I've started to respect Warren Spector again
"We're kind of a niche medium that overcharges for its product. And that generates a lot of revenue and makes it appear that we're mainstream.
I hate micropayments. I don't know what else to say. Yeah, I want to pay $1.99 for a sword....15 cents for a tunic? Give me a break.
Here, you can play this bad game for free, or pay us a little bit at a time to make it worthwhile? I just don't get it. And boy, somebody's going to tell me sometime in the next years that I gotta put an ad in a game and I'm going to just die." - Warren Spector
Before the Deus Ex: Invisible War fiasco I had a lot of respect for Warren Spector. He showed me the virtue of intelligent videogames that make you think and give you real choices. Over time he seemed to turn into a senile old fart that would say incredibly ridiculous things, like Invisible War was better than DX, and that may still be the case. However, he has recently said some honest things that I think everyone needs to hear and really think about.
The quotes above are Warren Spector speaking out about the money making scheme known as digital distribution and all of the evil things that go with it like episodic content, micropayments, high prices and ads. Warren comes across to me as someone who wants digital distribution to be an honest way to deliver games to gamers without charging insane prices for part of a game, charging for a shell of a game then charging more for its content and using online connections to force feed ads to gamers. I really want to believe that he sees how bad digital distribution is at the moment and wants to change it so that it becomes a system that truly benefits gamers. For this Warren has regained some of my respect, and I only hope that he really puts forth the effort to see his vision become reality.
