Warren Spector's Soapbox Thread

[Soulcucker]

Two possible reasons why Warren might not allow people to say the word "fun" in his studio:

Reason #1: Because he doesn't value entertainment value and HATES FUN.

Reason #2: What he actually said:

It's meaningless and doesn't help anyone to make a game.

Reason #3: Autism

 

[Zep Zepo]

Reason #4: Alcoholism.

Zep--

 

[LESS T_T]

Spanish article covering Spector's recent talk at a Spanish game festival: http://www.efefuturo.com/noticia/warren-spector-videojuego/

In his quest to define and think this creative language, Spector has been forbidden to resort to the word fun: "It's something different for each person. Thinking about fun does not help me to make better games, what helps me is to know that I want to make games that make people think, connect with people and allow them to experience unique moments. "

"People define video games just by saying whether or not they are fun. Why are we a medium described by a single word? It's something that bugs me. Movies do not have to be fun: they can be emotional, educational, tragic, comic ... Books, just the same. We have to expand the way we think and define the medium, "he criticized.

Spector devoted a little more than two years to teaching at the university, but his vocation turned him back on track: he now works with three other people in a new installment of Systemshock he hopes will be the "deepest simulation ever created."

"deepest simulation ever created."

 

[Naveen]

He has gone full academic professor. RIP.

 

[pippin]

He merged with the AI.

 

[Gerrard]

I will burn like the brightest star!

 

[LESS T_T]

Video of Spector's Sweden Game Conference talk:

 

[LESS T_T]

Spector will do a classic game postmortem of Deus Ex at upcoming GDC: http://schedule.gdconf.com/session/classic-game-postmortem-deus-ex

Classic Game Postmortem: 'Deus Ex'

Warren Spector | Studio Director, OtherSide Entertainment
Date: TBD
Time: TBD

Warren Spector, the veteran game designer best known for his work at influential studios like Origin Systems and Ion Storm Austin, is coming to GDC 2017 to present a Classic Game Postmortem on the pioneering game 'Deus Ex'. Spector directed development of 'Deus Ex', the critically-acclaimed cyberpunk "immersive sim" released in 2000 that achieved critical acclaim, commercial success, and influence over a generation of game developers. He went on to oversee development of its sequel as studio director of Ion Storm Austin before departing to found Junction Point, the Disney-backed studio where he oversaw development of 'Epic Mickey' 1 & 2. After leaving Junction Point, he joined the University of Texas at Austin, where he helped create the Denius-Sams Gaming Academy. Spector recently returned to game development by joining up with Otherside Entertainment, where he leads production of 'System Shock 3'. Now he's coming to GDC 2017 to recount the development of 'Deus Ex', reflect on his experience, and share key lessons learned from the project. Don't miss it!

Wonder how much it will differ from original written postmortem.

 

[LESS T_T]

Tweets from DX postmortem. Basically this guy's thread of tweets:

Spoiler

“You folks all realise you’re here to hear about a 17 year old game, right?” #GDC17

“The game I’m most proud of is Deus Ex.” - @Warren_Spector #GDC17

Deus Ex is “James Bond meets the X-Files by way of Neuromancer” #GDC17

“If you ever want to make a marketing person unhappy, mash genres up together. They’ll be your friend for life.” #GDC17

Deus Ex was deliberately trying to be an immersive simulation, and to let people really feel like they’re in the world. #GDC17

A role-playing, first person shooter adventure game. This combination of genres was designed to make players collaborate on story. #gdc17

Deus Ex’s origins start with Dungeons and Dragons. Warren played a game of it with @bruces as DM (OMG WHAT) #GDC17

“My friends and I were telling the story WITH him. The shape of the story belonged to Bruce, but the details belonged to us.” #GDC17

“My entire game developer career has been a mission to recreate the feeling I had in that game of D&D in 1979.” #GDC17

.@Harvey1966’s term, “shared authorship”, and “immersive sim” from Doug Church, are important ways to think about Deus Ex. #GDC17

Warren was tired of games where you’re the last space marine, or you’re fighting dragons with a sword. #GDC17

Instead, he wanted to make a ‘real world RPG’. Importantly, he wanted the game to reveal the player to themselves via their choices. #GDC17

