Deus Ex and Beyond: Warren Spector Discusses Evolution and Challenges

Warren Spector, a pioneer in the video game industry with a career spanning over four decades, has left an indelible mark through his innovative approach to game design. From his early days crafting tabletop games to revolutionizing digital gaming with titles like Deus Ex and System Shock, Spector's journey is a testament to his unwavering commitment to immersive storytelling and player-driven experiences. In this in-depth interview, Spector shares insights into his creative philosophy, the evolution of the Deus Ex series, reflections on industry trends, and the future of immersive sims.

You've had a long and influential career in the video game industry. What initially drew you to game design, and how did you get started in the field?

Well, I started playing Dungeons and Dragons like just about everybody, and lots of tabletop board games. I was working on my doctorate, and to make a long story short, I dropped out to make tabletop games. And I'm the luckiest guy in the world. I designed my own rule set and my own setting and went to Steve Jackson Games, a small tabletop and role-playing company in the city where I lived. And he hired me. I don't know why. I had no experience, but he was my first mentor.

A few years later, I had enough of a reputation, frankly, that I got a job offer from TSR and went there and worked on a bunch of stuff. We were beta testing the old SSI AD&D games, the Gold Box games. And I love and respect those guys, but they were simulating the wrong things. I was playing computer games obsessively, and they were simulating strength, dexterity, wisdom. They were doing the character attributes and the character classes and everything in the tabletop version of D&D. And what they were doing was role-playing, R-O-L-L playing, not R-O-L-E playing. And that really bugged me.

I played Ultima IV and loved it and met Richard Garriott, who made Ultima IV, at a couple of science fiction conventions. We were on panels together, and as he talked, I said, "This guy gets it. I've got to work for this guy." And ultimately, I got the chance. And all of a sudden, I was in the digital game world.

Your games, such as Deus Ex and System Shock, are often praised for their emphasis on player choice and emergent gameplay. Could you elaborate on your design philosophy and what you believe makes for a compelling gaming experience?

You have three days? Yeah, this kind of goes back to Richard and the Ultima series. The motto of Origin, a company he founded, was 'we create worlds,' and that really resonated with me. So I decided that I wanted to make games that were about worlds you could inhabit. And the timing wasn't quite right. Then Paul Neurath, who is now my partner at OtherSide, came to Origin and showed us a tech demo of a real-time, first-person perspective, fully textured world. It was just a tech demo, and we were all crowded around the monitor looking at this thing.

I don't know what anybody else was thinking, but I just looked at that and said, 'the world just changed.' And I kind of knew that that was the moment when we could put players in a world and let them see through their own eyes what was happening in that world. So that was kind of the first thing. And then I wanted to get away from hidden die rolls, statistics, and everything. There was an opportunity to simulate things, to use physics and a systems-driven design philosophy—actually, an implementation philosophy, with lots of small systems simulating.

God, this is hard to explain. Trust me when I say it became clear that the first-person perspective and a systemic approach led to games like Underworld and System Shock, which were kind of an ancient state of immersive simulations. And then there was System Shock, where the physics were outstanding for its day. There was so much driven by that; thus, there was a little deeper simulation, and players could express themselves a little more. And then there was Thief, which was deeper. So the funny thing is, Thief is all about sneaking, and it got to a point where there was a mission where I wasn't good enough to sneak. I asked the team, could you let me fight? And they said no because if we add a sword, if we really empower the player, they won't sneak; they'll just fight, as that is what, by that point, 30 years of games had trained people to do.

And that was the right decision for Thief, by the way, because it was a pure stealth experience. So not fighting was a good thing. I remember saying to myself, 'I'm going to show these guys that you can make a game about fighting and sneaking and let players decide.' And that's where Deus Ex came from. It was out of spite. I wanted to show the incredible Thief team that you could do what they said couldn't be done.

Deus Ex is celebrated for its deep narrative, complex player choices, and intricate level design. What were some of the key challenges you faced in bringing this vision to life, and how did you overcome them?

Oh god, I mean, there were so many challenges. One was me being stupid. I had worked for Origin and I had worked for Looking Glass, and I loved both of them for different reasons and in different ways. So, I hired some designers from the Ultima team, and I hired some designers who were from the Looking Glass school of design. I thought that by balancing these two perspectives, I could create something great. However, what I discovered was that they all wanted to lead. It was like Design Team One versus Design Team A, because neither group was willing to take a subordinate role. Managing that conflict was impossible. Eventually, I had to make some tough decisions, and the Looking Glass team emerged victorious. That was a significant challenge.

