Warren Spector Q&A

[Liquidize105]

Warren Spector answered some questions from FiringSquad concerning his new base of operation in FS's latest Q&A (http://www.firingsquad.com/features/junction_point_studios_interview/).

FiringSquad: First, you left Ion Storm and Eidos after the releases of Deus Ex 2 and Thief III, both of which were considered disappointments. Looking back what lessons did you learn about game development from working at Ion Storm?

Warren Spector: Well, first let’s be clear about one thing--both DX:IW and T:DS could have been better, sure, but that’s true of every game any of us ever make. There’s a great quote my wife, Caroline (a wonderful writer whose latest book, Scars, is available on amazon.com…) dug up that goes “A work of art is never finished, only abandoned.” That’s totally true. And, for the record, I don’t consider either game a disappointment—both teams took big chances, tried some really hard stuff, achieved some big goals, fell short of others… I can’t look back and feel disappointed in any significant way. Okay, that out of the way… You learn something from every development experience and, mostly what I learned was that running big projects is not the same as running small ones, and experience gained on smaller projects doesn’t necessarily scale well. So you better have people around you who understand big software development projects. Oh, and communication is everything on a really big project. Getting everyone on the same page, making a coherent game, is very, very hard!
That's great Warren, but that's not what the fans and the consumers wanted. The fact that Deus Ex: Invisible War, and Thief: Deadly Shadows to a much lesser extent, turned out not to be the faithful/evolutionary sequels their diehard fans had dreamt about meant that they "disappointed" their core audience. They were deviations, not continuations.

I still had fun, sure, but IW was not decorated enough to don the name of Deus Ex in my eyes. And your work, Mr. Spector, I'm still a fan of, but the sooner you face up to the fact the better.

[bapenguin]

Man...JCal gets a serious amount of interviews. Firing Squad is in for a real treat now that they brought him on board.

[Taco]

I tried to get into DX2 a couple times. I just can't.

Unified ammo....shudder......

[Taco]

Jcal's the man, always has been(at least going back to Stomped), the guy must spend 20 hours a day hunting down news and interviews, and has crazy connections it seems.

[Liquidize105]

Man...JCal gets a serious amount of interviews. Firing Squad is in for a real treat now that they brought him on board.
Sigh, it's not an interview, it's not even that great a Q&A. It's just bunch of questions. But yeah, you're right about him getting a lot done.

I'll step it up this year, I can feel it :)

Actually I contacted Junction Point as well, it probly won't be live but we'll see.

[Royal Fool]

I didn't like the unified ammo idea a lot, it just changed so many things. If I remember correctly it was also introduced pretty late into the development cycle... almost felt like a way to minimize all the balancing of weapons (Which doesn't really matter as much in a singleplayer game, but still). That and the new augmentation system which was in no way as great as the first one.

Overall, good game with lots of meat but the final parts were sloppy.

As for Thief III... well.... it was only one-third of what it could have been.

[mixuk]

I still don't understand the big deal about unified ammo. Gee, you don't have specific ammo for the pistol and another one for the shotgun? Big fucking deal.

DXIW's problems were more in the environments IMO. They were way smaller, which attributed to less options regarding gameplay and you never really felt like you were outside in an open world. Unlike in the first Deus Ex.

Said that, It's still a pretty good game. Underrated, for sure.

[mixuk]

Oh, and Thief 3 was far from a disappointment. Actually I have no idea why people consider it a failure (except sales-wise).

[Taco]

I still don't understand the big deal about unified ammo. Gee, you don't have specific ammo for the pistol and another one for the shotgun?

Kind of takes a lot out of it when it doesn't much matter which weapon you use at any given time. Won't even get into just how ridiculous and phony it feels when you get ammo and it increases for all your weapons. No doubt there are plenty of other game killers, this one is just the easiest to dig at with a one liner.

Said that, It's still a pretty good game. Underrated, for sure.

Nope. The only reason I've tried several times to get into the game is that I was hoping this was the case. It's not.

[Qoz]

Thief3 was kinda good.
DX 2 was utter crap.

I like Warren alot though. He always speak the truth and make some pretty cool observations.

[bapenguin]

Sigh, it's not an interview, it's not even that great a Q&A. It's just bunch of questions. But yeah, you're right about him getting a lot done.


Q&A, interview whatever. The man has connections and generates content. I need to steal his Outlook address book. :)

[Blade]

They have a cop-out for Invisible War. I've noticed this regarding certain sequels these days.

It's not labelled as "Deus Ex 2: Invisible War" so given its failures, it could be considered a spinoff. A game simply titled "Deus Ex 2" could be released.

Am I right?

[Taco]

No. .

