dot-com bubble, they were able to secure better office space, though this further delayed production. Schafer was also handling many of the duties for both the studio and the development of the game. Though some of the routine business tasks were offloaded to other studio heads, Schafer brought Esmurdoc onto the project in 2004 to help produce the game while he could focus on the creative side. The intent to allow all developers to have artistic freedom with the game created some internal strife in the team, particularly in the level design; they had initially scoped that level designers would create the basic parts of a level - main paths, scripted events, and the level's general design, while the artists would build out the world from that. As development progressed, they determined that the artists should be the ones constructing the level geometry, which the level designers resented. Subsequently, levels that were generated were not to the expected standards due to conflicts in the toolsets they used and Schafer's inability to oversee the process while handling the other duties of the studio. In 2003, the decision was made to dismiss all but one of the level design team, and unify the level design and art into a World Building team overseen by Erik Robson, the remaining level designer and who would go on to become the game's lead designer; the change, which Esmurdoc stated was for the better, disrupted the other departments at Double Fine. Psychonauts was to be published by Microsoft for release exclusively on their Xbox console; Schafer attributes this to Microsoft's Ed Fries, who at the time of Psychonautss initial development in 2001, was looking to develop a portfolio of games for the new console system. Schafer believes that Fries was a proponent of "pushing games as art", which helped to solidify Double Fine's concept of Psychonauts as an appropriate title for the console after the team's collected experience of developing for personal computers. However, according to Esmurdoc, Microsoft had also created some milestones that were unclear or difficult to meet, which delayed the development process. She also believes that their own lack of a clear vision of the ultimate product made it difficult to solidify a development and release schedule for the game as well as created confusion with the publisher. Schafer stated that Microsoft also found some of their gameplay decisions to be confusing based