PsychOdyssey a look inside Double Fine
The gaming industry is one of the most internally open but secretive mediums in comparison to movies or television. Games being announced years before they actually should, leaks happening on a consistent basis even with walls of NDAs, you could look at most studios and plan out their foreseeable future of releases. Sure, things like E3 or studio-run press events continuously give us deeper looks into titles coming out years in advance, but the average person doesn't understand the inside workings of game development. Double Fine's PsychOdyssey from 2 Player Productions looks to open a window into the game development process. PsychOdyssey follows the roughly 7-year development cycle for Psyconauts 2 and gives a slight glimpse into how at least Double Fine's development works. And it's easily one of my favorite documentaries I've ever watched.
We’re admittedly Xbox focused here so it was quite a surprise when Double Fine joined the Xbox family in 2018. Double Fine has long been in my top tier of game developers; Psychonauts took my imagination and flipped it on its head as a child, Brutal Legend combined video games and the metal genre into a weird combination of something I didn't know I needed; and Costume Quest captured a specific charm in games that I felt has been lacking as time goes on. Everyone knows Double Fine from the legendary and critically acclaimed (deservedly) Tim Schaefer. After watching through PsychOdyssey, it honestly gives me hope in an industry that's so full of crunch culture and bad working conditions. Double Fine seemingly integrates group exercise sessions throughout their daily routine, team meetings also give time for team members to recognize someone else by passing around a plush of Double Fine's two-headed mascot. Coming from the Midwest, where hard working conditions, extra hours, and a nonstop work ethic are the norm everywhere you go, the stories of burnout and crunch culture didn't really affect me that much from my point of view. However, seeing the way Double Fine treats its employees and the amount of group effort and communication honestly at points made me tear up. I only wish I were fortunate enough to have a job that cared half as much; it makes me want to get into the industry in some way that much more.
To your average gamer, seeing a game get delayed is a bummer, and you'll have your toxic vocal minority on Twitter in an uproar, but what's really behind a delay? In Psychonauts 2's case, it ranged from levels being developed, scraped, reworked, and scrapped again, with literal weeks and months in between each step. Put that in perspective with any big fall AAA release and the thousands of people working on a project. In PsychOdyssey, you get to see small teams of a handful of people put in charge of singular levels. One of the first levels you play through is Hollis' Brain, which is also one of your first introductions to the Psychonauts universe. It was worked on and reworked with different psy powers and level themes. Something your average player will run through in a handful of hours took hundreds of hours and many people's time to develop into the best possible version it could be. You can only imagine having that sort of production happen in your larger, multimillion-dollar endeavors.
Video games at their core are meant to be fun and enjoyed; we know that as players, and we know if we find something fun or not to begin with. But how do you create fun? How do you make the core process and gameplay structure of your project fun? Does the way the character you're controlling jump or walk feel smooth and in a way that's not off-putting to the player? How do you introduce new abilities and gameplay mechanics in an easy-to-learn manner while fitting them into levels where you'll be taught to use them, or better yet, do you need to scrap an entire level to fit a certain gameplay hook? Things like this are often overlooked and don't even cross your mind as the player in the countless hours you put into games you enjoy, but the smallest change or things needing reworked could be the cause of that 1 or 2 week delay that happens all too often.
Covid sadly hit towards the end of Psychonaust 2's production, and 2 Player Productions had to change the way they were handling filming. Being able to freely walk through the studio and see people working firsthand turned into sitting in on meetings online or having 1 on 1 video calls between team members to get a feel for how they're doing. Seeing how hard COVID hits studios isn't new, and we're just now coming off delays because of it years later. Hearing teams work at 70% efficiency during those times is honestly impressive, especially with other horror stories from bigger studios being only able to log on and work for a handful of hours at a time. Thankfully, a large chunk of development time during work from home periods was devoted to bug fixes and not entirely reworking parts of the project.
PsychOdyssey is something special that I didn't know I needed. It massively grows my respect for individuals in the industry and makes me really want to take the time and appreciate the little things in games. Games are made for our enjoyment, but at the end of the day, they're developed by a group of insanely talented and gifted individuals who pour themselves into a project 360+ days a year. If you've made it this far, next time you're online and see someone tweet about a project they're on or something they worked on in a game, be sure to take the time to thank them. Thank you, Double Fine, and thank you, 2 Player Productions, for this beautiful documentary.