A titan of the industry is bowing out. Warren Spector, a central creative in several highly influential RPGs and immersive sims, including System Shock, Ultima Underworld, and Deus Ex, has announced he's retiring from game development.
He made the announcement on LinkedIn, pinning the choice down to one simple fact: his age. "I'm a month away from my 44th year as a developer," he writes.
"I've had the chance to work on tabletop roleplaying games and board games. I've worked on more digital games than I can remember -- 17 full games, I think, and nine or so add-on packs," he adds. "Gratifyingly, some of those games are still being played 15... 20... 30 years later. And most of them have been in a genre that has had influence beyond what I or anyone else expected."
His numbers sound about right, but with a career as long and fruitful as his, it's actually difficult to put hard numbers on the number of separate projects he's touched. I can tell you that he has a solid 40 releases to his name for producer and production credits on MobyGames.
Yes, a bunch of these are from certain games getting ported or released on multiple systems. But still, that's a hearty amount of things to have your name on, and when you consider how many were genre-defining, it's clear he's led a spectacular career.
Spector mentions he has "mixed feelings" about his decision, though he "wouldn't change a thing even if I could," but having "run teams as small as a dozen and as big as 800," and gone from the indie space right up to corporate publishing and back again, he's done multiple laps of the medium by this point. There are other pursuits he'd like to indulge in, several of which don't involve screens, coding or meetings.
"It's time to write some books, do a lot of reading, do some lecturing, maybe do some consulting," he says. "Also there's a keyboard here just waiting for me to get my piano chops back."
Is this it for seeing his name in the credits for new games? "Never say never," he adds. "But I think it's time to ride off into the sunset."
You've earned it, Warren. Enjoy your piano lessons.
