Warren Spector's Soapbox Thread

[Zep Zepo]

Warren Spector interview at GDC: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/..._games_need_to_be_asking_bigger_questions.php

Well, ... [words]

tldr;

Warren: I've been playing a lot of pop-a-mole, and I quite like it...so expect to see a lot of it in SS3, faggots.

Zep--

 

[LESS T_T]

Unseen64 video on Junction Point's canceled big fantasy open world RPG Sleeping Giants:

Warren Spector entered the video game business in 1989 when he joined ORIGIN, co-producing Ultima VI and Wing Commander, then producing System Shock and many other classic RPGs. After working a year at Looking Glass Studio on Thief: The Dark Project, in 1997 Spector received a call from John Romero: it was the start of the new Ion Storm Austin team and the conception of another classic title, Deus Ex. In March 2005 Warren Spector officially announced his new company: Junction Point Studios, a team named after a cancelled online RPG he was working on during his last months at Looking Glass. Spector founded Junction Point Studios with the help of another former employee of Looking Glass and Ion Storm: Art Min, who worked on System Shock and later joined Valve Software where he managed the acquisition of the Counter-Strike IP. During the early days of Junction Point, Spector and Min conceived a few original games to pitch to different publishers. One of these pitches was titled “Sleeping Giants”, an ambitious open world RPG in the vein of The Elder Scrolls: SKYRIM, set in a fantasy universe originally proposed for DC Comics by Spector and his wife.

 

[J1M]

Husband and wife peoject is guarantee of shit.

 

[Dorateen]

Husband abd wife peoject is guarantee of shit.

Didn't Jon Van Caneghem's wife help him on Might & Magic II?

 

[pippin]

I think the problem here is Spector tbh. So many stories about failed projects.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Husband abd wife peoject is guarantee of shit.

Didn't Jon Van Caneghem's wife help him on Might & Magic II?

She helped him on a couple of Might & Magic games and convinced him to create Heroes of Might & Magic series.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

In March 2005 Warren Spector officially announced his new company: Junction Point Studios ... During the early days of Junction Point, Spector and Min conceived a few original games to pitch to different publishers. One of these pitches was titled “Sleeping Giants”, an ambitious open world RPG in the vein of The Elder Scrolls: SKYRIM, set in a fantasy universe originally proposed for DC Comics by Spector and his wife.

"March 2005"
"During the early days of Junction Point"
"an ambitious open world RPG in the vein of The Elder Scrolls: SKYRIM"
"2005" "Skyrim"

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

In March 2005 Warren Spector officially announced his new company: Junction Point Studios ... During the early days of Junction Point, Spector and Min conceived a few original games to pitch to different publishers. One of these pitches was titled “Sleeping Giants”, an ambitious open world RPG in the vein of The Elder Scrolls: SKYRIM, set in a fantasy universe originally proposed for DC Comics by Spector and his wife.

"March 2005"
"During the early days of Junction Point"
"an ambitious open world RPG in the vein of The Elder Scrolls: SKYRIM"
"2005" "Skyrim"

Deus Ex predicted 9/11.
Sleeping Giants predicted Skyrim.
Everything works as planned.

 

[LESS T_T]

Another interview: http://www.glixel.com/news/how-warren-spector-created-a-genre-and-set-games-free-w485404

Some highlights:

How Warren Spector Created a Genre, and Set Games Free

The Godfather of the immersive sim genre

Oh, I see Spector himself grumbles about these phrases on Twitter.

Spector himself uses that term [immersive sim], though he's not very happy with it. "I've been trying to find a better way to describe the game style, because ‘immersive sim' sounds kind of highfalutin and pretentious," he says.

He worked on classic immersive sims alongside industry luminaries like Neurath, Ken Levine (Bioshock), Harvey Smith (Dishonored), Doug Church (Tomb Raider: Legend) and Ricardo Bare (Prey.) "If you can't make a great game with people of that caliber on your team, you're hopeless," he says. "I'm not a programmer, I'm not an artist, I'm not the best designer. I'm good at finding people smarter than me and getting out of the way."

