Warren Spector

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Warren Spector, 2009
Warren Spector, 1999, with the Deus Ex game logo on the shirt

Warren Spector (* 1955 ) is an American game developer .

Live and act

Originally from the board game and pen & paper role-playing game -Métier (with TSR since 1987 , e.g. AD&D , today's D&D), he switched to the young computer game producer Origin in 1989 , where he worked as an associate producer on the games Ultima VI and Wing Commander worked; both games that are considered to be milestones in gaming history and were great commercial successes. Characteristic of these games is the - u. a. Generated by so-called cut-scenes - massive involvement of the player in a fictional world, in which he enjoys a lot of freedom and also receives emotional feedback on his behavior from the game system.

Warren Spector worked for a long time at Looking Glass Studios , with whom he made Origin blockbusters such as Ultima Underworld , Wings of Glory and System Shock .

However, this phase ended with his move to Ion Storm in 1997, where he took a position in the management. One of his first games in this position was Deus Ex from 2000, which was highly praised by the press and the players, but was denied a corresponding commercial success. The game is set in a gloomy future vision and the player takes on the role of a special agent of a government unit for the fight against terrorism, who finds out in the course of the game that the motivation of his clients is more than questionable. In many locations inspired by real locations, the player is challenged to rethink the classic concept of trust and ultimately to decide on the “side” that is closest to his morality.

The successor Deus Ex: Invisible War was released in 2004, and was criticized by many because of the short playing time, which is unusual for Spector's games, the greatly simplified game interface and also because of technical defects. The third part of the Thief series , Thief: Deadly Shadows , which followed some time later , seemed to convince many fans of this series (although this may not apply to German players as there was no German localization, only German Subtitle). Thief is a 3D game in which the player takes on the role of a medieval thief. The game was in stark contrast to the first-person shooters that were emerging at the time (1998) , since as a thief you try to act in the shadows as much as possible so as not to suddenly run into the hands of superior opponents.

In November 2004, Spector left Ion Storm. As the last very well-known developer, he followed his colleagues Harvey Smith , Randy Smith and Mike McShaffry, who had also just left. In March 2005 he founded Junction Point Studios with former developers from Looking Glass and Ion Storm, which was taken over by Disney Interactive in 2007 . There Spector and his team produced the game Epic Mickey in collaboration with Disney Feature Animation and Pixar . After the moderate success of the successor Epic Mickey: The Power of Two (2012), the studio Junction Point was closed by Disney in January 2013 and Spector was fired.

Recurring motif

One of the main motives of his work is to give the player all (obvious) freedoms by having at least two fundamentally different approaches to solving every problem that arises in the game. In interviews he also repeatedly emphasizes how happy he is when a play tester or programmer discovers a solution (as elegant and non-violent as possible) to an obstacle that was not explicitly designed. In order to create this illusion of freedom, he allows very high degrees of interaction with the game environment to be implemented in his games, for example through realistic physical modeling and simulation of the environment. So you can be sure in your games that there is always another way through a locked door for which there seems to be no key. For example, you could try to find a ventilation shaft or drainage duct in the building, or you could talk to a computer-controlled play figure (NPC - Non-player character ) to achieve your goal. This aspect runs like a red thread through Spector's entire work. In the Ultima Underworld, which he produced, the player is for the first time enabled to experience and discover a fluidly scrolling three-dimensional game world, seemingly independent of story threads.

Ludography

Warren Spector is commonly listed as a producer, except for Deus Ex where he is referred to as Project Director .

Web links

Commons : Warren Spector  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Disney Interactive - Closes Mickey Epic developer studio Junction Point, Warren Spector without a job on GameStar.de , accessed on February 1, 2013
  2. ↑ Gamasutra CMP Media LLC, San Francisco, California, online resource, accessed March 27, 2007
personal data
SURNAME Spector, Warren
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American computer game developer
DATE OF BIRTH 1955