Chris

More like those other jerks were wrong! I was totally right!

It is, I have it on Steam. It's also called Anno 1404.

No problem! Video games!

My point with "name a game" wasn't to be condescending. I couldn't name one of their games either. That was my point--on those games (and many others), "lead designer" doesn't necessarily indicate the person to "follow." I wasn't trying to call you out, I was just trying to provide an illustration of my point about different development titles.

Again, if a project has both a creative director and a lead designer, the creative director is pretty much guaranteed to be the one with more responsibility and creative direction on the project. You said you don't follow creative directors, just lead designers, and I'm saying that makes no sense. You responded to the Psychonauts point, but not in a sensical way, since following the lead designer of that game wouldn't be particularly useful. You said Schafer being the writer is enough, but like these other roles, that's going to differ in meaningfulness from game to game. You also didn't address the BioShock point. That's an incredibly common structure in the industry -- if a game has a creative director, that person is overwhelmingly likely to be the thing that you seem to be thinking a lead designer is. Also, if you're going by just "designer" and not "lead designer" then you're going to be "following around" half a dozen people on a given game, none of whom are likely to actually be the person who's really in charge of the game's overall direction. You're saying "lead designer" is a "better indicator," and I still maintain it's not. My overall point here is, it's not worth just picking a title like "lead designer" and deciding any kind of overall following strategy based on it. That's even more the case with that specific role, since year by year it's less and less likely to actually refer to the kind of person you seem to want to follow. Using outdated early LucasArts terminology seems like an odd way to make that decision. What makes more sense is just to figure it out on a game by game basis. But if you are going to have a hard and fast rule, you might as well at least go by "creative director" because that's the most likely role to be the thing you're trying to follow.

Well, my point is that what you're saying is often inaccurate. For example, Ken Levine was BioShock's creative director. Its lead designer was Paul Hellquist (name another of his games, quick). Psychonauts' creative director was Tim Schafer. Its lead designer was Erik Robson (ditto). And on the topic of LucasArts, Grim Fandango, like many LucasArts adventure games, had no lead designer; its project lead was Tim Schafer. What I'm saying is that "lead designer" is not necessarily a useful indicator of who actually served as the game's overall creative force and gatekeeper.

The role of a video game producer varies wildly--at the most fundamental level, there's a difference between a producer that works for a publisher, and one that works for a developer. Beyond that, different studios have different roles for that title. Spector conceived the Deus Ex idea, and served as its project director. "Lead designer" can also mean a lot of different things, although not as many as "producer." Sometimes, "lead designer" is used to indicate the overall creative gatekeeper, although that's increasingly less common these days. "Creative director" is starting to become much more frequently used for that, and "project lead" (Spector's other title on Deus Ex) has also often been used in the same way, while "lead designer" often refers literally to the lead on the design team, rather than the lead on the project as a whole. I believe that was essentially Smith's role on Deus Ex. I also haven't see Warren Spector generally credited as being the primary creative force on System Shock in the same way he is on Deus Ex. That tends to be credited more to Doug Church, who was the game's project leader. That game also had no credited lead designer.

I'm glad this thread is full of people who aren't totally lame like Nick. Also, to LeChimp: I did call out Jane Jensen as being one of Sierra's best designers, and mentioned Gabriel Knight, but since as far as I know those games aren't currently directly sold in an accessible way, they didn't seem to fall within the parameters of the guy's specific question. But yeah they are good!

Too modest to cite his own work?

Coming into it with no knowledge of the plot whatsoever, I still felt the same way you did right as the twist was revealed, but that feeling quickly dissipated for me in the face of Rockwell's amazing performance(s). I ended up really liking how frequently the movie did the opposite of what you'd expect a sci-fi movie of this sort to do.

That's what I love about it. To me, Guybrush is barely even a character. I know some people like to talk about how much they love Guybrush Threepwood as a hilarious character, but it's never been that for me, at least not in the first two games. I really like that I have no fully-formed human conception of who Guybrush is; his cypher-like nature is really central to the effectiveness of those games.

I love the term "moving pictures." Also, I love when people refer to a movie as a "picture." I first heard that from my grandfather when I was a kid, and I thought it was simultaneously old and goofy, and awesome.

I think "game" already implies interaction and some sort of tactile component, since historically nearly all pre-video games have featured those things, and audio is implicit in the term "video," which in almost all cases refers to a combination of moving pictures and sound.

Yes your first impression is much closer to the actual situation.

That seems to be mainly a UK tendency, but I don't think it really matters. They're effectively the same thing, and you're still sitting at home on your own interacting with a machine.

We made it to number 10, with bonus faster download rates. Now, since this is Idle Thumbs, we will lose interest and disappear for two years.* "As the CEOs of EA and Activision engage in an epic battle for the hearts and souls of gamers, our co-hosts consider Spike VGA-related game unveilings, fool significant others into buying consoles, look at some IGF 2009 entries, and propose Netflix achievement whoring." Games: Prince of Persia, Mafia 2, Dante's Inferno, Spheroid, Atmosphir, Dyson, Retro/Grade, Defense Grid, Ghostbusters, Ghost Tycoon. RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/idle-thumbs iTunes: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=293436552 http://www.idlethumbs.net/ *Not a true statement.** **I hope

On the original thread's topic: Yeah, I definitely don't think Japanese developers are more forthcoming and revealing in general. I'm constantly frustrated by how much they don't tend to be that in interviews, and now working on a staff with two Japanese speakers to do the interviews with Japanese designers, I am fairly sure it isn't a language barrier issue.

Which version are you playing? When I was still at Shacknews, I ran an editorial by Steve "Hot Scoops" Gaynor defending Kane & Lynch, but he mentioned to me in particular that he played both the Xbox 360 and PC versions, and found the control in the Xbox 360 one to be really poor in comparison.

Fuck yeah, they had one of these in San Diego. It was called Virtual World. I always preferred Red Planet to the BattleTech game, though, mainly because I sucked at BattleTech. Red Planet was an indoor zero-gravity racer where you could pick your ship from a selection of all different weight classes, armor ratings, weaponry, and so on, and the more games you won the more points you got, which would allow you to choose better ships. Man it was so fun.

My mind is always blown by the Europeanness of that ending song.

Yeah, we saw those too. What we figured is that this product has been oddly stealth-launched. I don't think there have been any press releases or anything. It's extremely bizarre.

Weird, now I also do. My PC responds to peer pressure.

I was sent a review copy of this but I don't have a flight stick. It kind of made me want to buy one though. Maybe I will.

Updated for this week. As usual, let me know what I've inevitably forgotten.

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