7 ms·

Warren Spector – 40 years and I'm still here

172 points by writeslowly 3y ago

jhbadger 3y ago
I may be the only person who remembers when Warren Spector designed non-computer games like Toon, (1984) an RPG based on the violent Warner Brothers cartoons where having an anvil dropped on you just made you see stars for a few seconds.
- jdougan 3y ago
  Toon was awesome. That and Paranoia were our go tos when we wanted a low pressure game night.
hypertexthero 3y ago
The guy hasn’t worked on that many good games. Only Wing Commander, Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Deus Ex, Thief…oh, wait. > One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that if your game doesn’t have a clear vision, and you can’t express and “sell” it and if you don’t hire people better than you are, you’re likely to fail. … > We’ve developed an entirely new art form. We’re the only medium in the history of humankind that can turn every consumer into a creator and, astonishingly, we do that through the power of play. Think about that! I’m looking forward to the next game Warren is working on, whatever it may be, and I think System Shock did introduce environmental storytelling to video games, which reminds me I must play the recent remake.
- tibbydudeza 3y ago
  He helped make the genre of games that I played during my youth - still wish that Tom Hall would finish Anachronox - such a quirky but awesome game and interesting story.
- rob74 3y ago
  A remake of System Shock launched this year: https://store.steampowered.com/app/482400/System_Shock/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/482400/System_Shock/ - Windows only unfortunately (but I wonder if it works with Proton?) EDIT: didn't read until the end of your comment before I posted my answer, and now I don't know how to change it, so I'll just leave it like it is...
  - morsch 3y ago
    It works well with Proton, though as always ymmv on PC: https://www.protondb.com/app/482400 https://www.protondb.com/app/482400
  - otteromkram 3y ago
    Not allowed to delete it?
- j7ake 3y ago
  “If you don’t hire people better than you”. Makes me wonder if it’s better to go solo than to hire people worse than you.
  - mcmoor 3y ago
    Some advice I've read says it's better to go neutral than negative. That's why some startup recruitment methods are ridiculous af because they're afraid to go negative.
- indigochill 3y ago
  > We’re the only medium in the history of humankind that can turn every consumer into a creator and, astonishingly, we do that through the power of play. Think about that! I mean, games are an incredible medium, but I think books can blur the line as well. I think "S." is probably the best example. It's not a traditional gamebook (which would be cheating since they're explicitly games), but it is a physical book which presents itself as an artifact of the story it's telling (it's produced to look like an old library book written by a fictional author with notes in the margins between fictional characters). It's really three stories in one: the story of what happened to the fictional author, the story of two characters trying to unravel that mystery, leaving notes in the margins and clippings inserted into the book, and the story written in the book itself. But in a sense it requires readers to become creators by connecting the clues linking the three stories and determining what happened, thus completing the story for themselves. Another example I grew up with was "The Eleventh Hour" which is an illustrated children's book with ciphers and puzzles and a main mystery for the reader to unravel. This is a bit more traditionally "gamey" than "S.". You could also argue religion is a form of this, especially Judeo-Christian religions which have sacred texts but also millenia of extra-textual canon and tradition.
  - hypertexthero 3y ago
    “S” sounds very interesting! Is there a link to it? And I agree that books, or most any art form, can be considered creative for the reader/viewer/experiencer since they change our brain, especially if we make something playful inspired by them. I bought a paper copy of a book called The Ground Itself not long go and warmly recommend it: > …a one-session storytelling game for 2-5 players, played with household materials (a coin, a six-sided die, and a deck of cards). https://everestpipkin.itch.io/the-ground-itself https://everestpipkin.itch.io/the-ground-itself
    - indigochill 3y ago
      Here's the wikipedia article about it (to avoid linking to any particular seller, but it's generally easy to find from normal book sellers): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._(Dorst_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._(Dorst_novel)
