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TVTranscript
00:00Do you hear someone?
00:06He's passionate.
00:07That love of games shines through.
00:10And loves to take chances.
00:12And it took me about a week to figure out I need nothing.
00:14Well, all of our games had cancellation threatened all the time.
00:17He's the man behind some of the most creative games in history.
00:22This is a really cool idea, but I don't know if they're going to be able to pull it off.
00:25Everybody in that project knew that this was something new and different.
00:28The world of gaming wasn't going to be the same ever again.
00:31And through it all, remained true to himself.
00:36I knew I could survive.
00:38Watch out.
00:40And that courage that he has to always work on the games is the reason that he's revered as a
00:45game god.
00:45This is the story of Warren Spector.
00:50Someone's on our tail for sure.
01:18I was a film freak from the time I was a little kid.
01:24I spent most of my time in the dark alone, which is kind of strange.
01:27But there you have it.
01:29My family wasn't a big gaming family, but we did our share of, you know, Monopoly.
01:34And my dad used to beat me at chess all the time and all that stuff.
01:37But really, I came to it pretty late.
01:40A close encounter at a friend's house leaves him starstruck.
01:44The guy who had the Atari 800 and walked into his living room completely dark and there were 20 of
01:49my friends all sitting around staring at a TV screen.
01:53And someone was playing Star Raiders.
01:56And Star Raiders was a revelation.
01:58It was the first time I felt like I was actually, you know, in a starfighter.
02:02I mean, I was doing something really special when I played that game, not just, you know, manipulating pixels or
02:06typing in keywords or something.
02:07And that was a big moment.
02:10Warren graduates from college and begins teaching the films he loved as a child.
02:16I was teaching film courses at the University of Texas.
02:18Animation history and introduction to film analysis and television studies.
02:24And the funny thing is there came a point where the chairman of the department called me up and said,
02:29You know, you've been teaching this class that you've been doing for, what was it, 13 semesters.
02:36And you're only really allowed to do it for nine.
02:38So we're going to have to take your class away.
02:40Sorry.
02:41Click.
02:43And so I'm sitting there on the floor in my house going, how am I going to pay my rent?
02:47What do I do?
02:48And it was one of those just wonderful moments.
02:50I got a call from a guy I had worked with on the school newspaper, of all things.
02:55And he had gotten a job with Steve Jackson Games, a local game company in Austin.
02:59And he knew I was a game freak.
03:00He said, hey, we're looking for an assistant editor.
03:02You want to come on?
03:03And I said, well, yeah.
03:07It was all luck, like so many things in life.
03:10I went from Steve Jackson games to TSR, the folks who do Dungeons and Dragons.
03:14And I was kind of bored actually making paper games, to admit it.
03:19And again, I got a call out of the blue from a guy who was working at Origin.
03:22And he said, hey, we're looking for an associate producer at Origin.
03:25Are you interested?
03:25And I said, well, sure.
03:27You know, I played Ultima V. It was great.
03:30In 1989, Warren sacrifices pay for creativity and joins the development team at Origin, the game company behind the successful
03:39Ultima series.
03:40One of the first things I had the opportunity to do when I went to Origin was work with Richard
03:44Garriott on Ultima VI.
03:45I came in as the paper game guy who was going to teach the electronic guys what interactivity was all
03:50about.
03:51And it took me about a week to figure out I need nothing.
03:55Richard Garriott quickly sees the talents that Warren has to offer.
03:58Rich was and is one of my mentors.
04:00Working with him was an education.
04:03He and I went off for about two weeks.
04:05We went to his house and we ate way too much Chinese food and spent way too much time talking
04:09late into the night about games.
04:12Their work pays off.
04:13And in the end, an entirely new world is created.
04:16And we worked together on the plot of Ultima VI and came up with, you know, the whole gargoyles invading
04:22Britannia plot
04:23and came up with the idea that, you know, they're not just bad guys.
04:25They have their own philosophy and it's equally valid.
04:28So it was an immediate immersion in the idea that games don't have to be just about killing.
04:33Ultima VI The False Prophet is released in June 1990 and fans praised the game as another great addition to
04:40the Ultima series.
04:42Creating that kind of gameplay, that rich sort of world, the multiple solutions to problems stuff that was a part
04:47of Ultima's even back then, that was my grad score.
04:53A few months later, after meeting with the small development company, Blue Sky Productions, the Ultima series takes on a
05:00new dimension.
05:02A lot of trends being indicated of what's going on in the consumer electronics business.
05:06Underworld came to Origin at a CES show, a precursor to E3.
05:10We were all impressed with this 3D demo that Paul Nurat showed us.
05:15We put together a demo in about a month, basically May 1990, of a sort of 3D texture-mapped walls
05:21with no floors or ceilings and a little bitmap and, you know, the world's simplest tile editor and no real
05:27gameplay.
