Warren Spector's Soapbox Thread

[Infinitron]

I'm always amused by how despite styling himself as the guru of player choice-focused simulationist sandboxes, Spector continually finds himself gravitating towards narrative. You can see that in his games, too.

The brain of a systemfag and the heart of a storyfag.

 

[Ash]

^Yes. He rarely talks about gameplay beyond summary statements regarding C&C, the need to innovate etc. The last piece he published that hasn't made me lose faith in him entirely was Warren Spector's Ten Commandments of Game Design

So despite how much he goes on about story and simulation, he does realise there still needs to be a game in there too. His seeming lack of passion in that regard is discouraging though, as well as all the games he lists playing which either feature very little gameplay/player involvement, or are just dumbed down versions of older games in that regard (Dishonored).
You are what you consume, they say, so I hope it doesn't have too much an impact on the philosophies behind his new games. The classics had just the right amount of gameplay : story : simulation ratio, with little conflict between the elements. There can always be more of each, but too much sim faggotry can be boring. Too much story focus is not what I want in a game, and too much gamey focus can impact the game holding deeper meaning.

Just do it like the classics, but on the next level in every respect.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

Spector realizes that if games are to become a narrative medium, the current "failed film director" formula of (for example) grafting pathos-heavy movies onto action shooters where you kill hundreds of people isn't going to work, and that we need to explore other genres and ways of merging gameplay and story.

I (and most people here, it seems) believe that video games are never going to become a particularly good narrative medium and that his efforts are going to fail, but I at least appreciate that he's attempting to innovate on that front instead of settling for the cynical, creatively bankrupt excuse for "narrative games" peddled by Naughty Dog and the like.

 

[LESS T_T]

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-09-12-suikoden-changed-my-life-warren-spector

Suikoden changed my life - Warren Spector
Why I Love: The System Shock 3 creative director generally doesn't go for JRPGs, but this PSone classic set itself apart in four special ways

Why I Love is a series of guest editorials on GamesIndustry.biz intended to showcase the ways in which game developers appreciate each other's work. This installment was contributed by Warren Spector, studio director for Otherside Entertainment's Austin branch, currently at work on System Shock 3.

I don't like JRPGs. I find them basically kind of dull. When I think of them, I think of contrived, non-interactive semi-cinematic story elements intercut with random combat encounters, introduced to relieve the tedium of traversing an otherwise empty, uninteresting landscape. I think of party-building and positioning for maximum efficiency in slow-paced, turn-based combat encounters that feel totally artificial and, for want of a better term, "gamey." I think of weapon and spell creation systems that take forever and require excruciating attention to detail on par with (and about as much fun as) doing your taxes. That's what I think of when I think about JRPGs (which isn't very often).

Clearly, I just don't get 'em.

And yet, I want to write about one - one that inspires me to this day, one that informed and continues to inform my own work, different though it may appear.

I'm talking about Konami's Suikoden, directed by Yoshitaka Murayama. Not the entire series - I confess I've never been able to complete the second or subsequent games in the series. But I did complete the first Suikoden game. Oh, did I. And that experience literally changed my life. Ultima IV was probably the game that influenced me the most--there's another whole essay there--but Suikoden may be number two on the list.

How and why, you ask? There are four things, four moments and/or ideas that blew my mind and set Suikoden apart from other JRPGs - other games, really. They are The Dragon Fight, The Little Guy Who Saves You, the Ever-Changing Base and the Father Fight.


The Dragon Fight

First, there was the opening scene where you and your party fight a way too big, way too fierce dragon. It seems like a hopeless fight. And it is. You lose. You barely survive. But you do survive, and it's because the littlest, lamest, most annoying character in your party (who, you're told, is your dearest friend) jumps to the front of the fight and saves you. There was more characterization in that moment - I CARED more about that little guy - than I had ever experienced in a game. An NPC had done something heroic. I loved it.

Image credit: YouTube walkthrough from Master of Conquest

The Little Guy Who Saves You, or "The Do You Leave Him Behind?" moment
And your little friend wasn't done. A short while later, you're at an inn where the little annoying guy is recuperating from wounds he got in the fight with the dragon. He seems like he's at death's door. Suddenly, a pack of bad guys shows up at the front entrance. What are you going to do? You're badly outmatched and if you stay and fight them, you're sure to lose.