That is, the way you play the game should reveal something about yourself. #GDC17

Originally, the concept was a game called “Troubleshooter”. Very hard-boiled man-with-a-gun shooter. #GDC17

This didn’t pan out, and instead he went to Looking Glass, where he worked on Thief. #GDC17

During Thief’s development, he encountered a point where he couldn’t get past it. He asked to buff the player; the team said no. #GDC17

Their response was that the game was about sneaking, and making combat too easy would remove the incentive to sneak around. #GDC17

At that moment, he decided that he wanted to make a game that didn’t enforce that kind of opinion. #GDC17

When @romero approached @Warren_Spector to ‘make the game of [his] dreams’, it was an easy decision. #GDC17

Warren has a test, a set of questions, called “6+2+1”; without positive answers, the game should not be made. #GDC17

First, can you describe the game’s core idea in a single sentence? #GDC17

Second, do you know _why_ the game should be made? For Warren, Deus Ex was a personal imperative. #GDC17

Is the idea well-suited to games? Can you describe the fantasy the game evokes? #GDC17

What do the player do? What are the verbs of the game? Boiling down DX, it’s running, jumping, fighting. Nothing new, but concrete. #GDC17

Then, the 2: has anyone done anything like this before? What’s the _one_ thing that the game does that no other game has done? #GDC17

For Deus Ex, the answer to the second one was the combination of genres, and the world style. #GDC17

Finally, the 1: do you have something to say? If you don’t have a theme or issue for players to explore, you’re wasting player’s time #GDC17

Deus Ex ticked all those boxes, so they got to work. #GDC17

One of the very first decisions was to set the game in 2052. This meant using near-future fiction like Neuromancer and Blade Runner. #GDC17

Looking at what the world would look like meant thinking about trends like rising terrorism, mechanical augmentation, AI research. #GDC17

In 1997, conspiracy theories were _everywhere_. The web was brand new, and lots of weird stuff was being shared around. #GDC17

Giving players the ability to answer the big questions posed by the game’s plot was made the central focus of the game. #GDC17

Show the goal. Have problems, not puzzles. Don’t create forced failures. Let players create a role, don’t make them fit a template. #GDC17

Players should do all the cool stuff. NPCs watch. Give constant rewards to drive players forward. #GDC17

As the player gets better, make the game harder. (Warren admits this one’s obvious.) #GDC17

Think about level layouts in 3D. Make the spaces highly interconnected. Give people room to explore multiple solutions. #GDC17

Lots of conspiracy research was done. The Denver Airport conspiracy theories were a particularly rich source. #GDC17

Over 25 missions were designed, over 200 characters. 500 pages of documentation. “I don’t know what we were thinking.” #GDC17

The team scaled from 6 to about 30. “Totally dysfunctional.” #GDC17

Pre-production was about 6 months. “It was good enough. Got us by.” Huge amounts of stuff got cut. #GDC17

Production was a grind, just like all projects. (lol) #GDC17

Warren was repeatedly told to ‘just make a shooter’, and that was pressure to ward off. #GDC17

The game was ‘done’ in September 1999, but they noticed that the game.. wasn’t fun. #GDC17

Immersive sims come together very late. It takes time for your systems to lock together. #GDC17

Eidos saw the potential of the game, and gave them more time; they shipped in 2000. #GDC17

“If people get that you can fight, sneak or talk, we’re great. But if they compare our combat to Half-Life, our sneaking to Thief…” #GDC17

“…or our storytelling to Baldur’s Gate, in isolation, we’re dead.” #GDC17

Some things that went right: They had the benefit of having a very clear high level vision. #GDC17

The fact that the idea had been percolating for many years meant that it was clear and straightforward to execute on. #GDC17

“If you have a game you really want to make, never give up. Eventually, someone will be stupid enough to give you money to make it.” #GDC17

They didn’t skimp on pre-production. It could have benefited from more, but their 6 person pre-prod team got good work done. #GDC17

“oh, this list has two 3’s. I needed more pre-production on my slides.” #GDC17

Some things that went badly: the game systems didn’t work quite as well in game as they did on paper. #GDC17

Something that’s much more common these days: the game was always in a playable state, and ready to be demoed in some way. #GDC17

