Double Fine Productions

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Double Fine Productions, Inc.
legal form Incorporated
founding July 2000
Seat San Francisco , California
United States
management Tim Schafer
Number of employees 65
Branch Software development
Website doublefine.com

Double Fine Productions is an American video game development studio. It was founded in 2000 by Tim Schafer , who previously worked for LucasArts a . a. participated in the Monkey Island series and was responsible for the successful adventure games Day of the Tentacle , Vollgas and Grim Fandango . Double Fine Productions has been a Microsoft subsidiary since June 2019 .

Company history

The company was founded in July 2000 by Tim Schafer after leaving LucasArts as a designer in January. The name of the studio was derived from a traffic sign on the Golden Gate Bridge , which indicated the so-called "Double Fine Zone", i. H. a region in which the violation of the maximum speed requirements (engl. with a twice as high penalty fine ) is assigned as normal.

The studio's first published title was Psychonauts , released in 2005 , an action-adventure game about the character Raz, who can penetrate other people's minds and experience bizarre adventures. The game received great critical praise, Double Fine was honored for this title among other things in the context of the Game Developers Choice Awards as best newcomer studio, but could not convince financially. The development of a second major project, the action adventure Brütal Legend , which began immediately after Psychonauts , was also problematic. After the original publishing partner Vivendi Universal Games stopped its support for the title after its merger with Activision to Activision Blizzard , the project threatened to end. Although Double Fine found a new partner in Electronic Arts , the resulting legal dispute between Activision Blizzard and EA was only resolved shortly before the game was released in October 2009. Brütal Legend's game concept was based heavily on clichés from the rock / heavy metal music genres and was marketed with the support of actor and rock musician Jack Black , among others . This title also received mostly good ratings, but also fell short of sales expectations despite around 1.4 million copies sold (as of February 2011). A continuation of the game was discarded due to lack of funding.

Subsequently, Double Fine mainly switched to smaller productions, which were mainly distributed via download . It was the result of a process that studio manager Schafer used in 2007 during the development of Brütal Legend , and which he called Amnesia Fortnight (German: approximately two-week memory loss). Schafer divided his team into four groups for two weeks, each with the task of designing a demo of a finished game concept within this time. At this point in time, this experiment was primarily intended to give its developers a brief change from the development process of their large-scale project. When the continuation of Brütal Legend failed, however, Schafer was able to use the results of this experiment to quickly secure new orders and thus the survival of the studio with the help of these comparatively cheap productions (~ 1–2 million US dollars). Between 2010 and 2012 the games Costume Quest , Stacking , Iron Brigade , Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster were released as a result . Costume Quest , Stacking and Iron Brigade used the Buddha engine developed by Double Fine for Brütal Legend , named after the working title of the action adventure. The engine was designed with a focus on multi- platform development after the company lost Microsoft as publisher for Psychonauts and the game had to be adapted to additional platforms at short notice and with considerable effort.

Works like Double Fine Happy Action Theater for Microsoft's Xbox 360 Kinect gesture control followed . In September 2010 it was also announced that Schafer's long-time designer colleague and former supervisor at LucasArt, Ron Gilbert ( Monkey Island ), would join the team. The development of the game The Cave , a genre mix of adventure and platformer , was initiated under Gilbert's direction .

In February 2012, Double Fine announced that they wanted to develop a new graphic adventure game. But since no publisher can be found, the team is dependent on the financial support of their fans. Via the online platform Kickstarter.com , the studio therefore asked for the necessary development capital of 400,000 US dollars to be provided by means of crowdfunding . The project with the working title Double Fine Adventure was successfully financed in March 2012 and surprisingly received around 3.3 million US dollars in pledges. It was by far the highest financed project to date and attracted a number of imitators from the game industry.

At the Microsoft press conference at E3 2019 it was announced that the studio has been taken over by Microsoft and is now under the umbrella of Xbox Game Studios . At the same time, the development of Psychonauts 2 was confirmed. Despite the Microsoft takeover, the game will also be released for Playstation 4.

