I saw a talk by Warren Spector about 10 years ago in Australia. It was an interesting experience - he's not at all who I expected. When I think of the greats of game development, I think of people with a singular vision and a deep drive to create beautiful things, like Jonathan Blow. Warren Spector wasn't like that at all. He was much more focused around how to build big teams and make them succeed.
A few nuggets from his talk, as best as I can remember it a decade later:
- He's bought several houses on his street and he's filled them with lots of stuff from various games he's made. He describes it as a sort of living museum to himself and his work.
- He said you shouldn't expect games to be fun when you first get them working. He described making Deus Ex, and said they spent years on the game and the first time they played it it wasn't fun at all. He thinks you shouldn't worry about that, and just make something with content in it and then make it fun to play at the end of the process.
- He seemed very pro-crunch. Like, to him it felt like the most obvious thing in the world that people would "work super hard" near the end of a video game project to make it the best it could be.
Its interesting - after hearing him talk about that I kinda get why his games turn out how they do. I've played a lot of his games. I grew up on Wing Commander. System Shock 2 is of the best gaming experiences I've ever had. But take Deus Ex - There were about 8 different creative ways to finish deus ex's first level. But by halfway through the game, it was very samey and the levels had mostly linear paths. The team obviously didn't have time to finish it properly. The boss battles were even outsourced to another team and they didn't fit the rest of the game.
But having seen him speak, I doubt that would have particularly bothered Spector.
He's clearly successful by any measure, but I still came away from his talk somehow not respecting the guy as much as I thought I would. My impression was that he cares a lot more about financial success and his personal image than he does making great work. Apparently Hayao Miyazaki rewatched Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind decades after making it and he was on the verge of tears, saying "Its still not done!". I can't imagine Warren Spector ever caring about his work like that. And thats fine - he can have whatever values he wants. But his values aren't my values.
> My impression was that he cares a lot more about financial success and his personal image than he does making great work.
Well, that's not the way he sees himself, from the article,
> People have appreciated the work my teams and I have done and have expressed it loudly and affectionately. I may or may not deserve accolades, but I've been lucky enough to receive them and I'm grateful for all the kind words and well-wishes I've received. Maybe it's just my ego, but what I consider to be my successes have nothing to do with reviews, sales or revenue. Success for me is connection with players (and not in the data-collecting way some of you may be thinking). I've had people send me handmade plush toys based on characters in my games. I've had people send me artwork they were inspired to create. I've had people tell me a game I worked on helped get them through chemotherapy. Autism. Cerebral palsy. I ran into a young woman at Disneyland dressed as Ortensia, in a homemade costume, before the character was a star in the Disney firmament. “I started my company because of your game,” I’ve been told. And “I changed the way I thought about design because of a game you worked on.” Now those are success criteria that have kept me going, even when things got tough.
What he seems to care about the most is that his work has an impact on the players in some way - which I think is the goal of many artists.
Even reading that I stand by my impression of him. In that passage I hear about how much he loves the impact his games have had on others. (Cynically through the lens of all the compliments he’s gotten on his work). But nothing about what his work means to him.
Forget his fans. Does he like his games? Does he play them? It’s hard to tell from that passage, just as it was hard to tell from the talk of his I saw all those years ago. I don’t know if that’s something he really cares about. In contrast, I don’t think Jonathan blow or Hayao Miyazaki really think about their fans much at all when they look back on their work. They both seem much more focused on their own direct relationship to what they’re making.
Again, there’s nothing wrong with that. But personally I find artists who make art for themselves, according to their own aesthetic to be more fascinating people to follow. I loved Deus Ex. But games like The Witness or even Stardew Valley somehow feel like they have more soul in them. It’s an oblique criticism though. I have made neither kind of game.
He just told you what his work means to him. The part that he enjoys the most, the part that makes it worth it, is that his work in some way leaves an impression on other.
As you said, he is a creator that makes games for his audience rather than himself. As he himself has stated multiple times that his games are to let players tell their own personal stories hence his emphasis on player freedom and letting players have unique (as possible) paths through the game - as opposed to to the “players must experience everything we created” philosophy.
That doesn’t mean his work has no “soul”, frankly it has multiple souls in them as they are the collaborative work of an entire team.
Were they? I’m pretty sure the original deus ex also had some pretty bland, generic fps bullet sponge bosses too. Especially near the end. But it’s probably been 20 years since I played it, so it might be blending with the prequels in my mind.