As you contemplate your options - all of them bad - the little annoying guy appears. He's dragged himself off his deathbed and, basically, says, "You go (cough! cough!). You (cough! cough!) have important things to do. I'll hold them off." Whoa! What do you do? Do you stand by his side and fight what's probably a losing battle? Or do you leave him to his fate and run away so you can save the world?

It's an awesome moment, a real dilemma, the kind of choice we are all asked to make in the real world at times, but are almost never asked to make in games. Powerful, powerful stuff. The kind of stuff only a game can do.

The Ever-Changing Base, or Who Did YOU Rescue?
And then there was the base. Ah, the base… Once you've experienced a bit of the world, you get a base - a big, empty pillar of rock. Nothing much going on there. But it doesn't stay that way.

See, there are over 100 characters in this world who can be saved or recruited. And when you save them, they show up in your base, giving you the benefit of their knowledge and/or skills. Some of them are generals who command armies, helpful when you go into big army vs. army battles that are a big part of the game. Some of them offer tactical advice that you can take or ignore. Some provide armor and such you can take into small-scale, but still important duels. All of them give you something, and who's there changes the look and feel of your base.

It's your unique base, unlike every other player's base. As I remember it, sometimes the characters don't play nice with each other and refuse to live together. So you can't have them all! And your base becomes an extension of your "self." It's awesome.

I've written a customizable base into every design document I've worked on since I played Suikoden, but for some reason, it's always the first thing cut, the first thing scoped out of existence. It just never seems to fit. But someday. Wait and see. Someday. And now you'll know the idea was stolen right from my memories of Suikoden.

The "Do You Fight Your Father?" moment
***SPOILER ALERT***

Finally, there's a point near the end of the game where you realize that one of the worst bad guys in the game is your father! That revelation was genuinely shocking. But even more shocking was what came next. Your father challenged you to a fight.

And you had to choose whether to fight him or not!

Fight your father to save the world. But he's family. But he's a bad guy. But he's your dad!

That was a put-the-controller-down moment for me. I don't think I had ever been asked to make a choice like that in a game before. Leaving your little annoying buddy behind was easy. Deciding who to recruit? Piece of cake. Do you fight your father?... That was a big emotional deal. Or maybe it just reflects something about my own family. But even if that's "all" it is - a personal dilemma born of my own childhood - well, HOW COOL IS THAT? A game forcing you to think about your real life? Powerful, powerful stuff.

So that's it. Those were the moments and ideas that rocked me pretty hard. Frankly, I have an abysmal memory and I've often wondered if they actually happened or if they're just a result of my fevered imagination and not really part of the game at all. If it's the latter, don't tell me - let me have my little fantasies, my glorious memories of the game I remember playing even if it isn't the one I actually played… If it's the latter, take this little essay as an exercise in flawed imagination and wishful thinking… This is how I remember the game and how I want to remember the game. So don't burst my bubble, all you quibblers out there, okay?

Anyway, here's the kicker: As I remember it, most of the choices you made in Suikoden were fake. You didn't REALLY have a choice - you HAD to leave your little buddy behind and you HAD to fight your father. The game channeled you back to the option it wanted you to pick in the first place. But, conceptually, the idea that a game could give you that kind of soul-searching choice - the kind of choice that says something about the human being playing the game, not the character being played?

That kind of choice is what games can do that no other medium can. I was blown away by that, in Suikoden. And I told myself that that kind of choice, ladled on top of the ethical dilemmas posed by Ultima IV, that was something I wanted to do in my own work. Major life choices ladled on top of ethical dilemmas became kind of a grail for me. And I owe it all to a JRPG, an example of a genre I basically don't like. Go figure.

The only bad thing about Suikoden, for me, is how damn expensive it is to buy a copy these days. You see, I foolishly loaned my copy to someone. Can't remember who. And I never got it back. I like to think my copy's been passed on from one gamer to another, inspiring each of them the way it inspired me. But if you have my old copy of Suikoden, do me a favor and give it back to me, okay? I miss it.

Upcoming Why I Love columns:

• Tuesday, September 26 - Overcooked's Phil Duncan on Storage Inc.
• Tuesday, October 10 - Dizzy creators The Oliver Twins on the BBC Micro
• Tuesday, October 24 - Yooka-Laylee's Gavin Price on Super Mario Kart
• Tuesday, November 7 - Wasteland 3's Brian Fargo on Inside

I wonder if "The Do You Leave Him Behind?" moment inspired the 'Ton Hotel choice in Deus Ex (which is not a fake choice itself).

