14 DAY TRIAL // Warren Spector, the legendary game designer of titles like Deus Ex or Thief and currently working on Epic Mickey, has given some insight on his own view of interactive entertainment. He said that developers should understand the uniqueness of their medium and should not conceive games like movies.
Warren Spector held a keynote on the first day of the European edition of the Game Developers Conference and talked about how should the game industry relate to other creative media.
“We are in a sense an amalgamation of all these other media,” Spector said, according to Develop. ”But is that all we are? That question has always really bothered me. I just can’t believe that.
“We don’t want to make games like other media. We cannot be bound by the conventions of other media. We have to make our own conventions.
If you want make your game as a movie, you should be making movies,” Spector said, referring to a popular trend in contemporary interactive entertainment design.
He continued to explain that, “We have to embrace what makes us unique. I believe in the power and potential of games to change things. Movies use dream logic, radio uses imagination, and we are different.
”We are special in that we are different. Other media can evoke emotions, bur we can offer the reality of choice, and I think that’s what we’re meant to do.”
Spector emphasized the importance of interaction for the industry and the cinematic moments cannot alone sustain a gaming experience. Player agency is what makes this medium unique in his opinion.
He also said that because graphics could not really emulate real life at the moment, developers were stuck with making cartoons in a certain sense. The temporary solution for this issue was sound, Spector giving an example from radio storytelling and how the listener's imagination could be stimulated through audio channels.
Spector concluded saying that, “If we embrace what is unique about our own medium, we allow our own audiences to express themselves creatively.
“We are unique in the human history in allowing audiences to be creative with their entertainment. We need to stop telling players what to do. We need to get them to tell their own story.”