Spector: the games industry is, and always has been, "chaos"

You shouldn't go into a creative industry like making games if you're chasing stability, according to Deus Ex and Epic Mickey creator Warren Spector.

Speaking to Kotaku about parent company Disney Interactive's shift away from traditional console development, Spector said these kinds of transitions and accompanying cuts have always been a part pf the games industry.

"It's as stressful as the game business has always been," he said. "The thing that you have to remember - I've heard this kind of thing for years.

"When we started up Junction Point, we started out like two of us, and then there were six of us, and then there were 11 of us.
And you try to build a studio from nothing and I would sit across the table from someone and I'd be interviewing them, and they'd say, ‘You know, this all sounds really good, but I need more stability.'

"And then I would say, 'Then get out of the game business.' Because this is not a business that has never been anything but chaos. And it's just a different kind of chaos now."

Spector said that making the kinds of games Junction Point makes - ambitious triple-A budget titles - means you have to accept that you're not going to have that many chances to be successful at it.

"It's not like you're working on an assembly line and you're going to make 50,000 car doors. My dad was a dentist. He filled 20 teeth a day. His life was defined by different things," he said.

"If you're a novelist, or a filmmaker, or a game developer now, your life is going to be defined by a very small number of things. And if you're not doing things that are meaningful to you, all you're doing is making a living. I have no interest in that."

Junction Point's latest, Epic Mickey 2, is out now and has received very mixed reviews.