I had a lovely conversation with Warren Spector this past weekend. The guy is outright down to earth and didn’t accidentally evoke the inner geek in me to expose my secret Star Struck Syndrome. The whole thing was rather unexpected as it was the last day of the New York Comic Con and I was wandering around the vast halls of the Jacob Javits center admiring all the artwork and videos on display of various upcoming products and ideas. I made my way to the Disney display which was tucked far away from most other video game demonstrations in an area closer to the comic book and thrift retailers.
When I initially got to the booth my first impression was simply “This is all the space they have? There’s only 1 demo of each game!”. The first game that I glanced at was the upcoming Tron game for the 360 and PS3. plenty of fancy neon lighting effects and bike races that all seemed appropriate for what the game was representing. I don’t have any personal attachment to the Tron series, (just never stuck with me), so hopefully there’s some hidden Kojima-like gameplay attributes that I neglected. Then I turned left and saw someone playing a demo of Epic Mickey in front of the Wii kiosk. I watched the person play for a bit and thought to myself “Man this reminds me of Kingdom Hearts but without Sora”. Which is a catch-22 because it’s good to have familiarity, but its bad because I will always measure the game up to Kingdom Hearts, which is fantastic.
With my attention waning and being picked up by all the other lights and sounds in my area I saw the one thing that I knew would conclude my opinion: waggle. Yup, there I saw this boy waving around the Wii remote in order to have Mickey splash some paint in the game. I thought to myself “they really couldn’t find a button to use for that?” followed by “I hope they have more control options too”. Settling in with my quick judgment of the game I began to lose interest and was prepared to walk away until one of the booth reps noticed that my day pass had the word “Press” on it and walked over to say “Hey, you’re with the Press? Do you want to meet some of the developers of the game?” Little did I know that mostly all of the booth reps on hand were in actuality the developers and artists for the game. Who knew? I agreed and the guy ran off to get me my USB drive full of art assets for the game. I settled on the idea of at least getting a free Disney thumb drive!
They asked if I wanted to play the game and declined, but thankfully I wasn’t the only person at the booth and passed the opportunity over to Irene. I watched her play the game and asked her what she thought and she seemingly approved of what she was doing and the experience. Then that rep came back and said “Hey, would you like to speak with Warren Spector?”. GADZOOKS, what was he doing wandering the floor? He seemed cordial enough, and he easily blended in with the sea of attendees. I was not at all prepared to ask the man any questions. I wandered off a bit and scrambled to find a wifi signal to get a good idea of where I should lead the conversation and found that the Javits wifi was rent-able, but not free. I strolled back to the booth and asked “are you enjoying the convention” his reply? “Yea, kinda. I try to sneak away sometimes so I can enjoy the show”. He started mentioning how this show is almost the equivalent in attendance with the San Diego Comic Con with attracts about 170,000 people and how this show had an estimated 140,000 attendance. I have no idea where he gets his facts so quickly, but I would certainly like to know.
I continued prying his mind about the convention asking “Were you able to pick up anything nice” and he showed me his bag full of “Bone” comics mentioning something about how he’s partial to Disney. Funny guy. I never suspected that he would be a fan of comics. Silly me. I asked him if he was a DC or Marvel guy and he explained “My favorite character is Green Lantern. In comparison to the Superman’s, and the other heroes, Green Lantern just seemed more digestible for me as a kid. All I had to do was find a power ring! and I even bought a replica as a kid”. Interesting fact because, to this very day, I too am searching for a power ring. He continued “but as far as story-lines and fictional worlds, I’m Marvel all the way.” Awesome. “The Marvel characters were always so relatable with how most of the heroes were just regular people who stumbled upon or developed these uncanny abilities”. I still, jokingly, believe that it was a canned response. We all know about how Disney and Marvel get down. Regardless, I agreed because I genuinely feel the same way. I’m even digging Green Lantern more than Spider-man these days which says a lot!
We continued talking a bit about Marvel and DC until I somehow remembered that I was speaking with a video game designer and Irene was beside us his game. I asked, “Is there any interest in working with Marvel?” his response? “Absolutely, the funny thing is that I already know most of the Marvel guys and they’re great. I’ve been friends with them even before our studio was acquired by Disney. I should’ve known that these industry guys on ‘the other side’ all stick together. I asked “Which property?” and he started rattling off ideas about Green Lantern again, and then other obscure Marvel properties and also mentioned a fondness for Ducks. Specifically Duck Tales and Darkwing Duck and gave particular emphasis to the character Scrooge McDuck. It seems he has been doing some serious research on the mythos and characters within the Duck Tales universe. Wonder why? He continued talking about his findings with Ducktales and Darkwing Duck until it hit me and I spit out “I think you would be perfect for a Fantastic Four video game”. His smirk turned to a smile and mentioned “you know, I wrote a novel about Ben Grimm the Thing and you may be right”. He did? When? Where? I had no idea! (Google doesn’t pull up any info either).
After planting that bug in his ear we finally began talking about the game of the hour for him. I asked, “so, what are your plans with Epic Mickey?” He replied that they simply wanted to finish putting the final touches on the game and getting it out and on store shelves.” I then asked “Any interest in working on a console aside from the Wii?” “he replied that they were in the “crunch” of the game and that there are still a ton of unused ideas and the experiences they learned from developing the game and would keep an open mind about other consoles but that this game was solely for the Wii” my obvious follow up questions was “What kinda unused ideas” which was followed by a quick “I cant tell you that!”. He’s good. We were then interrupted by some cosplayer that he apparently had been having a previous conversation with about Ducktales who was returning to inform Mr. Spector of his findings from the convention and research on the Ducktales characters and videogames. I took this moment to watch Irene finish playing the game.
After finishing the demo I asked one of the reps on staff for my USB drive and a business card, which they only had thumb drives. Warren walked over and said “I think I still have one”. My inner geek blushed.
I wasn’t a Warren Spector fan prior to the convention. Never played any of his games! After getting a good conversation in with the guy I noticed that there’s a passion and intensity for his craft that I had never seen in a developer. It also didn’t hurt that he reminded me of Spielberg.
I am a convert. I am now definitely looking forward to playing Epic Mickey because its developed by a fellow Green Lantern fan and comic book nerd. Did I mention how he literally dropped everything when vendors near his booth began giving out free stuff to get some schwag? Dude fit right in with the rest of us!
