Junction Point Studios - Spector Interview @ Gamasutra

[Dhruin]

Warren Spector has popped up at Gamasutra with a pre-GDC interview (http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20070305/sheffield_01.shtml), revealing that Junction Point Studios' project will be discussed in some form at the conference. Until we see the details, with Spector still discussing choices in narrative, it seems worth watching:
There's also a middle ground, and I don't think that it involves the choose-your-own adventure approach. There's a philosophy that I like to apply: as a developer I want to control the overall narrative arc. Using Deus Ex as an example, JC Denton has a brother, he works for this agency, and the agency turns out to be not what you thought it was and you have to switch sides because they turn on you. The terrorists are the good guys, and so on. All that stuff provides context and meaning for all of the minute-to-minute player choices. In that sense, I own all the acts and why you do things. Now, saying that, it's possible to own why you do things and leave how you do them in the players’ hands. The key for me is creating linked sandboxes and letting players explore those little narrative chunks on their own. I'll determine why it's important that you get through a door, but how you get through it, what happens and whether you kill, talk to or ignore everyone on the other side belongs to the player. That concept of sharing authorship is where the sweet spot of game narrative is. There are some things that I think we can do to take that to the next level, and things that can be done a couple of years from now that can take it to yet another level. The end goal for me now isn't for me to allow players to play a movie, ride a roller coaster ride or provide a sandbox so they can do what they want, but is to find the compromise where I can have a dialog with each player virtually. That's what's exciting to me.
More information. (http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?newsbit=4111)

[doctor_kaz]

This guy is yesterday's news. I couldn't care less what he's working on.

[curious]

not to me. thanks for the newsbit Dhruin.

[txa1265]

I think that all of the great former visionaries of the game world may still have gems left ... heck, I'd look forward to a DWBradley review ;)

[Ionstormsucks]

Spector is a jerk. But nice to see he's still giving the clown. Wonder if he's still working on his plan to force players into paying for episodic content.

[Stanza]

Warren has a knack for putting together great teams, something that's very important to making great games. I'm looking forwards to what JPS ends up doing. If it's still possible for a studio to make a good, innovative game in this age of mega-publishers, JPS may be able to pull it off.

At the same time, I think someone needs to put a muzzle on Warren. His other notable knack is for making empassioned statements that make him sound like he either belongs on the lunatic fringe, or is completely clueless about the games his people make (re: his hype around DX:IW).

If they've found a good project manager to go with Warren's knack for team building, JPS could easily impress us all. If not, then we'll all once again think Warren's grasp on reality is slipping further away.

[Guhndahb]

Regardless of his popularity, his statements above are on the mark. I'm not saying it's the best way to formulate a game, as there is no best, but it is one way that gives me tremendous enjoyment. Deus Ex was proof of concept for that.

I choose to be optimistic about JPS's future, even if there's that little voice in the back of my head reminding me how often my optimism is misplaced.

[doctor_kaz]

Warren Spector is living off of the reputation of work that he did when Bill Clinton was still President of the United States! Work which, by the way, he doesn't himself appreciate or understand why so many people liked it. This guy hasn't done a damn thing for the world of gaming for seven years, and he has never apologized for Deus Ex: Invisible War or admitted that the game sucked (Peter Molyneaux has at least admitted that Fable did not meet expectations). Spector appears to have no empathy for what any of the fans of his greatest games want and he is irrelevant to the gaming industry now.

[Acleacius]

At least this is a good sign.
"I will say that Sheldon Pacotti, who was the lead writing on Deus Ex and Invisible War, he's now back with us at Junction Point"

I knida of agree with all the post here, I used to look forward to WS's interviews, now I read them but am very cautious and sceptical about what he says, after his flusher cluck of IW and his constant self-justifcation about it.
I recall he said "I will admit we were wrong if you admit we were trying something new".
I got news for you WS we all knew it was a mistake, how could you not and who the hell cares if you were trying something new, thats inherently bad?

[Dez]

He still is the mastermind behind deus ex 1. So I'm more than willing to forgive the IW fiasco. Besides it was more harwey Smith's game than it was Spector's. However i just can't understand why he keeps defending those horrible design choises. Most of those so called innovations were complete failures! Removing skills, smaller levels, and same ammo for all the guns.. these innovations were the biggest fun killers ever... :( I wish W.S himself had been the lead desinger instead of H.S... just maybe the game wouldn't have been so BAD.