[Redline]

No no no. Look, the unified ammo has NOTHING to do with the way the weapons operated. You can have a single ammo type for all weapons, you can call it 'Bob's Unified Ammo' and fit it to a flame thrower or a shotgun. The failure was in designing the way the weapons operated themselves. Unified ammo was meant to simplify weapon usage and 'dumb' it down for the console versions.

Compared to Deus Ex, IW was a failure. In it's own right? It was a pleasant distraction for a week.

Thief III on the other hand was a totally different story IMO. It was by no means what Looking Glass originally intended it to be, but it was an awesome game in it's own right that, for the most part, successfully repeated the formula of the previous two titles. Okay, so the wall climbing didn't really work, but overall, it had the atmosphere and the feeling of the first two. I have no real complaints about it. And the Cradle level is still something I remember to this day. Awesome.

[F3nyx]

I’m all about offering players more options about how they access our stuff. And digital distribution opens up all sorts of doors for new kinds of content, new game styles and so on. As a player I want options and as a developer I want options—online, digital distribution (and not just of multiplayer games) offers more options for everyone.This must be Warren Spector's new doctrine (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22Warren+Spector%22+%22Emergent+Gameplay%22) of "emergent development."

Kidding aside -- Warren Spector is a god, but I think that he gets needlessly axiomatic sometimes. I really don't give a shit what overarching principles inform a game's design; I'm much more interested in little things, such as -- a single point-blank headshot from a reasonably high-powered sidearm should kill enemies, every time. If a rocket launcher takes up the same amount of inventory space as a Taser, either your weapon balance is fucked or you're missing the point of a goddamn rocket launcher.

If a development team can't even get simple details like those right, actual innovation is certainly doomed.

[JG_ZERO]

I loved Thief 3! It wasn't perfect but it was far from a failure. Deus Ex IW was a shadow of the original's glory but far from unplayable or without merit. Just my two cents. I spoke with Warren for an hour or so after E3 2004 when he was demo'in Thief 3 in the Nvidia area and he was really pumped about it and so was I. I think it's important to remember that low sales don't make a game a "failure."

[MosBen]

I've always thought that fans were a rather whiny lot who just want more of the same. There are plenty of series out there that keep giving the fans what they want and have grown rather stale doing so. A developer taking risks may produce a flawed game from time to time, but to me that's preferable to just trying to please the fans.

[mixuk]

Nope. The only reason I've tried several times to get into the game is that I was hoping this was the case. It's not.

It got 80 in metacritic and 83 in gamerankings.com. It is not a bad game. Sure you can personally dislike it, but it doesn't change the fact that the game is generally conceived as "pretty good".

[EvilBob46]

I really wish that one of these days, we'll hear word that Deus Ex 2 is in developement, and that IW was really just a spin-off. But then again, maybe I'm just dreaming here.

It's not so much the fact that IW was different from Deus Ex that made is such an average game, it's the fact that it did everything worse. IMO, the story was not anywhere near as interesting as the one in the original (the writing in general wasn't infused with as much brilliance), the levels were very small and gave the entire game a confined feel, the graphical style and setting of the game felt like run of the mill sci-fi garbage to me (especially the horrible looking character designs like the Omar), the combat was too arcade-like to be taken seriously and felt out of place in the serious context of the game, the music was completely forgettable and the entire game left me with an unfulfilled feeling when I completed it.

[EvilBob46]

It got 80 in metacritic and 83 in gamerankings.com. It is not a bad game. Sure you can personally dislike it, but it doesn't change the fact that the game is generally conceived as "pretty good".

The problem here is that the original almost achieved a 92% on Gamerankings. The difference between a 83% and a 92% is a pretty good game and a brilliant one.

[Cyrano]

I liked Theif 3. Deus Ex 2 was poor, but Deus Ex has its flaws too. Why does everyone remember that as the perfect game? The AI was awful! I remember laughing at guys running in circles on a staircase, and waiting for the bad guys to come at me one at a time through a hole to get shot. Also, it ran like crap on anything that wasn't Glide.

[Taco]

I've always thought that fans were a rather whiny lot who just want more of the same. There are plenty of series out there that keep giving the fans what they want and have grown rather stale doing so. A developer taking risks may produce a flawed game from time to time, but to me that's preferable to just trying to please the fans.

Are we talking about the same game? They took a game that was "out there" in the risk and gameplay department and hacked it all off and turned it into a turd suffering from consolitis. There was no risk or new ideas, just a bad game.

[Cubfan]

I thought the original Deus Ex was an average game. To each his own I guess.

[Taco]

I liked Theif 3. Deus Ex 2 was poor, but Deus Ex has its flaws too. Why does everyone remember that as the perfect game? The AI was awful! I remember laughing at guys running in circles on a staircase, and waiting for the bad guys to come at me one at a time through a hole to get shot. Also, it ran like crap on anything that wasn't Glide.

Yep(except for the Glide part), but in the end I found it one of the most enjoyable games I've ever played in spite of it's flaws. The issue with Glide was only on release, it played AWFUL on my system at first. Patches fixed it.