 

[Ash]

I don't like JRPGs. I find them basically kind of dull. When I think of them, I think of contrived, non-interactive semi-cinematic story elements intercut with random combat encounters, introduced to relieve the tedium of traversing an otherwise empty, uninteresting landscape. I think of party-building and positioning for maximum efficiency in slow-paced, turn-based combat encounters that feel totally artificial and, for want of a better term, "gamey." I think of weapon and spell creation systems that take forever and require excruciating attention to detail on par with (and about as much fun as) doing your taxes. That's what I think of when I think about JRPGs (which isn't very often).

JRPG is far too broad a category of game to lump together like this. It'd be like saying I hate WRPGs as they're all x when there's iso RPGs, sRPGs, Bioware dullard RPGs, Immersive Sim RPGs, Open World RPGs, FPS/RPGs, RTw/P, first person grid-based blobbers, or traditional top-down Ultima.
Has Spector played Vagrant Story (RTwP)? Kings Field (FP/RPG)? Parasite Eve 2 (Survival Horror RPG)? Final Fantasy Tactics (sRPG)? They're all vastly different games from one another, and some even vastly different from what you'd find in the WRPG scene.
To put it another way, labelling all JRPGs top-down turn-based is like saying all WRPGs are Wizardry and Ultima and pretending they didn't evolve and branch out.

Even among the more traditional JRPG, maybe there is more "life-changing" JRPGs like Suikoden for him out there?

The only bad thing about Suikoden, for me, is how damn expensive it is to buy a copy these days. You see, I foolishly loaned my copy to someone. Can't remember who. And I never got it back. I like to think my copy's been passed on from one gamer to another, inspiring each of them the way it inspired me. But if you have my old copy of Suikoden, do me a favor and give it back to me, okay? I miss it.

Emulators? You can play damn near any console game that isn't from the last decade (last decade consisting of too much worthless garbage anyway) on your PC. You've already played the game, meaning you've bought it in the past or borrowed it from a friend and therefore the legally grey area of ROMs shouldn't be an ethics issue for you in this instance. Not to mention it's likely Suikoden isn't even officially on sale anymore.

As for my "life-changing" games, some are probably JRPGs. One definitely was Deus Ex, so kudos to you. There's a lot of damn good games out there, especially from the glorious golden 90s age. Shame so much history is forgotten and/or disrespected out of ignorance *cough*.

 

[Venser]

Not sure if these lectures were posted already but these videos are must watch IMO.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC4AF467F9391D767

 

[LESS T_T]

Warren Spector on the canceled Half-life 2 episode he worked on in 2005 (not directly related to the elusive Episode 3 or Half-life 3 by Valve, or Laidlaw's plot): https://www.pcgamesn.com/half-life-3/half-life-3-ravenholm-episode-warren-spector-junction-point

Warren Spector reveals how the magnet gun would have worked in cancelled Half-Life episode

Warren Spector has revealed that the Half-Life expansion Junction Point were working on told the story of how Ravenholm became what it was in Half-Life 2. He’s also explained exactly how the magnet gun, the tasty new feature of the expansion, would have worked.

We’ve known Spector and Junction Point worked on a Half-Life episode since 2015, when Spector talked about it in an interview with Game Informer. Though it was only earlier this year, when ValveTime leaked images of the unfinished game, that we learned it had a segment in Ravenholm. Speaking to PC Gamer in their latest issue, Spector reveals that, in fact, the whole episode was set in Ravenholm and at a time before we visited it in Half-Life 2.

“We wanted to tell the story of how Ravenholm became what it was in the Half-Life universe,” Spector says. “That seemed like an underdeveloped story that fans would really enjoy. In addition to fleshing out the story of Ravenholm, we wanted to see more of Father Grigori and see how he became the character he later became in Half-Life 2.”

ValveTime didn’t just publish images of the maps Junction Point were working on, they also revealed that one of the big additions of the expansion was a magnet gun. Though, there were no hints to exactly how it would work - except for the suggestively explanatory name.

Unlike Half-Life 2’s gravity gun, which let you pull objects to yourself and fire them out at your enemies, Spector explains that the magnet gun let you “fire a sticky magnetic ball at a surface and anything made of metal would be forcibly attracted to it.”

