Invisible War
Video Games September 24th, 2003
…I don’t want to make games for 12-year olds. I have no interest in that. I haven’t been 12 in a long time. I don’t have kids. All I have is me, my wife, a dog, and some cats. To that extent, I want to make games — and everyone here at the studio — wants to make games that satisfy us. And we’re all getting older. So let’s do something more adult. Not, “Ooh, look, bare breasts. Ooh look, blood and violence.” Stuff that talks about, “What is a terrorist?” Stuff that talks about, “How do you feel about organized religion?” And it doesn’t just tell you — we don’t just preach. We set up a situation and let you interact with it and see the consequences of your choice. That’s what gaming does. And frankly, if making games that appeal to an older audience limits the number of people who can or will buy or play the games we make, I’m fine with that.
…Anyways, right now, we’re months away from shipping Invisible War. There are plenty of people who are worried about getting the framerate better. It’s pretty good now but it’ll get better before we ship. Our load times are too long. OK, great, we’ll fix that. The problems that are really worrying me, that number one problem I’m having right now, is “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do right now. This faction wants me to kill somebody, but I don’t want to do that. This faction wants me to hack a computer, but I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to do the things I’ve been given the option to do.” If you say, “This is what you have to do, this one thing,” players just do it because that’s the way to keep moving forward in the story. The moment you give them two, three, four options, they start going, “But I don’t want to do any of those.” And you’re in a whole new world of game design hell…
Full Warren Spector interview:
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