carabiner 3y ago
This plague - the rioting is intensifying to the point where we may not be able to contain it.
- FeepingCreature 3y ago
  Why contain it? 'scool!
- smpb 3y ago
  Why contain it? Let it spill over the schools and churches, let the bodies pile up in the streets. In the end they'll beg us to save them.
tempodox 3y ago
Congratulations to Warren Spector for this anniversary! Gaming would be poorer without him.
livrem 3y ago
"I’m especially proud of Martian Dreams, an Ultima-engine game even if no one remembers it even came out" No idea if it is fun, but it is one of the permanently free games on GOG and somewhere in my too large pile of old games I want to try some day: https://www.gog.com/en/game/ultima_worlds_of_adventure_2_martian_dreams https://www.gog.com/en/game/ultima_worlds_of_adventure_2_mar... Only knew it existed thanks to The Digital Antiquarian a few years ago: https://www.filfre.net/2018/02/the-worlds-of-ultima/ https://www.filfre.net/2018/02/the-worlds-of-ultima/
- DrJokepu 3y ago
  It (along with its counterpart, Savage Empire) is a fun game, but it is a product of its era. Not much handholding. Be prepared to spend months trying to complete it, if you’re not using a walkthrough. The Victorian-style overland music theme will haunt you in your dreams for years to come. Make sure to play it with a Roland MT32 emulator, sounds much better that way.
  - livrem 3y ago
    I have been slowly working my way through the nine AD&D Goldbox games, with no end in sight after over 30 years (and that is also the reason I have a quite long backlog of unplayed RPGs). It is likely to feel more modern than what I am used to.
Razengan 3y ago
I still remember him in Ultima: Savage Empire
guntherhermann 3y ago
Deus Ex for me is the greatest game of all time. I played it when I was around 12 years old, it had just come out. The graphics already looked 'old' in 2000, but it didn't matter. The sequels are actually pretty good too, IMO, but can't touch the original. I still go back to play it from time to time, although I always play the sneak-thief kind of character, it just seems so much more fun!
- amalcon 3y ago
  I played Deus Ex because it came with some PC part I was buying at the time -- I forget whether it was a graphics card or a sound card. The part in question came with three other games, but I can't name another one of them. On the other hand, I could probably make a pretty good approximation of Deus Ex's first level map from memory. I don't know if I'd call it the best game of that era, but I think it's a strong contender for most influential. It goes beyond the obvious homages (e.g. the variety of games that put the code "0451" in a prominent place). Deus Ex blended actual agency with illusory agency in a way that almost every western narrative-driven game since then has tried to replicate, with varying degrees of success. It's one of the few games where I knew I didn't really have much control over the story, but it made me feel like a character in it anyway.
- Sharlin 3y ago
  Username checks out. But yeah, a sneak-thief has the opportunity to enjoy the most of the game's writing, in the form of emails, data cubes and overheard conversations, and they just make the world so much richer and more alive. And all the allusions and pop culture references, the excerpts of the (real) novel The Man Who Was Thursday, exploring several themes common with the game, as well as the (fictional) thriller Jacob's Shadow, whose plot seems to reflect the player's progression in the game. No doubt Deus Ex is one of the most intellectual, literary video games of all time. For a trip down the memory lane, I recommend Stephan Lavavej's¹ Deus Ex page which, among other things, contains an annotated copy of all the non-dialogue text in the game: https://nuwen.net/dx.html https://nuwen.net/dx.html ¹ Some of us may also recognize his name as the principal maintainer of Microsoft's C++ Standard Library implementation.
josephg 3y ago
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.
- frameset 3y ago
  I think you're confusing the original Deus Ex and the Eidos Montreal prequels. Those were the ones with the outsourced boss battles.
PaulHoule 3y ago
I love running TOON games (and Paranoia and Call of Cthulhu) games so much more than D&D since those games don’t make players get as serious about to investment they’ve made in their characters. (When I am completely unprepared I will usually stage a series of accidents in the very dangerous Alpha Complex before they even get to the briefing room and players will come back for more)
CharlotteArchie 3y ago
[dead]
waynejulie26 3y ago
[dead]