Another now-common one: lots of external play testers. (“Do not tell your publishers you’re doing this.”) #GDC17

.@Harvey1966 was a strong advocate for cutting, and for avoiding kitchen-sink game design. Helped to focus the game. #GDC17

The fact that the engine tech was licensed meant that the programming team could be kept small. #GDC17

A bad thing: two people were made ‘lead designers’, and they each had their own team. Lots of conflict, hard to manage. #GDC17

Lots of art issues, too: management of the art team was clunky and difficult. #GDC17

That said, the leads on the team were stellar, and Warren has nothing but praise for their contributions. #GDC17

Another problem: the goals of the game were unrealistically big. (“You’re going to liberate 2000 people from a POW camp!”) Cut. #GDC17

Setting creative limits is critical for actually shipping. #GDC17

The fact that the tech was licensed was also a downside. It took a long time to get acquainted with the engine. #GDC17

“Unreal Tournament was never designed to be a deep simulation.” #GDC17

Big outdoor areas were wanted, but the tech was not up to it; the levels had to be broken up, which hurt the experience. #GDC17

The game became less realistic as time went on because it turns out that the real world is not fun. Concessions to gameplay were made #GDC17

'Any publicity isn’t good publicity.’ The “Ion Storm und Drang” that happened negatively impacted the team, and the game. #GDC17

(“Playboy photoshoots happened in the office, we threw huge shipping parties before we actually shipped…”) #GDC17

Warren’s talk is running over time. “I’m not good at scheduling.” #GDC17

The Deus Ex team were surprised by what players did. Even seasoned players ended up with choice paralysis. #GDC17

They expected people to pick a style of play, and play through as that. But that isn’t what they did. #GDC17

What they did was play up to a choice point, save the game, make the choice and see if they liked the outcome. If not, load the save. #GDC17

Lots and lots of emergence. Stuff like building ladders out of wall-mounted mines, or setting up chain reactions. #GDC17

Have a definition of what ‘success’ looks like for the game. For Deus Ex, having players talk about their experiences was success. #GDC17

Conversations like “wasn’t it cool when you saved the prisoners from under UNATCO?” “what prisoners??” #GDC17

The fact that different fans criticised it for being too left wing or right wing is another example of this. Different experiences. #GDC17

The goal was to create a skeleton of an experience, and let the players put the meat on the bones. #GDC17

“In the end, Deus Ex is a game about you, me and the future as it might be. It was about letting players remake the world themselves” #GDC17

People ask Warren how he feels about the new DX games. He replies “it’s amazing to have created something that has a life of its own” #GDC17

Confirmation: “JC” in “JC Denton” _does_ stand for Jesus Christ! #GDC17

But there’s more: Warren’s friend, Bradley Denton, is a writer, and is _way_ too helpful. Warren would say “jesus christ, Denton!” #GDC17

“One of my secret goals in DX was to shame other developers into making better games. Didn’t work.” #GDC17

“Lots of the people on Dishonored and Prey are my old team, and don’t work for me anymore. They’re really happy there. I hate it.” #GDC17

“I still listen to the Deus Ex soundtrack all the time” - @Warren_Spector (cc @FunkyRustic) #GDC17

 

[LESS T_T]

Also fairly detailed Gamasutra report: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/..._Exs_development_back_to_a_game_of_Damp_D.php

Ion Storm Austin’s Deus Ex was a critical and commercial success when it was released in the summer of 2000, laying the groundwork for an enduring franchise.

More importantly, it inspired a generation of game designers to dig into the nooks, crannies, and conveniently-placed ducts of what we now shorthand as "immersive sims," those games that ask players to make interesting choices in how they want to confront or slip past obstacles in their path.

Shortly after the game shipped, game director Warren Spector wrote a broad postmortem of the project. Today at GDC, he revisited the subject after 17 years to offer some fresh insight into how the groundbreaking game came to be.

“People always ask me which of my games are my favorite; don’t ever ask a game designer that,” said Spector. “The closest I ever get to answering is saying that the game I’m most proud of is Deus Ex.”

Spector acknowledges that a lot of what he's talking about is standard practice in the game industry now, but he reminds fellow devs that it absolutely was not common practice 20 years ago when the game was first conceived.