Spector gave a number of examples of how it would work, saying: “You could fire it at a wall across an alley from a metal dumpster and wham! The dumpster would fly across the alley and slam into the wall. You can imagine the effect on anything approaching you in the alley - either squashed or blocked. Or you could be fighting two robots and hit one with a magnet ball and they’d slam together making movement or combat impossible for them. Or you could be trying to get across a high-up open space with an I-beam hanging from a cable in the middle. Stand on the I-beam, fire a magnet ball at the far wall, the beam swings across the gap, walk off it, done.”

Spector admits in the interview that he doesn't know why Valve cancelled the game, Junction Point had been working on it for a year and were just getting comfortable with the Source engine when the news came through. He's not bitter, though, as it allowed him to work on Epic Mickey with Disney.

 

[Ash]

Very interesting.

Spector admits in the interview that he doesn't know why Valve cancelled the game, Junction Point had been working on it for a year and were just getting comfortable with the Source engine when the news came through.

Very interesting indeed.

 

[LESS T_T]

He's not bitter, though, as it allowed him to work on Epic Mickey with Disney.

Funny. After Valve also canceled Arkane's Half-life 2 episode, Arkane experienced the darkest days of its history, and acquired by Bethesda in the end.

Valve, the company that gave blows to two immersive sim developers.

 

[Ash]

Too much ambitious and interesting game design for Valve. 2006 (or whenever it was) JPoint and Arkane may have still been inclined at that stage, and would have made HL2 something more than a tech demo. Perhaps something much more, though unlikely. It would have the HL2 title so it has to be pureblood FPS else the fanbase would rage.

...ultimately purely speculation though and there could have been a legitimate reason for cutting them off in both cases. I wonder how things would have turned out for both developers if they were allowed to finish. Possibly much, much better. Perhaps both would have been in a position to make actual Immersive Sims over the last decade without all the extreme commercialisation.
Junction Point and Arkane acquired by Valve and their infinite funds? An interesting alternate history for sure.
Then again Valve doesn't really act as a publisher aside from publishing mods from their community under the Valve label. Team Fortress. Counter Strike. Dota etc. Correct me if I'm wrong. But I digress. It's just interesting to ponder how different things could have been.

 

[LESS T_T]

It's also the curse of 2000s. Consoles getting bigger, publishers getting reluctant to work with independent studios, global financial crisis...

Junction Point had several potentially interesting projects. Sleeping Giants (an epic fantasy action RPG), Ninja Gold (a contemporary ninja action game that collaborated with John Woo), and Necessary Evil (a Deus Ex spiritual successor). All cancelled and/or rejected by publishers. I guess being a Disney fan is not the only reason Spector accepted their offer.

Not to mention Arkane's darkest days.

 

[Zep Zepo]

It's Warren....He's full of tired, old ideas. It's not a mystery why they get cancelled.

Zep--

 

[LESS T_T]

Spector was at a game dev conference at Madison, Wisconsin. Apparently he did a keynote, Epic Mickey postmortem, and some panel about narrative in games. (An article from local paper about his keynote, it's his usual talk about success and meaning in game development.)

This business publication asked him some serious question: http://www.ibmadison.com/In-Business-Madison/October-2017/Take-Five-Warren-Spectors-gamesmanship/

IB: Do you consider Deus Ex to be your Gone With the Wind or Casablanca?

Spector: Wow, no one’s ever asked me anything like this before. At some level, I think it’s for others to assess the quality or nature or significance of the work, not me. And games are such a young medium [that] even after being around for about 40 years it’s hard to say we’ve achieved the level of sophistication of a Casablanca or a Citizen Kane or the professional polish of a Gone With the Wind.

What I will say is that I’m immensely proud of Deus Ex. That’s partly because the team came so close to realizing the dream I had when I conceived the game. The team did all the real work, just to be clear — I mostly tried to stay out of their way! But it’s also because I’m so amazed and pleased that 17 years after we shipped people still care about and play the game. That’s really special. Almost never happens.

The fact that the interviewer didn't say Citizen Kane tells you that he is not a game journalist.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.pcgamer.com/warren-spect...venholm-in-his-cancelled-half-life-2-episode/

Warren Spector discusses his cancelled Half-Life 2 Ravenholm Episode
The magnet gun, Father Grigori, and more.

Junction Point Studios is best known for developing the Wii-exclusive action adventure Epic Mickey. But this wasn’t the first project for the studio founded by Warren Spector after his departure from Ion Storm Austin. Somewhere between the end of 2005 and mid-2007, Junction Point studios worked on an additional Episode for Half-Life 2 that was ultimately cancelled by Valve.