172 points by writeslowly 3y ago

I may be the only person who remembers when Warren Spector designed non-computer games like Toon, (1984) an RPG based on the violent Warner Brothers cartoons where having an anvil dropped on you just made you see stars for a few seconds.

jdougan 3y ago
Toon was awesome. That and Paranoia were our go tos when we wanted a low pressure game night.

hypertexthero 3y ago

The guy hasn’t worked on that many good games. Only Wing Commander, Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Deus Ex, Thief…oh, wait. > One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that if your game doesn’t have a clear vision, and you can’t express and “sell” it and if you don’t hire people better than you are, you’re likely to fail. … > We’ve developed an entirely new art form. We’re the only medium in the history of humankind that can turn every consumer into a creator and, astonishingly, we do that through the power of play. Think about that! I’m looking forward to the next game Warren is working on, whatever it may be, and I think System Shock did introduce environmental storytelling to video games, which reminds me I must play the recent remake.

tibbydudeza 3y ago
He helped make the genre of games that I played during my youth - still wish that Tom Hall would finish Anachronox - such a quirky but awesome game and interesting story.
rob74 3y ago
A remake of System Shock launched this year: https://store.steampowered.com/app/482400/System_Shock/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/482400/System_Shock/ - Windows only unfortunately (but I wonder if it works with Proton?) EDIT: didn't read until the end of your comment before I posted my answer, and now I don't know how to change it, so I'll just leave it like it is...
- morsch 3y ago
  It works well with Proton, though as always ymmv on PC: https://www.protondb.com/app/482400 https://www.protondb.com/app/482400
- otteromkram 3y ago
  Not allowed to delete it?
j7ake 3y ago
“If you don’t hire people better than you”. Makes me wonder if it’s better to go solo than to hire people worse than you.
- mcmoor 3y ago
  Some advice I've read says it's better to go neutral than negative. That's why some startup recruitment methods are ridiculous af because they're afraid to go negative.
indigochill 3y ago
> We’re the only medium in the history of humankind that can turn every consumer into a creator and, astonishingly, we do that through the power of play. Think about that! I mean, games are an incredible medium, but I think books can blur the line as well. I think "S." is probably the best example. It's not a traditional gamebook (which would be cheating since they're explicitly games), but it is a physical book which presents itself as an artifact of the story it's telling (it's produced to look like an old library book written by a fictional author with notes in the margins between fictional characters). It's really three stories in one: the story of what happened to the fictional author, the story of two characters trying to unravel that mystery, leaving notes in the margins and clippings inserted into the book, and the story written in the book itself. But in a sense it requires readers to become creators by connecting the clues linking the three stories and determining what happened, thus completing the story for themselves. Another example I grew up with was "The Eleventh Hour" which is an illustrated children's book with ciphers and puzzles and a main mystery for the reader to unravel. This is a bit more traditionally "gamey" than "S.". You could also argue religion is a form of this, especially Judeo-Christian religions which have sacred texts but also millenia of extra-textual canon and tradition.
- hypertexthero 3y ago
  “S” sounds very interesting! Is there a link to it? And I agree that books, or most any art form, can be considered creative for the reader/viewer/experiencer since they change our brain, especially if we make something playful inspired by them. I bought a paper copy of a book called The Ground Itself not long go and warmly recommend it: > …a one-session storytelling game for 2-5 players, played with household materials (a coin, a six-sided die, and a deck of cards). https://everestpipkin.itch.io/the-ground-itself https://everestpipkin.itch.io/the-ground-itself
  - indigochill 3y ago
    Here's the wikipedia article about it (to avoid linking to any particular seller, but it's generally easy to find from normal book sellers): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._(Dorst_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._(Dorst_novel)

carabiner 3y ago

This plague - the rioting is intensifying to the point where we may not be able to contain it.