"Doug Church (Tomb Raider: Legend)"

Spector has been playing a lot of Prey lately, and says that he just emailed his former colleague Ricardo Bare, the lead designer on that game, to compliment him on it. "I'm so thrilled that Prey came out, and I'm so thrilled to see more immersive sims these days," he says.

I spoke to him in 2015, when the video game industry was buzzing about crowdfunded projects from his former colleagues at Origin – Chris Roberts' Star Citizen promised to be the apotheosis of the Wing Commander franchise, and Richard Garriott's Shroud of the Avatar set out to be the ultimate Ultima-style experience. I asked Spector if he had any interest in going that route, and Kickstarting a spiritual successor to one of the classic 1990s franchises he helped create.

Absolutely not, he insisted. "It's bad enough being beholden to a single publisher," he told me. "I can't imagine being beholden to 50,000 backers."

Spector stands by that today. "Crowdfunding still seems like a nightmare to me," he says.

The development of System Shock 3 is currently taking place in Spector's home. Or rather, in one of his homes. He has three houses on the same block in North Austin – one house that he lives in, one that he keeps his film and animation memorabilia in, and one that's essentially a library that houses his tens of thousands of books. That library house is System Shock 3's makeshift office for the time being. "Right now, there are just four of us working on the game, and ultimately it'll probably be about 20, including contractors," he says "That's roughly the same size as on the original game. System Shock's team was in the mid-twenties, if I remember correctly. Deus Ex was 34 people including testers."

 

[Decado]

Regarding "serious games," Spector makes some pretty profound errors, though mostly he is just falling into the footsteps of those who have come before him. Also yes, I know this is from 2013, don't give a flying fuck.

He actually gets pretty close to the issue in his second bullet point: "Two, games are incapable of expressing ideas that lack a strong action component." They do not necessarily need an action component, but they do need a component of challenge. Games, fundamentally, are about overcoming an obstacle -- the system, the rules, another player, etc. The biggest problems with so-called "serious games" is not the lack of action, it is the lack of challenge. Name an unchallenging game that is fun to play, or even watch.

Now, challenge most frequently takes the form of violent action, for several reasons: action is a paradigm we all understand, it is easy to build systems around it, and it is fun. The last one may be the most important, and it is something that games like "Gone Home" or "Depression Quest" don't mange to capture. Challenge with fun is a game. Challenge without fun is work. So the question Spector is asking, really, is "Why aren't games more like work?" and the answer to that should be obvious: because work usually sucks.

But it is not all about challenge; we can view challenge as a necessary but not sufficient criterion for any game to have. It is possible to have challenge, and still not have a game, but that's a horse of a different color. The bottom line is, the games that are the most fun are the games that manage to find a sweet-spot between challenge, artistry, story, mechanics, and design. It is kind of surprising that he doesn't realize this.

The more interesting question to me is why so many people are continually banging on this "serious games" drum. It is disturbing on several levels. First, it seems to be coming from some deep wellspring of inadequacy. Game developers are forever comparing themselves to authors or directors or musicians, but why? Did the guy who made Monopoly spend his waking hours worried about whether or not he was "having an impact" or "changing the world"? What about Gary Gygax? Was he agonizing about DnD's contributions to the human endeavor? Was he talking endlessly about the need to make serious campaigns that taught people a lesson?

Second, Spector et al. make the fundamental mistake of confusing the game with the message (whatever that is). Games can be a vehicle for delivering whatever you want, provided you do it the right way. The moment you start hitting people over the head with your politics or your philosophy is the moment you have an unfun experience. This is even more confusing when you consider that this guy made Deus Ex, a pretty fun game with some not-inconsequential philosophy bubbling around its bedrock. It doesn't need to get any more overt -- any more "serious" -- than that. He mentions a game about old people getting old, so my question is, what's the fun in that game? And if his answer is "It doesn't have to be fun!" then my response is "Then what the fuck are you doing?" Again, name a good game that isn't fun. Does it even make sense to ask what one of these would look like? Even if you could define it, who the fuck would play it?

