Publishers Don’t Want to Invest in New IPs, Tim Schafer Says

Tim Schafer, the famous game designer behind cult classics like Grim Fandango or Full Throttle, as well as newer titles, like Costume Quest, Stacking or Iron Brigade, has revealed that, while coming up with new intellectual properties is easy, getting publishers to invest in them is extremely hard.

Lots of gamers, as well as people from the industry complain that we’re flooded with sequels upon sequels every year. 

Sadly, while this may help motivate studios to work on new projects, Tim Schafer reveals that publishers still aren’t willing to invest in new ideas, especially when it comes to triple-A projects like Schafer’s own Brutal Legend.

"Publishers often don't want to release anything new, I mean they're scared of new IP, and Double Fine specializes in new IP," he told Digital Spy. "That's always been our challenge: getting a publisher to invest millions of dollars in something brand new like Brutal Legend."

After the lackluster debut of Brutal Legend, Schafer and his team at Double Fine have started making smaller downloadable games. Since then, they’ve released quite a few popular ones, like Costume Quest, Stacking or Iron Brigade, not to mention Kinect titles like Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster or the most recent Happy Action Theater.

"It has helped to have games that are smaller, like digital download games are smaller so the budgets are smaller, like Happy Action Theater. The whole reason it got made was that I was asking for very little money to get it made," he explained. "And once it proved the power of it, money was invested in it, but the original thing that we were asking for was very small."

Double Fine is expected to continue focusing on downloadable games, even if its recent success might have made some publishers consider investing in bigger projects from the studio led by Schafer.