“Conceptually, I thought of Deus Ex as a genre-busting game, which let me say, really enamored us to the marketing folks. They loved that,” said Sepctor. “If you ever want to make a marketing person unhappy, mash some genres together.”

The game was envisioned as a mix of first-person shooter, adventure game, and RPG. But Spector traces the history of its development back to playing tabletop games, long before he became a game designer.


"I would not be here, you would not be here, if not for that game of Dungeons and Dragons"

“Let me tell you were it began -- this is going to get a little embarrassing,” said Spector. “It all began with Dungeons and Dragons.”

In 1978, to be precise, when he started playing D&D with a new Dungeon Master.

“I would not be here, you would not be here, if not for that game of Dungeons and Dragons,” said Spector.

The Dungeon Master of that game was “cyberpunk guru” Bruce Sterling, and Spector says the experience was meaningful not because of the story being told, but because of how it was being told -- by Spector and his friends, under the guidance of Sterling.

“The story belonged to Bruce, but every detail belonged to us,” said Spector. “I was completely hooked; I played in that campaign for ten years.”

So how does that lead to Deus Ex? Spector says it inspired his entire career in game design, a long-running attempt on his part to try and recreate that experience he had playing D&D for the first time in ‘78.

“That’s been my life mission: to recreate that feeling,” he said. “Every game I’ve worked on, every single one, has been trying to engage players in the telling of the story. My only hope is to do it a little better every time.”

So Spector became a game designer, and joined Origin Systems in 1989 to work on games like Ultima Underworld. But at some point he got tired of making those games, and he decided to “try and swing for the fences.”

“I was sick to death of making games about guys in plate armor swinging swords,” said Spector. He says he wanted to make what he saw as a “real-world role-playing game” in which the player’s choices would say more about the player themselves than their in-game avatar

“I don’t care about your puppet; I care about you,” he said.

He also wanted every player to get to the end of the story; he wanted to tell a story with players the way Sterling told a story with him and his friends back in the ‘70s.

At Origin Systems he pitched a game concept that allowed him to do all this: something called (Trouble)shooter, which was a sort of hard-boiled noir game. Electronic Arts and Origin weren’t interested at all, and Spector shelved the idea. A few years past, he left Origin and joined Looking Glass, where a game called Thief was being developed.

Spector says he had a moment while playing Thief: he hit a part that was too tough to sneak through, and impossible to fight through. So he asked the team to make the player character tougher, so he could fight his way through; but the team balked, saying that wasn’t the point of Thief. The game was about sneaking, after all; it wouldn’t make sense to let players smash through a roadblock.

That, says Spector, was when he got the idea to go back to (Trouble)shooter. So he left Looking Glass shortly before Thief shipped, and wound up nearly signing a contract with Electronic Arts to make a totally different game.

“That’s when John Romero called me and said don’t sign the contract; join me at Ion Storm and make the game of your dreams,” said Spector. “Who can say no to that?”

And so Ion Storm Austin was born, with the game that would become Deus Ex as its debut project. But before work got underway, devs may appreciate Spector's recollection of asking himself a series of questions he calls the 6 + 2 + 1 -- a vetting process he says he applies to all games he works on.

“Why I don’t call them the nine questions, I don’t know,” said Spector. “But if I can’t answer any of these questions I don’t make the game.”

1. What’s the core idea? Can you describe the core of the game in 2-3 sentences?
2. Why do this game?
3. What are the development challenges?
4. How well-suited to games is the idea?
5. What’s the player fantasy? (If the fantasy and goals aren’t there, it’s probably a bad idea)
6. What does the player do? (What are the “verbs” of the game?)
7. Has anyone done this before?
8. What’s the one new thing? (“You can always find one thing that hasn’t been done before [in games], even if you’re making a My Little Pony game.”)
9. Do you have something to say? (“In Deus Ex I wanted to explore all sorts of big issues,” said Spector. “And I wanted players to explore those things in ways that only games could do.”)

All of these questions were answerable for Deus Ex, so in 1997 work on the project got underway at Ion Storm Austin.

“If we were gonna plug into the real cultural zeitgeist, we had to play close attention to things in the real world,” said Spector. Things like mechanically-augmented soldiers, or the rising tide of terrorism.

“You didn’t have to be a genius, even in 1997, to see that the news was increasingly filled with reports of terrorism,” he added.

