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The Week Ending February 15, 2000

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Wolf 3D: Finally 3D!
Although long rumored – and unofficially confirmed in a Los Angeles paper last fall – Activision has finally announced that Wolfenstein 3D, id Software's seminal action game is going to be remade using the Quake III engine. From a marketing perspective it makes great sense to bring Wolf 3D back, but I think the developers face an uphill battle as they try to re-create the Wolf 3D feel using the Quake 3 engine – After all, it's not like the floors and ceilings are going to be flood-filled in gray this time around. I think it would make more sense to re-make Doom with the Quake 3 engine, but nevertheless I can hardly wait to see what Grey Matter (Kingpin developer Xatrix under a new guise) will do with the Wolf 3D concept. Can you imagine curved surfaces in Wolfenstein 3D? Bottom line: It's risky to tinker with a classic, but I can't wait to see the game in action!
Revolving Talent Door
News broke the other day that Brian Reynolds, one of the design visionaries at Firaxis (creators of Alpha Centauri) has decided to leave the company. Although Reynolds no doubt didn't get his due because he was designing games such as "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri," his departure from Firaxis is just another example of a designer deciding to leave a successful company to strike out on his own. I think departures such as Reynolds' (and the recent exit of Tim Schafer from LucasArts) illustrate the need for the gaming industry to look at what it's doing wrong: very few creative designers feel comfortable within the limits of a larger organization. If this trend of designer defections continues, I think we may well see game development mirror the motion picture industry where every designer has his or her own production company that contracts with a publisher. Today we are consistently seeing developers branded by the name of its lead designer and not the team as a whole, and if this doesn't change, I think we will continue to see talented designers leave growing developers.
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