Here’s the thing: I left Ion Storm and Eidos in the spring of 2004 frankly because I felt out of place at that company. – Warren Spector
Dude, I turn into a six-year-old when I come to Disneyland. It’s amazing. My eyes glass over and my blood pressure goes down. I’m just like everybody else. I turn into a big kid when I come here. It’s the happiest place on earth, right? – Warren Spector
I was amazed at how the life of a freelancer differed from running a remote studio for another company. I thought I knew what I was doing in 2004 when I left Eidos because I had run Ion Storm Austin, which was my own independent studio. I had run a business unit inside Origin, but being part of a startup is crazy. – Warren Spector
I started playing video games, and in 1978 I discovered Dungeons & Dragons and started game-mastering and writing my own adventures and creating my own worlds. – Warren Spector
I think plenty of games – from ‘Thief’ to ‘Zelda’ – have shown that sneaking around can be fun. – Warren Spector
The ‘DuckTales’ ensemble is clearly critical. There’s the core set of characters – Scrooge, Webby, Launchpad, Huey, Dewey and Louie… Plus there’s Gyro and Duckworth and Mrs. Beakley and so on. The cast is huge. – Warren Spector
Seriously, I don’t know if people would really tell you this. But in my dream world, the people who work for you would say, ‘Wow, I didn’t know I could do that until I started working with that guy.’ – Warren Spector
I have never been assigned a game, I have never made a game I didn’t want to make. I’ve never done anything just to make somebody some money. – Warren Spector
Finney is about the best writer of time travel stories ever, and I adore time travel stories – have to make a time travel game someday! – Warren Spector
The fact is most computer roleplaying games that offer a zillion highly specialized skills end up with nine-tenths of a zillion skills that every player quickly realizes aren’t worth the experience points to buy. – Warren Spector
Third-person camera is way harder than I even imagined it could be. It is the hardest problem in video game development. Everybody gets it wrong. It’s just a question of how close to right do you get it. – Warren Spector
In cartoons, in movies, time passes differently. There are flashbacks and flashfowards. – Warren Spector
I remember on Deus Ex there was one programmer – Alex Durand, a guy who still works for us – he decided he was going to get through the game without ever using a weapon. I would never think to do that. And that’s fine. – Warren Spector
Everyone at Junction Point has been inspired by the creative folks at Pixar and Disney Feature Animation to make ‘entertainment for everyone.’ – Warren Spector
I’ve loved cartoons all along. Most people outgrow that when they hit 10 or 12, I guess, but I never did. I’m not sure why. – Warren Spector
It’s about players making choices as they play, and then dealing with the consequences of those choices. It’s about you telling your story, not me telling mine. It’s about you. – Warren Spector
My first encounter with video games was pretty conventional. I was travelling with my parents – we used to take long cross country trips in the United States every summer – and we went into a restaurant where there happened to be a Pong machine, and I was… a lot of quarters went into that Pong machine, let’s just say. – Warren Spector
Gamers are everywhere, coming in all ages and genders, and developers have grown up, too. – Warren Spector
As far as the timing, well, I’d write that off to luck as much as anything – I happened to be out looking for a development deal, and Disney happened to think my team and I might be the right people to make a Mickey Mouse game. – Warren Spector
I like Disney stuff. No-one looks at ‘Toy Story’ and says,’ Oh, that’s just for kids.’ Why is it that games can only appeal to a certain audience, but movies and books – I mean, how many adults read ‘Harry Potter?’ – Warren Spector
I think the power of the platforms is outstripping the size of the audience. We can’t charge $150 for a game. And when the best-selling game of all time has sold only 20 million copies at $60, do the math! – Warren Spector
Once we can do Pixar-quality graphics rendered in real time with interactivity, I could see games costing $200 million to make, and all of a sudden you have to sell a lot of games just to break even, so I’m a little worried someone’s going to do that. – Warren Spector
The concept of emergent gameplay is really exciting. That’s when players are really crafting their own experience. So if you’re clever and creative, you can do things that even developers of the game didn’t know were possible. – Warren Spector
I have never made a game that wasn’t explicitly about empowering players to tell their own story. – Warren Spector
Hey, if we didn’t overcharge for our product – guess what – people wouldn’t have to buy used games. – Warren Spector