Warren Spector on his game development career

[st3lt3k]

40 years and I'm still here by Warren Spector
Looking back at a long and fortunate career in game development.
from the Game Developer website

It's lengthy, supposedly a 62 minute read, and has lots of insight, including things that have changed and things that haven't.

Here are some specific Wing Commander related parts

I worked on a bunch of other things at Origin, notably Chris Roberts' magnum opus, Wing Commander (1990). That project was a result of a unique vision, a dedicated team and Chris' unwillingness to compromise. I mean, I figured if I had ten arguments with Chris in a day and won three of them, that was a very good day indeed. (I could talk about Wing Commander all day, but that'd fill a book and I'm not writing a book here!)

and

Speaking of Sims-to-come, after Underworld and Underworld 2, it was on to System Shock (1994). I'm sure everyone has their own story of how that game came to be and my memory may be faulty, but here's what I remember... I was at Origin, bored to death of making games about heroes in chainmail or plate, looking like the Mighty Thor, saving princesses and slaying evil mages. I'd worked with Chris Roberts on the original Wing Commander game and decided I could take the ideas behind Underworld and make a science fiction game, set in the Wing Commander universe. I called it Alien Commander. I wrote up a concept doc and got ready to pitch it. What I didn't know was that at Looking Glass Technologies, Doug Church (there he is again...) was working on an SF game of his own. Knowing Paul, I'm sure he was involved, too, but it was Doug I was talking to. We compared notes and all I could think was, "Um... Yeah... That's better than Alien Commander." Paul was able to assemble yet another amazing team to work on the game. He has a knack for building teams...

There's a picture of him that's described as "Testing Wing Commander at home. Work was pretty all-consuming back then!"

It looks like the computer is an Austin Computer Systems 386. I don't recognize that scene from Wing Commander though.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Fascinating stuff, thank you!