Double Fine's Schafer: Games must "avoid self-censorship"

Double Fine boss Tim Schafer has said that games should "avoid self-sensorship," insisting that funnier games would come as a result if so.

"The thing that's more important than anything else to my mind - whether it's comedy or horror or anything else - is just the element of surprise," Schafer told CVG.

"Anything entertaining to me has to have that, really. Like in horror, you're underwater and then the floating head ... it's the same feeling as when you're expecting one thing and then something else happens in a joke."

Schafer continued: "I think that's a very similar urge in comedy. It's the essence of really fun entertainment to me. It's gets into our puzzles, too - like, What does the player think is going to happen here? There's a door and there's a lock. That's too obvious. What else can we do?'

"The other thing is to avoid self-censorship. There are a lot of funny people in the games industry, and [they seem to] think of the funny thing, and then say: 'No, I can't do that. Let's cut that out because someone might be bothered by that.' I think if people censored themselves less there'd be a lot more funny stuff out there."

Double Fine's latest title, Stacking, releases this week on PSN and Xbox Live.