Doing Disney

A conversation with game design legend Warren Spector, who just sold his Junction Point Studios to Disney

by Colin Campbell

Warren Spector is a man who needs little introduction in industry circles. His work on classic series like Ultima Underworld and System Shock is well known, as is his design of the award-winning Deus Ex series. With the Thief series of game, Spector is even considered one of the fathers of the stealth genre.

But it’s that very legacy that made the purchase of his development house by Disney Interactive raise so many eyebrows when it was announced at E3. While Junction Point Studios doesn’t have a game to its name as of yet, one would assume that a publisher best known for fluffy child-oriented fare like Hannah Montana and Spectrobes would shy away from a designer known for his gritty, violent and sometimes terrifying visions.

Spector however thinks the deal makes a lot of sense for a lot of reasons. We sat down with him to hear his side of the deal as well as what it means for his future, including how Disney will and will not effect his position an a leader in the development community.

Why did you decide to throw your lot in with a big company like Disney?

There are some professional ones and there are certainly some personal ones as well. On the professional side, the Disney organization has given Junction Point and me the opportunity to work on an incredibly cool project that I really can’t say anything about. The company’s always been at the forefront of technological innovation and storytelling, and the more I talked to people about Disney Interactive, the more I got the sense that they really embrace the whole Disney heritage. So when you put that together with the kinds of games I like to make—I mean obviously I’m an interactive storytelling sort of guy, to the point where I think I probably annoy people about it, you know? So the professional fit was perfect as near as I could tell. And then on the personal side I’ve just been a Disney geek all my life. I try to keep that hidden so I keep this dark, edgy sort of reputation but I’m a cartoon fanatic and I have been all my life. I worked on a bunch of cartoon games when I was in the tabletop game business: Toon, Steve Jackson Games, and the Bullwinkle and Rocky game at TSR. I wrote my masters thesis on Warner Brothers Cartoons. You know I applied for a job as an Imagineer [an Imagineer is an employee of Walt Disney Imagineering, the creator of many Disney theme park rides. –ed.] before I got into video gaming so from a personal standpoint it’s a great fit there too.

So you’re going to be working on your original IP and also some Disney IP as well. What can you tell us about that?

Well I think over the years we’ll be working with some Disney brands. Again, I love those brands that Disney has, the IP that they’ve created over the last, I mean my gosh, eighty plus years. We’re definitely going to be working on some original stuff at some point too but again it’s really not the time to be talking about the specific projects yet.

You seem to be somebody who’s very much your own man. Are you going to be able to work within the confines of a large organization? Do you feel comfortable with that?

Yeah, you know, the funny thing is I’ve done the…I’ve worked for big publishers, I’ve worked as an independent, I know the ups and downs of both and at this point I think this is a really good time for us to become part of Disney. It’s kind of a crazy time to be an independent if you really look at all the increased costs of next-gen. I’ve got a track record and certainly I’ve got a team of people here who’ve worked on some amazing projects but we were still a start up and it was kind of a dicey sort of time, and so again the opportunity to work specifically with Disney, it was just too good to pass up.

Are you still going to set up at GDC and places like that and give us your no holds barred opinions on the game industry and creativity?

I’d love to see anybody try and stop me. Yeah, you bet. I mean, the industry does a lot of things right but it does a lot of things wrong.