type private industry video game industry founded july 2000 ; 16 years ago 2000 07 founder tim schafer headquarters san francisco california united states key people tim schafer products psychonauts br tal legend broken age grim fandango remastered owner tim schafer number of employees 65 2015 website doublefine.com double fine productions inc. commonly referred to as just double fine is an american video game developer founded in july 2000 by tim schafer after his departure from lucasarts . he started double fine with programmers david dixon and jonathan menzies in what was once a clog shop in san francisco . after several months of working on the demo for what would become psychonauts a mixture of personnel from the grim fandango development team and other new employees were slowly added to begin production . 1 though the company s first two games psychonauts and br tal legend were critically praised both underperformed publishers expectations . the future of the company was assured when schafer turned to several in house prototypes built during a two week period known as amnesia fortnight to expand as smaller titles all of which were licensed through publishers and met with commercial success . schafer has since repeated these amnesia fortnights using fan voting mechanics to help select and build smaller titles . double fine is also credited with driving interest in crowdfunding in video games having been able to raise more than us 3 million for the development of broken age at the time one of the largest projects funded by kickstarter . the company has continued to build on their independent developer status and has promoted efforts to help other smaller independent developers through its clout . the name double fine is a play on a sign on the golden gate bridge that used to display double fine zone to warn motorists that fines on that stretch of road were double normal rates . double fine s logo and mascot is called the two headed baby frequently abbreviated 2hb 2 an abbreviation also used for their moai ide debugger . 3 4 the company is based in san francisco . 5 the official double fine website is also host to seven webcomics which are created by members of double fine s art team and are collectively referred as the double fine comics . 6 contents 1 projects 1.1 amnesia fortnight 1.2 dracogen funding 1.3 crowdfunding 1.4 additional projects through publishers 1.5 double fine presents 2 games developed 3 awards 4 references 5 external links projects edit double fine s first completed project was psychonauts a multi platform platform game following raz a psychically gifted boy named after double fine s animator razmig mavlian 7 who breaks into a summer camp for psychic children to try to become part of an elite group of psychic heroes called psychonauts . critically praised it was released for microsoft windows playstation 2 and xbox . however despite its acclaim it did not sell well initially . 8 it was later re released on xbox 360 under the xbox originals banner as well as for microsoft windows via gametap and steam . double fine s second project was br tal legend a hybrid real time strategy action adventure game following a heavy metal roadie named eddie riggs whose name is derived from both eddie the head the iron maiden mascot and derek riggs the artist who created the mascot . the story follows eddie as he is transported to a fantasy world in which demons have enslaved humanity . tim schafer has credited the inspiration for the game to the lore fantasy themes and epic norse mythology of heavy metal music found in both its lyrical content and its album art. 9 br tal legend was published by electronic arts and was released in north america on october 13 2009 for the playstation 3 and xbox 360 and later for microsoft windows . amnesia fortnight edit during the development of br tal legend a publishing issue arose . activision having acquired the rights to the title through its merger with vivendi games decided to drop it and forced schafer to locate another publisher . during this period around 2007 to 2008 schafer attempted to boost the company s morale by engaging the team in an amnesia fortnight . for a two week period the employees were split into four groups told to forget their current work on br tal legend hence the amnesia and tasked to develop a game prototype for review by the other groups . 10 each of the four ideas were successfully created and praised by the whole company . the four projects produced were iron brigade a project that later became sesame street once upon a monster tiny personal ninja and operation your desk is disgusting . 11 the process was repeated later near the end of br tal legend providing an additional four prototypes . schafer credits the concept of the amnesia fortnights to film director wong kar wai . during the long three year filming of ashes of time wong had taken some of his actors and film crew to hong kong to shoot footage for fun ultimately resulting in the films chungking express and fallen angels . schafer noted these were some of the director s more famous films . 12 schafer eventually signed a publishing deal with electronic arts for br tal legend . double fine productions owner tim schafer and cookie monster during a promotional video for sesame street once upon a monster these amnesia fortnight periods proved fortuitous as schafer considers these to have kept the company viable . 12 upon completion of br tal legend double fine started work on its sequel but was told to stop development shortly after as electronic arts decided against publishing it . with no other publishing deals lined up at the time schafer turned back to the eight game ideas developed from amnesia fortnight believing they could be developed further into short complete games . schafer also looked at the success of smaller focused games like geometry wars on the various download services realizing the potential market for similar titles . 