Although he’s already worked on a Costume Quest cartoon, Double Fine and legendary game designer Tim Schafer have shared that he doesn’t really see a future where any of his games won’t be made into TV or movies. .
Speaking to IGN’s Ryan McCaffrey after winning the Andrew Yoon Legend Award from the New York Videogame Critics Circle, Schafer explained that although he is often approached by Hollywood to turn one of his games into a movie or series , it usually ends up being “just a distraction”. “
“We often get approached by people saying, ‘Hey, can we make a movie of this?’ but, you know, it’s usually just a distraction,” Schafer said. “I think games are what I really care about and what I like to do and what I think is interesting. It comes up every once in a while, but it never turned into anything. I had lots of free lunches out of Hollywood.”
When Psychonauts was touted as an IP that would seem like a great candidate for a life outside of gaming, Schafer said that while he agrees you could “do tons of stuff with Pscyhonauts,” he thinks ” games are cooler than movies and tv, so it’s already peaked.”
Full Throttle is another game Schafer was approached for, and Warcraft movie director Duncan Jones even wrote an entire script to show him how it could be done. Schafer read the script and thought it was good and “you can tell he really played the game and knows what it’s about.” However, even this intriguing Full Throttle experience didn’t give Schafer much hope.
“It was exciting,” Schafer said. “It would be fun to work with Duncan but, you know, LA and Hollywood, it’s just one big lunch whirlwind.”
For more, find out why Schafer wants Double Fine’s next game to be an original property, read our Psychonauts 2 review, and learn more about the studio which has confirmed it’s already working on multiple projects.
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Adam Bankhurst is a reporter for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Tic.