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've made plenty of violent games in my life. I play violent games. They don't affect people in the way that a lot of people think they do. They just don't. It's demonstrably true that they don't, and anybody who thinks they do is just not thinking.
I've always said - I've been making games for twenty years, and from the first day I got in this business, I've been saying, 'All I have to do is sell one more copy than I have to, to get somebody to fund my next one.'
Used games allow more people, specifically younger people, to become game fans because of the lower price point.
I don't even make multiplayer games much, so dealing with multiple characters is something new for me - or, rather, something I've had to recall from my days as a roleplaying adventure designer where the party was everything!
My first encounter with video games was pretty conventional. I was travelling with my parents - we used to take long cross country trips in the United States every summer - and we went into a restaurant where there happened to be a Pong machine, and I was... a lot of quarters went into that Pong machine, let's just say.
I make M-rated games for adults, you know, with guys wearing sunglasses at night and trench coats.
The reason our games generate so much revenue is because we're stupid enough to charge $60 for a box or $50 for a download or something. You need used games because most people can't afford those prices.
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.
The fact is most computer roleplaying games that offer a zillion highly specialized skills end up with nine-tenths of a zillion skills that every player quickly realizes aren't worth the experience points to buy.
Every game has to teach you how to walk, run, talk, use.
People perceive games as being for kids, and I think that perception is going to change. Time is going to take care of that. I mean, we've already won. Games have won; it's inevitable.
If anything, game development is even more of a team effort than making a movie, so for individuals to get credit for making a game is absolutely insane.
Finney is about the best writer of time travel stories ever, and I adore time travel stories - have to make a time travel game someday!
I want my little corner of the world where I get to make games where you're not trying to win or lose; you're not trying to get a higher score - you are having unbelievable amounts of fun as you learn about yourself and the world. That's what games can do!