Short answers, pulled from the story.
Tim Schafer is an American video game designer born on the 26th of July, 1967, in Sonoma, California. He is best known for designing Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Psychonauts, Brütal Legend, and Broken Age, and for co-designing Day of the Tentacle at LucasArts before founding Double Fine Productions in July 2000.
Schafer received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Game Developers Choice Awards in March 2018 and a BAFTA Fellowship in April 2018. He also won a BAFTA Best Screenplay award for Psychonauts in October 2006, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame at the 26th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards in February 2023.
Schafer was hired by LucasArts in 1989 after applying in response to a job listing seeking programmers who could also write game dialog. Despite a rough phone interview with David Fox, in which he confused the name Ballblazer with its pirated variant, he submitted his resume alongside a comic strip of himself getting the job and was offered a position.
The campaign, launched in February 2012 under the working title "Double Fine Adventure," raised $3,336,371 through Kickstarter plus an additional $110,000 from premium pledges. It was the first Kickstarter project to reach two million dollars and the second most successful on the site when the campaign closed on the 13th of March.
After Brütal Legend underperformed commercially and Electronic Arts cancelled sequel development, Schafer turned to prototypes created during Double Fine's Amnesia Fortnight game jams to keep the studio financially stable. Four of those prototypes, Costume Quest, Stacking, Iron Brigade, and Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster, were expanded into full releases by project leaders other than Schafer.
Microsoft announced the acquisition of Double Fine as part of Xbox Game Studios in June 2019. The deal preserved the studio's independence and provided financial security that allowed Schafer and his team to complete Psychonauts 2, which shipped on the 25th of August, 2021.