”And really interesting to us was the rise of nanotechnology; the dangers of that seemed fun to explore. But most importantly, everywhere you looked in 1997, it seemed like there was a conspiracy theory,” said Spector. “The world of Deus Ex was being created all around us; we didn’t have to make anything up. It was great!”

In short, Spector says the game was designed to answer five big questions:

• What would happen if you mashed up the adventure game, shooter, and RPG genres?
• What would happen if you dropped a secret agent into a world wih no black and white -- just shades of grey?
• What if all conspiracy theories were true?
• What does it mean to be human in world with augmentation?
• How should the world be? Would the world be better off ruled by a secret cabal, a sentient AI that connected all humankind, or plunged into a new dark age?

“The game was going to have no bosses to kill; it was about deciding how the world should be,” said Spector. “You could answer those questions through your play choices.”

To explore these questions in a game, Spector says he established some “commandments” for the team to follow:


Ion Storm Austin Commandments (or, the Deus Ex rules of roleplaying)

• Always show the goal. Players should always see what they’re trying to accomplish.
• Problems, not puzzles. “It’s an obstacle course, not a jigsaw puzzle.”
• No forced failures. “Failure’s not fun.”
• It’s “role” not “roll” -- ie.. “It’s about playing a role, not rolling dice,” said Spector. “Why do we still have character classes and skill levels and die rolls?”
• If there’s cool stuff happening, players should be doing it. Players do the cool stuff; NPCs watch the players do the cool stuff.
• Lay out constant rewards to drive players onward.
• As the player gets better, make the game harder.
• Think 3D. “I believe 3D maps can’t be laid out on graph paper; if players aren’t looking up and down constantly, you may as well make a 2D game.”
• Be connected. Tunnels from A to B aren’t interesting, says Spector; interconnected spaces are.
• Every problem should have multiple solutions.

By the time the team moved from the concept phase to pre-production, the Ion Storm Austin team had grown from six to about 30 people. It was a “totally dysfunctional team,” according to Spector, and the team had “about six-ish months” of pre-production. The design document was cut down to 270 pages (“which nobody read”) and the team entered full production.

“You don’t want to know how many times I was told to just make a shooter, and I said no,” said Spector.

“Then there was the day we hit pre-alpha and realized the game was not fun; that was a good one,” recalled Spector. By this time, September of 1999, Spector says the game had finally come together and the team found out it wasn’t fun.

“Luckily, Eidos saw the potential of the game and gave us more time,” said Spector. “By June of 2000 it was ready to ship. It was the game of my dreams.”

He seems to really mean this, too; Spector says at the start of every project he closes his eyes and envisions what a game will be. By the time Deus Ex had shipped, he looked at it and recalled that “every single detail had changed, but in spirit it was exactly the same. It was kind of amazing; it’s the only time that’s ever happened.”

So what positive lessons were learned from the experience that fellow devs might appreciate? As you might expect, Spector had a list:

Don’t give up

“The lesson here is that if there’s a game you have to make, never give up, because someone’s gonna be stupid enough to give you the money some day.”

Have clear goals

“We wanted players thinking about who they were in the world...we wanted players to think about how they wanted to behave in the world,” said Spector. “We wanted them to feel like they were actually in the world….everything in the game had to be based on something real.”

“If there’s anyone in the audience here who worked on Deus Ex, I’m sure you hate me,” added Spector.

Don’t skimp on pre-production

“You can always use more, but we did okay,” said Spector.

Keep your game design organic -- be open to change

“Our game systems didn’t work as well in reality as I thought they would on paper,” said Spector.

Always have a playable build

“We always knew where we were, even if that was painful,” said Spector, explaining that the team would build out envisioned missions early, in limited form, to test how they played. These “proto-missions” were small and ugly, but critical to the game’s production because it helped the team see things that didn’t work, early enough to do something meaningful about it.

Also, says Spector, make sure to playtest with real people

“Do not let your publisher know you’re doing this,” said Spector, recounting how Ion Storm Austin would bring folks in to do playtests without telling Eidos. “Listening to their responses, I called that particular milestone the ‘wow these missions suck’ milestone.”

