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Deus Ex, System Shock designer Doug Church joins Valve
Portal 2 developer Valve has landed some major new design talent in Doug Church, whose credits include Deus Ex, Thief, System Shock, Tomb Raider: Legend. Gamasutra confirmed the hire but Valve didn't comment on Church's new position or what projects he may be involved with. Church most recently worked on the cancelled Stephen Spielberg / EA production Project LMNO.
'The Incompetent Perfectionist': Inside SpyParty dev Chris Hecker's process
"When you're trying to do that perfect jewel, there's a kind of bar you have to hit. People argue that Jon [Blow, developer of Braid] could've shipped with the programmer art -- I mean, it won the IGF design competition. And I don't think so. I think the game design was the most important part, but the whole package came together so well -- the way David [Hellman's] art looked with the thing, and the .... I think that there's a certain quality bar that is the expression of what you're trying to do, and you kind of have to hit that." SpyParty developer Chris Hecker doesn't plan on releasing his ambitious one-on-one spy game until he feels that it's hit the "perfect jewel" point -- an indescribable essence, or rather, a point in development when the concept and execution gel. "I'm not that interested in shipping the earlier version of it," he told me at an NYU coffeeshop late last year. Hecker's bringing the game with him to next week's Game Developer's Conference where he'll also be giving a few short lectures. And yes, he'll be making the trek across the country in a few weeks to PAX East so that everyone can check it out. %Gallery-117474%
1UP examines Spielberg's LMNO, the game that 'tried to do too much'
If EA and the Steven Spielberg couldn't pull of a first-person hybrid built on "escape gameplay" and driven by an emotional co-op dynamic, featuring an AI-controlled partner -- spoiler alert -- from the future, whose character evolution was to be determined by non-verbal interaction with the player, then who could pull it off? Probably no one. "LMNO," as this project was code-named, was officially canned by EA last month -- and it's been dead for at least a year, according to 1UP's new in-depth investigation into the game. The report -- and definitely read the whole thing -- is a compelling tale in and of itself: the inside scoop on a big-budget experiment (a "hyper-replayable" 2- to 3-hour game with no multiplayer) that would later morph into an Uncharted clone (complete with "an alien version of Megan Fox"), dubbed The Escape Artist, before being canceled altogether. But the LMNO story is also a striking reminder of just how inflexible AAA game development has become. EA tried admirably to invest in new IP several years ago, but its actually released games didn't provide the returns the publisher had expected from consumers. Had it come together as original designers Doug Church and Randy Smith once envisioned, LMNO could have been EA's most ambitious original IP to date. Instead, it fell apart as the industry fell back on iteration (you know, "sequelitis") and made jaw-dropping investments in socially-networked casual gaming as the path to future profitability. LMNO once carried the heavy burden of being the video game that would finally "make you cry." Assuming that the industry has yet to recognize this milestone as having been achieved, the mission now seems better suited for an indie developer with nothing to lose; one free from the concerns of the corporate goliath: namely, staying in business. [Pictured: Pre-Megan Fox "Eve" character concept; source: 1UP]
