2002 Interview by Dave Ringelheim re-posted here as the original is no longer on the site.

Introduction:

While we here at PCGameworld.com strive to get you the inside scoop on upcoming games with the interviews and previews we wanted to do something a little different. We know how developers feel about their games but what are their thoughts on the industry in general? We asked seven great developers ten questions ranging from graphics to consoles to violence. But first, quick list of the players.

(List order was determined by order the responses were received)

Kenn Hoekstra - Raven Software (http://www.ravensoft.com/)

Dave Georgeson - Dynamix (http://www.dynamix.com/)

Jeff Tunnell - Garage Games (http://www.garagegames.com/)

Peter Molyneux - Lionhead Studios (http://www.lionhead.com)

David Perry - Shiny Entertainment (http://www.shiny.com/)

Jason Hall - Monolith Productions (http://www.lith.com/)

Warren Spector - Ion Storm (http://www.ionstorm.com/)

1) Gamers with high end systems want all the bells and whistles you can fit into a game and those with slower systems want a game that runs well. How do you create a balance that will satisfy both high and low end gamers graphically?

Kenn Hoekstra:

Scalability is the key when it comes to PC games. In the days of Doom and Heretic, there wasn't a whole lot of scalability to be found. Your machine either ran the game or it didn't. As machines got faster, frame rates for these games went up. That was about it. These days, everyone wants to take advantage of as much hardware as possible...faster processors, more powerful video cards, 3D sound etc... The trick here is to spec out a minimum machine, make sure the game plays well on it and then make your game as customizable as possible to take advantage of the bells and whistles that top of the line machines have.

Soldier of Fortune is probably the most scaleable game that Raven has ever made. It runs well on the minimum machine and there were five or six menu screens of scalability options to take advantage of T&L, 3D sound, lighting, shadows and a hundred other things. People with powerful systems were grateful for all of the options the game had and people with low-end machines were happy with how the game ran on their hardware. It was a difficult balance to find, but I think we succeeded. Fortunately, Quake Technology, Unreal Technology and LithTech Technology are all quite adept at providing scalability for gamers. I expect this trend to continue into the next generation of PC games and game engines.

Dave Georgeson:

Pick a low-end that you can live with. Make the game so that it rocks on that platform. And then, if you have time, add bells and whistles to the game so that high-end folks have some fun toys also. But the truth is...if the game isn't fun on the low-end that you picked, then you're doing a disservice to your gamers. There will be very few players out there with high-end systems that will gripe about not having some super cool feature...as long as the game is a blast to play anyway. (Oh sure...some folks will gripe anyway...but if the game is fun, they'll play, and that's what's really important.)

Jeff Tunnell:

There is no good way to do this. Core gamers want cutting edge graphics and effects, and are willing to buy the proper CPU and graphics card to do so. Mass market gamers aren't usually aware they even have a graphics card, and vaguely remember the speed of their CPU. Combine all of this with the fact that a game may take two years or longer to develop, and a developer has a big problem. Usually for a core gamer product such as a FPS, we begin the project targeting the current high end CPU and graphics card. By the time the project ships, it is the core of the market. For mass market titles, you need to target the lowest end your design can stand.

Peter Molyneux:

With Black & White we have solved this with our scalable engine. This mean that on a low end machine some of the graphical details are not displayed so that the frame rate remains respectable but there is no top end on it so that owners of high end machine will see an incredible amount of graphical details.

Dave Perry:

The trick these days is to have an engine that automatically adjusts the amount of detail it puts into a scene depending on how powerful the machine is. Our current technology in Sacrifice is so sensitive that even just closing another program in the background can noticibly improve the look of your game!

Jason Hall:

Well, the quick answer is "scalability." This means that your game is able to scale its graphics up or down depending on the type of computer system that it is running on. Monolith games utilize the LithTech engine, and LithTech has a lot of scalability technology built into it that the games can automatically take advantage of (things like "level of detail" on the models which reduce the polygon counts significantly under various circumstances).

In any case, it is a difficult line to walk and most of the time you have to make trade-offs that lean a game in one direction or another.

