Double Fine Productions founder Tim Schafer will be inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) Hall of Fame this month at the 26th annual DICE Awards, in recognition of his over 30-year impact on the games industry.
Schafer’s career began at LucasArts in 1989 as a programmer working on games including Indiana Jones and the last Crusade and Maniac Mansion. He was eventually invited by Ron Gilbert to work on The Secret of Monkey Island and its sequel, both of which received massive acclaim. Schafer went on to design games such as Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango before eventually leaving LucasArts in 2000 to found Double Fine Productions and create Psychonauts, Psychnauts 2, Brutal Legend, and Broken Age.
AIAS Hall of Fame status is given to “game creators who have been instrumental in the development of highly influential games and moving a particular genre forward.” Schafer will join past honorees such as Ed Boon, Connie Booth, Bonnie Ross, Todd Howard, Hideo Kojima, and others.
“Tim has been a beacon of creativity and innovation in the games industry for decades,” said head of PlayStation Creators Greg Rice, who will be presenting the award. “Since the early days of LucasArts he’s been setting the benchmark for storytelling in games, and with the formation of Double Fine he created a place that not only allowed him to continue to deliver incredible games, but also inspire and support others doing the same. He truly is a legend.”
We praised Double Fine’s most recent work under Schafer, Psychonauts 2, for its “weird and wonderfully written story” and its expansion of its predecessor “toward both grander and more intimate threats without losing the joyous childhood adventure vibes of the original.”
The 26th annual DICE Awards will take place on Thursday, February 23, in Las Vegas as a part of the 2023 DICE Summit.
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.
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