Warren Spector: the interview! - part one

Being presented with the opportunity to gas with a bona fide videogames legend isn't exactly the sort of thing that occurs on a regular basis. Nope, maybe once in a blue moon, and only then it's down to a stroke of fortune or greasing the right palms with promises of half a shandy complete with cherry and umbrella down the local watering hole.

So, when we got the call that Ion Storm boss and gaming luminary Warren Spector was in town and willing to blab about all things Deus Ex: Invisible War and beyond, we hot-tailed it into the heart of London, streams of fire left in our wake...

Now that Deus Ex: Invisible War is finished, how do you feel it's turned out - is it what you wanted?

Spector: I'm never one for getting satisfied, so I look at Invisible War and think: "We improved everything we wanted to improve, and we've got pretty close to our original vision," but you always want added time or energy or money or something.

In addition, this time we had the added complication of all this new technology - the new renderer, the new sound system, the new physics, all-new AI, all that stuff. In the same way that the first games that come out for a new console are never as good as the ones that come out three or four years later... it's the same thing.

We're still figuring out what we can do with our technology, so I think what we'll see is... you know, Invisible War is impressive in terms of how technology influences the gameplay, but Thief is going to take this a step further, and then subsequent games are going to be unbelievable. Well, I hope. Obviously I don't know [laughs].

There are some obvious things that we know we want to do better next time. I think we can do - I probably shouldn't be specific because there's a PR person around... Our characters, you know, are still mannequins. We've got to be better... I mean, as an industry we've go to be better with characters. Half-Life 2 is certainly going in the right direction but there's plenty more we can do beyond even what Valve is doing.

But overall yeah, I'm really happy with it.

How important is the introduction of such technology as Havok physics to the videogames scene overall, would you say?

Spector: We can't lose sight of the fact that we're in the software business. There's a tendency, especially among non-technical designers such as myself and Harvey Smith who's the project director on Invisible War... there's a tendency to want to say it's all about design.

But the reality is that technology is very important, and we're still... I often say that we're this infant medium trying to figure out how to walk. So we're not done with technological leaps forward. You can't just use them to make prettier pictures or more realistic pictures; you have to think: how does this technology serve what makes games unique?

That attitude I think is the thing more than anything else that sets Ion Storm apart from a lot of other developers. We're not thinking about how to make games more cinematic - I couldn't care less about that. We're not about making games more like movies, we're about making games unlike anything else that the world's ever seen. And technology is an important part of that.

How optimistic are you about the games industry at the moment - in the UK over the last couple of weeks we've seen a number of studios close down...?

Spector: I wouldn't say I'm optimistic about the games industry [laughs]... I am hugely optimistic and hopeful about the potential of this medium. The future of games could be amazing, but the industry is a whole other story. The industry as a whole is not interested in the potential of games as a medium of communication and expression.

So I would say that you're dealing with two different things. On the one hand I'm very excited and on the other I'm not so.

Similar to GTA, in Deus Ex: Invisible War players are dropped into this sim environment and can proceed through the title in not limitless but a huge number of different ways depending on how they want to play - is it your dream to design a game that's completely freeform?

Spector: I have mixed feelings about completely freeform gameplay. It's funny because, you know, Will Wright is the king of sandbox gameplay. He imposes less on his players and gives them more freedom than anyone else. I admire and respect that beyond words.

I'm not quite ready to give everything up to the player. The way I describe it is we [Ion Storm] want to collaborate with players. I want to tell a cool story - I love telling stories. I don't want to take developers completely out of the picture. I want to find ways that we can work together with our players.

Looking at the flipside, do you think gamers are ready yet for a completely freeform game, or do you think people still want to be directed to a certain extent?

Spector: That's a really good question. I was talking to someone earlier about the future of gaming and it's cool that we're becoming more mainstream and that more people are playing. But, fundamentally, I don't think we're ever going to be as big - in terms of numbers of users or players - as the movies and TV. Fundamentally, most people don't want to interact.

As much fun as games are, they're work. There are plenty of games that are really cool and cinematic and tell great stories and they put you on the rails and it's like a rollercoaster ride.

You have some control over the speed of the rollercoaster, but when you get into games where people have to make choices - look over the shoulders of someone playing Invisible War and it's almost like they get paralysed.

The more choices you give people, the more a lot of people get overwhelmed. We're going to get bigger, and we're going to get better at what we do, and we're going to make more interactive experiences. Plenty of people are making great rollercoaster rides; and we're making games is the way I think about it at Ion Storm - we make games.

And... I guess I'm rambling on a little bit [laughs]. But what the future of gaming is is an interesting question.

Working on the PS2 version of Deus Ex meant you had to slim down pages of stats and the HUD to suit the controller, and in essence you've kept this for Invisible War. Are you happy with the way the HUD has turned out and how it looks?

Spector: Yeah, really happy. The Xbox is a nice piece of hardware and it really is capable of supporting the experience we wanted to provide - the PS2 version of Deus Ex was a great learning experience.

Sadly, because I'd love to reach out to people with PS2 because there are a lot of them, but we just didn't feel that we could provide the experience that we wanted on it - Sony will never speak to me again [laughs]!

But from a technical standpoint Xbox is capable of supporting the renderer, the physics, the AI, the sound - you name it. And am I happy with the way it looks? I think it looks pretty darned good. I think it looks better than any other Xbox game out there to be frank. And we're maybe getting 50 percent of what our technology is capable of, so as I said the future is looking really bright.

For part two of our exclusive interview with Warren Spector, where he continues to reveal more on Deus Ex: Invisible War, click here.

Stuart Bishop