You don't want to know how many times I was told, 'Why don't you just make a shooter?' You know, just make a shooter. What I learned, actually at Origin, is that the word 'No' is incredibly powerful. If you use it, you have to be prepared to walk away from an argument. I had a clear vision in my head of what Deus Ex was meant to be, and I was unwilling to compromise. Many influential people at Eidos urged me to simplify the game into just a shooter, but I stood firm and said no. Eventually, they relented, and I was able to create the game I wanted to make. However, dealing with that pressure was incredibly frustrating. 'Just make a shooter.' If I ever hear those words again, I don't know how I'll react.

Since the release of Deus Ex, the franchise has seen several sequels and spin-offs. How do you feel the series has evolved over time, both in terms of gameplay mechanics and narrative themes?

You know, it's funny. A lot of people ask me how I feel about that, expecting me to feel bad that someone else is making Deus Ex games. And my answer is always I love the fact that someone else is making Deus Ex games, because it means my team and I made something bigger than ourselves that has a life of its own. It's like, oh, my baby's all grown up. So I think it's cool. And to be honest, I didn't play Mankind Divided. I started it, but something came up, and I didn't finish it. But Human Revolution, there are some things I would have done differently. But when I got to the end, I sort of sat back and said, I had a Deus Ex experience. I thought they did a good job.

Deus Ex: Invisible War faced criticism for changes such as simplified gameplay mechanics and smaller level design compared to its predecessor. Can you discuss some of the reasons behind these design decisions?

Well, there were a couple. One is we did want to go for a larger audience. I mean, Deus Ex is like a cult classic, you know? And frankly, one of my success criteria for that game was I wanted it to have influence. I wanted it to get other developers saying, 'oh, I didn't know you could do a game like that.' And I think to some extent it succeeded. But it sold pretty well, it made money. But, like, I'm the king of the cult classics. I make the games I want to make and focus more on the philosophy behind it than I do on commercial success, which is, I don't know why I keep getting work. It's incredible.

But we wanted to reach a larger audience, so we needed to make the game more accessible. And you're right, that's a really smart observation, the levels were smaller because we started on console and then we ported to the PC. And consoles at that point weren't powerful enough to handle levels the size of the original Deus Ex. And one of the arts of making a game like Deus Ex is the levels have to be big enough that you can create levels where players have the opportunity to see a challenge, to stop, see a challenge, and make a plan, and then execute the plan. And when you make a map too small, it's like challenge, challenge, challenge, challenge, challenge. You don't have time or the opportunity to stop and make a plan. So that was kind of a problem.

And then we decided to do the universal ammo thing. In retrospect, that was a mistake. But I have to say, that game is better than people give it credit for. I mean, I'm totally prejudiced, but I think we were being compared to the original. And that's probably not fair. We made some mistakes and we had some commercial requirements that we didn't know were going to affect the game. So you put all that together and you got Invisible War, a better game than people give it credit for.

We've learned that THQ Nordic canceled an unannounced Deus Ex game last year.

Geez, I didn't even know that. They did?

Sadly.

Wow. Okay, I won't be able to answer any questions about that, clearly.

But if there was a chance to get back to the franchise and make a new game, would you be willing to get back to the franchise that's so popular?

Oh, hell yeah! I know what I would do with it, and I'm not going to talk about it, so don't even try. But yeah, I would love to go back to the Deus Ex universe. I will say, the game I'm working on now is incredibly ambitious, and I have a great team. You know, to make a great game, you need a great team. And I've been lucky enough to work with some remarkable teams. The one I have now is right up there. So I'm pretty committed to my team and my project. But I would love to do a Deus Ex game.

Can you discuss your experience working on other notable projects, such as Epic Mickey and Thief: The Dark Project? What lessons did you learn from these projects?

The interesting thing that most people don't notice is I've been making games for 40 years. And I keep making the same game over and over again. From a philosophy standpoint, I mean, I know it's pretentious and I don't care. But I have a philosophy of what games should be, and can be, and have to be. So I try to do better with each game. That's all. Are you simulating the right things? Are your systems working together appropriately? Have you created something that allows players to surprise themselves and surprise us, the development team? That's the real success. That is probably the biggest success criterion. If players can do things that the team didn't know could be done, that means you're doing okay.

