One of the gaming industry’s most notable icons, Warren Spector, has decided to retire and will no longer be actively involved in game development.
Spector is credited as one of the founders of the immersive sim genre, with Deus Ex and Thief acting as his most recognisable projects while at Ion Storm. Spector went on to develop Epic Mickey and its sequel, eventually landing at Otherside Entertainment to develop a spiritual successor to Ultima Underworld, which he helped produce while at Looking Glass in the early 1990s.
Announcing the news on LinkedIn, Spector, who is currently 70 years old, reflected on a career that spanned nearly 45 years, 17 game releases, board game and tabletop contributions, and more. Spector admits that he has mixed feelings over retirement, but says he no longer finds the same joy in the gaming industry that he once did and thinks a new generation of developers deserves its time to shine.
“To all of you reading this I want you to remember that games are not a solved problem yet–there is, I hope, plenty of experimentation and innovation to come,” Spector concluded in his post. “And to all you young developers out there, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, your job is to make people forget people like me ever existed.”
Spector admits that there still three games he would love to make (and stops shy of naming them), but plans to write several books and provide valuable consulting work to those who need it. Spector began working on System Shock 3 over a decade ago before the project was seemingly abandoned several years later.
Spector’s final game, Thick as Thieves, launched earlier this year. It was announced as a PvPvE immersive sim, but was restructured as a single-player and co-op adventure instead. Otherside Entertainment announced that the game would no longer receive content updates after it failed to live up to expectations in the weeks following its launch.