Christopher Bratt's Online Newsletter: Double Fine PsychOdyssey

Hello everyone and welcome to what we’ll now be calling Christopher Bratt’s Online Newsletter. That's it. That's the name.

Listen, I’ve been trying to think of a newsletter title that could more directly reference video games for months now and I’ll be totally honest with you: there’s nothing left. As a community, we’ve now officially created too many things to do with this hobby and the well is absolutely bone dry. I blame the YouTube crowd mostly. We're yet to see an adjective we couldn’t bolt onto the word gaming, gamer or gamers. Irate? Sleeveless? Rambunctious? Tall? We’ve done all of them. It’s over.

I’ve even heard of this one website that calls itself Eurogamer despite the fact that a significant portion of the English-speaking audience it’s looking to attract is based in non-European countries. How wild is that? Imagine working THERE.

And so I’m left with nothing but my own ridiculous name to lean on.

This reboot also lets me shake up the structure of the newsletter and wrangle it into better shape. I wasn’t having as much fun as I’d like with the old format in which I shared links to articles and videos from around the games media. It just ended up feeling a bit cold, I think. Some folks are much better at doing those sorts of roundups and so I’ll leave that work to them.

Instead, I’d like to use this space to dive into something that’s grabbed hold of my brain each month and right now, oh my god, is that Double Fine PsychOdyssey.

Following the entire development of Psychonauts 2, this 32-part(!!!) series is one of the greatest pieces of video games media I’ve ever come across. And I’ve not even played Psychonauts 2 yet, so that’s proven especially surprising. It’s outrageously good. I'm mad at how good it is, frankly. Seething.

Based on 5000 hours worth of filming across seven years, it presents an extremely candid look at the reality of making games and how joyful, collaborative and at times, utterly painful the process can be. I don't think I've ever really wrapped my head around what game development's need for iteration really means until now.

This series is directly funded by Double Fine Productions, the studio being documented, which obviously brings up a number of questions about objectivity and who gets to have the final say on what's ultimately being published here, but having seen how this series handles conflict within the studio has left me with a surprising amount of trust for how that process was likely managed. At times PsychOdyssey is difficult to watch, upsetting even. It gives us that rare chance to see not just the best OR the worst of the people involved, but both.

Before each video in the series begins, the audience is presented with a block of text explaining that you'll be watching people "work under pressure" and "emotionally grow alongside cultural norms". I expected this might mean a few brief outbursts of frustration, as the team grappled with creative challenges and pressing deadlines, but there's a level of transparency and nuance here that I've never really seen in this space before. It's not just that 2 Player Productions has been able to interview the same group of people, again and again, over years of a project's lifespan, it's that they're also able to bring us directly into the meetings and the conversations where those same people then experience some of their highest highs and their lowest lows.

We watch tensions brew between managers and employees over weeks, months and then years, giving us⁠—as the audience⁠—the opportunity to empathize with both points of view, even when those involved might not be able to get there themselves. One particularly heart wrenching moment sees a project lead, who's no longer able to bridge the gap between himself and those he's responsible for, turn to the documentary crew and ask them what he's missing. What can he do to make things right? More than a dozen hours into the series, having watched communication buckle underneath his leadership, I struggled to think of an easy answer to that question.

And so, over the last week, I've lived through seven years of Double Fine as they've raced to secure funding only to see their publisher embroiled in scandal, leaving very real concerns about whether the studio can afford to continue. I've watched founder and CEO Tim Schafer get challenged by an employee, in tears, about the "slippery slope" of crunch culture she believes the company had now started down. I've watched people get fired and then needed to wrestle with my own complicated thoughts about who was in the right and who was in the wrong. And then there's the acquisition by Microsoft and the mix of relief (no more hunting for investment!) and the anxiety (what if Double Fine stops being Double Fine!) that comes with it.

I'm sure there's an amount of oversight on what can and can't make it into the final documentary on the part of Double Fine's management, but it all feels so staggeringly vulnerable. Again, we're watching people at their best and their worst here, from newly-hired, fresh-faced designers, all the way up to Schafer himself.

Then there's the simple fact that spending so long with these people, as they make something they deeply care about, means that by the end of the series my relationship with them as a viewer has changed entirely. Having watched more than 20 hours of them collaborating, learning and growing together, it's all so incredibly, wonderfully human. I've celebrated their victories alongside them and felt their disappointment or regret, as veterans of the studio have moved away or found jobs elsewhere. I can't tell you how bizarre it feels to be sitting at my desk, with tears in my eyes, as an animator for a game I've never played needs to move away from California and no longer work with his coworkers in-person after nearly twenty years.

Double Fine PsychOdyssey is an absolute triumph and I'm so thankful to have watched it. What a treasured look inside the reality of making games this is. I'm left so totally inspired!

I'll be doing my best to get somebody from 2 Player Productions onto The Games Press next month, so if this sounds up your street, make sure you get it watched before then. You won't be disappointed. ARGH. SO GOOD.