by Brian.


Warren Spector is known as one of the godfathers of the gaming industry. His experience and innovation dates back to before I even knew you could play games on your computer. His latest game, Deus Ex, is considered by many (myself included) to be the next step in immersive gaming. Lucky for us he's also been a film professor in his life, and still holds a passion for the medium. Together with some input from friends and coworkers, I sent him a few questions in hopes that he would give them some thought and fire back some answers. This is what I received:

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Brian: In your latest game, Deus Ex, you finally succeeded in a forward step for the first-person-shooter genre. However, in other interviews you've expressed that technology is still not at the point you'd like it to be. What would your ideal technological status be to engage the kind of game you'd like to make?

Warren: Well, I look forward to the day when we can simulate an entire world, with all the detail people expect. I'm talking about a world in which every single object is functional, in the ways you'd expect based on your everyday interaction with the real world. I'm talking about a world in which every non-player character looks, sounds and behaves like a real person. I'm talking about a world where the limits on interaction are imposed by the player's imagination and not by our ability to push polys on a screen. Bear in mind, I'm NOT saying we should just create worlds and let players loose in them, hoping they find some fun there. Far from it. I have no interest in abdicating all authorial control to players and/or simulations. Developers still have a part to play in creating games! I just want to have greater choice, as the creator of a game, about where to bound the player's experience. I'm not looking for the simulation to drive all the gameplay but, rather, for tools that allow developers to create more compelling and interactive situations for players to interact with. I want a fully simulated world so I can decide where to set the boundaries of player experience rather than having those boundaries be set for me by the machine.


You've also stated that you'd love to make a game in the vein of Jean Renoir's 'Le Grande Illusion', however you're still relegated to the Action genre, again due to technological limitations. Although character drama is still a long way off, what other genres would you consider a bit closer to interactive realization?

I'm not sure we're as far off from making a game about how people interact with one another socially and culturally (which is what I mean by a game in the vein of Grande Illusion) as you might think. Mostly I'm frustrated at my own inability to figure out how to make such a game at all, how to convince someone to fund it and then how to convince people to buy it! Basically, I think we're a couple of whacks-on-the-side-of-the-head, creative leaps away from characters who can make you feel something without firing a virtual gun at you. Once someone figures out how to make talking to a virtual character as compelling as shooting at him or her, once we figure out how to make intuiting a character's motivation as interesting as moving boxes around to solve a puzzle, we'll start seeing some very cool games. But I think the problem here is one of creativity not technology. I hope so!


If by any chance you remember my small e-mail a while back, I engaged you on a crime genre game. Creating sort of an interactive 'Out of the Past' or 'The Big Sleep' where you play a detective in a relatively small environment of an extraordinarily high level of detail. As you collect facts and clues, you'd engage other characters on different subjects. How far off would you say such a game is possible to produce?

I'm not sure, really. I'm tempted to say we're pretty close to being able to make the game you describe -- or the One Block Roleplaying Game I've been talking about for a while -- but we're pretty far from having a business model that supports it. Tell a publisher you want to make a small, deep game, the equivalent of a short film or a printed short story, and they'll give you a look like a dog being shown a magic trick. It's a blockbuster business, and you better be able to show the biz guys the money. If we had an alternate distribution system or an indie scene you might see more short form and/or experimental games. Right now, you're not going to find a publisher willing to step up to the plate for a game with ten hours of gameplay and a radically different gameplay style that costs as much to make as a more obviously commercial, long-form game...


The Thief series of games went a long way in establishing a game told in first person different than a shooter, which Wolfenstein 3-D and Doom are still spawning popular descendents. You yourself expanded the first-person game by making an amalgamated, smarter, story-driven version of the genre. Where do you see the first-person genre going in the future?

First of all, I think we have to move beyond the idea that camera position dictates gameplay. Everyone who looks at a first-person game instantly and automatically thinks "Shooter." That was true when Blue Sky Productions shipped Ultima Underworld and it's true today. Just because you're looking through your character's eyes that does NOT mean your only mode of interaction with the world has to be shoot-everything-that-moves. Once we get people -- and I'm talking as much about developers and press as I am about the great unwashed masses out there -- to buy into that, we can start making some progress. What sort of progress? Well, clearly, I think, we have to give players much more control over the minute-to-minute gameplay experience. If, as a developer, all you're asking players to do is position a cursor over a target and press a mouse button to get a spray of red pixels, you're not stretching very much, are you? We have to start giving players some credit. Let them decide how to interact with the situations we set up. Let them talk, sneak, think OR shoot their way out of predicaments. Let players deal with the predictable consequences of their choices. Create a more open world and a deeper simulation, throw in some interesting characters with unique motivations -- give players more to do. That's a gaming future I'm interested in seeing...


