Recommending Double Fine PsychOdyssey

Spanning seven years of work and 22 hours of watch time, Double Fine PsychOdyssey is a shockingly transparent documentary series about the creation of Psychonauts 2. It was made by a small team of filmmakers embedded in (and possibly employed by?) Double Fine Productions for the better part of a decade, and is very likely the most comprehensive depiction that exists of modern professional game development. If you have a passing interest in video games, project management, or collaborative creative processes, you absolutely must watch it in its entirety.

It’s easy to imagine a parallel version of PsychOdyssey that does the Chef’s Table thing, making heroes of the artists it portrays and casting the creative process as a mystical, miraculous thing. There’s certainly plenty of personality and drama in this story to support that style of documentary. But the version we got is far more interesting, because it portrays its subjects not as anything special, but as extremely flawed, well-meaning humans who just keep showing up to work every day (and many nights) and trying their best to make a video game.

I’m honestly a little surprised it exists—I can’t understand how Double Fine possibly stands to benefit from its existence—though of course I’m grateful it does. The events it covers are inspiring, though primarily through the steadfast optimism of brilliant people who do the dirty work to close the gaps in their imperfect organization. This is one of the most valuable lessons that PsychOdyssey imparts: all work is made more complex, and arguably harder, by being corporate, and no company can ever be more than the sum of the work of the individuals that make it up. A great company, a great studio, or a great team, is nothing more than great people.

The filmmakers, 2 Player Productions, treat Double Fine’s employees with care but not without honesty. Over the course of the series, we see entry-level designers in way over their heads without anything approximating sufficient mentorship. We see unflappable engineers working through dinner to bash on an engine they’re unfamiliar with. We see team leads and project managers trying to make sense of immense backlogs and shifting due dates and varying budgets. Again and again, we see people letting each other down and caring for each other and somehow still doing the work in spite of the many real-world complexities that make otherwise simple things nearly impossible. And it’s all conveyed at a restrained pace that allows these little stories to present themselves in a natural, emergent way, as they would in any workplace, without any undue attention or judgment that might distract from the forward progress of it all.

There’s plenty more about this documentary that will stick in my head for ages. It’s always sobering, for example, to be reminded that creative skills, and even leadership skills, do not necessarily translate at all to management skills. And the unclear relationship between 2 Player Productions and Double Fine does add a curious layer of uncertainty to the seeming transparency of the whole endeavor. I could also easily spend a few hundred words on how brilliant an idea Amnesia Fortnight is, the way it pushes and empowers people and creates an atmosphere of possibility; but also how exhausting and crunch-inducing it seems to be, especially for a studio that prides itself on having a healthy work environment.

But all of that is probably best discussed in conversation with someone else who’s seen it. So just go watch it (and if you’re reading this, you probably have my phone number, so let me know when you do)! Give yourself a nice lunchtime treat for the next few weeks and enjoy one episode a day. It’s well worth your attention.