Thoughts On Randy Smith Interview

[demagogue]

I posted the following in ThiefGen at TTLG, but knowing how useless that forum's been in the last year I'm not expecting very much good discussion (maybe, hopefully I'll be surprised) ... but anyway it occured to me I'll probably get a better discussion going here. I'm interested in what people here think about Randy's views on T3, esp given how they tend towards the bitter end.

So this is the post:

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

link to the interview.

 

I thought this was a pretty frank and insightful interview, also helps put the three Thief's in perspective as a whole.

 

I don't think there was anything really new here, but a few interesting things to note.

 

It was interesting to note that cross-platforming wasn't even in RS's top 10 design issues with T3 ... sort of fits in with Krypt's thoughts that one of the biggest problems was the rushed/shoddy job on the engine put them on crutches from early on. But Randy seems to take it the next step that really cross-platforming was way down the list. Makes you wonder what was closer to the top, in addition to the engine limitations...

 

This quote:

 

Quote:

The team had many great design ideas (too many, in fact, one of the problems I brought to the troubled development environment at ION Storm), and it was sad that many of them were cut or compromised.

 

 

is particularly revealing, but I'm wondering what to make of it. It sounds at first like he's talking about feature creep, or maybe room creep, but the way he phrases it makes it sound more philosophical ... like he had a particular design agenda that was just hitting one road block after another, and not just because of the limitations of the engine (or maybe parasitic on the limitations). And I wonder if there's some connection between this and the fact that T3 was so deficient in features as it was ... sort of a funny result, or maybe I'm not really connecting the dots. Maybe it was like a gas-on-fire sort of situation, where RS was pretty assertive with a design agenda at the same time the engine was giving them roadblocks left and right, time was pressing, and the two worlds just collided. Also, the way this is worded, I wonder if he's at all blaming himself here, a little, like he thinks in retrospect he should have held back for the better of the whole project, or if this situation was just a breakdown waiting to happen. I don't know, what do others think?

 

It's really a shame that the series had such a bitter end for Randy, since for many of us here I think he contributed so much to the heart and soul of the series, and the disappointment he had with T3 mirrors a lot of people's here, as well. He almost sounded a little satisfied T3 was a market failure, didn't he? (which also tosses away any hopes for T4, I'd think). (Although one has to admit it was better than DX:IW on that engine; it could have been worse.)

 

If you're out there Randy, I think you'll find a lot of people around here are on your side on this ... and the same magic you talked about with Thief: TDP and T2 you'll find a lot of sympathy here ... and I only wish, like you say, you could have experienced the magic of The Dark Project as a player like we were able to.

Edited June 3, 2006 by demagogue

[oDDity]

" If I had my way, over half of the games in development would get canceled and replaced with something that is more fresh and innovative and emotional and less of a rehash of the same ideas. I can't believe how many people are still interested in power fantasies about guys with guns or driving fast cars or jumping around on platforms. Interactive media seems like such a powerful platform for exploring ideas about the human experience, and the games industry winds up focusing on the equivalent of a Charles Bronson vigilante flick over and over and over... it totally makes me sad."

 

Please, someone put this guy in charge of the games industry immediately.

One thing I didn't realise was that LGS actually owned the intellectual property rights to Thief 1&2 and then Eidos bought it when LGS shut down. I was under the impression that the publisher already owned any rights to the games being made.

It seems the designers had alot more fun and satisfacton working at LGS when they owned the rights themselves, than at Ion where Eidos owned the rights.

I guess we have to accept what he says abut consolitis not being a major factor, but that means that a lot of the crap we saw in the game and attributed to cross-platfrom design decisions would ahve been in there anyway even if it had been a PC only release.

That does'nt make me feel any better.

I think we all liked the direction they were trying to take of making an open city and taking the game away from a linear series of missions, but a lot of tiny bad decisions can add up to ruin a game, no matter how good the core concept is, and that's what I think happened here.

[Dram]

Please, someone put this guy in charge of the games industry immediately.

 

LOL, yeah, I think we'd finally get some good games again.

 

 

 

 

As for the interview, it's interesting to see a developer's perspective on a game as opposed to a reviewer. Thanks for posting the link

[Maximius]

"So, to answer your question, I know lots of people that have great ideas that aren't clearly within the marketing domain we see repeatedly, and that's a huge barrier to getting an exploratory project started. And generally speaking the most competent teams, developers, and publishers are going after the sure thing, meaning tired power fantasies, and the innovative stuff is left to people with a less proven track record."