In the interceding years, only a handful of details about the Episode have emerged. The Episode would have introduced a new weapon called the 'magnet gun', although it was never explained how the gun worked. In addition, earlier this year, purported images of the project leaked online, depicting what appeared to be the zombie-infested town of Ravenholm carpeted in snow. But whether these environments formed part of Junction Point’s final vision for the project, or to what extent Ravenholm would have appeared in the Episode, was never determined.

Now, though, PC Gamer can confirm that not only was Ravenholm to feature in Junction Point’s Episode, but it was to be the focus of the entire game. "We wanted to tell the story of how Ravenholm became what it was in the Half-Life universe. That seemed like an underdeveloped story that fans would really enjoy," says Warren Spector. "In addition to fleshing out the story of Ravenholm, we wanted to see more of Father Grigori and see how he came to be the character he later became in Half-Life 2."

Part of the reason little has been revealed about the project is because Spector’s memory of that time is hazy at best. Aside from that Father Grigori would have featured prominently, Spector remembers little else about how the story would have unfolded. When the images of the Episode were placed online, the map’s content suggested two characters named Duncan and Scooter would accompany the player, but Spector cannot recall them. Indeed, he isn’t even sure whether the player would have assumed the role of Gordon Freeman or played a different character.

What Spector can recall, and in considerable detail, is the magnet gun, and how it would have functioned. "If I remember correctly, it was team lead Matt Baer who came up with the idea for the magnet gun," he says. "It went through several iterations, but the one I remember was one where you’d fire a sticky magnetic ball at a surface and anything made of metal would be forcefully attracted to it."

The magnet gun was Junction Point’s twist on the gravity gun idea from the original Half-Life 2. Instead of drawing objects into the player’s grasp, it would attract metal objects to a remote location designated by the player via firing the magnetic balls at a surface. Spector cites several colourful examples of how this could have been used.

"You could fire it at a wall across an alley from a heavy metal dumpster and wham! The dumpster would fly across the alley and slam into the wall. You can imagine the effect on anything approaching you in the alley – either squashed or blocked. Or you could be fighting two robots and hit one with a magnet ball and they’d slam together making movement or combat impossible for them. Or you could be trying to get across a high-up open space with an I-beam hanging from a cable in the middle. Stand on the I-beam, fire a magnet ball at the far wall, the beam swings across the gap, walk off it, done."

Although Half-Life has always been a linear shooter, Half-Life 2's Episode Two expansion experimented with a slightly more open-ended structure, especially toward its conclusion. Meanwhile, Spector’s own games have always been geared toward letting the player explore and interact with the environment in numerous ways. Would we have seen an open world version of Ravenholm in Junction Point’s Episode? Spector says no. Well, mostly no. “We would have followed the Half-Life pattern. Half-Life players had expectations and thwarting them would have been crazy. Having said that, introducing the magnet gun would inevitably have opened up new gameplay possibilities players would likely have exploited in unpredictable ways," he says.

This was Junction Point’s rough design pitch for its Half-Life 2 Episode. But how much had Junction Point put into production at the point of cancellation? Spector says it had "put in a solid year" of work into development and had a "small area that demonstrated how the game would look when we were done" in place, alongside a "vertical slice" that showed the magnet gun in action.

Spector doesn’t know why Valve decided to ultimately cancel the project. But he describes the news as "frustrating". "We had just figured out how to really use the Source engine, how to get the most out of it and we had just started building what I thought was amazing stuff. And that’s when Valve pulled the plug," he explains.

"To this day, I don’t really know why [Valve] decided not to move ahead with the Episode, but they did and, frankly, that worked out okay. If they hadn’t we might not have been available to work on Epic Mickey for Disney," he concludes. "Everything happens for a reason, I guess."

 

[LESS T_T]

NYU Game Center recently released an audio recording of Spector's 2009 guest lecture:

NYU Game Center Lecture Series Presents Warren Spector
April 16, 2009

Warren Spector is a veteran computer game designer. He is known for having worked to merge elements of role-playing games and first-person shooters. He is best known for his legendary cyberpunk FPS/RPG hybrid, Deus Ex (and its subsequent sequel, Deus Ex: Invisible War).

There's also Marc Leblanc (a Looking Glass amumni) talk if you're interested.

 

[LESS T_T]

Spector was at a game dev conference at Madison, Wisconsin. Apparently he did a keynote, Epic Mickey postmortem, and some panel about narrative in games. (An article from local paper about his keynote, it's his usual talk about success and meaning in game development.)

