Stygian Sentinel 20

Issue #20, February 22nd 2016

In my talons I shape clay, crafting life forms as I please.

Not much going on here. It’s really quiet…

Okay. Well, we did have a new hire. Some guy named “Warren Spector.” I think he changed his last name to that because he’s a fan of the undead.

Warren's cameo in Ultima Underworld

Besides lurking as an undead, Warren's been luminary in the game industry. His contributions to the game industry go back over three decades. If you were a gamer in the 80's, you probably played his early work and didn't even know it.

Warren cut his teeth at Steve Jackson Games on an incredible RPG Toon where you play a Saturday morning cartoon character in a world where anything can happen and no one ever gets killed. (If you're into tabletop RPG's and haven't played Toon, you can still get your hands on it on Amazon.)

Warren also had his hands in other Steve Jackson projects, like the GURPS RPG system and the supplement for Paranoia. He then spent some time at TSR (now Wizards of the Coast), developing the spy RPG Top Secret and Marvel Super Heroes RPG.

Warren was just getting started.

SHODAN reimagined for System Shock 3

In 1989, he joined Origin and teamed up with other industry giants like Richard Garriott, Chris Roberts, and our own Paul Neurath. He worked as producer on classics like Ultima VI, Wing Commander, Ultima Underworld, Ultima Underworld II, Serpent Isle, Wings of Glory, and, of course, System Shock. Warren worked briefly on Dark Camelot, which became Thief: The Dark Project, before moving on to help form Ion Storm. Many of these games were not only great in their time, but are credited as classics and industry changing titles.

Warren was then kind enough to give us Deus Ex, Deus Ex: Invisible War, and the third Thief game, Thief: Deadly Shadows. Deus Ex took everything that Warren was perfecting at Origin and Looking Glass and added his own spin on it. It's a cyberpunk classic, up there with Neuromancer and Blade Runner in its influence on the genre.

That pesky player choice on full display in Deus Ex by Ion Storm

Coming full circle back to his cartoon roots, Warren started working with Disney on Disney Epic Mickey and Disney Epic Mickey 2. Not only did Epic Mickey give us a cool cartoon character world with nods to classic Disney cartoons, the telltale signs of player choice and a morality system are still present in the game.

Epic Mickey by Junction Point/Disney

Once he wraps up his current semester of teaching, Warren will be joining Otherside full-time, continuing his journey of creating fun, immersive worlds for everyone to enjoy. He'll not only be helping develop Underworld Ascendant, he'll also heading up efforts on System Shock 3. Lucky us!

Here are a few words with Warren:

Chris: Why did you decide to return to making games?

Warren: Well, as much as I've enjoyed my time in academia, I've been getting the itch to make something again. It's been coming on for a while... Also, the game business changes so quickly, I was starting to feel like I needed to get back into it just so I wouldn't fall behind. You know, get some experience with crowdfunding, games as a service, the impact of streaming video on gamers, the whole metrics and analytics thing... I need to experience all of that. And when Paul Neurath dangled the System Shock 3 possibility in front of me, I really couldn't say no.

Chris: What excites you most about working on Underworld Ascendant?

Warren: It's always fun to get to play in a world you had a hand in creating. Ultima Underworld was groundbreaking in its day, but we've all learned so much about "immersive simulations" in the last 20 years, the idea of capturing the spirit of the original while taking advantage of what we know now that we didn't know then... That's pretty exciting.

Chris: Otherside's very much about taking innovative, well-loved game series and seeing how far we can push them forward. If there was one area of game design you'd like to push forward what would that be?

Warren: My whole career has been about recapturing the feeling I had in 1978 when I first played Dungeons & Dragons. That feeling of telling stories with my friends, of all of us being authors, was really powerful. I want to recreate that in digital games. So I guess you'd have to say Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson are my biggest influences.

Gary and Dave: The original Dungeon Masters

Chris: Without giving away too much of course, where do you see System Shock fitting in with modern gaming? Are there any game systems, technology, or narrative structures that you would want to explore?

Warren: Oh, man, it's too early to be talking about this! All I'll say is that you can count on Citadel Station and SHODAN playing very important roles, though maybe not in ways people expect.

Exciting times ahead for Otherside!

In Other News

We've picked our winners for the limited Edition SHODAN print by Robb Waters!

As a token of our appreciation, 16 respondents --- one for every year since System Shock 2 was released --- were chosen at random to win a limited edition SHODAN print by series concept artist Robb Waters. The winners will be contacted by email later this week!

Without further ado, here are the lucky winners:

• Mohammad Hussien
• Victoria Sørensen
• Jessica Freeman
• Yong soo Kim
• Svetlana M
• Miguel Espinoza
• Istvan Szabo-Gamos
• Amer Al-Hussain
• Rachael Netz
• Nicola Cipriano
• Andrei Cinculescu
• Sebastian Köller
• Amanda Bart
• Thomas Visser
• Afiq Ja'afar Sidik
• Daniele Masotto

Otherside in the News

Here are a few highlights from the flood of press coverage surrounding last week's announcement about Warren joining OtherSide. (The first several of them include interviews with Warren.)

• WIRED "How System Shock lured Warren Spector back to games"
• GAMASUTRA: "The Comeback: Why Warren Spector is making games again"
• VENTURE BEAT: "System Shock revival lures Warren Spector away from academia and back to games"
• IGN: "System Shock 3 Studio hires Warren Spector"
• GAMESPOT: "Deus Ex Creator Warren Spector to lead System Shock 3 Development"

Enter The Flame in the Flood this Wednesday

Another successful Kickstarter project comes to fruition later this week... The Flame in the Flood - a "rogue-lite" river journey through the backwaters of a forgotten post-societal America - arrives for PC, Mac, and Xbox One on February 24th.

In it, you forage, craft, and evade predators in gorgeous, procedurally-generated wilderness crafted by The Molasses Flood, an independent team of developers formerly from the BioShock and Halo series. (It also features dialogue from Underworld Ascendant's writer and design director Joe Fielder.)

Definitely worth checking out!

The Team at OtherSide

External Links

• Stygian Sentinel #20