General News - Warren Spector Interview

VentureBeat interviewed Warren Spector and asked him about System Shock 3 and what he is making now amongst other topics.

GamesBeat: Can you fill in some of the blanks on how things have been going for you in the last few years with OtherSide? It seemed like work on System Shock 3 came to an end for you. I don’t know if that’s the right way to characterize it.

Warren Spector: We released a statement last year. There’s not much more to say at this point. Tencent is taking the franchise forward. It’ll be up to them to say what they want to say. There’s not much clarification I can give you.

GamesBeat: How long had you worked on that previously?

Spector: We worked on it in 2018 and 2019. That was it.

GamesBeat: How large had the studio gotten for that project?

Spector: I think we maxed out at 17.

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(Talking about his new game)

GamesBeat: How long have you been actively working on it now?

Spector: I went through a pretty long phase of just developing this one or that one. I guess it’s been not quite a year. But again, remember, that was me sitting alone. It almost doesn’t count. Paul and I take this seriously. When it comes to creating something new, you want to do something special. Making games is–I call it “grindingly hard.” If you’re not at least trying to do something great–you’re going to fail most of the time, and I get that. But if you’re not trying, it’s soul-crushing. There’s no point.

I’m a relentless advocate for a particular kind of game, for immersive simulations. I’m going to do that for the rest of my life, or at least the rest of my career. If I can’t do that I guess I’ll stop making games. But in many ways it’s what I’ve been thinking about for quite a while as the next step in immersive sims. If we pull it off, people are not going to be ready for what’s going to hit them.

GamesBeat: Is it consistent with some of the themes you’ve advocated for before, like emergent gameplay over scripted storytelling?

Spector: Oh, absolutely. I have no interest–at my studios, you’re not allowed to say the word “puzzle.” We don’t make puzzles. As soon as you say the words “the player must” or “the player has to” I stop listening. It turns into blah-blah-blah. Games have always been about players showing how clever and creative they are. We remind ourselves constantly that they’re as smart as we are, and in many ways smarter. The bottom line is, we’re the only medium in human history that’s been able to engage players as partners in storytelling. That’s what I’m going to do as long as people will keep paying me to do it.

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