Nobody is interested in making or playing serious games. If they want a serious immersive experience, that's fine -- but they're no longer talking about a game. Like challenge, interactivity is a necessary but not sufficient criterion for a game to be a game; if it was both necessary and sufficient, Choose Your Own Adventure books would be games, and that's obviously fucking absurd. So, it is perfectly possible to have an interactive, serious experience that is not a game in any meaningful sense of the word, and that's fine. And Spector wants to know why nobody is making them, the answer is pretty simple: so far, their track record reveals a list of titles that are boring, hamfisted, poorly written, and preachy. And the personalities behind them are usually insipid and irritating. You don't have to scratch your head really hard to figure out why those don't sell.

 

[Infinitron]

Immersive sim roundtable discussion with Warren and Harvey Smith:

 

[LESS T_T]

This is a story of Warren being a jerk to designer of Portal (via ValveTime): https://plus.google.com/113350870238497543306/posts/MMVXbuHiRmQ

Jeep Barnett / 06. 24. 2015

Wow, it's been 10 years since the first time I met Warren. Maybe it's finally time to tell this story.

I had been at Valve for several months and was excited to be at GDC, now on the employed side. No more sheepish handshakes and begging people to consider my resume.

So I go to the IGDA party. I'm totally psyched to be 'in the industry' and arrive at the start time. A little too early I guess because nobody is there except the bartender and 2 people chatting in a large outdoor courtyard. I make my way across the courtyard to say 'Hi' to the strangers, and as I approach I recognized 1 person as Warren Spector.

I think to myself, "Holy shit! I'm introducing myself to Warren Spector! I'm for reals in the game industry now!" He asks where I work and I say that I'm working at Valve, all proud of myself.

"Ha ha. No you don't."

"Umm... Yeah, I do." I point at the GDC badge dangling around my neck.

"Do you have a Valve business card or something?"

"No, I just started. I have my own business card if..."

"Okay, tell me what project you're working on at Valve."

"Well, it hasn't been announced yet. It's sort of a puzzle game..."

"Look, I've visited Valve a bunch lately and I've never seen you there." He goes back to chatting with his friend.

... "Okay... Bye... ???" I slink off and get a drink.

I didn't see him again till a year later when he was presenting a Junction Point Half-Life spin off and I was presenting Portal at the first (and only) Steam Developer Conference. We locked eyes for 15 seconds in a total Seinfeld type moment. And that's the second first time I felt like I was in the game industry.

 

[J1M]

"I just came to this party for some free drinks and to have students ask me if Deus Ex is still the best game ever. I don't need anyone from a successful game studio soaking up my spotlight. Begone, peasant!"

 

[LESS T_T]

Spector is this month's guest on IGN Unfiltered.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/07...warren-spector-about-deus-ex-a-ign-unfiltered

WHAT'S 'MOST IMPORTANT' TO WARREN SPECTOR ABOUT DEUS EX — IGN UNFILTERED
"The most important thing is what I heard and still hear from players."

Deus Ex creator Warren Spector recently spoke to IGN about his influential first-person action RPG and shared what's most important to him about the game.

"I couldn't care less about sales. I don't care much about reviews, I don't read reviews," Spector said on the latest episode of our monthly interview show IGN Unfiltered. "Influence is very important to me. I'm now old enough that the word legacy means something to me... but leaving something behind is very important to me."

As such, the stories he's heard from players about their experiences playing Deus Ex is what he values most. "The most important thing is what I heard and still hear from players," Spector said. "The whole idea of Deus Ex was to recreate the feeling of playing Dungeons & Dragons and telling stories with your friends—not being told a story, but telling stories with your friends and with a dungeon master."

With Deus Ex, Spector believes he and his team were able to achieve that vision. "In Deus Ex, what we were trying to do was lay out the skeleton of a story—here's why what you're doing is important—and then let players own the minute to minute, and have every player finishing the game having had a unique experience," he said. "I heard from a lot of players, and so I know we succeeded at that. Players had unique experiences and they did things that we didn't know could be done in the game that we made."

