It seems that over the past week I’ve been typing the names “Tim Schafer” and “Notch” in the tags on my posts an awful lot. Obviously most of this revolved around Double Fine’s vastly successful Kickstarter campaign and Notch’s hopefully cautious comments about Psychonauts 2. Yesterday Mojang had their successful Humblebundle event. Now, however, Mojang is making Schafer look like a boss, completely by accident.
In an Industygamers interview at DICE, Tim Schafer remarked on the “exodus” of developers from Microsoft’s XBLA platform. He’s referring to what’s being called an “eye-opening” report by 2D Boy’s Ron Carmel that shows development could be dwindling on the once popular platform. Schafer sees this as a development and production issue, saying that both XBLA and the PSN, “are closed and curated very closely.” Schafer also added that creative talent will continue to develop more for other platforms if things don’t change.
So where is the Minecraft connection? Well, when Schafer made a statement about the industry with Kickstarter, Mojang and Notch were there to support him. Then this weekend, on the same day Schafer’s interview was posted, Minecraft’s lead developer, Jens Bergensten, tweeted that Minecraft was just about to reach 5 million users. So again Tim Schafer is making a point and Minecraft is there to help him prove it.
Obviously this time around it was just a coincidence, but I’m not surprised. People with innovative ideas are going to bump into each other from time to time. But seriously, does Tim Schafer have a Psychonauts psychic doorway into Notch’s head or something?