[Dhruin]

Warren Spector is living off of the reputation of work that he did when Bill Clinton was still President of the United States! Work which, by the way, he doesn't himself appreciate or understand why so many people liked it. This guy hasn't done a damn thing for the world of gaming for seven years, and he has never apologized for Deus Ex: Invisible War or admitted that the game sucked (Peter Molyneaux has at least admitted that Fable did not meet expectations). Spector appears to have no empathy for what any of the fans of his greatest games want and he is irrelevant to the gaming industry now.

Geez, harsh much? It's been a while since he put out anything great, so any skepticism seems perfectly fair but I don't see the need to apologise. DX:IW wasn't great but it wasn't an offence to mankind. Plenty of my favourite writers and directors occasionally screw up and put out something that doesn't meet the standards of their other work...I don't see any of them apologising, nor should they. A demo was released - caveat emptor. And don't underestimate the control Ubisoft had on the direction they took.

[Lord Alex]

DX:IW was actiony, boring, and completely unlike the first game in tone and pacing. In fact, it often felt like some other designers were trying to do a poor imitation of the Deus Ex style. I'm still baffled by that one and agree Warren could up his street cred by owning up to that game's many shortcomings.

However, all that aside, Warren Spector was at the helm of one of my all-time favorite games. For that reason, I'm always interested in what he has to say and what his future plans are with JPS.

[Acleacius]

"In fact, it often felt like some other designers were trying to do a poor imitation of the Deus Ex style."

Thats exactly what happened when WS put HS in charge.
It was HS fighting many of the great designs in Deus Ex and why WS fired about 30 of the main design team, with in a year of release, because HS was (as Lead) constatly getting over ruled by the team for his crappy ideas.

So remember if you cant get your way, just get rid of everyone else. :rolleyes:

[abbaon]

It was HS fighting many of the great designs in Deus Ex and why WS fired about 30 of the main design team, with in a year of release, because HS was (as Lead) constatly getting over ruled by the team for his crappy ideas.
I'd never heard of this before. Do you remember where you read it?

[doctor_kaz]

Sorry, but I don't buy that it was Harvey Smith by himself making all of these bad design decisions. Warren Spector was behind them all the way (publicly, at least), and months before the game came out he was enthusiastically supporting how the game was being scaled back and dumbed down in gaming interviews while taking snide potshots at the fans. For example, he referred to large levels as "the stuff that people fast forward through in movies". The fans of Deus Ex practically got on their knees and begged Ion Storm not to screw up the sequel and Harvey Smith and Warren Spector said "Fuck you". I don't think that Harvey Smith worked on Thief: Deadly Shadows, but that game had tiny levels and other dumbing down decisions like the removal of rope arrows. Warren Spector personifies exactly why the hobby of PC gaming is in a state of decline, and I could care less if the guy ever makes another game again.

[Acleacius]

Trying to remember, mid to late 99 tied to the 30+ person layoff (of which there was only one I recall atm), it would have had to been news posted on Ion boards, possibly TTLG.

Might try key words of "Warren Spector 1999 ion storm layoff " if your intrested.

Maybe I am confused but wasn't it common knowledge their was a team split trying to get the game out the door?
Even WS was trying to get his Optical inventory in the orginal (per his own description) but the he was over ridden and didnt get it in until IW, iirc.
There was also tons of talk about it as IW's limitations and dumbing down were being revaled on Ion boards.

Anyway best I can recall at midnight, will certianly post if I remember more. :)

[Acleacius]

doctor_kaz
Yeah I remember the Ion boards too, fans were confused, upset, broken hearted and mad.
I recall WS saying that he let HS make like 90% of all the decisions, even if WS didnt agree.
For example WS wanted it to be about JC and it was HS idea to make it about someone else, also the ammo was HS, Optical inventory was WS.
The small assed levels, crappy graphics and crappy menu screns, all HS iirc.

No it was HS working on T3, that was Randy Smith (HS's brother) whom is very talented designer whom left months before release due to design differeneces, just as the 30 or so people left the orginal I mentioned above.
RS is currently and mostly a consulatant atm, afaik and as an example when a dev wants one of the best Stealth guys in the business they call RS, which is just what Arkane/Ubi did for Dark Messiah and why the rope arrows almost brought tears to my eyes. ;)

[abbaon]

I'm inclined to believe that Warren fired thirty people for insubordination (from a team (http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/deus-ex/credits) of twenty full-time developers and six contractors (http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20001206/spector_04.htm)) in the same way that Harvey Smith is Randy Smith's brother.

[Avantenor]

@Spector:

He's an intelligent man, he normally get's the point and most of his thoughts are / come true. He's a man of vision, sometimes really great visions. But as I had to say when I read a german interview with Louis Castle, he isn't able to provoke anything in the industry. Spector talks about art, and the art in games industry has gone long before. About the time, EA decided to use their abbreviation as official branding for their games. The time of the great game designers is over.

