Evening Q&As

[Mar 20, 2006, 11:25 pm ET] - Share - Viewing Comments

Warren Spector
The Junction Point Studios Q&A on FiringSquad talks with Warren Spector about his new studio, though he's more forthcoming about the past than the future: "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!"
Savage 2
The Savage 2 Q&A on Gamerati talks with Marc (Bones) DeForest of S2 Games about their upcoming shooter/RTS hybrid: "One big complaint about Savage 1 was the learning curve (which we hope to solve through better interface and tutorials). Along with the large learning curve was the frustration of getting owned while you were trying to pick up the basics. Now, not only did we add a tutorial and a much more intuitive and informative interface, but we also have allowed server admins to set their servers experience level. Each account (all players play through a single account) has persistent experience, meaning all the experience they have earned in all their matches played is tallied to their overall account experience. While this doesn’t give any player an advantage over another, it allows other players and servers to see their experience level. We can then have groups of servers for lower level, medium level, higher level, and expert level players. This will allow everyone to compete against players with similar game experience and skill."
Guild Wars
Gaming Steve Gaming Steve Episode 43 is a podcast featuring an interview with ArenaNet's Jeff Strain, discussing Guild Wars and the upcoming release of Guild Wars Factions. From Steve: "Jeff and I talk for over an hour and cover a huge number of topics. Find out how on earth they expect to release a brand new Guild Wars Campaign twice a year, more details on the technology behind ArenaNet, how they manage to continuously balance the game, Jeff's thoughts on various MMO subscription models, as well as much more."
9Dragons
RPG Vault's 9Dragons Q&A - Part 2 wraps-up this conversation with Indy21 about their martial arts MMORPG: "The game does not have a magic system as such because we are trying to be truly authentic. However the ancient Chinese believed very much in the internal power know as Chi. They felt this could be enhanced through meditation and would help them perform amazing acts. The monks are particularly famous for this. Players can use long-range attack by using their inner strength to shoot monsters. Also, there are some mind skills that freeze or confuse monsters, and healing skills are very useful for party play."
Gamebryo
The Gamebryo Graphics Engine Q&A on FiringSquad gets revved up to talk about engines with Emergent CEO John Austin on the occasion of the release of the Gamebyo-powered The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: "These are two great examples of how flexible our technology is – Gamebryo can be used on a wide range of titles and so studios can adopt our technology across multiple titles. Our engineers have worked very closely with both Firaxis and Bethesda to make sure their games look great and make the best use of Gamebryo. It’s a rewarding experience for everyone involved—especially when the games are released to the level of acclaim that those titles received. And for us, the feedback we get from our top developers helps drive future features and tools."
Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War
A Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War Q&A on GameSpot is subtitled "Picking Up the Pieces After a Developer Shuts Down," covering that topic with Midway's Mark Caldwell: "Stainless Steel had reached alpha but not beta before shutting down. We are finishing the development in San Diego. We never received any current assets before Stainless Steel shut down, so we had to rely of an archive of code and data to try and piece together the current version. Mostly we were able to re-create an alpha version of the game, but we did lose a lot in the transition. We have brought the game back to the state before the developer shut down and are currently fixing some bugs, fine-tuning some levels, finalizing the demo, and focusing on multiplayer."
GDC
The GDC 2006 Q&A on FiringSquad talks with GDC director Jamil Moledin about this year's conference, and the shocking subject they've picked for a theme: "Our theme this year is 'What’s Next,' which means we’ll definitely have a great deal of focus on next generation consoles. But not everyone develops for those platforms, and with that in mind there’s a lot of changes going on in the industry overall. There’s a dramatic push to broaden the market of gamers, find new ways of distributing games and building communities with gamers, as well as creating games in a distributed fashion."
American Conquest: Divided Nation
The American Conquest: Divided Nation Q&A on Strategy Informer talks with Shaun Fletcher of Revolution of Strategy about their coming installment in GSC Game World's RTS series: "The game engine has undergone many changes. Some of these are concerned with improving the ability of the game to represent huge battles (up to 40,000 troops, and in the Gettysburg Pickett’s charge mission, with over 150 cannon on each side) on topographically based maps. We also added the ability to construct and destroy field fortifications, and such things as trees and walls can provide cover from enemy fire. On the AI side of things we developed an all new battle AI, with the aim of letting the player fight the battle as he pleases, knowing the enemy will react accordingly. In the popular Random Map mode, an all new and effective AI has been developed to give even the best player a run for his money!"
Havok
Firingsquad's Havok FX Q&A discusses the physics vendor's new products: "Havok will be showing its upcoming 4.0 release, which will showcase more scalable physics on next-generation console platforms, and two new products: Havok Behavior (a character behavior composition tool and run-time SDK), and Havok FX (a GPU-accelerated “effects physics” SDK that blends seamlessly with Havok’s game-play physics product – we’ll be showing Havok FX at the NVIDIA booth at GDC)."

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Re: On Warren Spector...