Warren Spector:

Some developers will tell you the only sensible thing is to target the low-end user to maximize your potential audience. Others will tell you to shoot for the high end because, with technology changing as rapidly as it does, the audience will grow into your game, ensuring a long shelf-life. (Back when I was with ORIGIN, in the late-486, early-Pentium days, we had a saying that went, "no one remembers the best game that runs on a 386 but everyone remembers the best game.") The sensible approach seems to me to be to target the high end (not the bleeding edge!) and then let players turn down the detail to achieve acceptable performance on lower-end systems. Of course, there are some folks out there who will tell you Deus Ex is for power users only, so what do I know?

2) Within the last two years there was a mini boom in 3D sound technology. Now, most people don't really talk much about it anymore. Do you feel that gamers don't really care, or has it just hit a basic standard and interest will rise again when new technology arises?

Kenn Hoekstra:

Sound technology has always taken a back seat to visuals. Everyone wants to be blown away by what they see and they generally only notice sound and music if it's bad or annoying...rarely if it's good. It's this trend of visuals over audio that has kept sound peripherals a step behind video hardware over the past few years. Add to that the recent personal and financial problems with some of the major sound manufacturing companies and you've got a temporary lull in the advancement of sound technology. When the Next Big Thing(tm) in PC sound arrives, there will be a big rush to support it as always, and that will drive the market forward again.

Dave Georgeson:

My opinion is that game developers are just now getting a handle on the graphics boom that happened even earlier than the sound boom. (Pardon the pun.) We are *just* now getting to the point where Art (with a capital "A") is possible in the games and therefore style, setting and mood will become even more critical to games in the next year or so. Basically, although gameplay is King, and will always be King, having the proper mood and feel is something that will help differentiate a game from its competitors. And...heck...it's true...sound is hard to sell in a screenshot, so it's almost always done last. But I don't think that's going to be the case for long. It's just too important.

Jeff Tunnell:

It can be used with great results, but the bottom line is that most people don't have their computers set up to take advantage of 3D sound. Speaker placement is important to make it really work. I think most developers will continue to support it, and eventually most people will find it makes game play more compelling. However, it is evolutionary, not revolutionary.

Peter Molyneux:

I think the importance of sound and music in games has always been under estimated. For some reason it has never been such a sexy subject as graphics; but the biggest most recent improvement in Black & White was not when we introduced a new rendering technique but when we put the sound engine in.

Dave Perry:

It's the 5 speaker problem. To do it right (much better than normal), you need 5 speakers. It's just not easy to get 5 speakers around the average gamer.

Jason Hall:

I think that there is a lot of room for cool things to be done in the area of sound in games (such as sound occlusion), but in general, great sound in games is a more nebulous thing to quantify as a total value-add when compared to something like graphics. I'm sure that interest will rise again in the future as new technology arises.

Warren Spector:

I think there are just too few games that really exploit the gameplay possibilities of 3D sound to achieve the critical mass necessary to go from fad to standard. I expect interest will rise as more players install the necessary hardware. On the other hand, the "necessary hardware" may end up being a next generation console hooked up to the surround sound audio system in your living room!

3) When I look at the big sellers as of late, it seems as if games with mass-market appeal have taken over. This obviously is due to the PC becoming more and more of standard household equipment. But where does that leave the hard-core gamers when developers choose to aim at the general markets?

Kenn Hoekstra:

The hard-core gamers' market is a steady and reliable one. If you make a quality game targeted for that audience, you can expect some decent sales numbers to back it up. However...game development is, first and foremost, a business. Publishers and developers want to see the best returns possible on all their hard work. After all, sales are what keep the company in business. For that reason, "decent" isn't always a good thing.

You have to ask yourself...how did I become a hard core gamer? The answer, most often, is that you have been playing games for ten years or so (often longer than that) and now you want to play games that are truly new, cutting edge and challenging. It's reasonable to assume that the people who play solitaire and minesweeper today will be playing the Sim games of tomorrow and the RTS and FPS games of the future. What I mean is, eventually the hard core audience will grow as the personal computer continues to be less of a luxury item and more of an everyday appliance or tool. As that audience grows, the demand for hard core games will grow.

Everything's cyclical in the games industry. A lot of developers and publishers are going where the money is right now. In a year or two, it will come back around to the hard core games market. In the mean time, hard core games aren't going anywhere. There may not be as many as you're accustomed to seeing, but there will be more than enough to keep you busy...