FeepingCreature 3y ago
Why contain it? 'scool!
smpb 3y ago
Why contain it? Let it spill over the schools and churches, let the bodies pile up in the streets. In the end they'll beg us to save them.

tempodox 3y ago

Congratulations to Warren Spector for this anniversary! Gaming would be poorer without him.

livrem 3y ago

"I’m especially proud of Martian Dreams, an Ultima-engine game even if no one remembers it even came out" No idea if it is fun, but it is one of the permanently free games on GOG and somewhere in my too large pile of old games I want to try some day: https://www.gog.com/en/game/ultima_worlds_of_adventure_2_martian_dreams https://www.gog.com/en/game/ultima_worlds_of_adventure_2_mar... Only knew it existed thanks to The Digital Antiquarian a few years ago: https://www.filfre.net/2018/02/the-worlds-of-ultima/ https://www.filfre.net/2018/02/the-worlds-of-ultima/

DrJokepu 3y ago
It (along with its counterpart, Savage Empire) is a fun game, but it is a product of its era. Not much handholding. Be prepared to spend months trying to complete it, if you’re not using a walkthrough. The Victorian-style overland music theme will haunt you in your dreams for years to come. Make sure to play it with a Roland MT32 emulator, sounds much better that way.
- livrem 3y ago
  I have been slowly working my way through the nine AD&D Goldbox games, with no end in sight after over 30 years (and that is also the reason I have a quite long backlog of unplayed RPGs). It is likely to feel more modern than what I am used to.

Razengan 3y ago

I still remember him in Ultima: Savage Empire

guntherhermann 3y ago

Deus Ex for me is the greatest game of all time. I played it when I was around 12 years old, it had just come out. The graphics already looked 'old' in 2000, but it didn't matter. The sequels are actually pretty good too, IMO, but can't touch the original. I still go back to play it from time to time, although I always play the sneak-thief kind of character, it just seems so much more fun!

amalcon 3y ago
I played Deus Ex because it came with some PC part I was buying at the time -- I forget whether it was a graphics card or a sound card. The part in question came with three other games, but I can't name another one of them. On the other hand, I could probably make a pretty good approximation of Deus Ex's first level map from memory. I don't know if I'd call it the best game of that era, but I think it's a strong contender for most influential. It goes beyond the obvious homages (e.g. the variety of games that put the code "0451" in a prominent place). Deus Ex blended actual agency with illusory agency in a way that almost every western narrative-driven game since then has tried to replicate, with varying degrees of success. It's one of the few games where I knew I didn't really have much control over the story, but it made me feel like a character in it anyway.
Sharlin 3y ago
Username checks out. But yeah, a sneak-thief has the opportunity to enjoy the most of the game's writing, in the form of emails, data cubes and overheard conversations, and they just make the world so much richer and more alive. And all the allusions and pop culture references, the excerpts of the (real) novel The Man Who Was Thursday, exploring several themes common with the game, as well as the (fictional) thriller Jacob's Shadow, whose plot seems to reflect the player's progression in the game. No doubt Deus Ex is one of the most intellectual, literary video games of all time. For a trip down the memory lane, I recommend Stephan Lavavej's¹ Deus Ex page which, among other things, contains an annotated copy of all the non-dialogue text in the game: https://nuwen.net/dx.html https://nuwen.net/dx.html ¹ Some of us may also recognize his name as the principal maintainer of Microsoft's C++ Standard Library implementation.

josephg 3y ago

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.

frameset 3y ago
I think you're confusing the original Deus Ex and the Eidos Montreal prequels. Those were the ones with the outsourced boss battles.

PaulHoule 3y ago

I love running TOON games (and Paranoia and Call of Cthulhu) games so much more than D&D since those games don’t make players get as serious about to investment they’ve made in their characters. (When I am completely unprepared I will usually stage a series of accidents in the very dangerous Alpha Complex before they even get to the briefing room and players will come back for more)

CharlotteArchie 3y ago

[dead]

waynejulie26 3y ago

[dead]