Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Interesting timing, this. I was chatting to a journo-chum yesterday about how disappointingly tedious the Wall-E game was, and how odd and sad it was that a film studio as accomplished as Pixar would be happy to let such turgid nonsense be officially associated with them. Why do Pixar not start an in-house development studio of their own for these titles? Surely shared in-house digital assets would make the art and graphics a bit easier, and they’d be able to ensure these were proud counterparts to their celluloid output rather than let themselves undermined with shoddy cash-ins. The phrase I used was, I believe, “Pixar could be the Blizzard of kids’ games if they wanted.”

Suddenly, it sounds like this very particular dream may come true. WARR-EN to the rescue…
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Gamasutra have posted a brief interview with one of our favourite developers-with-beard, Mr Warren Spector. In that interview he talks about the fall of the long game.

“Game costs are going to be $35-40 million, even $100 million, and the expectations are huge. You have to differentiate yourselves. One-hundred hour games are on the way out… How many of you have finished GTA? Two percent, probably. If we’re spending $100 million on a game, we want you to see the last level!”

But do you, the player, care if you don’t see the last level? Aside from the fact that GTA is a really bad example to use in this instance (given that people use it more as a playground than as a story), do we agree with Mr Spector’s statement? Games with huge play-times seem to me to be very much healthy, and staying. Perhaps if anything, as Kieron suggests, it’s actually the middle ground that is being lost. Games are either going to be very short, or endless.

What do you think, interbrain?

Readers from the distant past known as last week will remember many things that’ll now be bewildering to modern readers. Remember when Jim was away, not Kieron? And talking at length about Audiosurf – what was that all about? And those trousers we wore! What were we thinking! Anyway, those bearded veterans will also remember us linking to a series of interviews Warren Spector performed with various luminaries, which immediately disappeared.

Those following the comments thread will have seen a sharing group emerged to distribute all thirteen files to anyone who wanted them. News reaches us, via spokesperson LocalHost, that they’ve assembled a 3 gigs (aka Many, many Peggles) torrent file of the whole bunch. You can download it from here and I suspect many of you really, really should. Like, really, really, really, really.

EDIT: Site is 403ed. Comments thread is now a list of who got what and what to do with ‘em.

Wow. This appears to be the motherlode. If you read our Warren Spector interview last month, you’ll have probably been excited by the section where he describes interviewing twelve gaming luminaries as part of his University of Texas Master Class in Video Games and Digital Media. Talking to everyone from Richard Garriott to Blizzard’s Mike Morhaime to Id’s Tim Willits, in sessions you’d want to be a fly on the wall for. And now you can, as in a bandwidth-destroying move, the University of Texas has posted all thirteen lectures.

Get them now before the internet collapses.
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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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As readers of our comments threads will know, the day after we had our last – er -chat with Warren Spector, I was heading off to London to have a chat with Real Warren Spector. Luckily, he hadn’t seen our previous post. He was, however, in a fine mood. Unable to talk about what he’s acually doing for Disney, when asked about what the response will be upon its announcement he says…

“I don’t have to speculate. I know what it’s going to be. And I can’t wait. Oh my God. It’s going to be like the world came to an end. Absolutely. I’m going to be vilified. I’m going to be accused of selling out, yet again. It’s going to be glorious. Just glorious.”

He also gives his opinions on Deus Ex 3, Bioshock, audience reaction, what it’s like being a games developer in his fifties, how bloody hard it is making Immersive Sims, how he wants shorter games, Portal and how he’d like to try making an MMO. Fun stuff. Go read.