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Having a really good physics system allows for unexpected emergent gameplay, which is of course the most magical thing and tremendously rewarding for a game designer (like Warren Spector. Ok, like almost everyone)

Warren Spector approached Disney with a different game idea but they pitched him on making a Mickey Mouse game and he ripped up his other idea.

Folks on Warren Spector’s Epic Mickey team convinced Bob Iger to get the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit back.

Warren Spector put up televisions around the Epic Mickey team workspace that just played Mickey Mouse cartoons constantly

Warren Spector says you should never ride the rides at Disneyland with all the lights turned on because all the magic will be destroyed by the seamy reality of patches and acoustic tile and duct tape (me: but what if I think those things… are magic…)

Warren Spector was dissuaded from doing a grimdark mean Mickey by a focus tester who, according to Warren, looked like an ex-con and insisted that the character design not ruin his childhood

Warren Spector says it’s a good idea to find out where a (corporate creative brand guideline) boundary is by going way over it and then pulling back, because if you creep up to it until you get negative feedback you will always fall short

Warren Spector hates the Epic Mickey vertical slice, in which you could paint objects down to the pixel, and once again insists that vertical slices are total nonsense

Warren Spector has the quality of all good creative directors which is that he constantly says “I’m not smart enough to do this [thing that an artist, technical designer, programmer, etc he worked with] at all, I’m just lucky I worked with someone who was!!”

Warren Spector has OCM syndrome (can’t do anything without One Clever Mechanic that’s new) which is why Epic Mickey has Paint and Thinner

“Reward Observant Players” was a design motto on Epic Mickey, which differentiates one player’s experience from another

Warren Spector says Disney’s internal mandate was “we make entertainment for families” but Pixar’s was ”we make entertainment for everyone,” and being Warren Spector, he insisted on trying to do the latter with Epic Mickey and feels that he succeeded. <3

Notably Warren Spector’s personal anecdotes on who “everyone” is include a lot of stories about accessibility and people with disabilities who found the game moving

“I couldn’t care less about making a lot of money. I want to touch people and know that I’ve done that. That is one of my success criteria.”

Warren Spector is very happy that people still talk about and play and remaster his games (recent System Shock and Epic Mickey remasters etc)

Warren Spector says that every time someone believes a game is ready to exit pre-production and go into production, they are wrong, the game is actually not ready and would benefit from more time in pre-production.

Warren Spector says he has stupidly made the mistake many times of trying to make something work which just doesn’t work, and you should stop and cut your losses (or cede the problem to someone else!) before you make nine or twenty-three attempts

Warren Spector says “Always Be Demoable.” When you have five minutes of gameplay, get people playing it. When you have 30 minutes of gameplay, get people playing it. Classic advice: don’t talk during playtests; but do use them to settle arguments decisively

Warren Spector says his games, other immersive sims in lineage (e.g. Dishonored) and the Zelda:BoTW games express the same overall philosophy of games: small, linked sandboxes, player freedom through systems, multiple unplanned solutions, consequence and recovery, emergence, shared authorship

“If two players describe the same experience of a mission or an encounter, start over. We have failed.”

Warren Spector is one of these people who bans the word “fun” and challenges anyone to come up with a meaningful definition. (OK I’ll take the bait: it’s a non-obvious diminutive of the word “pleasure,” less threatening, less serious, smaller, etc.)

Warren Spector labels himself “the king of the cult classics.”