[Dhruin]

I think we've entered a twilight zone of misinformation. In addition to the Randy / Harvey Smith thing, I don't recall Spector firing 30 people right in the middle of Deus Ex' development. There were layoffs in Romero's Dallas Ion Storm studios because neither Daikatana nor Aanachronox were successful - but not Spector's Austin studio.

There were 25-30 people layed off in 2004 but by Ubisoft, rather than Spector, and because DX2 wasn't successful enough, not because of creative differences. I have an email from insider who wrote to RPGDot about the layoffs...I'll dig it up if this conversation continues.

@doctor_kaz...I'm not making excuses for Spector - he was the boss, so he carries the can. I just don't think he deserves to be shot because they screwed up while under pressure from Ubisoft. Pretty much the same way I wouldn't shoot Cain despite writing some of the worst dialogue I've ever seen (ToEE) or Boyarsky for abandoning their real fans and creating a strictly linear Vampire. I may hesitate to buy Spector's next game but DX2 was nowhere near the sham that, say, Dungeon Lords was with Bradley. *shrug*

[Stanza]

Warren sure does bring out a lot of emotion in gamers.

I think the best advice we could collectively offer WS would be, "Show me, don't tell me. Now shut up and go make a game." I don't care if he has to effectively go indy and do it all out of his garage with only a couple coders and artists. Stop talking about what you would do if someone gave you a hellalota money, Warren. You didn't need $50 million and a 100 heads to make UU, Thief, or DX. Stop chasing the money and put your development effort where your mouth is. Forget whatever inclinations towards excess you picked up from the Garriotts. Forget the idiocies so rampant in the industry today.

Make a game. Ship it. Impress us.

You've done it before. Now go do it again.

[Stanza]

Oh yeah, and for the small levels, lack of rope arrows, etc. Those are technical issues. I don't think Warren should be blamed for those.

Go peruse the T3 editor forum on TTLG. The engine used for DX:IW and T3 was... poorly implemented. And that's being polite. The guy who wrote it evidently left ISA part way through the project, and they were stuck with a mess, not enough time left to start over, and no one who understood it well enough to fix, optimize, or completely overhaul the whole of it.

The only blame I'd level towards the engine development would be a general blame towards all of management. If you're going to take an existing engine, gut it, and rebuilt it, then you'd better have some serious oversight on the effort to make absolutely certain the work can be done early enough to either manage all of the issues that arise, or pull the plug and fall back to the original engine. By the accounts I've heard, whoever redid the engine was given free reign, and only too late did they realize the hole they'd dug for themselves.

Mind you, I'm going on heresay here. Most of what I've heard has been second hand accounts of off-line comments by the devs, who are understandably reluctant to air dirty laundry on the problems that came up during DX:IW and T3's development.

[doctor_kaz]

I could live with engine problems/frame rate issues, because that's an honest consequence of being ambitious and underestimating the task. You take chances sometimes, and they come up snake eyes. But 95% of Invisible War's problems stem from the core design philosophy of the game -- and that design philosophy was "Make the game for a new audience on the X-Box instead of making a true sequel for the PC". Small tiny levels (thanks to 64 MB of X-Box RAM), crappy interface, crappy menus, huge writing, gimped role-playing system, stupid inventory system -- all of those problem stem from having to design the game for the X-Box as the lowest common denominator and making it more, ahem, "accessible".

[abbaon]

For reference: the scenes Ion Storm wanted to show you (http://au.gamespot.com/xbox/rpg/deusexinvisiblewar/screenindex.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=gsimage&page=10).

[Dhruin]

I agree with all of that. Yes, it is time for Spector to show us the gameplay and they did design DX:IW "down" to a bigger audience and lost the game's appeal in the process. I'm hoping he learned from that.

[Gorath]

There were 25-30 people layed off in 2004 but by Ubisoft, rather than Spector, and because DX2 wasn't successful enough, not because of creative differences. I have an email from insider who wrote to RPGDot about the layoffs...I'll dig it up if this conversation continues.


Eidos, not Ubisoft.

[Acleacius]

abbaon
http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13902
"Jonathan: I understand. Ahem, any relations to Harvey Smith?

Randy: Yeah, we're brothers.

Jonathan: Of blood?

Randy: Sure, sure.

Btw, I cant see your gamesutra link since we allarently have to regester.
Kk, since I get the idea you intend scarcasim (not in a bad way, at least to me . :) ), and I am always willing to learn.
If team members get fired/layed off and are not their for completion of the project, let consider for the moment it could have been unabmible split, would they get credit for working on the title credits?