05:28And presented it to the Origin folks and said, hey, we can do a texture-mapped real-time dungeon game.
05:33We pitched it to Origin and they were like, sure, go do it.
05:35We're not going to give you any money, basically, but, you know, if it got done, we'd be interested.
05:39So we went off and spent the next year or so building the tech up, making it real.
05:43Blue Sky returned to Cambridge to work on the game with Origin's financial blessing, but without Warren.
05:49And I really wanted to work on that project. We didn't have a story, we didn't have anything except a
05:53tech demo at that point.
05:55But it got assigned to another producer at Origin. I was really upset about that.
05:59But months later, when the producer leaves the company, Warren recognizes the opportunity.
06:04I went to my boss, Al Snell, and said, give me this. This is going to change the world. I
06:10have to work on this.
06:13I don't know why, but he said, sure, it's yours. And so I started working with the guys at Blue
06:18Sky.
06:19And Warren showed up about halfway through and really helped.
06:22We were already in the process of thinking, okay, this actually has to ship someday.
06:25So Warren did a lot of helping us sort of focus.
06:28That team in that time were real special.
06:30It was all, it was like over-intellectual kids, you know.
06:33And I was, you know, among the worst. And we were just so angst-ridden.
06:36And, you know, we were up all night and working on our technology.
06:39And we had our philosophy of games and it wasn't working out.
06:42And, you know, Warren would be like, hey guys, it's awesome. Look, you know, hey, the game looks so great.
06:47You know, let's go. And it was totally inspirational.
06:49The team was just like chaos, you know, lightning in a bottle sort of.
06:53They worked all the time. They were, they kept these crazy hours.
06:57And they fought like cats and dogs, but they were all pretty much aligned in wanting to make a great
07:01game.
07:02The production team headed by Warren finishes Ultima Underworld in 1992.
07:07And things for Warren seem to be going well.
07:10But a pair of heavy initials are about to move in and mix things up.
07:14Everybody in that project, they knew that this was something new and different.
07:17And the world of gaming wasn't going to be the same over again.
07:31Ultima Underworld, the Stygian Abyss, ships to stores in 1992.
07:38Warren Spector has begun preparing his space among video game greats.
07:43Ultima Underworld's unique gameplay and innovative visual style earns praise from both critics.
07:48The magazines loved it. It got great reviews.
07:51And players.
07:52When I first saw the Underworld games, I was like a software tester in Cambridge.
07:56And everybody was gathered around somebody's cube over in customer service.
07:59So I went over there and went, what's going on? What's going on?
08:01That was one of those moments, like the first time you see a 3D game, you know, the first time
08:04people saw Mario 64.
08:06Or the first time you saw good-looking sprites on a 16-bit.
08:08Like when you saw that, it was like, there was like a whole world in there. So it was pretty
08:12amazing.
08:15It felt like a real world. And you know, you could get a stick and some string and go fishing
08:19and make popcorn by throwing corn on the fire.
08:22Like it was just, it was really cool.
08:23But for the rest of us, it really set that agenda of, wow, this is really powerful.
08:29You know, we can do this thing you can't do in a book, you can't do in a movie, and
08:32this is really empowering.
08:36Ultima Underworld sells a half a million units.
08:39Its success leads to a sequel, Ultima Underworld 2 Labyrinth of Worlds.
08:44But after two trips into the dungeon, Warren starts looking for a little shock to his system.
08:49After Underworld 2 wrapped up, I was sitting around with Doug, and we were just saying, man, we are so
08:56tired of doing fantasy games.
08:59Well, gee, should we set it in the space station? Should we have it on the moon? I mean, who
09:03knows where it was going to be.
09:04So I think Warren felt a little more, I mean, all of us felt a little more ability to kind
09:08of do what we wanted to do,
09:10and not think like, well, how would an Ultima make this?
09:12There's more like, oh, so how's our crazy space station work anyway?
09:16System Shock, an open-ended role-playing game, is a chance for Warren to integrate many of his ideas into
09:22one game.
09:23System Shock actually introduced a lot of things that seemed pretty innovative.
09:28It was one of the first games that I know of that was a role-playing game in a real
09:33role-playing sense.
09:35System Shock definitely felt like a revolutionary game.
09:40Once you get into games like that, highly, highly interactive games with a high degree of object density in the
09:47world,
09:47things that you can play with or interact with, things that respond to your presence,
09:51other games just don't cut it after that.
09:54In March 1994, Blue Sky Productions becomes Looking Glass Technologies and releases System Shock with Origin as the publisher.
10:03But gamers aren't so open-minded about the open-ended gameplay.
10:08Wow, this game is slow. The controls are too complicated. I don't get it. Is this a role-playing game
10:14or a shooter?
