! Feast on gourmet food and signature cocktails, and get ready for the legendary Midnight Surprise—a Black & White Ball tradition! Tickets $250 | SF WEEKLY SfSYmPhONY.ORg/bWbALL (415) 864-6000 Box office Hours Mon-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat noon-6pm, Sun 2 hours prior to concerts Walk up Grove Street between Van Ness and Franklin Programs, artists, and prices subject to change. All Black & White Ball attendees must be 21 and over. No refunds or exchanges. All sales are final. Rain or shine, there will be dancing. M AY 23-M AY 29, 2012 preSenting SponSor media SponSorS 9 San Francisco Symphony |