In your opinion, is the first-person point of view most suited to the type of game you'd like to make?

Absolutely. There's nothing cooler to me than something that puts you in another world -- not some puppet or avatar but YOU. The power of seeing a world through your own eyes is overwhelming to me. I'm kind of single-minded about this. I hate it when games remind me I'm just playing a game. First-person games, if done well, do that less frequently than any other kind of game. They really lend themselves to a feeling of immersion. I don't see the point in making any other kind of game (though many a publisher has tried to show me The Way by explaining how first-person games don't sell as well as other kinds of games...). Look, I play other kinds of games and I enjoy them, but the immersive simulation is the thing that gets my shorts in a knot and the only kind of game I really want to make.


Segueing into the realm of film, what are some of your favorite films, and why?

Man, I am not sure you have the time for this but you asked for it so here goes... I'm completely convinced that John Ford's The Searchers is the finest American film ever made. It's big and brassy and action-packed but it's all about people and how they behave under circumstances that range from the totally mundane to the utterly extraordinary. And it tells a story that's so quintessentially American some alien wouldn't have to see, read or do anything but watch it to learn everything there is to know about us. I'm just a sucker for a story about the bringer of civilization for whom there's no room in the civilization he brings and The Searchers is the best of that breed. I'm also really fond of On The Town, a post-war, realistic musical. The juxtaposition of gritty realism and fantasy makes my head spin. Put On The Town on a double bill with the slightly later It's Always Fair Weather and you'll get a lesson in the post-war American psyche that'll blow you away. I love Jean Renoir. His long-take, deep-focus approach to cinematography and editing implicates viewers in a way I find really appealing. And Renoir's affection for and understanding of people, with all their foibles, is really beautiful. Check out some of his less well-known work -- Crime of M. Lange or A Day in the Country or Boudu Saved from Drowning. Beautiful stuff. Heck, I could go on for days here... I love The Nutty Professor (The 1963 Jerry Lewis version) and The Adventures of Robin Hood and British documentaries from the 30s and, and, and....


In your opinion, is there a difference in developing a game and directing a film?

Well, I've never directed a film (unless you count the dozen or so really, really bad films I made in high school and college that convinced me I had no future in Hollywood!), so I can't actually say. My guess is there are radical differences, driven by the fact that film is a mature medium (at least relatively speaking) and filmmakers don't have to reinvent the camera or editing techniques every time they start a new project. They don't have to deal with a constantly shifting technology base or bugs or interaction or anything like that -- stuff we worry about all the time. There has to be a purity (I hesitate to say "simplicity") to a director's ability to craft a single message and bring it to the screen, as compared to the messiness of involving players as collaborators in the creation of a game. Interactivity is both powerful and wondrous and a royal pain!...


Do you see the two mediums merging in the future? Will people want to stop watching and start participating, once the technology exists? Or will interactive film pass by like Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books?

I think the whole interactive movie thing has always been a fad, one that will eventually go away. It's easy to look at two superficially similar media and say they should come together to the benefit of both but, in reality, we're dealing with two different things here. Movies are great at what they do. Games are learning to be great at what they do. I don't see either medium supplanting the other. In fact, for the most part, I see games becoming LESS like movies, not more, as game developers figure out what their infant medium is all about. As for whether people will stop watching and start participating, don't hold your breath. Interactivity is scary for most players. I think that's a large part of the reason there are so many games that give the appearance of freedom of choice and interactivity while, in fact, offering a story as linear as any movie -- the only interactivity in most games comes from trying to figure out how the developer wanted you to get past each roadblock in his or her linear narrative.


As Technology grows in quality and decreases in cost, do you see fully digital characters becoming a major force in film soon? Judging from both the state of character animation in games and CG films from houses like Pixar and PDI, how far away would you say we are of modeling and animating a fully realized character?

Digital actors are coming. It's inevitable. I have no idea how close we are to creating actors who never existed but there are already commercials that look totally real but include no real objects. It's a little spooky when you can't tell if a car in a commercial is real or a computer-generated model -- you see that all the time nowadays. People are a tougher problem than cars to solve but not impossible. It'll happen. The irony is we might not know when someone creates the ultimate avatar -- heck, maybe there's already a virtual actor out there and we're just not aware of it! Who knows?...


What do you see as the next big leap in both game and film?

Man, I have no idea! Ask me after someone makes that next big leap!


Finally, any word on the progress of your next highly anticipated game, Thief 3?

There are some great things happening here but it's just too early to be talking about Thief 3 (or Deus Ex 2) just yet. When the time is right, we'll start talking...


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