
The curiously ordinary desire of Tim Schafer - andycroll
http://www.polygon.com/features/2015/5/20/8601389/tim-schafer-broken-age
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jasonmp85
The only thing "curious" about this situation is that we've arrived at a place
culturally where non-"exponential" success is held as somehow less-than. In
tech we derisively call these "lifestyle businesses", as though somehow
quietly producing things people want to buy at a level that makes you
comfortable is a moral bad, lacking as it is in the "change-the-world"
narrative so many startups tell themselves.

Meanwhile, I caught a trailer for Broken Age, decided it would be fun to sit
with my toddler and play, and have been enjoying it immensely. Sure, it's not
pushing the state of the art in graphics, procedural content, AI, or the
medium in general, but it's beautiful, charming, and exudes craftsmanship in
ways that many other "game-changers" do not.

Keep on keepin' on, Tim.

~~~
austinstorm
Yes, this. I should be so lucky to build a 'lifestyle business', some kind of
stable enterprise that is the livelihood of 10-20 people.

------
Sleaker
seems like an article that was done specifically just to try and save face
about all the broken promises with SpaceBase, followed by Broken Age, missing
deadlines, mis-managing funds, and then making jokes about your customer base.
Sure there's a healthy bit of backstory and a story that tries to basically
say 'He just totally deserves a top hit.' I don't think he really deserves
one, maybe he should earn it?

But even then, Tim seems like he's been successful. He has a legitimately good
design legacy... I'm not sure why he needs a 'super huge great selling game.'

He makes comments like this: "That’s something we’d love to do," he says. "But
we don’t want to compromise our approach to games. It would just be wrong if
we tried to make a game that was imitating some other successful game."

Except that from the outside it looks like they are very willing to compromise
when they could have had success by just following through on their
promises...