 

 

This is the heart of the problem as I see it. "Going after the sure thing" is what a for-profit enterprise is going to tend to do and industry wide homogeneity is the result. The safest bet is what sold the last time. Maverick groups like LGS will come along at times but the trend is towards the mediocre middle. Especially with the really big, investor owned media houses where more than half the staff are dedicated to squeezing as much cash as possible out of a project in the shortest amount of time. Its what they trained to do when they got their MBAs.* Its not quite that black and white Im sure but I'd bet a buck its close.

 

 

 

*masters of business administration

[sparhawk]

Companies are are created to make money. Developers have to live from something, thus they need money. If a company doesn't earn money, they wont exist for long. Simple as that. To make creative and innovative game you need a pool where you can draw from without going down first.

[oDDity]

Hurrah for mods.

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

That's the reason the only games I ever bought in my life were Thief 1, Thief 2, Civ3, Civ3 expansion, Civ3 expansion expansion, Civ4, and I'm thinking of illegally downloading Civ4 expansion if it becomes available. Oh, and Siberia, Lighthouse, and Roger Wilco 6 adventure games. That's it. If everybody stopped buying the sure thing.

[Maximius]

Companies are are created to make money. Developers have to live from something, thus they need money. If a company doesn't earn money, they wont exist for long. Simple as that. To make creative and innovative game you need a pool where you can draw from without going down first.

 

 

Then we need to think of alternative ways of getting it done. The "private sector" is simply too wasteful and corrupting of an environment for art to flourish. There are ways to pay those developers a living wage and do away with the parasitic middle man of the corporation. The Nanny States disusses a way to produce artwork outside of the corporate model. Heres an example drawn from U.S. figures, it skips over a lot but youll get the idea:

 

Imagine a federal art works program. The U.S. actually had something a bit like this right after WW II. They are still around at local state, and federal levels but they are often choked for funding or busy whoring themselves out to business interests to keep the lights on. If every working U.S. citizen were to pay a 75$ a year "art tax", it could provide around a 40K $ a year salary for anyone who applies for the job. Applicants would have to demonstrate they have at least some basic education and ability but that would be the only criteria. Their products would then be made available to the public via any number of means, for no cost to the consumer after the initial 75$. Even artists whose work was not very popular, and that would never sell to a large audience, could make a living because the only standard would not be a financial goal but the actual ability to produce a work of art. The consumer wins because for 75$ they get all the art, of whatever genre, they could possibly want in a years time. All the albums, games, whatever the fork. As diverse a selection as you could hope for, without zombies in business attire making decisions about whats marketable or whats too controversial.

 

Of course, its not that simple, but Im only presenting an outline. There would be plenty of kinks to iron out but the important point is that alternatives exist and given an opportunity could be viable.

[sparhawk]

The biggest problem with this I see is corruption and abuse. After all, what is art? If somebody sprays a few cans of colour on some parchment and delivers this, is it already art? And if yes, how much would he get for it? And if a painter would get a yearly salary for this, then how much would a game developer get? because a game developer has to work for several years to make his game, while such a painter could do it in a few hours.

[Ishtvan]

The way the gaming industry is going with giant publishers controlling the content has often been compared to the music and movie industry. In these industries, years of seeing the same crap churned out has produced a backlash such that "independent" and "alternative" are the new cool. I'm talking about the market success of movies like "The Blair Witch Project" (not that that was a good movie, but it was independently made and spread largely thru word of mouth), or the success of "alternative" music back when it actually was alternative.

 

Of course some of it is still mainstream crap masquerading as independent or alternative, but the fact that media companies even choose to try and masquerade says something about people's attitudes. People like to feel smarter/more cultured than their peers by "discovering" some independent band or movie. Many of us have this illusion that we're the only educated consumer out there and everyone else is a philistine, but I think our attitudes are more alike than we would like to admit (excepting the under 14 demographic).

 

Anyway, I hope that at some point the same backlash will occur in the game industry, where non-mainstream projects become sought after for their potential to present innovative experiences.

[sparhawk]

Actually I considered Blairwitch quite refreshing and a good movie too.

[Maximius]

The biggest problem with this I see is corruption and abuse. After all, what is art? If somebody sprays a few cans of colour on some parchment and delivers this, is it already art? And if yes, how much would he get for it? And if a painter would get a yearly salary for this, then how much would a game developer get? because a game developer has to work for several years to make his game, while such a painter could do it in a few hours.

 

 

The setting of such standards would be tough, I agree, but at least it would not be in the hands of a boardroom of business executives. Thats corruption and abuse incarnate. Perhaps committees could be set up of artists, academics, and private citizens to attempt to judge such things, or find happy compromises.

