On Doug Church

Who is Doug Church? Kieron Gillen explains, "In short, a fair chunk of the things which Spector gets credit for, originate with Church (And, to be fair to Warren, he goes entirely out of the way to tell people this)", and then reprints this fab interview with him:

If you look to Underworld to Shock to Thief, I think you can see a progression of taking out everything that kept you from diving into the world. That’s the reason why the CD version of Shock was so much better than the floppy disk version. We desperately tried to stop them releasing the floppy disk version, as - well – the whole reason we overlaid the automap, the whole full screen, the augmentations was because we wanted you to play it full screen, not to stop and read but be in the world all the time. With Thief it went even further. We really tried to narrow down the player’s ability, but within that narrow scope to give them complete control. I can see the progression that way. In a lot of ways, with Deus Ex and the stuff Warren’s doing, is the reverse of that. Okay – you guys took all that lot out. We’re going to go back to the Kitchen Sink approach and go for broad but shallow game as opposed to a deep and narrow game. Obviously, some day we hope to both make a both Broad but deep game.

-- Doug Church [Kieron Gillen's Workblog]