For more on Deus Ex, which ranks 19th in IGN's top 100 games of all time, stay tuned for our full interview with Spector, when this month's episode of IGN Unfiltered goes live later this week.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/07...-in-the-future-of-aaa-gaming-a-ign-unfiltered

WHY WARREN SPECTOR ISN'T INTERESTED IN THE FUTURE OF AAA GAMING — IGN UNFILTERED
"I think you're seeing immense creativity on the indie side."

Warren Spector, the creator of Deus Ex and designer of Epic Mickey, isn't especially interested in the future of AAA games. Instead, he's drawn to the creativity found in the indie space.

"I kinda don't care about the future of AAA gaming," Spector said on the latest episode of our monthly interview show IGN Unfiltered. "I think the costs are so high, the teams are so big, the risks are so great that we're seeing an awful lot of same old, same old with prettier pictures. That's a little reductionist, I know, but I don't see a lot that interests me in the AAA space."

Spector went on to note that at events like E3 and GDC, he instead spends the majority of his time checking out games from independent developers. IGN asked Spector if he's seen Cuphead, given Spector's longtime love of Disney cartoons and Cuphead's 1930s Steamboat Willie-esque aesthetic, to which he replied, "Of course I've seen Cuphead! I can't wait for Cuphead." He added, "I think you're seeing immense creativity on the indie side, and in that sense things are way better than they used to be."

He also highlighted how the rise in independent development has lowered the barrier of entry for anyone who wants to make a game. "There didn't used to be an indie scene and now there are so many ways to make a game, there are so many ways to reach an audience with that game, that anybody can make the game of their dreams," Spector said. "I got the opportunity to make Deus Ex, which was my dream game, but that's because I was the luckiest guy on the planet. Nowadays, one person in a garage can be [Minecraft creator Markus] Notch [Persson]."

Spector is now working as the creative director on System Shock 3at OtherSide Entertainment. For an early look at the project, check out this batch of concept art for the game.

Stay tuned for our full interview with Spector, when this month's episode of IGN Unfiltered goes live tomorrow.

 

[Infinitron]

Huh, back to one-part episodes: http://www.ign.com/videos/2017/07/12/ign-unfiltered-21-game-design-legend-warren-spector



Ash might be interested in the part starting from 18:30

 

[Ash]

Yeah he's told that story before. In a written interview or two.

 

[LESS T_T]

"(Doug Church) was at Valve for a while." (17:24)

And he no longer is? o_O

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/07...nt-of-warren-spectors-career-a-ign-unfiltered

WHY EPIC MICKEY IS A HIGH POINT OF WARREN SPECTOR'S CAREER — IGN UNFILTERED
"I am really proud of that game."

In addition to creating Deus Ex, Warren Spector is the designer behind Epic Mickey, a series that, despite its criticisms, he sees as a high point in his career.

"I am so proud of that game. Deus Ex and Epic Mickey are, without question, the high points of my career," Spector said on the latest episode of our monthly interview show IGN Unfiltered. "The opportunity to bring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Walt Disney's first star, back to the world—the fact that that happened in a game, I mean, think about what that says about Disney."


Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Mickey Mouse in Epic Mickey 2

Additionally, Oswald is now featured at Disney California Adventure, which Spector noted can be credited to Epic Mickey. He also said he recently purchased an Oswald mug that has Oswald's girlfriend Ortensia on the back, a character that his team made up for Epic Mickey.

"I suspect no one at Disney realizes that we made Ortensia up for our game. I'm sure people at Disney think Ortensia is a part of Disney's history," he said. "We made her up. So the fact that Oswald is back, and the fact that Ortensia is now a part of Disney's history, is because of a video game. That's very cool."

The fan response he received for Epic Mickey is another reason why the game is so special to him. "I got more fan mail about Epic Mickey than any game I've ever worked on," he said. "It was more heartfelt fan mail than any game I've ever worked on. We touched people in a way that games just never touch people."

Spector said he's heard from people who told him the game helped get them through chemotherapy. He also shared a story about one kid with cerebral palsy who played the game as part of his physical therapy after undergoing surgery. Additionally, he received a letter from the father of a 16-year-old autistic girl who didn't engage with the outside world, saying she insisted that he send Spector her drawing of Mickey and Oswald looking up at a starry sky.