Games

Developed games

  • 2005: Psychonauts
  • 2007: Epic Saga: Extreme Fighter
  • 2008: My Game About Me: Olympic Challenge
  • 2008: Tasha's Game
  • 2009: Brütal Legend
  • 2009: Host Master and the Conquest of Humor
  • 2010: Costume Quest
  • 2011: Iron Brigade
  • 2011: Psychonauts Vault Viewer!
  • 2011: Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster
  • 2011: Stacking
  • 2012: Amnesia Fortnight 2012
  • 2012: Double Fine Happy Action Theater
  • 2012: Middle Manager of Justice
  • 2012: Kinect Party
  • 2013: Autonomous
  • 2013: Dropchord
  • 2013: Host Master Deux: Quest for Identity
  • 2013: The Cave
  • 2013: The Playroom: My Alien Buddy
  • 2014: Amnesia Fortnight 2014
  • 2014: Broken Age
  • 2014: Costume Quest 2
  • 2014: Hack 'n' Slash
  • 2014: Spacebase DF-9
  • 2015: Grim Fandango Remastered
  • 2015: Massive Chalice
  • 2016: Day of the Tentacle Remastered
  • 2016: Headlander
  • 2017: Amnesia Fortnight 2017
  • 2017: Full Throttle Remastered
  • 2017: Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin
  • 2019: Rad
  • in development: Psychonauts 2

Distributed Games

  • 2014: Escape Goat 2
  • 2014: Mountain
  • 2016: 140
  • 2016: Thoth
  • 2017: Everything
  • 2017: Gang Beasts
  • 2017: GNOG
  • 2019: KIDS
  • 2019: Knights and Bikes
  • in development: Samurai Gunn 2

Awards

Company awards:

For psychonauts (excerpt):

For Brütal Legend:

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Double Fine Productions: About: Frequently Asked Questions ( English ) In: Official website . Retrieved November 14, 2012: " It comes from a sign on the Golden Gate Bridge that, until recently, said" Slow to 45 mph - Double Fine Zone. " "
  2. ↑ Caroline Esmurdoc: Postmortem: Double Fine's Brutal Legend ( English ) In: Gamasutra . UBM plc . March 24, 2010. Retrieved November 14, 2012.
  3. ↑ Simon Parkin: Develop: Double Fine's Schafer On 'Amnesia Fortnights' And The Pitfalls Of AAA ( English ) In: Gamasutra . UBM plc . July 15, 2010. Retrieved February 23, 2011.
  4. ↑ Eddie Makuch: How Amnesia Fortnight Saved Double Fine ( English ) In: GameSpot . CBS Interactive . March 8, 2012. Retrieved November 15, 2012.
  5. ↑ Double Fine's Massive Chalice Hits Funding Goal | GamePolitics. In: gamepolitics.com. ECA, June 4, 2013, accessed June 15, 2013 .
  6. ^ Cheese talks to: Double Fine (about cross platform game development). In: cheesetalks.twolofbees.com. January 18, 2013, accessed June 15, 2013 .
  7. ^ Brian Crecente: Tim Schafer Hires Ron Gilbert, Gets Funnier ( English ) In: Kotaku . September 27, 2010. Retrieved November 15, 2012.
  8. ↑ Keith Stuart: Ron Gilbert on The Cave and how to make adventure games ( English ) In: The Guardian . Guardian News & Media Ltd .. June 27, 2012. Retrieved June 27, 2012.
  9. ↑ Double Fine Adventure at Kickstarter
  10. ↑ Konrad Lischka : Crowdfunding: "Monkey Island" makers take in $ 3.3 million . In: Spiegel Online . SPIEGEL publishing house . March 14, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2012.
  11. ↑ Blockbuster Effects ( English ) In: Kickstarter Blog . Kickstarter . March 29, 2012. Retrieved November 15, 2012.
  12. ↑ Marcel Kleffmann: Microsoft has taken over Double Fine Productions; Psychonauts 2 in the trailer (PS4 version confirmed). In: 4Players . June 10, 2019, accessed June 10, 2019 .
  13. ↑ OXM Game of the Year 2011 Awards: Developer and Technical Awards ( English ) In: Official Xbox Magazine . December 19, 2011. Retrieved February 15, 2012.