alt Hacker NewsMy favourite ever games journalism quote:
"There's a tendency among the press to attribute the creation of a game to a single person," says Warren Spector, creator of Thief and Deus Ex.
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As a professional game developer who has worked on multiple games affected by this, it's definitely something which bothers me a lot.
I've seen a lot of discussions among fans about why one specific publicly visible person made this or that decision when he was never part of any discussion related to it.
The journalist understood the assignment!
This goes beyond just the press really.
The myth of the solo creator who heroically makes something amazing has a romantic appeal to a lot of people, especially those who dream of doing such a thing themselves someday. In truth, all great things in history have many collaborators and what we think of as the “creator” is often just a person who played the role of bringing together the collaborators, with perhaps a few other direct contributions.
But in the AI era, this solo-creator myth can now become reality, or if you are more cynical, just an even deeper delusion that exploits the non-consensual labor of millions for one’s personal benefit.
Similarly, "Steve Jobs invented the ____"
Mine's from this game itself, when speaking with Morpheus:
"The individual desires judgment. Without that desire, the cohesion of groups is impossible, and so is civilization. The human being created civilization not because of a willingness but because of a need to be assimilated into higher orders of structure and meaning. God was a dream of good government. You will soon have your God, and you will make it with your own hands."