10:16Hey, why didn't you guys just do Doom? It sold way better. Or, why didn't you do a story-adventure
10:20game? You know, that's what I thought you were doing.
10:23That was like a large body of people responding to. And then there was a small category of person who
10:29utterly understood what we were doing creatively.
10:32It once again got enough critical reception and enough people telling us what they liked that it certainly kept us
10:38motivated to keep going.
10:39I think what they were doing is like laying out a sort of architectural plan for open-ended, first-person
10:44perspective RPG hybrids, basically.
10:48System Shock sells well, and work on a sequel begins immediately.
10:56Watch out. I'm getting strange readings. Take cover.
11:01In 1992, Origin is acquired by game giant EA, Electronic Arts, for $30 million.
11:08With EA's deep pockets behind them, the pressure is on Origin to deliver, and Warren had everything to lose.
11:15Get through a secure airlock before you're sucked into space. Move it!
11:19You've got to swing for the fences. You need a home run. It's a hit-driven business.
11:23Because I didn't want to be making home runs, and I didn't want to spend, you know, five years and
11:27$13 million making one game and praying it was a hit.
11:31I wanted to do low-budget things that came out in shorter timelines, and the risks were lower, where I
11:36made a little bit of money for somebody on a constant basis.
11:39But I realized it was time to move on.
11:43EA went through a period of not really wanting to do anything first-person. They just didn't really believe in
11:47it.
11:47I mean, even System Shock sort of had, well, all of our games had cancellation threatened all the time, but
11:52System Shock in particular had a lot of,
11:54oh, why are we doing this? This is a waste of time.
11:57In the background, Paul Nurath, who I'd been working with for years, he'd been asking me to sign on with
12:03Looking Glass, you know, leave Origin, come sign on with Looking Glass.
12:06They asked me to come on as a producer, they asked me to come on to run development, they asked
12:11me to just come and work with us.
12:14So, all of a sudden, I was on the hook, because, you know, EA told me they didn't want to
12:18make the kinds of games I wanted to make, and here's a guy offering to set up a studio, or
12:22let me set up a studio, in my hometown.
12:24So I get to do the kinds of games I want to make, working with people I love, well, okay,
12:30let's go.
12:31Warren leaves Origin to work full-time with Looking Glass as a producer on their role-playing games.
12:36Welcome aboard, soldier.
12:38His first order of business? A game in development called Thief.
12:43We didn't understand Thief at the beginning. Thief went through two alternate designs that were sort of more story-based,
12:49larger scope, less focused.
12:52And we kept struggling with how to make the story work.
12:55It was the beginning of a very long education.
12:58You know, I kept telling those guys, you've got to stop making games by and for MIT grads, there are
13:03only 10,000 of you in the world.
13:05So the fiction changed, and it ultimately did become Thief.
13:09The time is ripe for a bit of burglary.
13:12Thief was, we're going to give you a tiny toolset, we're going to be a thief, and we're going to
13:16give you everything you need to be a thief, in as much detail and however you want.
13:20And that's all we're giving you. End of discussion.
13:24They would send me copies of it and stuff, and I was just immediately blown away, like I had heard
13:29them talking about it for years.
13:31That shot was meant for me.
13:34Just the introduction of very analog stealth gameplay, where the guards' perceptions were based on light and shadow.
13:40Yes, I'm sure there was Garrett in the window. He's dead. Let's head back now.
13:44Very creepy, very immersive. I loved it immediately.
13:48Looking Glass had a lot of, kind of, forward-thinking people.
13:52Did you hear someone?
13:54Being able to see that, like, stealth is this really powerful thing that can build tension.
13:59Is someone following us?
14:00In a way that a lot of pure adrenaline rush can't.
14:04But Warren won't get a chance to finish the game that he's helped parent.
14:08Let me be clear about one thing. I left Looking Glass before Thief Shit.
14:16I left, and I started shopping around, you know, another proposal.
14:23And what Warren has planned next will push the envelope even further.
14:40With a series of innovative games behind him, Warren begins to look for a new home.
14:46John Romero called me and said, don't sign that.
14:51I mean, I told him, it's too late. It's too late.
14:53He said, I'm going to let you do the game of your dreams.
14:57Let me drive down to Austin from Dallas tomorrow, and let me try to talk you into joining Ionstorm.
15:04And he drove down the next day, and damn if he didn't convince me.
15:08I mean, he said, bigger budget, bigger marketing, game of your dreams.
15:13I mean, who's going to turn that down?
15:15In the fall of 1997, Warren moves to Ionstorm, where his first order of business is to surround himself with
15:20the talent he needs.
15:22Sometimes I deserve more credit than I get. Sometimes I deserve less credit than I get.
15:25But the one thing that is absolutely true is that no one person makes a game.
15:31This is the most intensely collaborative medium I can imagine.
15:35We're making the kind of games that hardcore players really want to play.
