Much ado has been made about Minecraft creator Markus ‘Notch’ Persson’s offer to fund a second Psychonauts game from Tim Schafer’s Double Fine Studios. Schafer told IndustryGamers that he was still talking with Notch about the idea before moving forward. Today, in a post on his personal blog, Persson confirmed that talks were still ongoing and the project is still currently in limbo.
“Double Fine lead Tim Schafer mentioned that they wanted to make Psychonauts 2 happen, but that nobody had been willing to fund it so far. Being a big fan of the first one, and thinking a sequel could probably be profitable, I semi-jokingly tweeted Tim about me funding a sequel,” Persson wrote.
Persson noted that he and Schafer are planning to meet at GDC about the project, but was surprised to find that the potential budget for Psychonauts 2 was “three times higher than my initial impression”. He also believes Double Fine will have its hands full with the Kickstarter project for awhile.
“I have NO idea if this is actually going to happen. The kickstarter stuff obviously changes the playing field a lot. Investing that incredibly high amount of money also requires a lot of planing and discussion, and I’ve never done anything like that before, but I do have contacts and advisors to help me out,” Persson wrote.
“All I know is that IF the numbers work out and IF they still want to do it and IF they don’t decide to self fund a sequel by doing more crowd funding (which is honestly what I would’ve done if I were them), I would be most interested in doing this type of investment.”
So, less hype, more fingers crossed. Perhaps one day you’ll get to play the Psychonauts sequel you’ve always wanted.