Dave Georgeson:

It depends on how you define "hard-core". If you mean "hard-core" as the guys that loved to spend countless hours learning to fly in a flight sim (like I did, once upon a time), then yes...that leaves them out simply because games that are as hard to learn as those old flight sims are never, ever going to reach the 1,000,000+ numbers of a "Diablo II".

However, if you define hardcore as a gamer that spends a ton of hours each week playing games, then ease of interface, and an "approachable" concept doesn't eliminate them at all...as long as the game has some serious depth of gameplay. By "depth", I mean that the game is fairly easy to pickup, but then has levels and levels of tactics and strategies you can try out. Games that have serious "depth" are games like "Doom" (many ways to attack a level and different weapons to try out to "solve" level puzzles), Chess or Go (of course), and even a game like "Ms. Pacman" has depth once you realize the ghosts all have differing personalities and react differently. And, of course, all of those games are easy to learn, but difficult to master. The key is avoiding the temptation to overcomplicate the game *at the entry level* thus preventing casual gamers from getting hooked (and thus preventing them from becoming core gamers).

Jeff Tunnell:

There is plenty of room in the market for both audiences. In fact, core gamers should rejoice in the arrival of the mass market gamer. Mass market games are usually easier to develop, have a better ROI, and are easier to schedule, so they assure a more steady stream of revenue flow and profits. This allows the publishers to take bigger chances on core gamer products.

Peter Molyneux:

It's true that there are at least 100 million active PC's in the world and obviously only a small proportion of these are used by gamers - so it's not surprising that mass market games can sell exceptionally well. The great thing about the PC is that it can support such varied games as The Sims on the one hand and Deus Ex on the other. The PC had been around for a long time and is described by developers as the "rock" for this reason they will always support it and the future for the PC is bright.

Dave Perry:

Don't worry, there will always be developers that would much rather be working on "Diablo III" than "Who wants to be a millionaire?".

Jason Hall:

It leaves hard core gamers out in the cold. The fact is that there just aren't enough hard core gamers out there to make a significant difference in the overall game buying area. The game "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" was generally not bought by hard core gamers, yet it soared to the top of the sales charts and stayed there for a long time. The hard core community is merely a tiny subset of all the game buying revenue out there, and with the cost of development exploding, developers are taking a serious look at catering to the masses in order to make money.

Warren Spector:

There's certainly cause for concern in the push to reach an ever-larger audience. And it's definitely disturbing to see what might be called "hardcore games" lumped into the what's selling charts from PC Data and TRSTS with Barbie products and TV game show spin-offs. Not sure what to make of that, really. I think any developer who isn't looking to maximize his or her potential audience is running headlong for a cliff and about to fall off. Career over! However, the answer, for me, isn't to start making a different kind of game but, instead, to make "our kind" of game more accessible to normal human beings. I'm pretty sure there are ways to make cool games, with depth and (dare I say it?) complexity that still appeal to lots of folks

4) Well I am sure you saw this coming, so let us talk about violence. No worries, we won't be debating if games leads to real life violence. However, has the national past time of blaming video games for these acts of violence effected how you design your games?

Kenn Hoekstra:

I wouldn't say that it's affected the design of the games themselves, but it has brought an increased awareness to marketing materials, advertisements, ratings, box warnings and parental control options. In my opinion, that's a good thing. Parents should know what kinds of games their kids are playing. This recent heightened awareness of the issue will only help parents and game companies do just that.

Dave Georgeson:

Okay...time for me to get flamed here. I think people need to stop blaming external sources for the mental hangups of their own kids. Parenting is critical and is mostly being neglected. Parents need to get involved in their childrens' lives so that personality issues can be resolved and worked out BEFORE a shooting spree at a high school starts. Computer games are certainly less "real" seeming than movies and television, and some of the scenes I recently read in "Hannibal" (yes...I actually read books) are far more disturbing than anything I would put in a game. But even so, I think most of these "video-games-are-evil" speeches come about from people refusing to accept blame on themselves for the failure of their children. If you don't want your kids to play a game, then for God's sake...DO NOT LET THAT CHILD PLAY IT. You're the parent. Make the decision. Ultimately...it's your responsibility...not the media's responsibility.

Jeff Tunnell:

I have never been a fan of the most violent games, so it this debate has had little effect on the kind of games that I want to create.

