Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Variety have been interviewing Warren Spector about the Wii-Epic Mickey game and amongst the information that’s irrelevant to THE WORLD’S MIGHTIEST PC GAMING BLOG a couple of facts came to light. Specifically, some more details of the two games which Junction Point were working on before they were acquired. One was a fantasy game, but the other was basically Deus Ex with the serial numbers filed off because Eidos wouldn’t sell the IP to him. “There were and still are ‘Deus Ex’ stories I would like to tell. That story is not done for me,” he says in the interview. Most crucially, the rights to the two games went to Disney with Junction point and aren’t dead. In other words, we could still see Spector’s Bioshock, if you follow my metaphor. As he said to me a few years ago, it’s possible he’ll only work on three more games before he retires. Epic Mickey, Not Deus Ex and incarnating a Fantasy World his wife and he have wanted to do for fifteen years would be a fine way to round off his ludography.

It is a time of rejoicing amongst the thought-commune known as Deus Ex fans. The Narcissus Entity has deigned to break its silence and – once again – communicate with non-Nth dimensional hyperbeings The jubilation means nothing. Your pitiful orgasmic cries are meaningless. You will be consumed, when we can be bothered. But there is another reason for DeusExian human joy, a distant second to the reappearance of our transcendental majesty. The Nameless Mod is finished and available to download. At just under a gig, this game modification is about twice as large as Deus Ex itself. This will impress you. It means nothing to Narcissus, who is larger than the sum of all existences.

Narcissus will continue its address below. You will read and attempt to comprehend as much of it as your inferior minds can manage.
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As three-quarters of RPS quietly recover from the Thinkosium, this brought a smile to our collective faces as we tried to work out how to remove cheese from the floor our of my oven. In a move which I have to assume will be rejected as another half-baked notion by AIMs, Eidos Montreal send Bethesda a cake to congratulate them on shipping Fallout 3. Bless.

More on the Thinkosium in a bit. In short: THIS WAS A TRIUMPH, etc.

Via PC Gamer UK.

Gametap, that surging faucet of digital delivery, has announced that it’ll be featuring candidate for best game ever, Deus Ex, on its free games roster as of next week. The Big Ex joins Psychonauts and Thief: Deadly Shadows on its free game thinger. You will again be able to celebrate some of the greatest moments in gaming.

I have to say, actually, that it’s about time we had some more Deus Ex 3 news for Kieron to dissect at terrifying length. Come on, Eidos, leak some more info already.

Just before Christmas, Eurogamer got me to travel up to Disney’s London headquarters to interview Warren Spector. The resulting piece covered all the big matters of the day - Deus Ex 3, Portal’s awesomeness and how when his new game is finally announced he’d be “vilified”. But there was a hell of a lot more. Starting with polite small-talk, and extend outwards to take in his admiration and identification with Walt Disney, being “Tech’s Bad Boy”, how best to approach The Icons, putting his money where his mouth is, Being In a videogame, the importance of teaching videogames, creating an oral history of games, what it’s like to be a 52-year old designer and JRPGs about Chopin.

The one thing we didn’t ask him why he decided to hook up with this Mickey-Mouse outfit…
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…and somehow found their way here as a result: Um. Really?

[At this point in these postmortem features, I decided to mix it up a little for PC Format. Since they were integrated into the mod-section of the magazine - with the subtext that they were inspirational things for readers thinking about becoming games developers - I thought a look at how a designer got to be a designer could be fun. Luckily, Harvey, who's previously worked on landmark games including Deus Ex and System Shock, was up for it. The interview was done after the end of Ion Storm Austin, but before he'd joined Midway to work on Blacksite.]

We all look back, in an unholy mix of nostalgia and self-analysis. It’s what this column is all about. This time, however, we’re going to take an alternate route through this terrain. Rather than follow the path of a game, and what went right and wrong, instead we’re going to follow a career. How it started, how it moved on and what was learned at each step. And, indirectly, one of the most common questions that arrive in our inbox: “How do I get into the games industry”. Here’s a case study of how one man did. The man in question? Harvey Smith, who started back in 1993 in Quality Assurance at Origin and continues to this day at Midway.
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[A version of this feature was originally printed in UK videogames bible Edge. It's about the use of Text in videogames, both in the mainstream and over in the world of Interactive fiction. It features material from Chris Avellone (Planescape Torment), Sheldon Pacotti (Deus Ex), Adam Cadre (Photopia, Shrapnel) and Emily Short (Galatea, Floatpoint). I've expanded it to fit in in some of the quotes I couldn't fit in Edge's word-count. Which were many. If you've read my Planescape Retrospective, you'll recognise some key riffs. This feature very much grew from that one. And enough waffle. Let's do this thing.]

In the beginning was the word. And the word begat a phrase. And the phrase was “Avoid Missing Ball For High Score”. Gaming’s public relationship with words started here, and continues to this day. It’s these first furtive fumblings which produced the most lasting signifiers which define games in the public eye, and will continue to do so as long as the form continues to exist in its current state. Icons like “Extra Life” and “High Score” are as much a signifier of gaming as any of the corporate mascots.

But this isn’t about that.

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