Also I never said it was absolutly 30 people either did I, nope I said about and best of my memory from 7 years ago. :)
So if you basis for believeing or not, is Omg he didn't know the exact number!
Well it would make this really not worth talking about. ;)

Dhruin
Maybe this its misinformation, it's how I recall it and the Smith's being brothers was easy to show it happened only 6 months or so ago, but this wasn't very public back 7 years ago and I even remember WS talking about the team split on Deus Ex and no I am not refering to IW. :)

I have no problems with remembering things incorrectly, but fact is so far nothing has really changed my mind or memory and its really too much trouble to scour dead forums and news from 7 maybe 8 years ago. :)
I also like Moby, so I am not knocking them it's just not sure if every person whom worked on the game is listed.

[Stanza]

There a dollop of new info over at gamespot.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6167439.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=newstop&tag=newstop;title;5

Looks like they've got two projects going, but have only been working on them for a few months. Sounds like they cancelled whatever game(s) they were working on. I'd heard they had cancelled something , and other rumors that they'd ended whatever partnership they'd been trying to set up with Valve/Steam. It wasn't clear if those references were to the same game, or different projects.

[Ionstormsucks]

Ah, I always love to quote from the Escapist when it comes to spector. In issue nr. 38 he writes:

We have to find ways to go direct to consumers. We have to tap into that $10 or $15 a month MMOG players get charged and forget about long after they've lost interest in the game. I mean, NCsoft got about $60 off of me after I stopped playing City of Heroes and before I remembered to cancel my subscription. My wife's WoW habit has gone down to once or twice a week now, but Blizzard is still collecting her $15, like clockwork, and she can't bring herself to stop playing completely.

Nice attitude. Cool, developers of single player, offline games have to find ways to charge players of such games 10 or 15 $ a month long after they have lost interest in the game. Whenever I read that sentence I'm sitting there staring at that sentence wondering how retarded, shameless, or both must a person be to write something like that?
Shows me what kind of person Spector is. I'm not saying he did not create nice games, but today he seems to be only after people's money.

[curious]

thanks for that quote. i however get something entirely different from that small morsel. first i see him giving examples of his and his wifes wastes of money for something that didn't really have a lasting content. personally i think this taps into all our desires to have subscription based items wheter it a game, newspaper, magazine, online movies, etc. for people who have tons of free time subcriptions are usually good deals, like a netflix account or a gym membership. ultimately though we all live much more sporatic lives where even if used intensely for a while the usuage peters off and we don't cancel either because of the hassle or we 'hope' to pick up the pace in the near future. so i think he is trying to tackle the issue that many people are spending more money on online games than offline games and ultimately getting less value for their money including himself. personally i would like to see quality episodic content released but there really hasn't been a good case of that to me since siege of avalon. the dreamfall chapters shows promise but to early to tell on that one.
also if warren spector wanted people money as a priority i think he would have chosen a mountain more of gaming jobs at larger companies than spending all these years under the radar attempting to make games he believes in.

[Acleacius]

Found this bit, while it doesn't talk about the firings (actually forced layoff as I recall) it does touch on the major conflict itself, so the conflict was real, just hope someone can eventually find something on the numbers. :)
Here is a quote from Warren Spector talking abuot life at Ion, here in Austin. :)

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=162858


" The game eventually got underway at Ion Storm but it wasn't all plain sailing: "Down in Austin, we had a team of incredibly talented people, many of whom didn't get along at ALL," he explained."

[Dusk]

Sheldon Pacotti is in Junction Point now? He is a few designers who read books of my liking and write good dialog. Spector seems to be gathering his old (dysfunctional?) family and he knows Pacotti is an important key in making games which he wants to make. Even Deus EX: Invisible War definitely had its moments with the learned content although the lack of coherence and the soul of the original made it just snobbish at times. Of course, if he goes with this design philosophy of “I would rather fail gloriously than succeed at something mediocre”, he is doomed to some failures and blunders at times or - probably in most of the cases. ;)

BTW, is Spector excited about what Doug Church is doing at EA – must be that unknown work with Spielburg...hmmm...sounds interesting.

[Acleacius]

Yeah I have to agree there was poteinal in DX 2, but there was so much wrong it was painful to play. :(

Yeah a top Exec at Eidos leaked the Offical Deus Ex 3 is in production in May 07, so I guess Sheldon wont be writing it, unless he has left JP since the big sale in the last month or so.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=164196

Here is maybe another reason HSmith should never be lead designer again, sort of a wierd ending he was trying to push for DX 1.
I am so glad there were people fighting his ideas on DX1, just too damn bad there was no one slapping him down on DX2. :(
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=168573