Peter Molyneux:

No it hasn't affected the games I've developed but I can see a line that does need to be drawn. But I think that as the game industry becomes more accepted as a viable entertainment medium we will have to realize that we must be responsible in the creation of its content.

Dave Perry:

If games get really violent, stores don't stock them. Then the team goes bankrupt. So there is a simple financial balance. I personally believe strongly in ratings and I am very pleased to hear that some stores now will check ID's to control the sales of mature titles.

This will hopefully stop people complaining to developers and let us make games where we choose our audience at the same time. Making violent games makes it hard to get into stores. (A place we all need to be!)

Jason Hall:

Not particularly. Generally speaking, we make the games that we want to make. Overly violent games historically do not sell as well as less violent games. The same goes for movies. No "Rated R" film has ever grossed over 300 million dollars in revenues, whereas there PG rated movies accomplish this every single year!

Making less violent games generally is a better business practice for reasons of sales, not because of people blaming things on games.

Warren Spector:

The hue and cry over videogame effects hasn't had any impact on the games I've worked on at all. I design and/or produce and support the kinds of games I want to play. If some people find those games objectionable, the game industry has a robust and effective ratings system in place to ensure that parents (and adults) are clued into a game's contents before they choose to buy it. Having said that, and speaking entirely personally, I find the easy path taken by most designers -- context-free, consequence-free, virtual killing to be pretty trivial and dull. That HAS affected the games I work on. But that's a matter of personal opinion -- just as the games I work on are personal expressions. That's not a basis for shaping public policy

5) Lets talk about sexual stereotypes in games. Is it fair that when a 'busty bombshell' heroine appears in a game it is called feeding to stereotypes of what a heroine women look like; yet that is not what is said when we see the countless 'muscle bound tough guy' heroes in games?

Kenn Hoekstra:

I agonized over this question for a long time. I wanted to avoid going into a twenty-five page dissertation about discrimination against women in our society, the glass ceiling for women in the job market, the sexism in the workplace, the treatment of women as objects and not human beings, the standards that women are subjected to because of advertising, magazines, Barbie dolls and other societal influences and the all around bad rap that women get in the world today. Am I a feminist? Probably... If a man can be considered a feminist, that man would probably be me.

Suffice it to say that it's my opinion that women do get a bad rap as characters in games today. A lot of that probably has to do with the fact that most game company employees are men. Just as male writers have trouble with female characters in their novels, male game designers have trouble with women in games. I think game designers everywhere would be doing themselves a favor by creating more likeable, believable, and less stereotypical female characters in games.

Dave Georgeson:

I find this subject sort of amusing. I mean...who really wants to play a short, fat, balding starfighter pilot who saves the galaxy? Games are partially about escapism. And lots of people like to picture themselves as the big, buff hero-type, or even the svelte and sexy vixen. I think you'll also notice that not all the females in games are total "busty bombshells". For instance, the recent heroine of "Perfect Dark" was pretty cool looking without being cheesecake. But in essence, this is that same old "Barbie" conversation and it boils down to the fact that people would much rather be perfect in every way instead of mortal and flawed like we all actually are. Amusingly, "Everquest" players often rag on the Verant guys because the male characters in that game aren't "beefcake" enough. Go figure.

Jeff Tunnell:

Bottom line is that the core gamer market is made up of young males. There will be sexual stereotypes, and they will continue to sell. These same stereotypes sell comic books, movies, and countless other products as well. We are not out to change the world here. We didn't invent the stereotypes, and we won't be able to make them go away. I don't know about you, but I really liked the movie X-Men, and it wasn't because the women characters were ugly.

Peter Molyneux:

I think that this is in line with what happens in TV advertising and all areas of the media. It's just an attitude which is accepted by the media generally.

Dave Perry:

As games are a fantasy, the push is always to go much larger than life and more exciting than real life. Is this an abuse of women, should these pumped up superheros all be MEN? If you think so, then maybe you are sexist?

Jason Hall:

Well, that is probably not "fair" but I'm not going to cry like a baby about it. Life is not fair. I certainly can see why people would want to point out that a "busty bombshell" heroine is feeding a stereotype - women already have enough to deal with on the issue of how they look without needing to add this stuff on top of it all. So I can see the issue, it is just that I really am not concerned with "fairness" and how men should be able to whine about the same stereotyping. I believe that grown men shouldn't whine about things like this, ever - so I don't. (but that is just my opinion).