Mar 22, 2006, 10:03

Fartacus

I've worked with both Harvey Smith and Warren Spector (not at Ion, but at Origin), and I have mucho respect for both of those guys. I know many people who were on the DX2 team (and a few on the T3 team, but not Randy Smith). I have heard a lot of stories from ex-Ion guys about DX2 production and its major failure points. I think it's unfair and inaccurate to characterize DX2's failures as "all Warren's fault" or "all Harvey's fault". It's also unfair to attribute DX1's brilliance entirely to Warren (and don't forget that Harvey was a designer on DX1). There were many brilliant people on the DX1 team (including Harvey and Warren). Also, DX2 and T3 weren't bad games by any standards. I enjoyed both of them. But neither of them lived up to the perfection of their predecessors.

Re: On Warren Spector...

Mar 21, 2006, 18:54

Squirmer

When the guy "creates" System Shock he is lauded as a game god for years, but when he "creates" DE2 and T3 he can't be called down, because "others were in charge?" Oh, yes he can. No double standards. He's the highest head on the totem pole. He PUT Harvey in control, who then screwed the whole thing up. And for T3, although Randy is a great designer, he was let go or fired or someshit which isn't completely clear, part of the way through, because his goals differed from those which Warren could successfully sell to the Eidos suits. So yeah, other guys were the design leads, but Warren was the weakest link, the boss, the go-between for ISA and Eidos, and for fans of the series, and he fell short. Besides, numerous interviews have shown he doesn't even get Thief. How could he properly support it, when he doesn't even get it? Complete load of rubbish. First of all my post was in response to the accusation that Spector was 'past it' as a designer. As I said, the last game he actually designed was Deus Ex. Blaming him for putting Harvey in charge simply ignores the truth: that Spector wasn't involved in designing the game, so his ability as a designer shouldn't be judged by a game he didn't direct. It makes no sense. Second, Randy Smith left Ion Storm for freelance design work right at the end of the project, not 'part of the way through'. The game was all but COMPLETE when he left. Interesting that you defend Randy Smith and offer excuses (the Eidos suits) yet critcise Harvey Smith when he was working in the same situation. Third, the VERY REASON why Spector brought on Randy Smith as project director for Thief 3 is because he admitted they needed someone who understood Thief intimately. So it was in fact his decision as the studio head that brought on all those former Thief designers to work on Thief 3. I think you just made up most of your post, didn't you?

What WS /should/ have learned...

Mar 21, 2006, 09:23

MacD

Was that it was stupid to burden pc-gamers with the limitations of a memory-lacking console. That being said, I have to mention this: I actually thought DE:IW and T3 were good games. The gameplay was cool as were the graphics. What many people don't (want to) see around was the tiny size of the levels, which /killed/ immersion. That part really sucked and brought down the suspension of disbelief: all those loading times etc, where the original games had sprawling levels (and that also allowed for much more emergent gameplay...you can do/think up a lot more/plan better with huge spaces than when you have a single room to work work with. But if you got past that single, nearly dealbreaking problem (brought on by the xbox' anemic memory....the dev who got the Thief3 level editor out mentioned that they wanted to do so much more but couldn't because of the xbox' limitations), you'd have found games with great gameplay, cool levels and interesting story.

Re: On Warren Spector...

Mar 21, 2006, 09:08

MyRealName

When the guy "creates" System Shock he is lauded as a game god for years, but when he "creates" DE2 and T3 he can't be called down, because "others were in charge?" Oh, yes he can. No double standards. He's the highest head on the totem pole. He PUT Harvey in control, who then screwed the whole thing up. And for T3, although Randy is a great designer, he was let go or fired or someshit which isn't completely clear, part of the way through, because his goals differed from those which Warren could successfully sell to the Eidos suits. So yeah, other guys were the design leads, but Warren was the weakest link, the boss, the go-between for ISA and Eidos, and for fans of the series, and he fell short. Besides, numerous interviews have shown he doesn't even get Thief. How could he properly support it, when he doesn't even get it? Oh how the mighty have fallen. A Spector interview, with 5 comments? Bah. Admit you realize that many mistakes that were made, Warren, and you'll not let it happen again, and they will come (back). Boycott Starforce - http://www.glop.org/starforce/

Re: On Warren Spector...

Mar 21, 2006, 01:38

Squirmer

He wasn't directly involved in DX2 or T3. He ran the company while others (Harvey Smith and Randy Smith) were the project directors. Saying Spector is 'past it' makes no sense since the last game he directed was Deus Ex (1).

Re: On Warren Spector...

Mar 21, 2006, 01:35

Creston

I think Warren will actually come back and make a great game. The guy is a terrific designer and he didn't just all of a sudden forget how to make a good game. I'm guessing he became way too involved with the management of the studio rather than working on the games themselves, with rather dire consequences (ie, Thief Deadly Shadows and Ex Deus : IW.) Ofcourse, once he saw Harvey Smith completely rape everything that made Deus Ex great, he should have stepped in, but he didn't. It's in the past. I think/hope he will redeem himself with another great game in a few years time. Creston

Re: On Warren Spector...

Mar 21, 2006, 00:34

PointlesS

because he was asked a question?

On Warren Spector...

Mar 21, 2006, 00:07

Jadar

I suspect he's past it. Also, if he doesn't have anything to say, why does he keep talking?

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