In an industry that is shifting towards more serious, narrative-driven games, Double Fine studio head Tim Schafer wonders "why all games aren't funny".
During a roundtable interview with TheGamer and other UK-based outlets, Tim Schafer was asked about whether he and the team felt pressure to be funny when making Psychonauts 2.
Schafer said, “One of the biggest mysteries to me in games is why all games aren't funny, because the stuff you can do is ridiculous. I mean, you can jump on someone else's head. It would take a lot more effort for the team and I to make a game that was deadly serious. I think that would just take a lot of work.
On the subject of Double Fine being funny, Schafer also said, "I think the team that we have a Double Fine is a lot of really funny people and they're really funny on the art side and, you know, we even have funny programmers... I think that when you see the humour in the games, I don't know if it's especially an effort from a team or just a natural expression of the personalities and people making the game."
Schafer's opinion on wondering why all games aren't funny shouldn't come as too much of a surprise considering the legacy of Double Fine. Tim Schafer originally worked on games like Monkey Island and Grim Fandango at EA, before leaving to form Double Fine. Since the studio opened it has done games like Psychonauts, Brutal Legend, Stacking, and Broken Age, all of which focus on humour as part of the narrative.
Although Psychonauts 2 is just as focused on humour as Double Fine's other titles, it's trying to take specific themes more carefully and try and treat them with respect. In the same interview, Tim said, "Luckily there’s a lot of stuff we got right in the first game just because of good intentions, but there was also a lot of stuff that we would do differently. So now with the second game, we’re doing a lot more of it with actual intent."