License good tech

“That was something we did right; we licensed Unreal Tournament,” said Spector. “Adding what we needed was much easier than it could have been...three programmers made Deus Ex. They were very overworked.”

So what went wrong? What should you know to avoid in your own game projects?

The team structure didn’t work

“I had two people qualified to be lead designers so instead of picking one, I gave them both roles as lead designers with design teams,” said Spector. “Don’t do that. I thought I could manage the tension between the teams, and I couldn’t...I had to call one of the design teams 1 and the other one team A, because neither would be team B or 2.”

However, Spector took pains to say one thing he did right was in choosing who to hire. “Those guys do not get enough credit for the creative aspects of the game, the fact that we shipped at all, and managing the team.”

Goals were too big and unrealistic

“Harvey Smith and another designer, Steve Powers, came to me one day and said ‘you cannot make this game. We cannot make this story,'” recalled Spector. “So we cut a bunch, and the game was better for it.”

He recommends you limit yourself in a kind of creative box, and ensure your entire team is operating within it.

More risks should have been frontloaded

Put simply: Spector says devs should prototype more systems earlier so you can iterate and make them better -- or throw out what doesn’t work.

Be careful about licensing tech

“This is something that I said we did right, but it’s also something we did wrong,” said Spector. “Unreal Tournament was not designed to have a deep sim and allow fighting, sneaking and talking...we had to layer all that stuff in on top. It worked, but….we ended up faking a lot of stuff, to be frank.”

He also added that the engine presented the team from being able to create the large, open areas they envisioned, and he feels it significantly impacted the game.

“It was a mistake to try and recreate the real world...in 1997,” said Spector.


Any publicity is not good publicity

“Ion Storm was not a quiet company; I don’t know how many of you remember this,” said Spector, pulling up an image of an ad for Ion Storm Dallas’ Daikatana, also released in 2000. He went on to mention Playboy shoots in the office, articles about pay rates at Ion Storm, and more, noting that “it’s hard for everyone on your team to be productive when everyone’s screaming about your company.”

But when the game finally released in 2000, Spector says the results were gratifying: it sold well, reviewed well, and most importantly (according to him) players got excited about the notion of making meaningful choices in the game.

“Be ready to define success for any game you make; if you can’t define success, you are not ready to make that game,” said Spector. “Conversation was my definition of success.”

He’s talking about the sort of conversations that are now a common goal in game design: the “what did you do? How did you get through this part? What ending did you choose?” conversations between players who are playing through the same game in different ways.

“That was what Deus Ex was all about. It wasn’t about what the development team thought they world should be, but what the player thought the world should be,” said Sterling. “Like Bruce Sterling and every other Dungeon Master, we provided the skeleton of the experience and the players put meat on the bones.”

“Here’s my final thought for all of you: I sincerely hope that everyone of you gets the opportunity to work on the game of your dreams some day,” said Spector. “And I hope every one of you gets to work on something that’s still relevant 17 years after you make it, and has a life beyond you.”

 

[Jazz_]

I like stumbling on ancient threads when looking for specific info about DX (thanks google I guess..), the notion that Deus Ex in August 2000 was ''technologically brilliant'' and ''has all the latest bells and whistles'' is kind of cute to me.

 

[J1M]

Just because someone wrote it down, doesn't make it accurate. Take that SS2 propaganda elsewhere.

 

[Jazz_]

lolwhat? SS2 propaganda? that was not the point of the post, genius. And I liked DX way more than SS2 anyway. Are you so insecure that if you read a random opinion you don't share it makes you mad? grow up.

 

[Gerrard]

“One of my secret goals in DX was to shame other developers into making better games. Didn’t work.”

 

[Soulcucker]

I like stumbling on ancient threads when looking for specific info about DX (thanks google I guess..), the notion that Deus Ex in August 2000 was ''technologically brilliant'' and ''has all the latest bells and whistles'' is kind of cute to me.

Shitposting circa 2000. The biggest thing I remember about the tech in 2000 was how poorly the game ran on my system and this was with an Athlon 700/Geforce 256/256MB ram, which was good hardware for back then.

 

[pippin]

re: spector's comments about system shock and vr: interesting perspective. After all, he was there for the virtual boy. I dare to say the current vr games are just like those you had in the virtual boy, the only real differences are aesthetical ones (proper color, sound, etc. nothing truly relevant when it comes to gameplay).

