Create an original games Are you nuts? Yes.

The industry owes a lot to Tim Schafer, who continually surprised gamers in the golden age of LucasArts adventures by cranking out memorable original concepts such as the ever-funky. These days he's rolling with a new crew and is shortly to publish, a bizarre action/adventure set within the brains of its characters. (Check out our Psychonauts Preview ). At this year's DICE summit he addressed the game development community about the subject of taking creative risks with products. His advice for creating a new original concept and non-traditional intellectual property?"Don't do it!" he yelled. "Are you crazy?"Well, you can't really blame him. His current baby,, has had a rough ride. Microsoft dumped the project as it neared completion and he had shop it around to several publishers before Majesco finally picked it up. During this time he got to see just how afraid the publishing industry was of something new and different. He noted that, when publishers looked at a game, "Creative" almost became a stigma. "Wow, that's really ... creative," people would say. He joked that when his team heard those fateful words they started packing up their bags.What disturbed him the most was thisfrom an executive at a large publisher: "This is really great. This is creative. It's too bad people aren't going for creative stuff right now."But despite the tongue-in-cheek warning that kicked off his talk, obviously Schafer was a huge supporter of new and original game worlds and concepts. In fact, he argued that the industry needed them in order to keep talent. To prove his point he used his own time working at LucasArts as an example.(Schafer kept the audience chuckling by not mentioning Lucsarts by name. He used code words throughout the presentation. The company was run by a guy he called "Joe Lupis," who had this great movie property called... "Space Pals." He also had a special effects house called "Mechanical Fire and Voodoo.")