"Screw Metacritic. Screw the gamers who didn't like our camera. Screw everybody. I am really proud of that game, and I am really proud of the team that made it, and nothing is going to ever sway me from feeling like that was one of the high points of my career," he added.

A sequel to Epic Mickey, titled Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two, was released two years after the first game, in November of 2012. Junction Point Studios, the development team behind the series, closed shortly after the sequel's launch.

Be sure to check out our full IGN Unfiltered interview with Spector to hear more from the brilliant game designer, including his thoughts on the future of AAA games and the growing indie scene.

 

[J1M]

The stench of the inferiority complex the game industry has when it compares itself to cartoons radiates from Warren like a thousand suns.

Nobody gives a fuck if an autistic kid liked your children's game. That happens with literally any product seen by a few thousand children. Taste cannot be defined by the mentally unfit, and thus being proud that they were amused by it is essentially admitting a complete lack of critical thinking skills and dignity.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/07...en-spector-to-create-deus-ex-a-ign-unfiltered

HOW THIEF INSPIRED WARREN SPECTOR TO CREATE DEUS EX — IGN UNFILTERED
Sticking strictly to stealth.

Thief was instrumental in the creation of Deus Ex, and Warren Spector has come forward to reveal how Looking Glass Studios' first-person stealth title inspired the creation of his beloved action role-playing game.

"That [Thief] team was adamant about focusing on stealth to the exclusion of everything else," Spector said on the latest episode of our monthly interview show IGN Unfiltered, noting that "a lot of the reason Deus Ex exists is because of the stubbornness, the appropriate stubbornness, of the Thief team."

According to Spector, it was the team's dedication to making Thief strictly a stealth game that inspired him to make Deus Ex. "There's a lot to the story of Deus Ex, but one of the things that really drove me was a moment when I was playing Thief in the early build, and I just was not good enough as a sneak thief to get past some guards," he said.

So Spector went to the team and asked them to make the player character stronger so that he could fight his way through, rather than sneaking, but the team resisted. "They said, 'No, if we let you fight, that's what everyone will do. No one will sneak anymore,'" he said of the team's response. "I was convinced that they were wrong about that, and that it was possible to make a game where you could fight or sneak."

As such, Spector set out to prove them wrong by making Deus Ex. "I made a silent vow right then that I was going to show those guys that it was possible," he added. "I was going to build another team to do that, and that's one of the reasons Deus Ex exists—out of my frustration with this genius team off people I love who made Thief."

The original Thief, titled Thief: The Dark Project, was released in December of 1998. The game was followed by Deus Ex in 2000. That same year, a sequel, titled Thief II: The Metal Age, was released, and currently ranks among IGN's top 100 games of all time.

Be sure not to miss our full IGN Unfiltered interview with Spector for more on his thoughts about Deus Ex, as well as Epic Mickey, the future of AAA games, and more.

 

[HansDampf]

They are really milking that interview.

 

[LESS T_T]

Interview from a brand new industry news site called PC Games Insider: http://www.pcgamesinsider.biz/indus...say-im-the-luckiest-guy-in-the-game-business/

Nothing particularly new or interesting.

Released in 2000, Deus Ex was a wildly ambitious title that saw Spector merging a variety of different game genres

So much for "PC" Games Insider.

Certainly, in the UK, much ink has been spilt talking about how education around video games can be improved. But how does Spector think that this can be bettered?

“Man, could this get me in trouble... The biggest thing games education needs is more people who've actually made games,” he says.

“There are lots of people teaching whose resumes couldn't get them hired at a game development studio or publisher. More industry or indie people who WANT to teach would help a lot. Problem is, people who want to make games, tend to make games and not teach about them.

“Another thing I think would help would be more courses in games history and criticism. The game business - mainstream and indie - has virtually no sense of institutional history. I mean, I go to GDC and listen to talks my friends were giving 20 years ago. Same stuff. Drives me nuts. And we have very little vocabulary for talking about games in any way deeper than ‘fun/not fun’. Mediums grow when people can think about them more deeply than that. So, more pros, more history, more criticism.”