Also, ss2 was considered to be something of a technology wonder at the time of its release. Apparently, the Dark engine was going to be used for the game, and everyone feared that one would prove to be too "small" for what the game was trying to accomplish.

Some people were also really hyped for it, proving that SS was already a cult classic in the late 90s.

Deus Ex was said to to be "the biggest game ever", but people were afraid of Ion Storm's reputation, since Daikatana was still in development.

Sources: my memories from old gaming mags which I don't have anymore

 

[LESS T_T]

The Deus Ex postmortem is available on GDCVault for free: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024338/Classic-Game-Postmortem-Deus-Ex

 

[Alienman]

I like stumbling on ancient threads when looking for specific info about DX (thanks google I guess..), the notion that Deus Ex in August 2000 was ''technologically brilliant'' and ''has all the latest bells and whistles'' is kind of cute to me.

War never changes and all that. Funny that things are basically the same 17 years later.

 

[Luckmann]

I like stumbling on ancient threads when looking for specific info about DX (thanks google I guess..), the notion that Deus Ex in August 2000 was ''technologically brilliant'' and ''has all the latest bells and whistles'' is kind of cute to me.

I especially love the "Deus Ex has no atmosphere" and thinking that people compared it to Thief because you could "walk past some guards". My oh my oh my.

 

[HansDampf]

The Deus Ex postmortem is available on GDCVault for free: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024338/Classic-Game-Postmortem-Deus-Ex

Funny how he came up with the name. "Jesus Christ, Denton!" Never heard that story before.

 

[LESS T_T]

He used to say Nintendo games are his favorite. Part of the reason is that they're unlike the games he tries to make ("immersive sim"). He said he couldn't enjoy the games that akin to his vision because he gets too analytical and critical while playing them.

Now that the new Zelda game seems like quite "immersive" and "simulation"-centric as much as (or more so than?) many of immersive sims, will he enjoy the game as a fan? Or will he get too analytical about it? Or despair?

 

[Zep Zepo]

LOL!

Fuck this retard. He Dindu Nuffin in 20 years but try to take credit for other peoples work.

He's a fuckin' washed up clown!

Zep--

 

[iZerw]

LOL!

Fuck this retard. He Dindu Nuffin in 20 years but try to take credit for other peoples work.

He's a fuckin' washed up clown!

Zep--

What are you talking about? He did Epic Mickey and Epic Mickey 2!

 

[LESS T_T]

The Deus Ex postmortem is available on GDCVault for free: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024338/Classic-Game-Postmortem-Deus-Ex

Now also on Youtube:

 

[LESS T_T]

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

Well, in System Shock 3, everyone is dead, again:

I remember you talked up the possibilities of AI in games, especially non-combat AI, last year. Where do you stand now?

Well, realistically, I'm not sure System Shock is the place to be exploring non-combat AI, given that we're going to follow along in the tradition of everybody being dead *laughs* and communicating the story through video logs, emails, AR projections and all that.

So this is probably not the game to be exploring that particular aspect of game design. But what I do want to do is take the idea of choice and consequence and recovery, the stages of choice, consequence, and recovery from those choices, I want to take that to a whole new level by creating an incredibly reactive world. And then letting players interact with the world in a deeper way than they have before.

So that's largely the thrust of System Shock 3, as much as I can talk about it.

Games he's been playing recently, including Dishonored 2:

Well since you've been reimmersing yourself in some recent games, are there any you'd call out as especially worth studying by fellow devs?

Well, Dishonored 2. There's a particular kind of game I find most appealing, and the Dishonored series is right in that vein so it's pretty cool.

So I'm playing Dishonored 2 right now, and...well mostly, to be honest, I've been a little disappointed in the games I've played, and haven't played very much. What I do is, I play a game until I get so frustrated that I have to stop, or throw my controller against the wall or something. Or I've learned everything I'm going to learn from it, or I finish it. And I finish very few games.

But you know, I've played some Metal Gear Solid 5. I'm woefully behind, so I've been playing some Shadow of Mordor. Certainly there's some intriguing different things in that game, so that's worth taking a look at. I'm obsessed with some mobile games, there's this little puzzle game called Hundred that I just love. I'm playing it obsessively right now. And these aren't new games, but I think the Go games from Square Enix are a ton of fun. Deus Ex Go, Lara Croft Go, and Hitman Go -- I just find those great ways to pass the time.