Warren Spector:

To tell you the truth, I'm as bored to tears about the whole "muscle bound tough guy" business as I am about the "busty bombshell" phenomenon. I can't tell you how many times during the development of Deus Ex I said something like, "I don't want a game where everyone looks like The Mighty Thor!" I wanted short people and tall people, fat people and thin people. Games can and should reflect the full range of human body types -- not just some adolescent fantasy derived from the nonsense anatomy of comic books.

6) Ahh yes, the holidays... A wonderful time of year when we are inundated with a great selection new games. Unfortunately they are often full of bugs and it is getting worse every year. Is there no end in site for buggy software that is rushed out in time for holiday sales?

Kenn Hoekstra:

Releasing a game for the holidays simply because it's the holidays can definitely a double-edged sword. There is no doubt that the holidays increase sales numbers for the games industry as a whole. It can also be true, however, that your game could be lost in the shuffle because of limited shelf space. The trend in the industry right now from my perspective is moving more towards quality than quantity. I think you'll start seeing games held longer even if they slip past the holidays in order to ensure that the game is well-received and not returned because of customer disappointment.

Dave Georgeson:

Well...consumers are getting more savvy, and the Dev Houses are getting smarter about their business. I think the "buggy Xmas" products will die a deserved death soon because a) Dev Houses are finally learning how to project reasonable dates...AND publishers are now willing to listen rather than get burned yet again, and; b) competition is fierce enough at Christmas, that buggy products simply will not sell. They'll spike up, and slam down in sales once they get a rep for being buggy, thus totally defeating the reason to rush it out the door for the Xmas rush. It's a hard lesson for the industry to learn, and we've resisted it year after year, but I think the people that succeed in the next year or so will be the ones that finally let it sink into their skulls.

Jeff Tunnell:

Software gets harder to develop, players want more, publishers want it done on time and on budget. This problem will never go away. However, as games move more to an on-line subscription model it will become less of an issue because all games will be updated to the latest version before the player downloads it.

Peter Molyneux:

Bugs in games are extremely aggravating but are a result of the fact that games are so complex. I think every publisher should do everything they possibly can to ensure that as much testing as possible has gone into the any new game and simply not pass it until it is of the highest possible standard . But I am gulping as I type this as Black & White is just due about to go into testing at EA.

Dave Perry:

As teams move to console, I think you will see less and less buggy games. The console makers demand thorough testing. In the PC world, no matter how hard you try, you are at the mercy of a whole bunch of vendors and their buggy drivers... That includes Microsoft.

Jason Hall:

No. There will always be some company somewhere that will rush a product out to meet a Christmas deadline. It will not stop until it is illegal to release software that has bugs. This is not likely to happen, so the buyer needs to definitely do their research on a product before shelling out their hard earned money for it.

Warren Spector:

The only way you're going to see an end to this is if publishers stop pushing so hard to make specific dates. And that ain't bloody likely. I mean, it's necessary to make those dates if you're going to have any chance of making money, something that seems to be getting tougher all the time (what with rising costs and increased competition...). Developers have to take some blame, too -- I mean, we routinely sign up for schedules we can't meet. So, I guess we should adopt more professional attitudes but, be that as it may, once the folks with the checkbook say, "You're GOING to ship on November 1st," you're pretty much set-up to ship a buggy game. I don't know. Maybe I'm being too hard on publishers here. Tough problem.

7) It is always nice to know what the gamers think and quite often they have valuable insight. But where do you draw the line between input and interfering in the design vision?

Kenn Hoekstra:

Feedback from gamers is extremely useful to developers, which is why beta tests and/or demos are considered by most to be essential to successful game design. You can't, however, try to make everyone happy. If you do, you won't make anyone happy and your game will never ship. The thing to do is to look for basic trends in your feedback. If a huge number of people say "this weapon sucks" or "this level is too hard" or "I can't get the game to run on my video card," then that's something you should look into. If people throw things at you like "this game should be in third person" or "I think you should make it more like game X," then you should listen, but not jeopardize the fundamental design for a few unhappy campers. Everything is a matter of opinion and, as I stated earlier, you'll never make everyone happy.

