Post

Warren Spector’s talk, encompassing Deus Ex and Epic Mickey and much more, is streaming now at twitch.tv/nyugamecenter but ALSO by request, we are not recording or keeping this stream! Tune in if you want to see it.

I’m not going to try and live-post this whole talk but I will provide some notes: Warren Spector has been so far been unable to convince his mother that games are cooler than movies

Warren Spector is a strong advocate for carving out your own space in existing franchises (side-stories, separate locations, alternate universes) to have some creative control — Ultima: Worlds of Adventure, Ultima VII: Serpent Isle, Ultima Underworld all examples vs. Garriott’s mainline

Ideas are easy, ideas are irrelevant, don’t value them. Warren Spector has exactly 100 ideas for potential games sitting on his hard drive at home. But why work on a particular game, say Deus Ex? Because you BURN TO DO IT

The things Warren Spector was stubborn about with Deus Ex which he was told were impossible: mashing up too many different genres; his concept of sharing authorship with players

Ooh an update to Warren Spector’s classic 2000s “why can’t we make a game where you FALL IN LOVE!!” Warren Spector believes that games are good at “doing verbs” like run jump shoot blah blah, but still don‘t know how to do “being verbs” like being… in love! (Me: uh… what about loving?)

Warren Spector believes that if you’re going to make a game you should have something to ask via the game — a question posed to players, not just something to tell players

Warren Spector wanted to set Deus Ex in the present, but was so concerned with making everything realistic and functional that he decided to move it to 2052 so that the computers and phones didn’t have to work realistically

Part of the setting premise of Deus Ex is “what if every conspiracy theory you’ve heard of (in 1998) WAS TRUE?!”

Warren Spector’s Deus Ex team was all guys (but I will bet someone who wants to research it $20 that at least one of them has transitioned since then)

Warren Spector wanted Deus Ex to feature a massive war with thousands of soldiers on each side and a prison with a thousand prisoners, and now admits that having unrealistic goals was a problem for production

Harvey Smith told Warren Spector that his elegant skill system was terrible and sucked, and of course Harvey was right

uh yeah, one of the dev team has. not gonna tag her but yeah.

Yeah I knew it