There was a minute there where we were sure Shadow of Mordor's Nemesis system was going to be the next Big Thing in game design. Seems like we were wrong -- not a lot of devs picked up what Monolith was putting down.

Well, it's kinda their thing. I can't speak for any developer but myself, but if somebody's already done something, what's the point of doing it yourself? It's like, come up with your one new thing.

And one of my rules for any game I work in is, there has to be one new thing, something no one's ever seen before or done before. And that's already been done. Why would I do it again? I mean, there are certain elements of it that I find intriguing; like, it's nothing new, but characters you interact with on an ongoing basis, who change over time, that's pretty cool. But having them interact with each other, you know, it's an interesting idea. It's theirs. It's not something I'm going to adopt.


So what is it about Dishonored 2 that impressed you, that you think is worth calling out?

Nothing specific. I think it's just the overall immersion of the world, and the behavior with the characters. My ultimate goal is to empower players to tell their own stories, and play the way they want to.

You know, I had a mission statement that was 12 pages long that no one would read. then it was an 8-page version, then a 4-page version, and I ultimately summed it up in two words: "playstyle matters." And the Dishonored games really express that exceptionally well.

So it's not any one thing, but I do wish other developers would take a look at that and do more of it. I'm looking forward to Mass Effect, and those games have certainly adopted some of that approach to game design, and the more people who do that, I think the better off we're going to be, as a medium. And the more enjoyment players are going to get out of what should be genuine interactivity. Most games fake it. The immersive simulation games try not to fake it. So it's that attitude, more than any specific thing.


Yeah, in your Deus Ex postmortem I was surprised to see you acknowledge how much was faked.

Yeah, unfortunately. There's a lot of stuff that isn't, too! What we did was, we had to make sure that each dominant playstyle was represented, for sure. But beyond that, players really did discover their own solutions.

D&D and the Monty Haul dungeon:

And yet so many video games can be traced back to tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons.

Oh, sure. We would have no video game business without Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. I always say that every game developer should get down on his knees once a day, face towards Lake Geneva Wisconsin, and say a little prayer of thanks to those guys.

But it's also a problem, because I think personally, too many developers have been inspired by the mechanics of those games. And we have better ways of simulating a world than Gary and Dave had back then. So I would love to see us jettison -- forever -- character classes and you know, the character stats: strength, intelligence, wisdom, dexterity, charisma....I mean, we don't need that stuff. So it would be nice to move away from that.

But also the content; look at the content of games, of many if not most video games, and it's right outta D&D or Traveller. And we could do so much more. Thank god for the indie guys and gals; the indie folks are at least bringing new kinds of content into games.

But Richard Garriott was directly inspired by his D&D campaign when he made the first Ultima game; and we just keep on making guys in chainmail and guys with big guns games. Which are right out of that adolescent power fantasy stuff that defined D&D and Call of Cthulhu and Traveller and Empire of the Petal Throne and all sorts of other games your readers have never heard of.

The other thing that's interesting about those old role-playing games is, I don't know if you're familiar with the term Monty Haul dungeon [pun on deceased game show host Monty Hall, a dungeon designed purely for combat and looting -- thus "haul"] but those were always the most popular things.

It was funny, when I got to TSR, where I worked for a few years, everybody up there wanted to get away from the Monty Haul dungeons, where you knock down a door, you kill the monster, you grab the treasure, you knock down the next door, you kill the monster, you grab the treasure.

And so one of the designers did an adventure module that was the most ridiculous, silly, over-the-top Monty Haul dungeon ever, as kind of a statement. And it was the best-selling module we did! It's what people wanted. And that's also inspired video game developers.

You know, we need to be asking bigger questions. And some people are doing that. Again, the Mass Effect games ask you to think about stuff, the BioShock games ask you to think about stuff. The key for me, as I said in my talk, was not to answer the questions. Video games ask questions. Other media answer them.

I find that the idea of asking questions, and having a dialogue with your players, much more interesting than just saying 'here's my story. Here's what I think about Topic X.' That's way less interesting.