Dave Georgeson:

Vision should always be created in-house. It needs to be very focused, and it needs to carefully nurture the ember of an idea so that the basic gameplay in a product is honed and protected. HOWEVER...I talk to the "Tribes" community every morning and almost every night. They're FULL of ideas on almost every subject, and many of their ideas are simply fantastic. The way I look at the situation is that I get to access a Think Tank of approximately 10,000 dedicated fans every single day and I can bounce ideas around with them any time I desire. That's invaluable and has given me perspective on many occasions. Talking to players in the community is ALWAYS going to result in a better focus on what your players actually desire...as long as you can avoid the temptation to only listen to the same 10 guys each day. The key is to listen to MANY opinions. Many forums are very insulated and only provide a skewed image of what "the public" wants and a broader pespective is needed.

Jeff Tunnell:

We welcome all input from players when we are making games. It doesn't interfere, and it isn't threatening. We can always say no.

Peter Molyneux:

I think one of things you have to do as a games designer is tell as many people as possible about your idea as it is only by doing this that you can judge how good it really is. I am a firm believer in new ideas and okay you might have nine uninspiring ideas suggested to you but the tenth could be a real gem. One of the things that Quake has demonstrated is that when you enable gamers to use a game to design their own levels then they can up with some pretty impressive things.

Dave Perry:

I usually look to build on what works. Usually some piece of the game works surprisingly well, so we tend to adjust the game to focus more. A good example was the sniper mode in MDK... It worked so well, the game actually morphed around it.

Jason Hall:

Input is fine at all times. It never interferes with the design vision unless you are letting gamers outside of your company design your game - which is something I would not recommend.

Warren Spector:

The key to avoiding problems in this area is to go into a game's development with clear goals. Know what game you're trying to make and you can filter comments pretty effectively, whether those comments come from gamers, team members or (gasp!) marketing guys!

8) Pre-release hype, we see more of it every day. From mountains of screen shots to countless in depth feature chats. It seems that lately this is starting to backfire as gamers are getting let down with what they finally end up getting. Is it the gamers fault for getting too excited to the point of where it could in no way live up to the hype, or the game companies fault for pushing too hard?

Kenn Hoekstra:

I think it's a little of both. Game companies can do themselves a disservice by pushing the game too hard. If they show too much of the game in advance or make outrageous claims like "This game is going to have the best AI ever," they're just hurting themselves, their product and their credibility in the marketplace. In contrast, if they don't say anything about their game, there's no anticipation, no buildup and no public awareness for the title. Like most aspects of the games industry, you need to find a balance. Not the easiest thing in the world...

Gamers, on the other hand, should take everything they read with a grain of salt. Game hype is dripping with opinions and no two gamers (or reviewers) are alike in what they enjoy about games and what they dislike about games. One reviewer might say a game is the best they've ever seen, while another may say that they hate it because the game doesn't jive with the reviewer's style. Personally, I prefer the Playboy review system. Each game, music selection, book selection etc. is reviewed by a panel of judges with different likes and dislikes. If you track the reviews, you'll generally figure out which members of the panel have the same tastes as you do and you can take a look at their recommendations and go from there.

Ultimately, there's no substitute for a game's demo. I never buy software blindly. I have to play the demo first and so should you. There...a nickel's worth of free advice.

Dave Georgeson:

I suppose it's sort of like the hype associated with Summer Blockbuster movies. In fact, the AAA-titles that come out each Xmas season are roughly equivalent to those Summer Blockbusters. Sometimes products are overhyped. It's Marketing's responsibility to try to pace the excitement so that the new product is released right at the peak of that hype rather than after everyone is sort of sick of hearing about it and without overselling the game to the point that the game can do nothing but disappoint. It's an art, rather than a science though and it's tough to pull off.

Personally, I always try to avoid the majority of hype for any game or movie that I think is going to be great, just so I can form my own opinions, but I'll admit that I get sucked into reading previews of games I'm excited about just as much as everyone else does. (The web is REALLY bad for this, it sucks me in all the time.) Also, I think that since the publishing pace of the real AAA-titles has been slower recently (they take more time to develop nowadays), the wait is tougher for consumers. It's an uncommon game that holds players' interests for more than a month, and that often leaves gaps in their gaming lives that they fill by investigating upcoming stuff...and consequently getting overhyped about it.

