Immersive Simulations
Jul 10th, 2010 by Ninja Dodo
If you’re new to games, or consoles were more your thing in the 90s you may not have heard of Looking Glass. They were a game studio that pioneered a genre that came to be known as the “Immersive Sim”, focusing on deep player interaction with a detailed and consistent game world using a unique blend of narrative, artificial intelligence and physics simulation. Famous for titles like Thief and Ultima Underworld, its influence can still be felt across the games industry.
Right now there’s an excellent series of interviews on Rock Paper Shotgun about the rise and fall of this particular school of design and its continuing legacy. Smart people talking game design philosophy. Great great stuff.
I definitely like to see studios like Looking Glass make a comeback. Or even there game design philosophy. One of my ideas for a project is to deconstruct some of their games (with a pen and paper not a disassembler) and try and see what made them so cool.
I’d like to read that.
Actually if you want some info straight from the horse’s mouth, Warren Spector did a bunch of interviews with his fellow Looking Glass alumni a while ago. I have them mirrored here: http://www.ninjadodo.net/temp/spector/