Warren Spector's Words of Wisdom. Got $20 Million?

Some know him from his early days at Origin and Looking Glass (System Shock rings a bell?), others associate him with Ion Storm's outstanding Deus Ex game, but there are also those who simply love to hear him talk on and on, about the precarious state of the gaming industry. That's right, it's the famed game designer and producer Warren Spector, who recently delivered another one of his memorable talks at an Austin Community College lecture last week. Next Generation were there to get all the juicy quotes, side-rants and off-the-cuff comments from Spector's lecture, and now they're kindly sharing them with all of us on their website.

Here are some of my favorites, just to get you started:

"Clearly, if what you see in games right now, even in the best games, is all we're capable of doing, then I'm getting out of the business. I don't know about the rest of you... there's so much more we can do."

"You can't imagine what you can't imagine. There's a reason some of us make games, and others of us play them. We have to give them something they can't imagine themselves."

"If you go to E3 and you're not depressed, you're really not paying attention. I mean, three-thousand identical, noisy, crappy... With, like, five good ones you have to spend three days seeking."

"There is a chance that I will work on a game very soon, that is photo-realistic, and modern-day, because it's amazing how easily you can be typecast... If I end up working on a photo-realistic, modern-day game where a guy wears dark sunglasses, carries two guns, you know, and shoots his way through... I will kill myself, alright? Not really."

Spector also responded to requests for his thoughts on episodic games, by once again saying he is working with Valve on a Steam delivered project, though without revealing any further details. In the end, he concluded:

"Let me just say, that's what I spent the nine-months that I was trying to get financing, that's what I was doing. I think episodics are critical for our future, for about a thousand reasons I've got a whole other talk about. I've got a big proposal, if you've got $20 million, I'd love to talk to you about it."

We're thinking about opening a PayPal account, if anyone's up for some serious donations.

(N.B. Archive text, links removed)