Jeff Tunnell:

I can't imagine that the hype will ever die down. With hundreds of fan sites, real game sites, and magazines all clamoring for material, the publishers will be only too happy to comply. I think gamers need to sort through the clutter and realize that most of the hype will never come true. Support developers that have created good games in the past, and use demos, tests, and forums to give new products and developers a chance. A good rule of thumb is "if is sounds too good to be true, it probably is." All developers work with the same hardware and most of them are pretty smart. So, if you hear claims that somebody is simulating the entire surface of the earth in real time 3D with no load times on a Voodoo 1 card on a P90, take it with a grain of salt and move on.

Peter Molyneux:

Well the fact of the matter is that you have to make consumers aware of a game before it is released. There is always a great temptation to talk about planned features which maybe later have to be dropped. But I think that at the end of the day so long as the game is a good one and lives up to the hype you have created then everyone should be happy.

Dave Perry:

It is the developers fault. They should only publish screenshots that are REAL. They should also not 'hide' their games and just keep showing rendered movies. Gamers need screenshots/movies and the specs of the machine they are running on as the best reality check possible.

Jason Hall:

It is most likely the game company's fault for setting such a high expectation for their game by constantly talking about it to the gamers. If you are going get gamers all excited about your product by making lofty claims, you had better be ready to back it up!

Warren Spector:

I think I'd probably blame games that don't live up to their hype before I blame game companies. And I sure as heck would never blame a gamer for getting his or her hopes up! There are just a lot of "me too" games out there or, as we discussed earlier, too many games shipped before their time, that's all. It's not as if any developer WANTS to ship a bad or disappointing game, you know!

9) It seems as if many developers are jumping ship from PCs to consoles and that is partially due to the fact that the next generation consoles will be coming with mice, keyboards, hard drives and modems. It is also to due tremendous sales in comparison as well as the ease of designing on one single set of hardware. Where do you see this trend taking us in ten years from now?

Kenn Hoekstra:

I mentioned the cyclical nature of the games industry earlier in this interview and I feel obligated to mention it again. PC games were huge a few years ago. Then the PlayStation and the Nintendo 64 came along. Everyone wanted a piece of that action, so PC development trailed off. Then, as the market was saturated with console titles, PC development started in earnest again. Now, the game cube, X-box and PSX II are on their way. Every developer and publisher in their right mind wants in on the ground floor of this opportunity. In a year or two, the market will be flooded and we'll be back to PC titles...until the next generation of consoles comes out. Don't expect the up and down, back and forth nature of the industry to change any time soon. Developers and publishers will always follow the money and the current trends. It's sound business sense.

Dave Georgeson:

Good question. This industry has been so "one-year-at-a-time" until now that it's hard to make solid predictions, but if the Sonys and Microsofts can make good their claim to make complete entertainment centers out of their systems, then yeah...it's entirely possible that console platforms might be the wave of the future. I, for one, wouldn't miss the hellish compatibility sweeps of today's PC environment, and we could certainly make tremendously killer products if we had a single box to build on and could write code to specifically push the boundaries of that one platform. But am I willing to shuck the PC and bet everything on the consoles? No way, Jose. The PC is still the most advanced gaming platform and is the resting place of our current core crowd of gamers. If the Xbox does as well as it *should* do, then I will be an easy convert to doing games for that platform, but until then...gimmee the PC baby.

Jeff Tunnell:

Ten years? Damn, we'll be playing via neural implants by then! That's too far out to predict. How about three years? Consoles will continue to surge in popularity. If you are a PC fan, then root big-time for the X-Box because it allows all of your favorite PC game makers to keep making games like they are used to doing it. PC games shouldn't go away because a certain segment of the gamer population wants the latest, greatest hardware, and consoles are only powerful at announcement and launch. Once they hit the market, the PC pulls away until the next round of hardware comes three years later.

Peter Molyneux:

I think the PC will always be with us it is known in the development community so the rock and this coupled with pretty healthy sales figures for recent releases such The Sims and Deus Ex means that the PC is sure to be around for quite sometime to come. Lionhead still intends to continue to support the PC.

Dave Perry:

Consoles will still be consoles, PC's will still be PC's. Often joining things does not work. TV VCR combos were expected to change the world but did not. So PC/Consoles will fail, that is my personal opinion. I need a great PC or a great Gaming Console, not some funky device that is neither.