12 schafer and his team selected the best four and began shopping the games to various publishers and successfully worked publishing details with these . 13 two of these games costume quest and stacking were picked up by thq and released digitally on the xbox live and playstation network storefronts ; both games were considered successful and thq expressed interest in helping double fine produce similar titles in the future . 14 iron brigade originally titled trenched but changed due to trademark issues was developed as an xbox live arcade game in association with microsoft game studios and similarly received positive praise from journalists . 15 a fourth game sesame street once upon a monster was published by warner bros. interactive entertainment in association with the sesame workshop for the xbox 360 using the kinect controller ; though initially not a licensed title schafer and his team found it to be an ideal fit for their first licensed property game . 16 the four unused ideas may be used for a game in the future according to schafer but believes some of them may be unsellable to a publisher . 10 the development groups for these games were headed by the former leads from br tal legend lead animator tasha harris for costume quest lead art director lee petty for stacking lead designer brad muir for iron brigade and lead programmer nathan martz for once upon a monster . this was to not only put these teams under people who had been in the industry for a long time but as a means to help promote these leads . 17 the remaining staff were split among the four teams with some later swapping to make sure each team has appropriate resources when needed such as artists and programmers . 10 double fine did not have to lay off any of the staff during this time 10 and instead were able to hire ron gilbert schafer s former collaborator at lucasarts to work on the new titles as well as a future title that gilbert has envisioned . 18 schafer stated that though they could likely make another large game akin to psychonauts or br tal legend they would likely keep the smaller teams to continue to work on these smaller titles due to the gained experience shared by the company . 10 tim schafer and 2 player productions asif siddiky and paul owens at pax prime 2012 in november 2012 double fine along with the humble bundle group announced amnesia fortnight 2012 a charity drive based on the previous amnesia fortnight . during this those that paid a minimum of 1 had the opportunity to vote on 23 concept ideas . after the completion of the voting period double fine developed the top five voted ideas into game prototypes that were available for those that purchased the bundle . the prototypes were in order of receiving the most votes hack n slash a legend of zelda inspired action adventure where players need to hack to solve puzzles led by senior programmer brandon dillon spacebase df 9 a sim game set in space led by designer programmer jp lebreton the white birch an ambient platform game inspired by ico and journey led by art director andy wood autonomous a retro futuristic sandbox robot game led by art director lee petty and black lake a fairytale exploration game led by senior artist levi ryken . in addition the purchaser received the initial prototypes of costume quest happy song what would become once upon a monster and brazen a monster hunter style four player online co op homage to ray harryhausen which was led by brad muir who was also project lead of iron brigade . the development of the prototypes was documented by 2 player productions . 19 the indie fund announced at the electronic entertainment expo 2013 that they have provided funding for two titles from double fine . 20 the first game created with indie fund backing was revealed on october 15 2013 to be spacebase df 9 a fleshed out commercial version of one of the amnesia fortnight 2012 prototypes . the game was released as an alpha version on steam early access and will be developed with user feedback received during the early access release period . 21 the other game partially funded with indie fund backing was revealed on december 10 2013 to be hack n slash another full commercial version of an amnesia fortnight 2012 prototype . hack n slash was released through steam early access in the first half of 2014 . 22 an additional prototype from the 2012 amnesia fortnight autonomous was released as an expanded full free release for the leap motion controller on november 18 2013 . 23 in february 2014 double fine and the humble bundle group began another charity drive titled amnesia fortnight 2014 . during this drive those that paid a minimum of 1 had the opportunity to vote on 29 concept ideas . in addition those that paid more than the average will get to vote on a concept idea for a prototype led by pendleton ward the creator of adventure time . 24 after the completion of the voting period double fine developed the top voted ideas into game prototypes that were available for those that purchased the bundle . as with amnesia fortnight 2012 2 player productions filmed the production of the prototype which was available to people who purchased the bundle as well as on a blu ray along with the prototypes on a dvd for those who paid a minimum of 35 . 24 the four pitches that were made into prototypes for amnesia fortnight 2014 were dear leader an emergent narrative game led by anna kipnis little pink best buds a game about little