Riccitiello: Tim Schafer is worldâ??s best

Developers who feel they don’t get enough love from their publishing overlords, prepare to be surprised: EA CEO John Riccitiello has revealed he’s a huge personal fan of Tim Schafer live on US TV.

Speaking to Fox News, Riccitiello said that Schafer was “one of the world’s greatest” and said he was a bigger acolyte of Schafer than Brutal Legend star Jack Black.

Schafer – best known for working on Psychonauts and the Monkey Island series – recently created heavy rock adventure Brutal Legend for EA, and personally recruited movie star Black for the game.

When asked if he was a fan of Black, Riccitiello said:

“If you think about celebrities, there’s a big stage – capital ‘c’ celebrity – but one of the greatest developers in the history of our industry is Tim Schafer, who built [Brutal Legend] and brought Jack Black into it.

“I sort of have a lot more fan-ship in a lot of ways for the director than with the actor – the creator is where my fan-ship lives. And Tim is one of the world’s greatest.”

Riccitiello also asserted that 2010 would be the year that investors in Bioware would enjoy success.

When asked if long-term investors in the EA-owned studio had made a wise investment, he commented: “I certainly think so. Bioware [just released] Dragon Age Origins – a spectacular piece of software.

“The second thing to get into is that they’ve got a game coming out in the second part of the year: Mass Effect 2 – which has got to be a blockbuster. And we’ve got a joint venture between Bioware and Lucas to bring out Star Wars online: The Old Republic, which I think has the potential to be one of the biggest games in the universe.”