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points by Lerc 1 day ago | 0 comments

My 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.

[–] glouwbug 1 day ago

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."

[–] emmanueloga_ 1 day ago

I was thinking "that's really good writing", so I search lead writer for Deus Ex, points to [1]. Makes me want to read a book from her, but seems like she mostly writes for games, afaict.

EDIT: I had the wrong writer. Sheldon Pacotti was the lead writer of the original Deus Ex (2000). He wrote the AI dialogue, so the Morpheus quote is almost certainly his. Chris Todd and Austin Grossman also wrote for the game. Mary DeMarle wrote the later prequels (Human Revolution, Mankind Divided).

Pacotti has more books on his site [2]. Anyone familiar?

EDIT 2: Someone recommended Demiurge in this very post!

The linked article calls Deus Ex "pulp, not prophecy." I think "pulp" is a method, not a statement about quality (not sure if the author of the article has the same thing in mind).

I also love the pulpy/noir dialogue in Max Payne first games (1, 2). What are other games with good writing like this? (not necesary pulp)

1: https://www.mobygames.com/person/39957/mary-c-demarle/

2: https://sheldonpacotti.com

[–] 44mkultra69 14 hours ago

Can't explain the curiosity but I am wondering why you would consider this "good writing"?

The "but" alone loses the whole damn case the dude is trying to make ...

[–] jl6 1 day ago

This was all a prototype for a much larger LLM.

[–] ky3 1 day ago

Bourbaki was a dream of correct math precisely written up, free of errors, ambiguities, and poor terminology.

[–] analog8374 1 day ago

Replace "judgment" with "validation" and consider social media in that light. Validation of identity. Validation of worldview. And if you signal right, a ladder you can climb.

It's so mammalian.

[–] Yokolos 20 hours ago

Aren't judgment and validation describing the same thing in this context? That's what makes the quote so interesting, imo.

[–] glouwbug 14 hours ago

Machines indeed know judgement but not feeling, which adds another layer to already excellent writing

[–] analog8374 14 hours ago

Yeah. Validation is the better term tho.More neutral and popular.

[–] LarsDu88 1 day ago

I haven't had an LLM spout out such wisdom yet.

Perhaps we need a better prototype for a much larger system...

[–] manapause 1 day ago

Right now we use AI as an accelerant to expand our abilities across domains similar but different enough to be interesting. Gaining Knowledge is a side effect of all of us knocking out every rainy day project we kicked around for years.

It was all fun and games until I created a personal psychotherapist and realized that I don’t have a fear of AI because I know how it works. There is an uncharted landscape of horrifying growth when we leave our safe space and take these tools somewhere else entirely.

[–] hyperman1 1 day ago

Did you ask it for wisdom? I once asked it for 20 quotes that (RIP Terry Pratchett) sound very meaningfull without meaning very much. ChatGPT obliged with 20 pieces of deep-sounding total nonsense.

[–] userulluipeste 1 day ago

The Morpheus' quoted text is also nonsense. It was hardly the judgement that kept individuals together and led to civilization building. This kind of logic may seem plausible only to an individual of nowadays' condition, to whom the covered basic needs faded out of attention. The basic needs (with the need for security at the center of them all) was sufficient reason for group cohesion, time and time again.

[–] miek 1 day ago

In the times about which you speak, Judgement was central to encouraging good behavior and behavior that prioritized the survival of the group over the individual, as well as discouraging the opposite through shame and punishment. Groups and civilizations fall apart without it.

[–] 93po 1 day ago

long after the bucket has forgotten the well, the water still remembers the shape of thirst

[–] RetroTechie 1 day ago

Maybe their creators have more to learn than their creations...

[–] Agentlien 1 day ago

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.

[–] Terr_ 1 day ago

I see it as a facet of a larger thing where humans are instinctively driven to create stories--even oversimplified ones--about the world to capture and explain it.

It also happens in stories about how X was invented/discovered in history (ignoring a thousand required incremental steps and simultaneous discoveries) or how we can't help but intuit patterns in data we abstractly know is random ("hot streaks", "the coin is overdue for landing the other way".)

[–] globalnode 1 day ago

Stories about Newton seem oversimplified to me. Yes he was good, yes he came up with stuff, but he was also a good integrator (heh) of existing knowledge.

[–] pipes 1 day ago

Is that more true these days with large development teams compared to the late 90s early 00s?

[–] smallmancontrov 1 day ago

The journalist understood the assignment!

[–] moomin 1 day ago

Indeed, the narrative here, which is the commonly recited version, does exactly this, and so fails to explain why Deus Ex 2 didn’t hit nearly as hard.

[–] bluedino 1 day ago

Similarly, "Steve Jobs invented the ____"

[–] ahartmetz 1 day ago

For most of these, invention wasn't even the right word. An invention is usually a new technology that solves a pre-existing problem. Most of Steve Jobs' "inventions" were just product development.

I'm sort of OK with calling the iPhone an invention because it was a big improvement in several areas at the same time, but apart from that?

[–] Lerc 9 hours ago

Job's contribution was having the vision to let the engineers make the things they felt they could make if given the support.

That's why iPhone clones turned up almost immediately. Management said to their devs, ok now Apple has done it, you can make that thing you've been wanting to make for ages. The capability was there, what was missing was the belief that something better was possible and needed.

[–] shepherdjerred 1 day ago

I think the iPod is also fair to attribute to him.

My understanding is that he often came up with ideas for products and 'forced' engineers to find a way to make it possible. He wasn't very technical, but in a way that was a strength.

[–] ahartmetz 22 hours ago

IMO, the iPod wasn't that much better than other MP3 players.

[–] bigstrat2003 1 day ago

I've never understood why people give Jobs so much credit. He didn't make anything. He was a salesman. Now, as a salesman, he was phenomenal, one of the best in history. But without the engineers who actually made things, he would've been nothing.

[–] satvikpendem 1 day ago

The engineers wouldn't have made world changing products without his guidance. There are many books about this, even by the employees themselves such as Creative Selection and Insanely Simple, which talk about how Jobs' product vision simplified much of the UI and UX and therefore product for regular users when engineers instead wanted to add more features and complexify the product. Steve was not just a salesman handed a product and asked to sell it.

[–] homarp 1 day ago

Steve Jobs said no. No to 'stupid' ideas and no to 'cannot be done'. That leads to some products being bad (eg mac cube) and other to be interesting to build on (iphone with no app SDK).

[–] deadbabe 1 day ago

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.