The Game Worker, Labor Organizer, Reality TV Review of “PsychOdyssey”
I was skeptical when a colleague recommended “PsychOdyssey,” Double Fine’s 32 part documentary about the 6-year making of Psychonauts 2. I’d never played a Double Fine game, and assumed the doc was a self-indulgent advertisement. Isn’t 23 hours a bit much?
I was wrong. As a game programmer, a union organizer, and an unashamed reality TV fan, this series spoke to every part of me.
“Just Like Real Life”
PsychOdyssey is reality TV, but I mean that with no derision. Like my favorite shows, the series chronicles the friendships, struggles, conflicts, and achievements of ordinary people. Cinematography is neatly divided between formal ceremonies, candid conversations, “confessional” style interviews, and b-roll, all set to a touchingly sentimental soundtrack by Orange Drink. And while the show lacks the nearly-scripted drama of a Love is Blind, you’ll still find yourself on the same emotional roller coaster.
When you see a worker struggling, you cheer them on. When conflict arises you feel tempted to pick heroes and villains. New hires evoke the same intrigue as the mid-season reveal of new cast members in Single’s Inferno, and resignations feel like a tragic contestant elimination. By the end of the show, you’re overcome with how much the subjects have grown as people.
Editing divides the subjects between protagonists and side characters. Charismatic CEO Tim Schafer gets plenty of screentime, as does a newly hired project lead. On the rank-and-file end, a struggling junior designer serves as our underdog, while a mix of veteran employees (“old-timers”) and more recent hires show us the studio’s past and future.
Close to Home
As a game developer, PsychOdyssey hits hard. When an exhausted dev laments that “All of Tim’s feedback is to make the game more elaborate,” I feel the familiar dread of watching an excited lead feature-creeping my workload. Later on the game director hires a young level designer, explaining that while he lacks experience, “He’s cheap, he’s junior… I’ll fire him if he’s bad.” This worker is then given ownership of the game’s first major level, and struggles greatly — unlocking bleak memories of when I too was set up to fail by a supervisor.
Double Fine is clearly a special place to many workers, and the most difficult episodes are the ones where a team member walks away. Their colleagues hold back tears in interviews as they reminisce on what this person’s friendship meant to them. We work in a high-turnover industry, and saying goodbye to a friend is always horrible — I cry when it happens to me, and I cried during the show.
Starbreeze, the game’s publisher, goes broke halfway through development. Cancellations are a rite of passage in the games industry — I myself worked for a company funded by Starbreeze, and they folded just a few days after we crunched to deliver a final build. Just like that, all I had to show for 18 months of work were some keen clearance deals on Starbreeze office goods. A Microsoft acquisition gave the Psychonauts 2 team a happier ending, but it was a chillingly close call.
There are low lows to be found in PsychOdyssey, but also plenty of levity. Endless banter in the office between people who treasure each other’s company. That beautiful “I can’t believe that was it” moment when a developer discovers the cause of a bug. The endorphin high when a troubled level finally gets a playtest that wows viewers. The series taps into some of my least pleasant memories in the industry, but it also reminds me why I do what I do.
Walking the Line
The Double Fine we see is at a labor crossroads. The studio starts in 2015 as overwhelmingly cis, white, and male, but the makeup diversifies somewhat over six years of hiring. On the other hand, while various leads assert that they are against “crunch mode,” Psychonauts 2 sees a chaotic and stressful production. Schafer’s good intentions are clear, but has a hard time fitting his vision into a humane schedule. He wore an IATSE union hat at GDC 2018, but he’s definitively a boss with final say over all decisions at his company. He embodies the contradiction of a lovable person crossed with an oppressive power structure.
Episode 27, “Villains of crunch mode,” opens with a tearful engineer expressing her exhaustion in a group meeting. An upset Schafer retorts, “that’s bullshit” to a shocked room. Later we learn that this engineer had written a public slack post expressing worry over potential crunch. The ensuing meeting is tense and unproductive — the developer gets dogpiled by management, and she quits shortly thereafter.
Crunch is a perennial topic in PsychOdyssey, but worker agency is nearly absent. In meetings and interviews we hear all about the difficult scheduling decisions leads have to make. Rank-and-filers get asked about morale, but we rarely hear their own ideas. I’ve never met a dev who didn’t have opinions on their workplace, but the only agency we see granted to dissenting Double Fine workers is the right to quit. At times the narrative takes on an almost paternal tone — the story of heroic leaders trying to protect their employees.
This isn’t the only way. Workers are creative, and more than capable of participating in the production problem-solving process. This is why my coworkers and I at Tender Claws took matters into our own hands by unionizing. It’s a hard road, but now we no longer have to hope for benevolence from above — we have a seat at the table.
Limited Perspective
2 Player Productions makes no airs of being a neutral third party — Double Fine pays their checks, and midway through a filmmaker even comes on as a designer on Psychonauts 2 (his nametag overlay, previously “Cameraman, Two Player Productions” suddenly becomes “Design Intern.”)
With this in mind, it’s impressive how much sausage-making we do get to see. The editors could easily have trimmed out every off-color remark, or cut the emotional confrontations between workers and leads. We see a controversial game director get removed, and plenty of crying throughout the series. There is a clear desire by the filmmakers to be frank — as evidenced by the content warning at the start of the show.
And yet, we still have to accept that the window we get into Double Fine is the one that interested parties saw fit to show us. PsychOdyssey is remarkably honest, but it would be folly to think that I knew the labor situation at Double Fine based on media that management signed off on. 22 hours and 40 minutes is a long time, but six years is longer, and for every story told on screen I’m sure there are a hundred I’ll never know.
Art Imitates Life
We can’t treat PsychOdyssey as a no-holds-barred exposé into the operations of Double Fine, and that’s okay. In some cases it might be good. For one thing, if I had a serious HR complaint at my job, I wouldn’t want it shown in a documentary.
The viewer’s task is the same as with any reality TV series: fall in love with the daily lives and struggles of the cast, while also understanding that what’s on the screen might not be the whole story.
What we do get to see is sensitive, intimate, and deeply human. If you’re a game developer, I think you will find great catharsis in the ups and downs of PsychOdyssey. If you’re a labor organizer, you’ll find some thought-provoking contradictions to chew on.
And if you’re just looking for a wild ride? Buckle up.
