Harvey Smith On Gaming With A Social Change

[Morgoth]

Harvey Smith On Gaming With A Social Change

 

You certainly heard of Harvey Smith, Lead Designer on Deus Ex (awesomeness!) and Project Leader on DX:IW (oh noes!!!).

While I think he made some very dumb decisions (and no, the crippled engine wasn't the only reason why DXIW sucked) with DXIW, I still enjoy interviews when Harvey talks about his design visions. Give the gamasutra feature a try.

 

Oh and yes, I agree with Harvey that things like involving ecology, social structures and better non-combat AI is still totally underdeveloped (Bioshock seems to take a step forward at least) or just totally lacking in current games.

I just felt it again while playing Prey how dumb this game is. Cool Doom3 engine didn't save it's superficial and lacking vision of how to draw a player into a world that he ought to care about. Meh.

I'm really curious what Midway Austin is up to with their future prospects.

 

 

Discuss.

 

 

PS: And please stay on topic this time. Yes that means YOU Hades! No "Is it a CRPG?" silliness please.

Edited September 25, 2006 by Morgoth

[Volourn]

"You certainly heard of Harvey Smith"

 

I hadn't 'til this very second. :D

 

As for the topic, I find he's just another self important developer who makes interetsing points. Some of which I agree with; others I do not.

[Morgoth]

Well I didn't get the impression he's boastfully in that interview, as opposed to some other devs. Playing "Mr. Important" or not (you wouldn't do that when doing an interview?), he made some interesting points. Sadly, those points barely got into his games... as opposed to devs who don't make points but awesome games. Strange world.

Edited September 25, 2006 by Morgoth

[Volourn]

"you wouldn't do that when doing an interview?"

 

Of course, I would. I'm an arrogant SOB who has a feeling of more self importance than is considered healthy.

 

I don't think I've played any of his games except a little bit of System Shock which just wans't that impressive to me so I can't really comment on his games.

Edited September 25, 2006 by Volourn

[Arkan]

Well I didn't get the impression he's boastfully in that interview, as opposed to some other devs. Playing "Mr. Important" or not (you wouldn't do that when doing an interview?), he made some interesting points. Sadly, those points barely got into his games... as opposed to devs who don't make points but awesome games. Strange world.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Nothing strange about that at all. Ego can have an amazing effect on people.

[mkreku]

I don't think I've played any of his games except a little bit of System Shock...

You haven't played Deus Ex yet? For the first time in my board life I envy your sad existence.

[Volourn]

Sarcasm or not, my existence is anything but sad. I am very happy talking to nerds like me and you on the 'net and dissing people over what games they may or may not have played.

 

LOLOLOLOLOLOLLIPOP

[Atreides]

In after lollipop.

[Slowtrain]

Well, here's why I reacted negatively to the Bioshock footage. Some game devs love to pimp out their awesome ideas, but when it comes time to implemement fail catastophically. ie: DXIW which was pretty close to a disaster of a game.

 

Not onyl because a lot of Smith's design ideas failed, but he made a game full of consequences that were going to be super-important, but in the end none of them mattered AT ALL. Except for the one choice that chooses the end game. Either he or Spector defended this lack of consequence to all your actions (Hello, I just slaughtered all of the WTO security forces, but they still wub me! ) by saying that he didn't want to force a player down a road that the player might discover at the end they really didn't want.

 

Hello! Earth to Harvey Smith! Hello! WTF?

 

Isn't that what consequences in a game world are all about? Making choices and selecting actions that seal off potential avenues while opening others? If you're going to chicken out from taking that road, don't pimp your game as being a groundbreaking world of consequences and player involvement.

 

Not to mention his implementations of the biomod system was awful. The engine was crude. Animations sucked. Graphics were poor (the first time I came upon a trash can, I tried to activate it because I thouight it was a computer terminal which is what it looked LIKE!) The dialogue was far beloe even Oblivion-level. The weapons were poor.

 

Really it failed on almost every level.

 

 

I credit Spector for DX. Until Smith proves otherwise, I ignore him completely. Make a great game first, THEN spew your design vision to the world.

[Tigranes]

Harvey Smith, Lead Designer on Deus Ex

 

What's that then?

[Morgoth]

Harvey screwed up DXIW completely, but I think Spector wouldn't have done it better in his position. With a crippled engine like that, you can't make a good game. Nonetheless, I trust Harvey on the creative side (Lead Designer of DX), but wouldn't entrust him another Producer/Management job.

[Slowtrain]

Harvey screwed up DXIW completely, but I think Spector wouldn't have done it better in his position. With a crippled engine like that, you can't make a good game. Nonetheless, I trust Harvey on the creative side (Lead Designer of DX), but wouldn't entrust him another Producer/Management job.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

You could be right. From what I understand Spector was barely involved in IW from a design point of view. It was Harvey's game almost completely. There were rumors that Spector was not in agreement with some of Harvey's design decisions, but wasn't about to stop him.

 

One of Harvey's main ideas for IW was the idea of the "numberless game". In other words, we don't measure our world through numbers, so to make the gameworld more "involving", he eliminated all numbers. No weapon damage, no hit points, no skill points, no ammo count etc. He wanted to create a game that gamers couldn't distill into a bunch of numbers. Obviously those numbers are there, but they are hidden from the gamer. I find it an interesting concept. I don't think the game failed because of it; I merely use the example to illustrates Harvey's complete design control over the game. This was HIS vision of Deus Ex.

 

I think Spector would have created a game more in line with DX rather than breaking from it so completely.

 

ANd I do agree that the engine was crippling to any game that would have been made with it at this stage of developemt. It needed a lot more optimization and refinement, which seemed to happen by Thief 3.

Edited September 26, 2006 by CrashGirl