Tim Schafer interview: Psychonauts 2, crowdfunding’s future, and staying nimble

Posted byby Dean Takahashi
February 17, 2019
Updated June 19, 2025
8 min

Tim Schafer is the game industry’s favorite silly man. He hosted the awards ceremonies at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), cracking jokes about Trump and other topics, and they invited him back to do the same this year.

But he’s also a serious game developer as CEO of San Francisco-based Double Fine, and last year, he won the Lifetime Achievement Award for his work at LucasArts and Double Fine, where he created games, such as Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Psychonauts, Brutal Legend, and Broken Age.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.