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Warren Spector recently announced his retirement from video game development after a glittering career that includes titles such as Wing Commander, Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, System Shock, Deus Ex, Thief: Deadly Shadows and Epic Mickey.
One of the genres Spector is most readily associated with is the 'immersive sim' – games populated by real-world mechanics where the player is capable of finding emergent solutions to problems – and titles like Deus Ex and System Shock are seen as seminal entries in this subset of adventure games.
However, with System Shock 3 in limbo and Spector putting his feet up, is there a risk that the immersive sim might fall even more out of favour than it already is? That was a question EDGE magazine put to the legendary game designer when it spoke to him recently.
"We've been declared dead, like, every year since 1992," says Spector in his reply, before adding:
"The most exciting thing to me is that the heart of the immersive sim has kind of been adopted by mainstream gaming. One of my egomaniacal success criteria was to have influence. I've always wanted to try, even if I fail, to change things. I don't think you can look at Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom and not see a little bit of Deus Ex in it. And I think roleplaying games now are far more immersive sim-y than they used to be, [in terms of] going further to empower players to tell their own stories.
So, I don't know that we're dead. I think we're like a parasite that's invaded the body, you know? And that's all you can ask for. Making games different and better and more what they should be, and empowering players to become authors – that's all I ever wanted to do, and now there are lots of people doing that, even if they don't realise they are."
You can check out the full interview in the latest issue of EDGE magazine, which is on sale now.