Thank you GDC Vault for letting people watch these classic post mortem for free.
No thanks for putting them online, having them done YEARS TOO LATE. I really wish I had been watching these post mortem six or seven years ago, that would have been so valuable within the game development discussion.
X-COM! It’s the 5th iteration of a game made by two brothers. I never got to like it because of the art style and because I was young and into real time action games but I loved the concept and the game’s smartness.
They based X-COM as much as they could on random procedural generators which is to me, what computer games should all have: it’s the thing we can’t get anywhere else. It’s what creates stories inside stories, it’s what multiplayer does when it works. I love the fact that old single player games were giving you simulations instead of roller-coasters. So, so, so much deeper. And made on machines that are ten times less powerful than flip phones today.
Fallout. A game that I quickly played, I was too busy with real time 3D (a year later Half Life was coming out) but I just loved the post apocalyptic settings. In the post mortem we learn that at first they wanted to go with fantasy but ultimately decided that it wouldn’t be smart as it would compete against other Interplay RPGs. So simple and ego-less I’ve never seen that in game development, really. The art of compromise. Also, look at that start. Almost cancelled twice too. Crazy crunch times. It didn’t look good for a game that is now considered a huge classic.
Myst is another post mortem that tells you the same thing: they didn’t know if they would ever finish that project, publishers were both and alternatively super supportive and terribly pressuring, crunch time, a strong link in the team (again, brothers) kept development going, budget exploded, luck, timing.
One thing I note too, they were all making their own tools and engines and I think we’re losing something here with middleware. Hard.
Why isn’t there some discussion on that? It’s connected to how we feel all games feel the same these days. I’d like veterans talk and speak their minds about that and solutions we could come up with.