I totally stand by my comment about the level design getting more linear the further into the game you get. It has a great, ambitious promise of playing however you like and then it just didn’t really carry that promise through to completion. It seemed like they just didn’t have the budget or time to retrofit later levels once they figured out what made their game special and they just left it like that. It’s still a great game, which is what makes it such a pity it didn’t feel finished.
> I’m pretty sure the original deus ex also had some pretty bland, generic fps bullet sponge bosses too
I don't see how. That game really wasn't a FPS; firefights didn't last long before you were crippled in some way and then killed. Your arsenal was nothing but pellet guns with varying DPS. Realistic difficulty lived up to its name; the game really discouraged violence and Gunther's fight could be avoided altogether with a killphrase. I think there's even one or two bosses you can simply run away from?
> I totally stand by my comment about the level design getting more linear the further into the game you get.
I distinctly remember this being a thing for Deus Ex 2 especially. IIRC it wasn't even the same developer and everyone hated it. The first few areas were cool and sandboxy but by the end of that game it was basically Duke Nukem On Ice.
I was also at the ACMI interview with Warren but I remember it pretty differently. My main takeaway is that he was obsessed with player choice and freedom.
FWIW, Deus Ex was made during the unlimited time/unlimited budget years of ION Storm. The later games had various problems (often due to constraints of making them work on consoles) but the first Deus Ex is almost perfect
> He said you shouldn't expect games to be fun when you first get them working. He described making Deus Ex, and said they spent years on the game and the first time they played it it wasn't fun at all. He thinks you shouldn't worry about that, and just make something with content in it and then make it fun to play at the end of the process.
This seems to go counter to modern practices, which is to not bother with content at all at the start, and to "find the fun" in a gray box level first.
> From a game design perspective, we established an iterative process in which we create a basic prototype that’s fun to play, even without exciting graphics and fully implemented features. We have a system, we play and then improve, then again we play and improve, but this is done throughout the development process. We keep what works and get rid of what doesn’t. This approach ensures that we remain focused on the gameplay experience every step of the way and deliver a fun game.
I think that’s also Jonathan Blow’s approach in a way.
Figure out a fun mechanic and build a game around it. He even had a talk where he discussed several game prototypes that had mechanics he initially thought could be fun, but after implementing weren’t great so moved on to different projects [0].
I've seen Spector tell this story a few times, and the point as I understood it was that the team was shocked and dismayed to realize that the game they'd worked on so hard wasn't fun. They ended up tossing out big chunks of their original design document in order to make the changes necessary to make it fun. The lesson was "don't let your grand plans distract you from making a fun game", not "don't worry about making a fun game, focus on your grand plans".
The two are not mutually exclusive. Your "thing" may not be great when you first start out, but it is important to get content out and see if you can make it fun.
Deus ex is sort of that way. In deus ex it is the conversation engine. It was the first thing they made and is really the mechanic around which the game is built.
Yes absolutely. Or maybe if I’m being more fair, great work to him is decided by the audience and the acclaim his games get. For other creators, they care about whether their creations meet their personal aesthetics for what feels fun for them to play.
And that’s fine, I just personally find games made like that a bit less interesting. I end up playing games like Factorio and Braid a lot more than games like Diablo 4.
A few nuggets from his talk, as best as I can remember it a decade later:
- He's bought several houses on his street and he's filled them with lots of stuff from various games he's made. He describes it as a sort of living museum to himself and his work.
- He said you shouldn't expect games to be fun when you first get them working. He described making Deus Ex, and said they spent years on the game and the first time they played it it wasn't fun at all. He thinks you shouldn't worry about that, and just make something with content in it and then make it fun to play at the end of the process.
- He seemed very pro-crunch. Like, to him it felt like the most obvious thing in the world that people would "work super hard" near the end of a video game project to make it the best it could be.
Its interesting - after hearing him talk about that I kinda get why his games turn out how they do. I've played a lot of his games. I grew up on Wing Commander. System Shock 2 is of the best gaming experiences I've ever had. But take Deus Ex - There were about 8 different creative ways to finish deus ex's first level. But by halfway through the game, it was very samey and the levels had mostly linear paths. The team obviously didn't have time to finish it properly. The boss battles were even outsourced to another team and they didn't fit the rest of the game.
But having seen him speak, I doubt that would have particularly bothered Spector.
He's clearly successful by any measure, but I still came away from his talk somehow not respecting the guy as much as I thought I would. My impression was that he cares a lot more about financial success and his personal image than he does making great work. Apparently Hayao Miyazaki rewatched Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind decades after making it and he was on the verge of tears, saying "Its still not done!". I can't imagine Warren Spector ever caring about his work like that. And thats fine - he can have whatever values he wants. But his values aren't my values.