Warren Spector
Warren Spector
Warren Spector is an American role-playing and video game designer. He is known for creating games which give players a wide variety of choices in how to progress. Consequences of those choices are then shown in the simulated game world in subsequent levels or missions. He is best known for the critically acclaimed video game Deus Ex that embodies the choice and consequence philosophy while combining elements of the first-person shooter, roleplaying, and adventure game genres...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionGame Designer
Date of Birth2 October 1955
CountryUnited States of America
I'm a Nintendo geek, so I'm a pretty big Nintendo fan.
I often get painted as the guy who's trying to tell other people what to make and what to like, and that's really not my goal, but I believe so passionately that games can be more than a lot of people think they can.
Gamers both demand and deserve novelty. They need something new. As a game developer, one of my rules is there will be at least one thing in every game that I worked on that no one on the planet has seen before.
I like Disney stuff. No-one looks at 'Toy Story' and says,' Oh, that's just for kids.' Why is it that games can only appeal to a certain audience, but movies and books - I mean, how many adults read 'Harry Potter?'
I'm a big believer in pushing things too far and forcing people to pull you back.
It's about players making choices as they play, and then dealing with the consequences of those choices. It's about you telling your story, not me telling mine. It's about you.
The basic idea for what became 'Epic Mickey' began at the Disney Think Tank.
The more people who game, the better for everyone.
I've got a PowerPoint deck that I use for internal presentations, and there's a slide on it that asks, 'What percentage of your game is combat versus exploration versus puzzle solving versus platforming,' and I refuse to answer that question.
I've got friends who are literally working alone on indie games that have no prospect of profit or commercial success. I've got guys working on iPhone games.
I've done a pretty good job of hitting 18-34-year-old males, and not such a good job of reaching kids. Disney has done a great job of reaching kids, but maybe not the 18-34-year-olds. I figure I can learn a lot from Disney, and maybe, I don't know, they can learn a lot from me.
Seriously, I don't know if people would really tell you this. But in my dream world, the people who work for you would say, 'Wow, I didn't know I could do that until I started working with that guy.'
The concept of emergent gameplay is really exciting. That's when players are really crafting their own experience. So if you're clever and creative, you can do things that even developers of the game didn't know were possible.
The Junction Point journey is over. To all those who've asked, or want to ask, I'm sad but excited for the future.