Rock, Paper, Shotgun

“When the history of my glory is written, your species shall only be a footnote to my magnificence,” said a terrifying lady, yesterday, to me. Or SHODAN did or whatever. But her legacy lives on thanks to the kind of innovation Looking Glass studios was interested in. Paul Neurath, the co-founder and creative director of Looking Glass from ‘the day it opened to the day it closed’ has been interviewed on this super fascinating podcast looking back on his time with the studio. The company was responsible for some of our dearest memories, such as Ultima Underworld, System Shock, and Thief, before it closed its doors (sob!) in 2000.

Read the rest of this entry »

Edit: cos there are various theories flying around below about my perceived intent in posting this, I shall clarify my own feelings. I would really like to see contracts between publishers and developers more commonly include an arrangement whereby key (and ideally, but rather less plausibly, all) creatives on game projects continue to see some post-release royalties, as is the case in some other entertainment and publishing industries. That so many old games are being (apparently profitably) rereleased lately highlights this disparity. That is all.

There’s obviously a very good chance you already know this, but just in case: when a developer is bought out by a publisher, it’s usually the case that they then don’t see any ongoing royalties from the games they make for them, or indeed for any existing intellectual property that was swallowed up as part of the studio acquisition. It’s standard practice, knowingly agreed by both parties during the dark deal some studios made to ensure immediate financial viability and larger project budgets. But what it does mean is that a great many of the PC games we regularly celebrate around these parts are no longer bringing in any money for their creators, despite still being on sale. Whenever we excitedly see an old classic appear on Steam or GoG (such as Thief last week), chances are very high that whatever we pay for it goes purely to the publisher and the download service. And while it may well be right that these bodies profit from projects they funded and distribute, it’s sad that the men and women who toiled over that game’s creation won’t see another penny from it.
Read the rest of this entry »

This is turning into an oddly sad day here at RPS. Pete Closs forwards this footage of the last day at Looking Glass: May 25th 2000. About 40 minutes of the last seconds of one of the greatest developers of all time. Impromptu silly interviews with everyone you care to mention. Discover who will play everyone in the inevitable Looking Glass movie and see Lulu Lamer brag about her Unreal Tournament skills. Hurrah! But mainly sniff.
Read the rest of this entry »

Okay, in a vague warm-up for Bioshock – and I figure that anything’s a better use of my time than sitting on every single Bioshock thread on the internet and pressing “refresh” all day – I download System Shock from Underdogs and get it working on DOSBox, with full sound (P-P-PATHETIC CREATURE OF MEAT AND BONE!) and everything. It’ll be easier if I still had XP installed, as I’d be able to turn to System Shock Portable, which will even run from a USB drive.

Now, System Shock is a game I’ve played, but not played, as it were. Before my time by a good four years in terms of PC ownership and by the time I had one, I only went back for historic reasons. They’re always memorable. This means that every time I start playing it, I quickly get a sense of archaeological excitement, as if I’m excavating a Roman Ruin and I’ve just found a diesel engine or something. They did this back then?

This time, it’s a simple one. I’m nosing around at some high shelves, and notice that there’s a handful of boxes around. So, in proper modeled-physics, I start to kick them around to form a ladder and… waitasecond.

1994. Some people are still trying to pass this kind of object manipulation off as something to be excited about even now.

I’m chatting with Rossignol earlier in the kitchen. He’s talking about how, for him, System Shock was The Game, with sexy capitals. Back then, it felt so astoundingly new and complete that he kept on expecting something even more unprecedented around the corner, like an NPC who’ll talk to him with full voice-interface or something. It was a black obliesk landing into the summer of that year, and transformed any dumb apes lucky enough to touch it.

While it’s still worth battling with the slightly old-fashioned control system, what strikes me is that it’s just within some hacking to actually turn into something that’ll still be playable today. Just an introduction of a mouselook, streamling all the body positioning stuff (It has Leaning, crouching, crawling ala later games) without sending all the game’s other systems crazy would make it something you could actively recommend for anyone to play. Hell, the graphic fidelity has even been dealt with already by other archivists. System Shock Portable allows you to install extra textures to play in a passably meaty 1024×768.

We can just hope that there’s some p-p-pathetic creature of meat and bone who wants to prove to auntie SHODAN they’re not so p-p-pathetic out there. Immortality awaits.