Old Games Never Die

A long time ago, I was a designer and writer for a small design house called Westwood Associates. It was run by two great designers - Brett Sperry and Louis Castle. Louis was just and incredible programer and designer. He was doing stuff on the Apple IIe that would not be replicated until Doom came out. And Brett had this incredible sense of layout, interface design and organic motion.

On of the first games I worked on was Eye of the Beholder. I was a writer for the clue book on the EOB One and a writer and designer on EOB II.

The second game I worked on was DragonStrike for the NES. This was a top-down shooter and didn't any (other than the name) to do with the Apple IIe flight sim version.

I was a designer for a small NEC Turbographx role playing game called Order of the Griffon.

One of the last games I worked was Dune II for the Amiga and PC. This was the first real RTS to be developed. Brett Sperry came up with the idea after playing a German game called Herzog.


    

Westwood Associates .. Studios .. whatever

Kotaku recently did a post on Westwood Studios, called Let's Pour One Out for Westwood Studios. The gist of the story is comparing the take-over of Westwood to EA's new acquisition of PopCap. You can read the article here - Westwood Studios

Kotaku got a number of things right. When you're purchased by EA, it's a slow and painful assimilation. I saw first-hand what it did to many of my friends and if I have any advice to the employees of PopCap; it's don't purchase anything you can't fit into a suitcase.

Kotaku also go a few things wrong. But first let me -es'plain ...

A long time ago, in the late 80's I worked for Westwood Associates. I guess you could call me an employee - although I only made around 17k a year, had no health insurance and at that time Brett Sperry, the owner tried to convince everyone to be a contractor. - this is NOT a hit piece on Westwood, they were small, had no money and were trying to compete with well established companies. Not to mention we were all in our twenties and had no idea what the hell we were doing. So no regrets ..

That's me in the back by an eye.

I was a designer and a writer. I was a designer on Dune II. I was a writer on Eye of the Beholder II and there were other products.

I am not going to go into the whole history of Westwood. I will save that for another post. I'm just going to address some of the conclusion in the Kotaku post.

1. Brett Sperry was not the originator of the RTS. It was a game called Herzog Zwei created by Technosoft. A great little two-player game for the SEGA. Everyone loved playing it at the office. In another post, I will explain how Dune II became an RTS - mostly due to a wretched French company called - Cryo Interactive.

Brett was genius at taking embryos of ideas and designs and making them into something great. He did the same thing with Eye of the Beholder, Circuit's Edge and even Kyrandia. Why some company like Apple never picked Brett up as a VP of design I'll never understand.

2. Eye of the Beholder was NOT just another RP. It was the first (okay second) interactive RP. Games like Black Ops and Halo can thank EoB for establishing the engine. Also, games like World of Warcraft have taken a step backwards - they could learn a thing or two from EoB. *Trivia* - If you really want to the see the first - very first off-rail FPS game - check out DragonStrike. Louis Castle has an incredible mind.

So here is a big, huge, money-making tip for any wanna-be designer from your friend, The Mighty Kmuzu. Go git yerself a copy of EoB, EoB II and Lands of Lore. Play the crap out them and start  thinking of elements in those games that have vanished from modern day RP games. You will make a bucket load of money. good luck .

3. EA was not the destroyer of Westwood. Brett lit the fuse long before EA came around. Once again this is not a hit piece. I do not blame Brett or Louis, nor do I think they acted unreasonably. It was those damn Brits at Virgin Interactive. Brett fell in love (in a platonic way) with the guys at Virgin - hell, we all fell in love with the guys at Virgin. They were charming, funny and from Irvine - which at the time seemed a whole lot more groovy place than Las Vegas.

I left Westwood before Virgin actually took over. I did wait until after Virgin drove us all down in a bus to a some huge park for a party. The volleyball game between Westwood and Virgin is a priceless memory.. I will tell that amazing, funny story later.

After Virgin, there was Viacom and after that, EA grabbed what was left .. and by that time the poker game was pretty much over.

4. Westwood is not gone. It still remains today in Petroglyph Games. It's not run by Brett or Louis anymore, It's run by Mike Legg and Joe Bostic. And quite frankly, I think they're doing a better job - to be fair, its almost 30 years later and both Mike and Joe have a lot more maturity and experience under their belt.

I'm fairly sure Petroglyph is going to stay independent for a while. You can thank EA for making Mike and Joe gun shy about the beauty and fun of an acquisition.

I smell what this article is cooking and I agree, PopCap has no idea what's in store for them. EA has not been a design or game company for a long, long time. They're some kind of distribution company, who don't care if the games are good or bad or whatever - as long as it gets to the channel on time.

Kotaku Article --> Westood Studios

If you have any questions or comments - please feel free to drop me an email or put a comment below. And don't forget to give me a "thumbs-up" in Stumble Upon or Google's + thing.

Old Gamers Never Die

I'm an old gamer. So old in fact, I was there at the very start of video and computer games. I played Pong and Space Wars in the pinball arcades. I owned an Apple IIe, an Atari 2600, and even a cherry red Famicom.

It's kind of sad that the history of video game development in Las Vegas has mostly been forgotten. Hardly anyone now-a-days realizes that at least two major video game genres originated in Las Vegas. The inklings of modern day FPS (First Person Shooters) and RTS (Real-Time Strategies) were developed in Las Vegas and I make the argument that flight simulators got their start here with an old PC game called DragonStrike.

Back in the early 80's there were three high schools in Las Vegas that had advanced computer programming and math labs: Bonanza, Clark and Western. It started around 1980 before there were any PC's in schools. I call it the "Univac Wars". Students from each high school spent hours trying to hack into the school district's Univac system and take down the other school's access. A few student were also creating ascii-text games on the system.

There was no real sense of security back then. You have to remember enthusiasm for computers in the 80's was about the same as it is now for say, ham radios. No one cared .. and unlike today, the math teachers who ran the labs had almost free rein to do whatever they wanted. It was beautiful.

Mr. V who ran Bonanza's computer lab and taught calculus was a disgruntled Vietnam vet. He basically let us do whatever we wanted, unless it was illegal with the computers. Mr. V even had his own school club. The club met once a year for the school picture and everyone was vice president unless they didn't want to be. It was called the Bonanza Sophistic and Rhetoric Society - The BSeRS. The BSeRS even had a Homecoming float. It was an green painted plank with brown balloons stacked in a pile with a student wearing bull horns sitting on top of the balloons.

If you're wondering where all the creativity and engineering talent has gone, then look no further than the security and procedural mandates of schools. When a kid can get expelled for installing a second OS - Linux or detention for downloading Firefox onto a school computer, you know the days of innovation are over.

In 1982, Bonanza got it's first Apple II and it had one program on it called Lemonade Stand. It wasn't long before all of the dudes had the latest in Apple games like: Wolfenstien, Apple Maniacs and Choplifter. There was also a huge desire to program your own game and out do each other in game play and sophistication.

These programmers and math geeks from these three high schools eventually combined together to form Westwood Associates.

More on Westwood in the next post.

Interesting look at the history of games
Play some of those classic games - The Vault