Rare Q&A With Rockstar Games Head Sam Houser 89
Paul Williams writes "Develop Magazine has posted a fascinating multi-part interview with Sam Houser, president and founder of Grand Theft Auto developer Rockstar Games. Houser is rarely quoted outside of press releases, and almost never does interviews. So, reading his frank views on things like Rockstar's critics, the creative secrets that make games like GTA IV a success, and how the developer rejects things like focus testing — a common practice at the likes of EA but an 'anathema to creativity' according to Houser — is very interesting. Houser has even written a mini biography of his career with some fun references to the Hot Coffee scandal: 'July 2005: Residue code found in San Andreas. Hackers modify it and it turns into scandal known as "Hot Coffee." Get dragged into legal nightmare, ending in trip to Washington in February 2006 to sit in front of federal trade commission staff — for nine hours.'"
Re:They did a LOT of testing on Portal (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.portalmaps.net/
Re:Drop the script (Score:1, Informative)
Play some fallout 1&2 (Hopefully 3 will be as good). You'll get about as close to what you want as a modern computer game can get.
Re:Drop the script (Score:5, Informative)
Please drop the whole "scripted storyline" concept and make a super fancy algorithm so that the story derives from whatever the player does and whatever happens as a consequence
Here you go [wikipedia.org]. Some assembly required [fromearth.net]. Dwarf Fortress is in many respects built to allow stories to emerge from gameplay [gamasutra.com]; indeed, it's a significant [bay12games.com] part of what people find attractive about it.
It's kind of a mixture of Dungeon Keeper 2, Sim City, Nethack, The Sims, The Incredible Machine, and experimental brain surgery.
Re:They did a LOT of testing on Portal (Score:4, Informative)
As others have pointed out, the Hammer editor (it comes with your Steam install) is used for making portal maps. Same tools the devs used, actually.
It's also used for making Team Fortress 2 maps, Half Life maps (and mods), Day of Defeat maps... You can pretty much make maps/mods/characters/weapons/etc for any game based on the source engine. For the most part, it's pretty intuitive, too.