Over the years people usually realize and accept both errors and successes committed in the past. Looking Glass main successes are evident, but what about errors?

We surely made many errors over the 10 years we were in business. All companies do; more so if they do anything interesting. We did try to learn from our errors.
Some of the errors we made...
- We should have dialed back somewhat the level of depth and complexity we put in some of our games, and put more emphasis on accessibility. We did learn from this, and Thief was the result.
- We did not put sufficient emphasis on pure visual pizzazz for many of our games. Fight Unlimited was an exception; but for our other titles the level visual eye candy, and providing fast and smooth frame rates, was not on par with the blockbusters of the time. This hurt our sales.
- We spread ourselves too thin in terms of genres. Nearly every blockbuster studio of that time had a tight focus, such as only doing PC first-person shooters, as often as not just a single franchise. We did 3D fantasy games, 3D science fiction games, flight simulators, sports games, and others genres. In hindsight, we were slightly crazed to try to tackle such a wide palette as a small company, and it meant that we could not build the level of expertise in any single genre as we otherwise could.
- We were undercapitalized for what we were trying to do. As an small but ambitious studio we tried to push ourselves and do a lot; but often with not quite enough capital. It was a risky strategy that ultimately contributed to our demise.
I could go on, but that's probably enough to mention for now.

Time ago, Warren Spector defined both 'Thief' and 'Deus Ex' as 'immersion simulators'. Would you suggest us where to find them today?
At Looking Glass we called this approach “immersive reality”, but Warren's term is equally apt. It came out of some of us having worked on flight simulators in the 1980's, and then applying some of what we learned about this genre to Ultima Underworld and System Shock. In flight simulators you bend backwards to give the player as much freedom and control as you can in the simulation, creating a sort of game play “sandbox”. To some degree games such as the Sims and GTA took a similar approach.

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Anyway, to answer your question I believe that elements of “immersion simulators” can still be found today in a variety of games, but games that have the all-out focus on this approach are few and far between. This is in part because of the belief, perhaps correct, that full-out expressions of this game play style are suited only for harder core gamers, and again, it is hard to justify modern game budgets for just this audience. On a related note, there are notably fewer flight simulators and racing simulators today than ten years ago for much the same reason.

We believe games can be not only entertainment but a fantastic way for storytelling, offering many possibilities for singular artistic expression. Looking Glass showed that, but there's still a long way to go in terms of both comparison with the quality of movie scripts, and respect as a truly artistic medium at the same level. What does it take to change this?

Absolutely agree that games have a long way to go to match the level storytelling and character development that a good film can deliver. Part of it is an inherent limitation of the interactive media. It is far easier to tell an story and communicate character in a liner media such as a film or a book. Once you go interactive and non-liner, you introduce all sorts of hurdles, and game designers have not yet found a way to level to fully compensate.

It's the enlightning interview overall.





This is the highlight. I could never know that when Warren Spector invented the 'immersive simulatior' term, he meant it as literally as it now seems. I could not imagine that immersive sim games are so closely tied to the traditional simulation games.


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Warren Spector did not invented the "inmersive simulations", he only defined it, as the interview says.