[GunnyMo]

That's great Warren, but that's not what the fans and the consumers wanted. The fact that Deus Ex: Invisible War, and Thief: Deadly Shadows to a much lesser extent, turned out not to be the faithful/evolutionary sequels their diehard fans had dreamt about meant that they "disappointed" their core audience. They were deviations, not continuations.

I still had fun, sure, but IW was not decorated enough to don the name of Deus Ex in my eyes. And you, Mr. Spector, I'm still a fan of, but the sooner you face up to the fact the better.

I couldn't agree more. I was very disappointed with both IW and DS with their super tiny maps, unified ammo (wtf were they thinking?!) and muddled gameplay. Le sigh.

[Royal Fool]

It got 80 in metacritic and 83 in gamerankings.com. It is not a bad game. Sure you can personally dislike it, but it doesn't change the fact that the game is generally conceived as "pretty good".

So, by your logic, Doom 3 is considered a "cultural classic" or something?

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/doom3/

You know, because it has an average score of 87. So I guess it must be pretty good.

[MSUStud911]

While Invisible War might not have been all that great, I loved Thief 3. I didn't realize it was considered a disappointment until I read this news post. Hmm.

[WastelandDan]

I can say absolutely without any wavering that Invisible War was the worst piece of crap I've ever played. In my mind I don't think there will ever be a game ever, ever that will be so horribly disappointing. To take Deus Ex, a game that despite its flaws is easily one of the best FPS games ever produced and reduce it to the travesty that IW was is almost like a war crime against original Deus Ex fans, if not FPS gamers on the whole. And not only that, when you release a piece of software that literally cannot be run by more then 75 percent of the entire populace upon initial release (on the PC), clearly you've doing something inherently wrong.

[mixuk]

Royal fool,

No. I'm saying that if the average score (metacritic/gamerankings) is 80 or above, the game very rarely is bad. And for some reason, people lose all judgement considering DXIW and says the game is horrible, which is pretty far from the truth.

[xcalibur]

At the end of the day, sales numbers determine whether a game was a success or a disappointment. Sales numbers say they were both disappointments.


-X

[Slack3r78]

Royal fool,

No. I'm saying that if the average score (metacritic/gamerankings) is 80 or above, the game very rarely is bad. And for some reason, people lose all judgement considering DXIW and says the game is horrible, which is pretty far from the truth.

As others have said, on its own, IW is a mediocre at best game. It gets so much vitriol because it's a follow-up to a highly innovative game that, along with System Shock II, more or less forged a new subgenre that does its absolute best to strip away many of the elements that made the first game great.

I preordered IW, got it on release day and very, very quickly found myself thoroughly underwhelmed by it. If it hadn't had the Deus Ex name on it, I would've passed it by just like I do any number of forgettable shooters that are released every year.

A lot of fans got burned in that way. That's why so many of us share a special distaste for IW.

[Bone]

Where's all the hate for Thief III come from? I loved that game, and the wall-climbing was an integral part of my thievery.

I didn't bother to play IW though. It really did seem like too much of a departure.

I had the pleasure of seeing Warren Spector at a free SXSW seminar recently, and it was a little disheartening to hear how bitter he was with the industry. He remarked how he wouldn't make a dollar off of the Deus Ex movie coming up, and how he doesn't own a franchise that he came up with.
A movie industry lawyer on the panel responded "well, in order to get creative control and ownership of your titles, you need to have some success, that's how it works in movies".
Warren indignantly replied, "dude, I've made some of the most influential and successful games in the industry!" Now whether you think that's ego or not, he's right. The motivation for true creativity is stifled when someone of Warren's talent has to scrape for money or compromise by selling off all his rights to his own ideas.

[Taco]

A movie industry lawyer on the panel responded "well, in order to get creative control and ownership of your titles, you need to have some success, that's how it works in movies"

Ha, what an ignorant dick. That said, the whole Eidos and Ion Storm situation was such a cluster fuck.

In the end Spector joined Romero's company. He made a choice and it turned out to be a bad one.

[Unzerpum]

...He remarked how he wouldn't make a dollar off of the Deus Ex movie coming up...
Interesting. So the Deus Ex movie *is* happening? I thought it was canceled...?

[Everlost_MI]

Sigh, it's not an interview, it's not even that great a Q&A. It's just bunch of questions. But yeah, you're right about him getting a lot done.

I thought it was a decent Q&A, even if it's wasn't as deep as it could have been. I feel it's better to get a canned Q&A than none at all.

[xcalibur]

Wareen has done some cool stuff. Unfortunately none of it has translated into big sales, for whatever reason. The movie lawyer is correct, in that he is defining "success" as financial success, not critical review. In the end, the games industry is no different than any other industry - money talks.


