Warren Spector speaks

[Ladonna]

http://forums.obsidianent.com/index.php ... ntry768045

It seems he is speaking out again on something. Have to get to work so I will read it in depth later. Didn't know he was actually still in the biz!

 

[Drakron]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/94/4

 

[Section8]

He's basically banging on about story in games, and making a lot of sense, even if it is familiar territory. I just hope some mainstream developers take notice of it because it's "OMG Warran Spectar!!11!"

One particular gem I liked was the notion that developers need to embrace the idea of sharing authorship with the player. That's just a great concise way of summing up the interactive narrative.

 

[Krafter]

He talks a good talk, but Invisible War and Deadly Shadows, Warren. I still want blood!

 

[denizsi]

All of that means AI - cornerstone of creating great characters and, therefore critical to great story games - becomes even more challenging. And here I'm just talking about the fundamentals of navigation and base level interaction. We've made great strides in AI over the last few years, but you'd hardly know it - the advances have come in the service of "just keeping up" with graphical and simulation enhancement.

We did? I thought anything we may have seen in games so far has already been doable (and done) 10 years ago.

Back in the day (that is 20, 10, maybe even five years ago), NPC's just had to navigate through a 2-D world or a simple 3-D one. Now, even in a relatively simple game, they have to deal with highly complex 3-D spaces

Irrelevant. It's not like any game has NPC AI which has complex geometry recognition algorithms and thus can find its way around objects in an open game world without relying on preprocessed information. It's still premade paths and path-grids. Not to underestimate the complexity of 3D processes but what we have today IS 2d navigation.

But we want to look beyond current gamers to the vastly larger potential audience of (current) non-gamers - an audience we have no chance of attracting if all we have to offer are prettier, louder versions of what we've done before.

Obviously, current state of the industry proves him wrong. Gamer or not, most people tend to be dumbfucks anyway, so non-gamers too tend to be attracted easier, with graphics. Since most people who start gaming anew are so clueless, they can easily be excited by features they think are new, which have been around for 10 years and done a lot better many times.

To be clear, I think industry's doing a pretty decent job. Any medium that can boast of having produced games like Thief: Deadly Shadows, Indigo Prophecy, Psychonauts and so on has a lot going for it. We are making progress.

No shame throwing in his own game, and a game that is inferior to its predecessors.

It's also ironic and again shameless in my opinion that he writes a 5 pages long article, ties it to publisher uninterest in originality and emphasizes importance of indie and academic scenes and yetdoesn't care to mention one indie developer, one indie game in development which has a considerable attraction among gamers. He appears to be disconnected from the gaming scene and stating the obvious to pass his name on around.

I just hope some mainstream developers take notice of it because it's "OMG Warran Spectar!!11!"

That's about the only value the article may have.

 

[Deacdo]

I wish he'd shut up and show us his game so we can decide whether or not to completely ignore him.

 

[MorningStar]

Warren Spector became irrelevant. He did some great things in the past but he became a xbox sold-out. I will listen to him if he can outdo the last two brown cakes he did with a new, great game. Unfortunately, years passed and it doesn't look he's up to the task.

 

[Deacdo]

The guy is making a game with John Woo called Ninja Gold or something equally stupid. If that isn't a bad sign, not sure what is

 

[RK47]

small fonts...ewww.

 

[rei1974]

Warren was good, recently did some mistakes, but I don't think deadly shadow was so bad. I enjoyed it actually.

 

[KazikluBey]

Oh, and check out this bitch....
http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/6162/annas21ng9.jpg

I'm a little puzzled by why you linked that, but what puzzles me more is that no one has even commented on it, so here goes:

Huh? What's with her?

 

[SanguinePenguin]

Oh, and check out this bitch....
http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/6162/annas21ng9.jpg

I'm a little puzzled by why you linked that, but what puzzles me more is that no one has even commented on it, so here goes:

Huh? What's with her?

It was part of baby mamma drama concerning nameless prick's hairy nipple

http://rpgcodex.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=18483

 

[KazikluBey]

Oh right, that topic name was so uninspiring I never read it until now. TNP's badassness and glock got tiresome the first time I read about them.

 

[Fez]

What's that got to do with TNP's hairy nipple?

 

[OccupatedVoid]

It's a picture of a Ladonna!!!

 

[franc kaos]

But we want to look beyond current gamers to the vastly larger potential audience of (current) non-gamers - an audience we have no chance of attracting if all we have to offer are prettier, louder versions of what we've done before.

Obviously, current state of the industry proves him wrong. Gamer or not, most people tend to be dumbfucks anyway, so non-gamers too tend to be attracted easier, with graphics.

You've got a vocal minority of goldfish-attention-span excitable kids and prostitue-themselves-for-a-freebie journalists who pretty much flood the internet and love shooters (+offshoots like Action RPGs and 3D RTS's with higher fidelity graphics & sound), then you've got the more cerebral (and by nature less excitable) players who buy SimCity, Barbie does horse, Sims2, The Movies etc and very rarely post on the internet. I assume he means them.

As for Warren Specter not having created a great game since whenever, well, Bill Gates hasn't ripped off a decent operating system since DOS, and I don't see people hating on him :shock:. All those heroes of yesteryear who created Fallout, PS:Torment, Masquerade, Midwinter, Ultima, Populous, etc (most of whom are still in the industry), also haven't created anything worth a damn.

Warren Specter deserves a little respect for at least trying to keep the dream alive (story, by it's very nature offers choice & consequence) as opposed to simply towing the publisher line.

My tuppence worth.

 

[KazikluBey]

What's that got to do with TNP's hairy nipple?

I didn't realize that a thread named "TheNamelessPrick is a badass" would contain hairy nipples. If I had I surely would have read it. Multiple times.

 

[The_Pope]

But we want to look beyond current gamers to the vastly larger potential audience of (current) non-gamers - an audience we have no chance of attracting if all we have to offer are prettier, louder versions of what we've done before.

Obviously, current state of the industry proves him wrong. Gamer or not, most people tend to be dumbfucks anyway, so non-gamers too tend to be attracted easier, with graphics.

You've got a vocal minority of goldfish-attention-span excitable kids and prostitue-themselves-for-a-freebie journalists who pretty much flood the internet and love shooters (+offshoots like Action RPGs and 3D RTS's with higher fidelity graphics & sound), then you've got the more cerebral (and by nature less excitable) players who buy SimCity, Barbie does horse, Sims2, The Movies etc and very rarely post on the internet. I assume he means them.

As for Warren Specter not having created a great game since whenever, well, Bill Gates hasn't ripped off a decent operating system since DOS, and I don't see people hating on him :shock:. All those heroes of yesteryear who created Fallout, PS:Torment, Masquerade, Midwinter, Ultima, Populous, etc (most of whom are still in the industry), also haven't created anything worth a damn.

Warren Specter deserves a little respect for at least trying to keep the dream alive (story, by it's very nature offers choice & consequence) as opposed to simply towing the publisher line.

My tuppence worth.

I think this is why EA gets so much hate from internet retards. In terms of business practice they haven't done anything Bethesda, for example, haven't. They're angels compared with Microsoft or Sony. However, they have shown that you can make absurd amounts of money targeting other audiences (eg: Football fans with madden, women with The Sims, children with Harry Potter etc.) and it frightens them.

EA games don't do much for me, but it is hilarious seeing the people who excuse MS for anything go on to bitch about EA for making money.