Warren Spector Interview

Eurogamer was able to corner Junction Point Studios’ Warren Spector for a two-page interview about Eidos’ recently unveiled Deus Ex 3, 2K Games’ success with BioShock, how many hours of gameplay a video game should offer, and more.

Eurogamer: Priced appropriately, I’m fine with really short games. Valves statistics are fascinating in that way – something like 50 percent of people didn’t finish Half-life 2: Episode 1. And that’s less than five hours. Scale that up to all games…

Warren Spector: Wow. That Orange Box though – talk about value for money. I was going to say that I can assure you that people will be playing TF2 at my office right now, but that’s not the case. They better not be playing TF2 right now. Anyway – it’s about creating a satisfying emotional experience. You don’t need 40 hours to do that.

Eurogamer: Exactly.

Warren Spector: The funny thing about teaching this class though [Warren is teaching a videogames class at the University of Texas, and once a week brings a gaming luminary in to talk in front of the students with for 3 hours]. I had Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard, come in. I had Gordon Walton, who’s been making multiplayer games forever – Sims Online, Star Wars Galaxies and the Austin Studio is doing Bioware’s MMO. And Richard Garriott came in and talked about Tabula Rasa. And it just got me all fired up to make a multiplayer game. The Disney guys don’t know, but I’m going to probably hit them up at some point, and say… let’s do an MMO. C’mon! Let’s try it. Let’s show these guys how to do it right. Let’s see if that happens. I’m kind of jazzed – it’s kind of a cool challenge.

Eurogamer: Seeing how other games inspire other developers fascinates me.

Warren Spector: Read my blog, man, read my blog! I’m totally frustration driven. I literally don’t start games until something about some other game frustrates me so much I have to destroy it. I have to go on a petulant two-year-old destroy-all-my-toys rampage. I mean… Thief frustrated me so much – as much as I loved it – I had to do Deus Ex. I was frustrated by Ultima VII, which is why I had to make Serpent Isle. I am now dramatically frustrated by another genre… which is driving me wild. [Warren Laughs, hard] We have to remake that genre. We have to show these guys that they are lame – it doesn’t matter how many copies they sell! They are lame!