Warren Spector Interview, Part One
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Q: How 'hands-on' do you tend to get these days? Are you operating on more of a 'design guru' level and making sure that your concepts become integrated effectively, or does it go deeper than that?
A: My involvement varies based on a lot of factors. The most notable one is the phase of the project. I really enjoy the early conceptual phases of a project and the tuning and shut down phases at the end. The middle period - the production and execution phases - I'm much more of a "client", I guess you'd say, making sure the project's core goals are being met and not doing a lot of hands-on stuff. But I'm always involved in establishing a project's goals and in making the decisions at the end that can make or break a game's quality, fun factor and so on.
My involvement is also driven by the needs of the team I'm working with. If a team needs me to write dialogue, I can do it. If I need to "direct" (the way a movie director does), I can do it. I'm just at a point in my life and career (a word I never thought I'd apply to myself!) where I try to focus on the stuff I love and leave the other stuff to folks who love that other stuff. That seems most likely to result in great games.
