Feature: 'All For Games: An Interview With Warren Spector'

For today's latest exclusive Gamasutra interview, noted development veteran Warren Spector discusses what is going on with his new Houston-based studio Junction Point, as well as shares his opinion of massively mutiplayer online games, writing in games, dynamic storytelling, and the potential of the medium. In this excerpt, Spector explains the origin of the name for his new studio, as well as what deeper meaning the name Junction Point shares with his future goals for the company: “When I was with Looking Glass, the last thing I worked on with them on was a concept that I came up with along with Doug Church and some other guys. It was a very different approach to multiplayer online games called Junction Point. I loved the name and concept. I'm not revealing anything too dramatic since we're not doing the game, though I'd love to some day, but the name spoke to me more as a name for a studio than a name for a game. A junction point is where a lot of things come together and that you can go in a lot of different directions. If you think about the kind of games I like to work on and play, it's a lot of genres coming together. If you look at Deus Ex, we still win best role playing, action and story game awards [even today]. I love the fact that we confound the marketing people, frankly. Junction point expresses that. The games I like to make are all about players choosing directions, paths and play styles. A place where a lot of things come together and offer a lot of places to go... what better name could there be? It's also nice that it abbreviates to JPS, which rolls off the tongue.” You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject, with much more from Spector on Junction Point, as well as his views of the larger industry (no registration required, please feel free to link to this column from external websites).