Jason Hall:

That is too far in the future for me to make any real predictions. I can definitely see that the PC as we know it will need to become a much more stable and quantifiably easier to use platform if it is going to attract a more mass consuming gaming audience (when compared to consoles). I think the market's current trend will help the PC community understand how important it is to have these issues addressed over time.

Warren Spector:

I have no idea where this business is going, sadly. I used to think I understood it but I'm not at all sure anymore. There's certainly a trend, among publishers at least, of seeing the console future as more secure than the PC future. For my money, the smartest thing developers can do is hedge their bets -- get games out on multiple platforms, as close to simultaneously as possible. Luckily, the next generation consoles are powerful enough to support some more-or-less PC-style gameplay! But, like I said, I no longer lay any claims to expertise when it comes to the game business. I'm hopeful things will get clearer once all the next gen consoles are available.

10) Is there respect for gamers? Spend weeks locked away in a basement painting a picture or writing a great novel and you are respected. Spend that time playing games and you are not. Since gaming is starting to become a viable source of income and jobs as in gaming sites or "cyber-athletes", do you think this respect will change? Or will it always be dismissed as playing games?

Kenn Hoekstra:

I think the perception of gamers will change over time. The reality is, sales from games this year (or maybe next year) will generate greater revenues than the Hollywood box office. That's no laughing matter... Attitudes change over time. Films have been around for most of the century, whereas video games have not. Give it another ten years and the playing field (no pun intended) will even out.

Dave Georgeson:

It's true. Most folks' image of a "gamer" is that short, fat, balding guy I mentioned earlier. But it's simply not true most of the time. Gamers today are much more connected than they have been previously (thanks, Internet), and team games, in particular, are bringing gamers into a new level of thinking. Couple those new social interactions with well-funded tournaments, leagues, and events that are organized well and get good public relations, and I think people will (slowly) begin to think of these games as an "Everyperson" sort of sport that we all can participate in. Once people get it through their heads that computer games are actually little different than other games that they play regularly (poker, Jenga, softball, etc.), and they realize that fame and fortune can be had through participation...well...attitudes will change. More and more people are gaming every day now. And, like many things once considered "odd" (like Karate, Yoga, Soccer (in America), or even Aerobics), the more people that participate, the more mainstream and accepted the hobby will become.

Jeff Tunnell:

No. But playing games IS entertainment. Trying to make it more than that would be like trying to become professional at watching television. Making games is a different story. People may not get it yet, but it will soon be accorded the same kind of respect the general population has for musicians or movie makers. I've been doing this for a LONG time, and people still can't understand it. However, when they see that it has allowed me to have a much better than average income, at least they respect it

Peter Molyneux:

The big problem with games is the word games. If only we could find another less frivolous word to describe games then people would be far less uptight about this and take us much more seriously.

Dave Perry:

It will always be just playing games. It's not a fun spectator sport. The fun is being in control. That said, there will always be the 'win a Ferrari' competitions to look forward to. Hopefully!

Jason Hall:

Hmmm. I don't really know. Game players of other types certainly get a lot of respect. Sports like, Football, Basketball, Tennis, etc. all seem to have some form of respect associated with the players. Perhaps over time, video game players will find themselves in a similar situation.

Warren Spector:

"Always" is a mighty big word but I can't see a future where game development and game consumption isn't at least as well-respected as film-making and film fandom or television production and TV watching. (I'll leave it to you to decide how respected that is!) The fact that there's real money to be made in the making of games means development is a legitimate profession (even in my mother's eyes -- she no longer cries about the fact that I dropped out of grad school before I finished my PhD!).

The fact that there are a LOT of game consoles out there means you can't stigmatize gamers as some weird subculture anymore. I mean, the real weirdoes of the world, statistically speaking, are people who DON'T play games! The fact that Deus Ex has been written up in the New York Times, Newsweek, USA Today and a bunch of other major media outlets tells me we're a part of the cultural mainstream now. We're pretty legit already and probably getting more so every day. To be honest, though, who really cares about "respect?" It's a nice bonus but, for me the enjoyment of making and playing games is enough. It'd be sad if gamers or game developers required external validation to feel that their efforts or entertainment were worthwhile

Conclusion:

I want to thank each and every one of these great developers for taking the time out of their busy schedule to do this interview. Their hard work and dedication to the art of gaming has given us some truly fond memories.