Junction Point about to announce something?

OK, the title may be a bit of a red herring, but Austin-based Junction Point Studios, Inc. is still being pretty enigmatic. They've just signed a "new creative deal" with publisher Vivendi Games. The Game Developers Conference is next week. With E3 going away, developers and publishers need a place to announce stuff (and people like GDC director Jamil Moledina are saying PS3 owners will be "very happy" after Phil Harrison's March 7 keynote).

And Junction Point's founder / owner and "Game God" Warren Spector is doing a lot of interviews lately.

But just so the interviews don't get lost in the shuffle (and because they're more useful and concrete than my rumor mongering I'm doing above), let's talk about the interviews.

You can get insights into one of the great game designers / story tellers / visionaries in the February issues of both Game Developer and UK magazine games.

Like I said in my Steve Meretzky post, getting insight from folks of this caliber to me is nothing short of a gift. Though I've read a lot of stuff with Spector, there are still quite a few nuggets in both of these interviews.

They're all largely in concert with the mission statement for his studio:

"Junction Point Studios, Inc., founded in January of 2005, is an independent
developer of innovative console and PC games that focus on player-driven,
improvisational gameplay in the context of strong, traditional narratives. The
company's goal is to tell stories with players, not to them, allowing them to
craft their own, unique experiences through in-game choices." [Emphasis
theirs.]

Spector's philosophy seems to be an intelligent middle ground between largely story-less sandbox (a la Crackdown) and games on rails, even with great story (a la Half-Life).

His idea is to not create a sandbox game, but multiple little sandboxes, for which he decides the linkage relationship, and is responsible for "all the acts [and purpose for] why you do things":

"The key for me is letting players explore those little narrative chunks on
their own. I'll determine why it's important that you get through the door, but
how you get through it, what happens, and whether you kill, talk to, or ignore
everyone on the other side belongs to you."

While he somewhat eschews linearity, his philosophy does mandate a framework, rooted in narrative -- but not bogged down in story telling.

He's boiled it down to the three-act narrative framework:

"... the first act is to set the scene, introduce the characters and the basic conflict. And by the end of Act One, you have to get the hero -- or player -- up a tree, get him into trouble. Act Two is to throw rocks at the hero, really make the problem worse. And then, in Act Three, the hero gets out of the tree through force of will or through direct action. And then there's a little epilogue where you wrap up all the loose ends."

Deceptively simplistic when laid out, this brilliant reductionism isn't without its problems -- you've got to create a story that is driving and engaging, but leaves free will; options that can be handled by the less creative, and maximized by the overly creative gamer.

And that means games need to be their own thing, something about which Spector is passionate. They're not an R-rated movie (Gears of War), and though they're often derivative, they don't have to be, and shouldn't be ("Who in their 20s or 30s gives a darn about being the last space marine on a space station who has to stave off an alien invasion?").

(I just realized this is in essence the artifice for cutesy RoboBlitz.)

Bigger, Spector argues titles just for play and diversion aren't the end game (or at least the only value) -- "Games are about testing ethics, allowing people to challenge their own ethical and intellectual beliefs."

Building better people through games. Seriously.

And while he uses the term "sandbox", he means something much more complex, much more challenging, and much more stretching.

Interestingly, he thinks it's for developers to push this change in games, not for gamers to demand it -- because they won't. I'm probably butchering this, but his statements are almost akin to a product company creating a market for a product they want to create -- though I'd argue Spector has higher motives.

I'd be curious as to what he'd say about Okami, or the upcoming Bioshock.

So read the articles. There's even more there. Good stuff, this.

As an aside, Spector doesn't care so much for MMOs (but his wife is a WOW addict).