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Destructoid:Only one Double Fine game came to Switch, and it was the game that released last week (Rad). A descriptor people use for Double Fine games always seems to be that they're charming, and in a lot of ways that seems like a perfect match for Switch. How do you feel about not having more of a presence on Switch, and that it's presumably going to POE currency trade stay that way with the Microsoft deal?
Schafer:I love the Switch, and a lot of people at Double Fine are huge Nintendo fans and I think we always have been and will be. Early on in my career, Super Mario 64 was obviously very influential for me. And it always felt weird that I feel like I just cannot sell a game in Japan. Japanese games people would come to visit at LucasArts and they would look at Grim Fandango and they'd be like Are these characters done? One of them actually said that. I was like Yeah, that's the final art, and he was like They don't have skin. I always thought that we had very Japanese sensibility in our love of design and love of character. But, I guess our taste and aesthetic are more American than I realized. Some day we'll have a game that Japanese people will like.
Destructoid:Kind of along the lines of the last question, but with VR — except the Switch is thriving and VR seems to be flailing. Would you have liked to do more with VR given the creative tools it affords?
Schafer:No.
Destructoid:You're done with it?
Schafer:People always ask if I have regrets, and the only regrets I have in my career are financial. If I had invested more in VR, I would've made a lot more money. We lost a lot of people to VR. A lot of people on our team were really interested in VR and wanted to mess around with it. They went on to do huge things. Both Tilt Brush and Medium are ex-Double Fine people. Tyler Hurd obviously does a lot of cool things.
Part of me thinks Wow, if I bundled those people into a subsidiary of Double Fine, I could've sold that for millions. But that's a financial regret POE goods. I don't think that was the right thing to do creatively for me because my heart wasn't in it. I could've made more money at that period if I loved VR, but I just never did. Now, I don't regret that at all because I don't think I'd still be interested in even if I was interested in it back then. People are doing cool stuff in VR, but it's just not for me. I think a lot of the creative people I know that got into VR, they got into it because it opened up a bunch of creative possibilities. It doesn't mean they intrinsically love VR, they just love exploring new spaces. When another new space opens up, they'll all move onto that.
