Tim Schafer

Founder & CEO, Double Fine Productions · 1 appearance on the record.

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founderexecutiveentertainerauthor@TimOfLegend ↗doublefine.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Tim Schafer is a game designer known for narrative titles including Grim Fandango, The Secret of Monkey Island, and Psychonauts. After working at LucasArts, he founded Double Fine Productions in 2000 and later pioneered major video game crowdfunding with Broken Age.

9statements → 1claims → 1claims resolved → 3.78/5average certainty → 1.89/5average debate potential →

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted how the 1 claim stands · each chip opens the sources

1 assertion · 1 opinion · 5 insights · 1 disclosure · 1 what if · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertion are the 1 claim: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Tim argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported

Schafer: Double Fine Set Kickstarter Record For Fastest $2 Million Raised

“We had like the most, most backers. Most backers. It was like fastest two million bucks.”

Tim Schafer Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 0:22 a16z Podcast | Tech Trends Changing Gaming

How they sound: speaking style how? →

303 words/min while actually speaking · 20.4 um and uh per 1k words · 18.8 false starts per 1k · 36.1% of pauses land inside a clause

No argument clarity score for Tim Schafer: only 1 usable question→answer exchange on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 3,130 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

What they said9 Episodes1

Everything Tim Schafer said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

What-if

Schafer: AAA Game Studios Would Never Have Created Minecraft

“I don't think a AAA studio would have created Minecraft, for example, you know, and I don't think that followed any sort of rules that existed before it, you know, but I think when people have the ability to kind of make these smaller, personal, more risky pro…”

Tim Schafer Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 6:15 a16z Podcast | Tech Trends Changing Gaming

Insight

Schafer: Traditional Publisher Cross-Collateralization Hurts Individual Creators

“If you're in a studio and you have a bunch of, say you have a bunch of bands, your music studio, You know not all of them are going to be the Rolling Stones, and the Rolling Stones are going to pay for all the other bands, but you cross-prolateralize so that, …”

Tim Schafer Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 25:32 a16z Podcast | Tech Trends Changing Gaming

Disclosure

Schafer: Crowdfunding Gave Double Fine Direct Player Access And Creative Autonomy

“What happened with us in crowdfunding has allowed us to have just so much more creative control, and a more natural relationship with people who we make games for, because they're funding our games, and we're directly in contact with them.”

Tim Schafer Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 1:20 a16z Podcast | Tech Trends Changing Gaming

Opinion

Schafer: Mainstream Video Games Lack Genre Diversity Compared To Film

“In mainstream games, you still have, for the majority sense, like, summer action blockbusters. They're mostly all in that genre, if you know, and I think indie games kind of, you know, have stretched out of that, for sure, but just the idea that, that That peo…”

Tim Schafer Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 8:11 a16z Podcast | Tech Trends Changing Gaming

Insight

Schafer: YouTube Streaming Has Replaced Traditional Game Promotion

“Which I think is how things get promoted these days. It's just everyone talking about it. Kind of, it used to be called water coolers, but I think it's obviously just YouTube streams.”

Tim Schafer Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 17:15 a16z Podcast | Tech Trends Changing Gaming

Insight

Schafer: Narrative Games Require Three Months Work Per Ten Minutes Gameplay

“You'll work for three months on something, it'll take the player 10 minutes to experience.”

Tim Schafer Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 22:04 a16z Podcast | Tech Trends Changing Gaming

Insight

Schafer: Video Games Offer Emotional Practice By Enabling Moral Experimentation

“You know, but she's interested in the range of, you know, what happens if you try these things, and I think, ah, when kids play with dolls, they figure out through role playing what it feels like, and they get this kind of emotional practice, and I think all s…”

Tim Schafer Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 20:09 a16z Podcast | Tech Trends Changing Gaming

Insight

Schafer: Direct Customer Responses Convert Angry Users Into Supporters

“Sometimes you'll have the angriest person in the world write your meanest letter, and then you'll just say, oh, oh, I'm sorry you had that issue. Let me try and get that in our bug tracking system. They're like, I can't believe you answered. They're so happy. …”

Tim Schafer Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 28:41 a16z Podcast | Tech Trends Changing Gaming

Assertion Supported

Schafer: Double Fine Set Kickstarter Record For Fastest $2 Million Raised

“We had like the most, most backers. Most backers. It was like fastest two million bucks.”

Tim Schafer Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 0:22 a16z Podcast | Tech Trends Changing Gaming

Appearances (1)

Episode	Date	Speaking time
a16z Podcast \| Tech Trends Changing Gaming	Jan 2, 2019	12m

Tim Schafer

The record, in short

Their most notable supported claim

How they sound: speaking style how? →

Appearances (1)

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