 

The salaries could have a minimum baseline and as incentives for popular artists to be productive, a gradually rising tiered system of pay. I was wondering the same about pay/work ratios between genres, a sculptor might only produce one piece every few years while a poet cranks out verse daily. One answer is to set individual standards for different genres for production quotas, say the sculptor has to produce a piece every year and a half while the poet has weekly writing assignments. But their pay is not determined by their output, because of those disparites, its set at a base minimum and then the tiering comes in. Maybe with raises for time in service and bonuses for really breakthrough stuff.

[Maximius]

Anyway, I hope that at some point the same backlash will occur in the game industry, where non-mainstream projects become sought after for their potential to present innovative experiences.

 

 

I put more hope into mods and indie projects, the industry will always have kids to sell crappy console games to and make a fast buck. The crappy PC version will limp out behind and die on the shelves. Most dont have a clue what a really good video game is like. Ive seen the buckets of disks at peoples house, games that you play through once and then forget. As in a lot of industries, Im betting that they spend more money on marketing and promotion than they do on research and development.

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

Many of us have this illusion that we're the only educated consumer out there and everyone else is a philistine,

I copmletely agree with you, Ishtvan; I've seen so many people like that at the uni.

 

Perhaps committees could be set up of artists, academics, and private citizens to attempt to judge such things, or find happy compromises.

 

The salaries could have a minimum baseline and as incentives for popular artists to be productive, a gradually rising tiered system of pay. I was wondering the same about pay/work ratios between genres, a sculptor might only produce one piece every few years while a poet cranks out verse daily. One answer is to set individual standards for different genres for production quotas, say the sculptor has to produce a piece every year and a half while the poet has weekly writing assignments. But their pay is not determined by their output, because of those disparites, its set at a base minimum and then the tiering comes in. Maybe with raises for time in service and bonuses for really breakthrough stuff.

Maximius, I've lived in USSR, not too much, but I know enough about from circumstantial evidence from friends, relatives, media and other sources to say that is exactly what has been attempted there, regarding the quota and baseline salary system. Didn't work. Also, I'm not sure about the others, but having academics on the committees is not good. The undergraduate pool can be divided into three types of people: Those who aren't interested in anything besides fast cars and nightclubs - they are meaningless; those who are interested in all kinds of scientific, social, artistic knowledge and actively pursue it at the expense of their grades and attention in school - they are meaningful for the committee but they aren't academics; and those who are interested in NOTHING at all besides their career and grades and references etc, who later become academics.

at least IMHO

[Maximius]

Maximius, I've lived in USSR, not too much, but I know enough about from circumstantial evidence from friends, relatives, media and other sources to say that is exactly what has been attempted there, regarding the quota and baseline salary system. Didn't work. Also, I'm not sure about the others, but having academics on the committees is not good. The undergraduate pool can be divided into three types of people: Those who aren't interested in anything besides fast cars and nightclubs - they are meaningless; those who are interested in all kinds of scientific, social, artistic knowledge and actively pursue it at the expense of their grades and attention in school - they are meaningful for the committee but they aren't academics; and those who are interested in NOTHING at all besides their career and grades and references etc, who later become academics.

at least IMHO

 

I'd like to hear a few more details before I dismiss the idea completely. There could have been myriad external problems that have nothing to do with the core idea. But maybe it wouldn't work that way after all. Its only one idea. The main point is that alternatives have to be thought about.

 

I hear what you say about academics, but I would still want a scholar of painting helping any committee to decide what those painters standards might be. I would not let them dominate, nor any group, but they would have to have some input.

[demagogue]

FYI, we got a response from Randy in the other forum:

 

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?...488#post1462488

 

I've (or at least a post of mine) never gotten a direct response from a dev, so sort of cool. Sounds like he's not as bitter in retrospect as I had expected. E.g., he recognized that other guys had gone on to do successful things, so it wasn't so much an inevitable clash of personalities but more situational. (I get the feeling he's maybe talking about Spector here? I'd agree it's hard to pin that guy down.) Sounds like a healthier attitude, anyway.

 

He really does come across as sounding like he was going to bat for the fans and the situation soured against him. Something to keep in mind, I guess.

 

I get the feeling the team we have here, for as boorish as it can be at times, has a much healthier environment than was the case for TDS (not a high bar to top, maybe). Not having the market/time pressure and having such a better engine to work with I'm sure helps, but probably also not letting your ambition run away to lose track of what you're doing.

[New Horizon]

I get the feeling the team we have here, for as boorish as it can be at times, has a much healthier environment than was the case for TDS (not a high bar to top, maybe). Not having the market/time pressure and having such a better engine to work with I'm sure helps, but probably also not letting your ambition run away to lose track of what you're doing.

 

Heh, yeah. We have our squabbles...but for the majority of the time...we work quietly and get along. They're all a very talented crew.

[SneaksieDave]

Boorish!? Bite thy tongue, scoundrel!

[demagogue]

Not my term, I promise!