17 years ago, Ion Storm Austin’s Deus Ex was released to critical acclaim and commercial success. More importantly, it (alongside games like System Shock and Thief) helped define a generation of game developers and an entire genre -- the "immersive sim."

At GDC 2017, game dev veteran Warren Spector took the stage to deliver a postmortem talk on the game, reflecting on his experience leading the project and what it was like to work on a first-person role-playing game predicated on the notion that there was (almost) no wrong way to play.

It was a neat talk, which complements the original Deus Ex postmortem Spector wrote back in 2000 with more interesting trivia about the development of Deus Ex -- along with lots of game production advice that could be applied to other projects.

If you missed it in person, don't miss your chance to now watch it for free over on the Official GDC YouTube channel.

About the GDC Vault

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its new YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC, GDC Europe, and GDC Next already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Tech