Why Warren Spector is Making Games Again

Gamasutra has published a rather interesting chat with Warren Spector on his return to game development and the upcoming System Shock 3. In the interview, the Looking Glass Studios/Ion Storm/Junction Point Studios veteran explains why he is returning to active game development, why he’s disappointed by the current AAA scene, why he chose to work at OtherSide Entertainment, what kind of development model and approach he intends to use for System Shock 3, and more. A few highlights from the full piece:

Why go back to full-time game development?

There are a bunch of reasons. You know, the first thing is, when I first started talking to the university, I told them I’d take a three-year commitment, because the game industry changes so quickly. I was worried that after three years, y’know, the relevance of what I know would start to diminish.

And I wanted to make sure I didn’t become one of those teachers who used to make games, who used to know how games were developed and why. I knew I needed to keep my skills honed, so that was part of it. And part of it was just, y’know, I make games. It’s kind of what I do. I’ve been getting the itch to make something. It’s been coming on for a while now.

And finally, the last little piece of the puzzle was Paul Neurath, who I’ve worked with several times at Origin and Looking Glass, he came to me and asked if I wanted to make System Shock 3.

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Let’s dig into design, for a minute. How has the field of game design changed in the last few years, from your perspective, and where do you hope to take it?

I can’t believe I’m about to say this — I’ll never work in this industry again — but in the mainstream space I really haven’t seen a whole lot of progress. It seems like we’re getting more finely-tuned, prettier versions of games we’ve been playing for years.

Thank god for the indie space, there are people trying interesting things there. What I want to do, is I see a variety of places where we could make some strides that would help take games to the next level. The biggest one, for me, is more robust characters and character AI. We’ve gotten very good at combat AI, we’ve made great strides there, but I don’t think we’ve done much in the world of non-combat AI and interacting with people — human or otherwise. We haven’t done a lot with conversation, and establishing emotional relationships with characters in games. So I’d very much like to play with that.

Also, while I’ve seen some efforts, especially from the guys at Arkane, to sort of extend the design philosophy of Origin and Looking Glass — that whole “immersive simulation” and its philosophy of empowering players to tell their own stories. I’d like to go further with that. It’s nice to see more people trying, but I think there’s a ways we could go as well, in terms of empowering players to tell their own stories. Those are the directions I’m going to try to go in. We’ll see if I can pull it off.

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With a small team, are you interested in exploring new ways of developing games? Designing for Early Access or free-to-play, for example?

Again, it’s early to say. I’ve been on record as saying I don’t much care for the free-to-play model, so unless, as a strategic thing, OtherSide decides that’s the way to go, I don’t think that will happen. I probably won’t be doing free-to-play. I’m kind of a premium game guy.

But I think you have to provide ongoing support and expansions, so I want to provide a complete experience right up front that’s worth people’s money, and then on an ongoing basis provide new content: new characters, new mechanics, new places to explore and adventures to go on. I think that’s what you’ll see coming from my studio as we work on System Shock 3.