“We started to feel that a little bit on Invisible War and Thief: Deadly Shadows. The cost was high enough that we couldn’t – we couldn’t – make the game for the hardcore gamers. There just weren’t enough. And that was a big challenge, and I don’t think we did very well with it.”

So you made shitty games and failed miserably. Why not made the game properly then let people decide they wanna buy your game? At least you’d have your dignity and could say ” I made the game right.””

Yeah, I very much agree. It makes no sense to even take the budget into consideration. I mean sure they have their limits when it comes to spending, but you can’t fool me into believing they couldn’t have done better… Invisible War really was made with the whole ‘lets make it a console game’ kind of attitude that was simply wrong to begin with.

Same budget, different attitude… it could have made the game a lot better. I’m talking general game design here, not graphics, special FX or expensive voice-overs. I’m talking the basic body of the game. It’s kind of sad hearing game designers talk like that. :(

“We started to feel that a little bit on Invisible War and Thief: Deadly Shadows. The cost was high enough that we couldn’t – we couldn’t – make the game for the hardcore gamers. There just weren’t enough. And that was a big challenge, and I don’t think we did very well with it.”

So you made shitty games and failed miserably. Why not made the game properly then let people decide they wanna buy your game? At least you’d have your dignity and could say ” I made the game right.”

Thanks for your detailed clarification. You seem to have put some thought into the way you have conducted your interview.

It is part of your editorial freedom how you go about its presentation, and I don’t want to nitpick about certain aspects, especially since, as stated in my previous comment, I did like the interview.

I haven’t dropped by Eurogamer in a while, will do so when I find some time later though.
So is the piece on Eurogamer supposed to serve as a comprehensive complement to this article?

It’s mostly the second one with Spector. I’ve interviewed him quite a few times, so he – er – knows I’m not a dick, or at least someone who is looking for more than just the basic question list.

Of course, this is also a transcript interview – there’s very little which was said which isn’t on the page. I’m trying to chronicle a conversation to add to a sense of it a real thing which really happened, which most videogame interviews fail at. I want it appear to be a conversation between two humans rather than just this question/response thing. Occasionally that means you have stuff that’s just chat.

(If I wanted a more formal interview, I’d have just cut those questions and left it as Spector’s answer. They serve no purpose other than atmosphere.)

Not that I’m saying it’s a perfect interview in any way, but wanted to say there’s generally reasons why I do things the way I do. And always worth remembering the most chatty stuff was leading to questions covered in the Eurogamer interview – like the “What games are you playing” lead to the discussion of the merits of Portal and Bioshock. Definitely read both to get the full picture, sir.

KG

By the way, so are the Ron Gilbert and Al Lowe interviews.
Thanks for consistently picking out the right minds to cover :)

Kieron, could you please try to make your interview partners talk and reveal more? It might help to ask questions instead of resorting to make statements, such as

Something I say to people: the problem with games is that I like too many of them.

or

I’m stuck – there’s so many games I have to play, or want to play, so much stuff doesn’t get attention.

By the way this is meant to be constructive criticism. I like the interview you have conducted and the ground covered with Warren Spector. I am looking forward to the next one.

Warren Spector has more interesting bits on his work with the University of Texas on his blog.

The more Spector talks about how gamers are going to hate his new game, the more I’m convinced it’s going to be great.