Wow, great thread. OK, I know what I'm about to say is going to sound like I'm defending Warren Spector, but, I find it a little funny that people are blaming Warren for DX:IW on him and he wasn't the game's designer. I believe Harvey Smith was the DX:IW designer.

There were two teams, one working on DX:IW with Harvey as its designer and another team working on T:DS with someone else as its designer. Perhaps that was the problem with DX:IW. The original designer of DX (Warren) was "promoted" to a consulting position. If you look at the old dev diaries, Warren even says there were things he didn't agree with Harvey on, but, he basically gave him free reign because Harvey was the designer this time not him. He was in the same position with the Thief team. So, if either game succeeds or fails, it has nothing to do with Warren Spector.

Now, that being said he still fucked up. He did have the power to stop Harvey and change the track of the DX:IW game. In fact, that was supposed to be his job! To monitor these new game designers and make sure the game fit in to the DX universe and still be as good as the original. Also, he did write about how great he thought console games were and how games shouldn't take so long to complete. So, fuck him too. Just remember, Harvey Smith probably deserves a lot of the credit for ruining the sequel to DX as well. Anyway, If Warren is gone from ION perhaps he will go back to being a game designer at a new company instead of being a clueless "game manager" in charge of different teams. Something he obviously wasn’t good at.


Now, as for the game industry and it's future: I keep seeing these "Hollywood to merge with game industry" articles and I think this is a main problem with the industry too. The film industry and movies in general suck. They are all about style and special effects. A game engine is essentially, a game's special effects and so it would seem the game industry has learned from Hollywood. If you make people think a game is good people will buy it. It doesn't have to actually be good. Same with movies, Hollywood movies anyway. Quality movies can still be found in independent and foreign films and I believe the same will hold true with the gaming industry. I already see it happening. I prefered Jowood's Arx Fatalis to Bethesda's Morrowind. Alot of good games are starting to come out of Croatia (Stalker looks very good) etc. Yes, foreign game studios and later on independent games will most likely be the salvation from the Hollywoodafication of the game industry. Or maybe in the future we will all own consoles and play nightly games of Super Mario Deathmatch 15: The final DoomQuake.