No keynote video yet.

 

[Cael]

Spector was the original SJW and his love was class warfare. You see it in every game he touched including Ultima (7 and Underworld 2 in particular). To have him speaking of game narrative would like getting Terry Prachett's Death talk about artistic expression (he can't; it's all black to him).

 

[LESS T_T]

No keynote video yet.

Apparently he worked on Raven Software's Shadowcaster a bit.

At 37:15, he mentions that he lost his best level builder and his best writer on Epic Mickey because they couldn't get around to make a Mickey Mouse game. I think the level builder and writer are most likely Steve Powers and Sheldon Pacotti.

 

[LESS T_T]

 

[Zep Zepo]

Warren is, was and always has been a suit for the publishers. He stole his fame from underneath Looking Glass / Blue Sky.

I doubt he ever created a single game design on his own (unless he stole it from someone else and claimed credit, like he did with UU 1 and 2)

He busted Looking Glasses balls for EA as a suit during UU, and STILL claimed credit.

He's a terrible person and a thief.

Notice...HE IS NOT ON THE UA TEAM...Hmmmm...Makes one think, don't it. They remember the fucker who fucked them over originally.

Zep--

 

[Cael]

Warren is, was and always has been a suit for the publishers. He stole his fame from underneath Looking Glass / Blue Sky.

I doubt he ever created a single game design on his own (unless he stole it from someone else and claimed credit, like he did with UU 1 and 2)

He busted Looking Glasses balls for EA as a suit during UU, and STILL claimed credit.

He's a terrible person and a thief.

Notice...HE IS NOT ON THE UA TEAM...Hmmmm...Makes one think, don't it. They remember the fucker who fucked them over originally.

Zep--

I read somewhere that the stupid, completely unnecessary and potentially non-standard gameover game ending servants' strike in UW2 was Spector's baby and the writer used his self-insert in U7:2 as further proof of his class warfare preaching/crusade.

Colour me unimpressed with the guy.

 

[J1M]

Warren is, was and always has been a suit for the publishers. He stole his fame from underneath Looking Glass / Blue Sky.

I doubt he ever created a single game design on his own (unless he stole it from someone else and claimed credit, like he did with UU 1 and 2)

He busted Looking Glasses balls for EA as a suit during UU, and STILL claimed credit.

He's a terrible person and a thief.

Notice...HE IS NOT ON THE UA TEAM...Hmmmm...Makes one think, don't it. They remember the fucker who fucked them over originally.

Zep--

He admits as much under the guise of false humility in some of his talks at smaller venues.

 

[Ash]

He busted Looking Glasses balls for EA as a suit during UU, and STILL claimed credit.

Source? From what I understand he got what they were aiming for, revered it, and tried to communicate it to EA the best he could. such as stressing to EA "Don't you get it? It's going to change the world [of gaming and 3D graphics rendering]". But if you Mr Zepo are like me our information on the subject is somewhat limited, so I hope you're not spouting ill-informed bullshit.
Also some ball busting can be valuable, if not misguided. I recall Spector mentioning disagreeing with LGS devs implementing Tri-op mini-games in Shock 1. I have to agree, they don't add a great deal of value and priorities probably should have been focused elsewhere, like in making the core gameplay more polished. Yet at the same time I love the LGS kitchen sink approach and the novelty factor of the mini-games...
And hey, he disagreed yet the mini-games still made it in, so clearly he didn't interfere with their creative vision much at all, at least on Shock 1.

 

[ciox]

Unless you're about to claim that the Deus Ex design document is a forgery, I think it's pretty safe to say that Warren Spector does or at least did know his stuff.

 

[LESS T_T]

I don't know about his practical and actual game design skills as much as many of you (oh, he wrote some pen and paper rpg modules many years ago so there's that at least), but as a producer he seems to have very valuable traits:

- getting media attention - could lead to more exposure, and then sales
- his personal network - as one of the oldest working game developers
- somehow (likely helped by the above) he can persuade investors - he helped Otherside to get investments for UA even before joined as Director of Austin
- a coherent vision - which aligns pretty well with some of "Codexian values" (RPG-ness, C&C, hates games as a service, prefers a game with narrative and ending, but much more focus on action than telling)

If you are a game developer, and someone in your team could bring money, attention, and talents to your team, well, what's not to like him. (Of course as a gamer's view, I guess it's a bit different story.)