-X

[Metal Jesus]

I happen to be replaying Thief: Deadly Shadows (XBOX) right now actually. It's a damn fine game...and that haunted level is AWESOME!!

[Citizen Philip]

I thought Thief 3 was a *WORTHY* end to the series considering the unfortunate close of Looking Glass: it wasn't the same but they treated the material with respect and did do some new interesting things with it. No, it isn't the sequel LGS would have made but I applaud the effort. I thought it was an excellent game. The Asylum was my favorite, as I understand Brossard (sp?) the sound guy from SS2 helped one of the younger designers with the level. ;)

Deus Ex IW was a poor console game and a slap in the face to its PC origins. It was a bad game with your choice of disappointing dystopian endings, including making all the cool potential choices of the first game a farce. Unifed ammo = lazy design, on a number of different levels. Cramped, small "two choice levels" : either go through the door killing everyone or sneak through the convient and omnipresent LARGE VENTS because you LIKE TO SNEAK, USE THE VENTS. WE ARE GIVING YOU CHOICE. Or maybe hack a turret or something Steaming pile.

[Ultima Thulian]

I think both theif3 and de:iw were good games, great even to an extent. The problem with these games was that people's expectations were too damn high. Due to the fact that the game's predecessors were so innovative and revolutionary, people expected the same thing with the sequels. Instead, we were given a more traditional sequel experience. They are not horrible games by any means, but they can be dissapointing depending on your expectations.

Also, many games were innovating in each genre. We saw it with the stealth genre with MGS:2 and Splinter Cell 1 & 2. Same story for FPSs. While games were changing, Spector's games remained the same, which is both ironic and unfortunate.

[Ultima Thulian]

Deus Ex IW was a poor console game and a slap in the face to its PC origins. It was a bad game with your choice of disappointing dystopian endings, including making all the cool potential choices of the first game a farce. Unifed ammo = lazy design, on a number of different levels. Cramped, small "two choice levels" : either go through the door killing everyone or sneak through the convient and omnipresent LARGE VENTS because you LIKE TO SNEAK, USE THE VENTS. WE ARE GIVING YOU CHOICE. Or maybe hack a turret or something Steaming pile.

But didn't DE:IW come out on the PC roughly at the same time as the Xbox version did?

[Taco]

Not sure how that matters, it was clearly designed and developed with a console interface, hardware and audience in mind.

[GrinR]

I thought the original Deus Ex was an average game. To each his own I guess.

That's insanity. Did you finish it?

[Citizen Philip]

But didn't DE:IW come out on the PC roughly at the same time as the Xbox version did?

They came out at the same time, as it was "dual developed" for console and PC: it was a poor console game and even worse for a PC.

[Ultima Thulian]

Not sure how that matters, it was clearly designed and developed with a console interface, hardware and audience in mind.

No, I was being serious. I'm really asking that because I don't know the answer. Was the PC game out around the sametime? Just a question.

edit: C. Phillip clued me in, missed it.

[mpsmith]

I'd just like to take a minute to say how cool it is that there are so many DX fans on evilavatar. It's still possibly my favorite FPS but I never really knew many people who felt the same way... It makes me feel better knowing that there were so many others.

Unrelated to the topic, did anyone check out any of the books quoted in DX? I bought one: "The Man Who Was Thursday," by G.K. Chesterton. It's really short but a pretty good book. What was great about DX was that it was so immersive. The ai sucked at times but it was the story that was amazing. Great environments too.

[Taco]

No, I was being serious. I'm really asking that because I don't know the answer. Was the PC game out around the sametime? Just a question.

edit: C. Phillip clued me in, missed it.

Ah, sorry if I had misplaced attitude then :).

mpsmith, my list is Fallout 1 and 2, Deus Ex, the Tex Murphy games and then everything else.

I'm surprised I don't hear more about Under a Killing Moon and The Pandora Directive(the Murphy games). Those games were works of art, and they still play as well as or better than anything. But it's a bitch to run them on 2k/XP, or I'd be yelling at everyone to grab a copy off ebay. I have a 98 machine that's for nothing but those two.

[F3nyx]

Unrelated to the topic, did anyone check out any of the books quoted in DX? I bought one: "The Man Who Was Thursday," by G.K. Chesterton. It's really short but a pretty good book.Yep. I'd heard of Chesterton before then, but never that book in particular. The quotes were intriguing enough that I checked out the book from the library... now I own a copy and it's one of my favorite books ever.

[Liquidize105]

Unrelated to the topic, did anyone check out any of the books quoted in DX? I bought one: "The Man Who Was Thursday," by G.K. Chesterton. It's really short but a pretty good book. What was great about DX was that it was so immersive. The ai sucked at times but it was the story that was amazing. Great environments too.
I'm reading Olaf Stapledon's The Last and First Men. You know, the "Second Man."