GameSlice: Behind the Scenes of the Computer and Video Game Industry

Professor Spector

Page 2 of 9

Back to Index
HERE

The MIT Games Conference

While Warren Spector, is the man behind "Deus Ex", game journalists are often hard-pressed to extract that admission from him. Known throughout the industry for his excessive modesty, Spector takes extravagant pains to accord credit its every feature to the entire "Deus" team. But at its core, the title is Spector's vision, driven by his almost academic approach to the creative impulse in game design. His 10,000 word essay from last year, published in Game Developer Magazine and Gamasutra, reads both like a white paper for the creation of "Deus Ex" and a deeply thought-out treatise on game theory in the role playing genre. At a February forum on computer game aesthetics held at venerable MIT, Spector riffed like a street-smart arts professor, nimbly jumping back forth from abstract design concepts to the practical demands of creating a commercially viable product, all delivered with his classic rock, DJ-style voice, and his characteristically punchy irreverence.

Unsurprisingly, Spector has an advanced humanities degree, earned before his entrance into the game industry. It affords him an impressive range of literary and intellectual influences to draw from, including Victor Turner, noted anthropologist:

"We can let you explore behaviors in computer games that we don't want you exploring in the real world."
- Warren Spector

"[Turner's] concept of 'liminality,' of 'liminal spaces (look it up!)", Spector tells me, "Seems particularly useful to me in thinking about what gaming can and should be." (I did, Warren: "liminal space" refers to a social setting where artists, madmen, and hopefully, game designers, can play with a culture's unwritten laws.) "A ritual space where people go and explore elements of their culture and come out changed," he expands for me later. "We don't have a lot of those anymore in our culture. I like to think that games can fill that role. We can let you explore behaviors in computer games that we don't want you exploring in the real world. And if we can show you the consequences of your actions, which we're trying to do in very small ways in 'Deus Ex', it's a real interesting anthropological thing going on there."

Next, Publish or Perish Spector! >