And the other thing, like, I tried to make a more accessible game with Deus Ex Invisible War. And that was actually the same impetus for Epic Mickey. I remember thinking, with Mickey Mouse as my star, I can sneak some immersive simulation stuff in there and reach a really large audience. And it totally worked. I mean, the core gamers hated me. I got called a sellout a lot. But they didn't realize that the underlying philosophy was essentially the same. So I learned that the idea of allowing players to play the way they want to, that was a very rudimentary part of Underworld and System Shock, it was a little bit more developed in Thief, if I can be a little egocentric, it was a lot more evident in Deus Ex, and it was a little less evident in Epic Mickey, but people got it. They played the way they wanted, and the results of their choices were different. So, you learn a little bit, you know, and I don't know if I can describe specific things, but every time you just try to do it a little deeper and a little better and a little more accessible.

Are there any unexplored ideas that you want to tackle in your upcoming games?

Yes.

Which ones?

Not telling.

What is the future of immersive sim genre?

Well, there are a lot of answers, and I'm not going to give you a great one, but I've always said that the next logical step for immersive sims is multiplayer. You know, the kind of sad and pathetic thing is I've spent my entire career trying to recreate the Dungeons & Dragons experience I had the first time I played, telling stories with my friends and stumping the Dungeon Master. It was such a wonderful, unique experience, and it's not like most of the time you play D&D alone, and that's what immersive sims have been. So I think the idea of a party, both in the multiple people sense and in the fun sense. See, I used the word fun. See that? See what I did there? Anyway, my team hates me over that. That's the next logical step. Don't necessarily read anything into what I'm doing, but that is the next logical step.

How do you view the current state of the video game industry, and what trends do you find most exciting or concerning?

Most concerning is there have been 30,000 layoffs in the last two years. I mean, that's terrifying, and I don't know why it's happening. I have ideas, but I'm not a sophisticated enough thinker to know why, but that's the most concerning thing. My hope, and this is so naive I should not say it, but my hope is that we'll see a lot of indie studios pop up that are doing more interesting things than the big publishers are. I think that's unrealistic, to be honest, but I can hope. That's the most concerning thing by far. Increase in team size and cost, that's a concern. I think there are ways around it, and the OtherSide is looking for them, and we'll see if we succeed.

The most exciting thing, I said this in my talk today, it's that anybody can make a game now. I mean, even in the early days when I was working on Ultima Games and System Shock and Thief and certainly Deus Ex, you needed a publisher and a lot of money, and you had to create your own engine. And I mean, we used to write our own memory managers. It was insane, but absolutely necessary. And now, if you have an idea, there's a game engine you can use to bring it to life.

There are so many ways to reach an audience, that you can get it in people's hands, and there are multiple ways to make money. So if you can solve the discoverability problem, which I do not know how to do, by the way, but if you can solve that, you can change the world. I mean, we're not done. And I don't know that the AAA space is where the world's going to change, but the indie space, there's some real potential there for doing things that shock me.

You didn't ask this, but the job of the current and next generation of game developers is to make people forget I ever existed. That's their job, their obligation. And I think there's the promise that that'll happen. As technologies and player expectations continue to evolve, what do you believe are the most important aspects of game development for game developers to focus on? There are puzzle games, there are survival games, there are gardening games, there are god games. I mean, everything you can imagine is happening in games right now. So how can you not be excited about that?

You've been involved in mentoring and teaching game design at various institutions. What advice do you typically offer to aspiring game developers?

If you're going to be an indie, you need to be a generalist. You need to be able to do a lot of things. If you want to work for a studio like mine or a bigger developer, you need to be a specialist. It's not enough to say, 'I'm a designer.' Are you a systems designer? Are you a world builder? I mean, are you a model designer? Are you a modeler as an artist, a rigger, an animator? You need to know who you are, and you need to become an expert at that.

But here's the weird part. Don't neglect the humanities. You do not know, especially designers, but everybody, you don't know what you're going to need to know. I've needed to know how a medieval castle works. I've needed to know how World War I biplanes and triplanes work and the difference between a rotary engine and an inline engine. I mean, you just never know. I've needed to know about conspiracies. So there's that. Economics, it's kind of what we do. Behavioral psychology, kind of what we do. Communication skills, written and oral. Holy cow, you need to be able to speak and write.

The quickest way to not get a job with me is, 'What do you do for fun? What do you do in your spare time?' The easiest way to not get a job with me is to say, 'I play games.' Because that's assumed. You're not going to apply for a job at a game developer if you don't play games. But if you tell me you love ballet and you go to art museums and you read a book a week, you love movies. Tell me what you do. Tell me who you are, not 'I play games,' because I have no interest in people who do nothing but play games.