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Warren Spector Leaving Ion Storm
Gamespot has the story that after months in limbo, Warren Spector has left his role as Studio Director at Ion Storm. Despite his disconnection from Ion Storm, he will apparently still have ties to Eidos. From the Article: "Warren has chosen to pursue personal interests outside the company, but he will continue to work for Eidos as an IP consultant."
I think in the dev commmunity there's a culture of, especially amongst guys who came up building games for the PC, "we had better get our act together on the consoles or we are going to be irrelevant." It's big business now, not that it wasn't before, but the pressure levels for developers are unprecedented.
It seemed to me that the first Deus Ex on PS2 was more experemental. Of course they wanted it to sell well, but there wasn't the same pressure as there was on DX:IW. I don't think I need to remind everyone that neither that game nor Theif III really set the world on fire. IIRC, didn't Theif ship with some obvious bugs? A serious console dev faux pas.
Back then the folks at Ion Storm gave all these great press releases about "emergent gameplay" and the revolution of GTA:III and how they were going to be a part of that revolution. Well of course I bought into all of that crap, and now I have a really good idea what John Romero's fans felt like. I really wished they would have STFU.
That said, I wish nothing but the best for Harvey and Warren. I hope they get into a development that will let their talents shine. Both of them can, and have, made great games.
OK, so no Harvey Smith, no Warren Spector, why even call it Ion Storm anymore? Am I missing something? Is Doug Church (most underrated game programmer of all time) still over there?
I think in the dev commmunity there's a culture of, especially amongst guys who came up building games for the PC, "we had better get our act together on the consoles or we are going to be irrelevant." It's big business now, not that it wasn't before, but the pressure levels for developers are unprecedented.
Sure, but it takes different people in different ways.
For a contrasting example, look at Bethesda. They designed Morrowind for the PC, and then ported it to XBox. Both versions were bestsellers - the PC players couldn't believe there was a console version, because the game still pushed their PC hardware to the limits.
Now they're working on Oblivion, and once more they have their eyes on the console market. Except their primary platform is still the PC, and those consoles they're looking at are the XBox 2 and PS3...
So I am a bit sad that DX:IW wasn't the game it could have been. Actually, I have to confess I never bought it... the demo put me right off. I just went back and played the original Deus Ex again, which confirmed for me that Warren truly is one of the greatest game designers the young industry has yet known.