“It's been great working with OtherSide. Paul Neurath, the company founder – and co-founder of the late lamented Looking Glass Technologies – has always been one of my mentors and even at this late date I still learn from him every day,” he says.

“And it's always an interesting and rewarding challenge to build a team from scratch, like I am on System Shock 3. It's also nice to see games like Shock3 and Underworld Ascendant, OtherSide's other title in development, coming back. The fact that there's a new and growing market for what we used to call ‘immersive simulations’ is really gratifying. And, finally, it's been great working with a publisher like Starbreeze - as developers themselves, they really understand what goes on at OtherSide and they've been both hands-off and helpful depending on what we needed. So, yeah, so far so good.”

 

[LESS T_T]

Another one: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-08-10-devs-must-define-success-for-themselves-spector

Thematic depth in games:

"When I talk about my success metrics, one of them is you need more to say than just what's happening on the surface of a game," he continues. "There's no reason why games can't deal with thematic material as deep as any other medium. That's clearly one of my soapboxes. I'm going to repeat that to any audience that will listen to me until the day I die.

[...]

"There have always been little pockets of depth in games. Certainly Ultima IV was one that was really important to me, and that was about ethics and ethical behavior and value systems. I was pretty blown away by that," Spector says. "It was such a seminal message, not just for me but the industry as well. Ultima IV was kind of the first. Interestingly I think Suikoden forced me to think about the importance of friends and family, in particular, and that was powerful when I played it.

"Now there's some pretty incredible depth in games like Journey, Papers, Please, This War of Mine and others. There are games doing some pretty amazing things, and some mainstream developers are making interesting stuff too.

"I think Telltale with The Walking Dead series [is noteworthy], and Heavy Rain forced me to think about a lot of stuff. I think it's a lot easier in the sort of interactive movie genre, like The Last of Us and Uncharted, to convey messages and tell interesting traditional stories in that format. But we're certainly seeing more depth in game storytelling now than we used to, and even more depth in terms of player agency."

He adds, "It almost seems like we're bifurcating now even more than we did before... When you look around the world of games you see lots of cinematic stuff that's pretty linear and straightforward, but you also see games that require incredible creativity. Even something like Minecraft or the Arkane games, Dishonored and Prey. Or Fallout and the Bioware stuff. You're seeing lots of games now that empower players to tell their own stories, which I've been waiting decades for."

Not much about System Shock 3:

Spector may not be the guy to be working on VR, but he's exactly the guy who should be attempting to advance the genre of immersive RPG/Simulation. More than 20 years after the original System Shock, Spector left his position at the University of Texas to join up with Paul Neurath at Otherside and lead development on System Shock 3. So how is he approaching the franchise this time? What's he learned over the last few decades of game development that he will be applying to the title?

"I'm going to be a little coy, but I'm a big believer that every game needs to have one thing that no one's ever seen or done in a game before," he says. "That's also one of my success metrics. We're working on one thing that's scary as hell because no one's ever done it before and we don't know if it's going to work. It may end up getting cut because it's this grand idea that we're playing with which might not work out. There is going to be something completely new and scary in this game.

"The big thing we can do now which we couldn't do before is just build a really deep simulation. System Shock and Ultima Underworld before it were built on the back of as good a simulation as was possible back in the '90s, but we can go way deeper in simulating a world now. That deep simulation is going to empower players to solve problems in a way they want to, which I think will surprise people."

He thinks he has "a few games more" before retirement:

"Just to bring this full circle, you don't get there by just making a fun little game or even a fun big game. You get there by taking a big risk and doing things that are personal and meaningful to you. And have that one new thing, always pushing the boundaries. I still feel a need to do that, and I think the medium needs people to do that.

"And if you do that, maybe you can make a difference. I like to think that the games I've produced, designed and directed maybe made a little difference. Other people can decide that. Will I retire? We'll see. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought about that, but I think I have a few more games in me."