15:39While building a team, he starts planning what the game of his dreams will look like.
15:44I put together a 30-page pitch proposal for Deus Ex, flew to London for ECTS in 97, and presented
15:51it to the executives there.
15:53And I put together a budget, and they said, great, okay. I didn't hear from him again for years.
15:58It was an unbelievable opportunity.
16:02With the full support of Eidos, Ionstorm's parent company, work begins.
16:08Ionstorm Austin started off with a bang, working on Deus Ex.
16:13No one at the time really knew what kind of game we were making.
16:16Like, the team basically sort of diverged into three factions.
16:22One group was more or less convinced that we were making a shooter, you know, like a Daikatana.
16:28Another percentage of the team thought we were making a really true dogmatic RPG, like an Ultima or something.
16:36And then about a third of us knew that what we were doing was something sort of like Underworld or
16:41System Shock.
16:43And there was a lot of conflict about that.
16:45I think in some ways it hurt the game, but in other ways it helped.
16:48Getting all these different people with their different viewpoints together and in conflict pulled the game in directions it wouldn't
16:53have gone otherwise.
16:54By June 2000, Deus Ex, Warren's dream project, is ready to be shipped to stores.
17:00And Warren holds his breath.
17:03You know, the day we shipped, I was just like, I have no idea how this is going to go.
17:08I have no idea if people are going to love it or hate it.
17:10If people compared our combat model to Half-Life, we were doomed.
17:14If they compared our stealth model to Thief, we were doomed.
17:16If they compared our role-playing to Baldur's Gate, we were doomed.
17:20But if they figured out that they could do anything they wanted, if they realized they had that freedom, and
17:27it wasn't just a damn shooter,
17:30we were going to rule the world, or at least change it a little bit.
17:33And players got it.
17:35Just the notion of being able to go through the game in different ways, and whether you want to kind
17:38of use violence,
17:39the stealth and that kind of stuff, and just the whole plot.
17:42And it was like, this is a neat idea, but like, I've heard neat ideas before that just totally fail.
17:47And then when you actually played Deus Ex, it was like, it worked.
17:52He did it.
17:55Deus Ex wins countless Game of the Year awards for its hybrid gameplay, something gamers had never seen before.
18:03Gamers are also being discerning, wanting multiple options to what they do in their games.
18:07So that means bringing in what might have been old-school adventure elements,
18:12but tying that in with current both action sequences or special effects or role-playing elements.
18:19Just spotted a sniper in the tower.
18:21Even now, I just, I don't even know what to make of it.
18:23Everybody puts it in their top ten games of all time.
18:26I don't even know what to say.
18:28But its incredible success is almost overshadowed by the storm brewing in Ion Storm's Dallas offices.
18:35Ion Storm was a mixed bag.
18:37It's really seductive. The inmates running the asylum seems like a great thing.
18:40In the end, it didn't quite work out so well.
18:42Oh, sorry. My mistake.
18:44I mean, the whole idea behind Ion Storm was, let creative people do creative things, get out of their way.
18:50And up to a point, that's great.
18:52And I'm enough of a business guy or a management guy that I could pull it off.
18:57I think they had a little more trouble in Dallas.
18:59That's pretty much all there is to say.
19:02On July 21, 2001, John Romero resigns and Ion Storm Dallas closes its doors.
19:08Undaunted, Warren keeps Ion Storm Austin open and helps refocus on a sequel to the Deus Ex game in late
19:152003.
19:16Warren also begins to think about using his experiences to do some good in the game community.
19:22I got involved with the IGDA about three or four years ago.
19:27And the idea of an international association, a community of game developers, working professionals and students who hope to become
19:35working professionals or analysts.
19:36I just think that's vitally important.
19:38Glad to know you. What can you tell me about what's going on out there?
19:42There's too little talking in this business.
19:45Warren's innovative game designs and the talented teams he worked so hard to cultivate continue to influence the industry.
19:52Warren's biggest ability is to say, yes, that's good, but now how can we make it better?
19:59Just be patient and remember your training.
20:01Let's get creative. Let's think about these things.
20:04So him being a very creative person just influences everyone around him to take it to the next level.
20:09Good work.
20:10He's spoken so much about where games should go in the future.
20:15Deus Ex has won over such a more mainstream group of people that it's been really cool to watch Warren
20:20get his due for leading games.
20:26He's revered as a game god and it's not an easy thing to have. It is not an easy thing
20:30to have.
20:32When I look back at 20 years of game development, I'm stunned that I've survived that long.
20:38The thing I'm proudest of is the opportunity to work with so many great people and to actually help people
20:44achieve their goals is pretty special.
20:47And doing that in a field that I just absolutely love. I mean, I make games for a living. You
20:54know, I mean, what could possibly be cooler than that?
20:56And doing that?
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