‘Triple-A development is stagnant’, Warren Spector says

On the eve of hisreturnto full-time development, Warren Spector has issued a manifesto of sorts about the shape of triple-A game development.

The Deus Ex, Epic Mickey and System Shock creator toldGamasutrathat coming up with more realistic character behaviours and allowing players to form their own narrative through emergent storytelling was key.

In the mainstream space I really haven’t seen a whole lot of progress,” he observed. It seems like we’re getting more finely-tuned, prettier versions of games we’ve been playing for years.The biggest one, for me, is more robust characters and character AI. We’ve gotten very good at combat AI – we’ve made great strides there – but I don’t think we’ve done much in the world of non-combat AI and interacting with people – human or otherwise.

Thank god for the indie space; there are people trying interesting things there. I see a variety of places where we could make some strides that would help take games to the next level."

Develop has the full story.