DGC Ep 400: Bonus Interview with Tony Rowe

Dev Game Club

Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we revisit our series on Trespasser: The Lost World with an interview with Tony Rowe, who did QA on the title. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Podcast breakdown: 00:49 Interview 1:13:20 Break 1:13:55 Outro

Issues covered: time to take out the prehistoric trash, getting in, doubling up the QA team, the clay model of an island, having to rebuild the island, cutting a more open level, the empty plantation house, Microsoft Hiking Simulator, the bowling shirt, how long games took at the time, rising expectations, developing a software renderer, length of time and risk, entirely procedurally driving the critters, using a hill to escape a dinosaur, everything being a box, exploding physics boxes, choosing procedural animation, saying yes to too many things, a richer first person experience, locking the arm, emergent gameplay, a different context, building a separate demo level, overtime/double time/golden time, lack of friction, the floating plants, taking the blame, programming and managing at the same time, video game history and documenting game development, influences later, making it hard for game stores, dinosaur brains and subtlety, cranking up the anger, the importance of preservation, regressing bugs and test plans.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Star Wars, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Jurassic Park, Dreamworks, Electronic Arts, Spark Unlimited, LucasArts, Force Unleashed (series), First Assault, Drexel University, Greg Knight, Interweave, WayForward Technologies, Microshaft: Winblows 98, X-Fools, Star Warped, MYST, PYST, Parroty Interactive, Monopoly, Spielberg, Katzenberg, David Geffen, DOOM, Neverhood, Dark Forces, Skyrim, Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings, PS3, Microsoft 360, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, PSP, AMD, Quake, 3dfx Voodoo2, Dreamcast, PS2, Seamus Blackly, Looking Glass, Terranova: Strike Force Centauri, Richard Wyckoff, Austin Grossman, Andrew Grant, Tai-Fu, Small Soldiers, Crystal Dynamics, Noah Hughes, Kung Fu Panda, Unreal, Clive Barker's Undying, Fall Guys, 3D Studio MAX, Starfighter, Video Game History Foundation, Phil Salvador, Frank Cifaldi, UNESCO, Dinosaur Train, Terry Izumi, Clint Hocking, Far Cry 2, Half-Life 2, Octodad, Eidos, Spectre, Max Spielberg, Jet Lucas, Assassin's Creed, David Wolinsky, Apple ][, The Sims, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia.

Next time: TBA!

Links: David Wolinsky's Interview with Steven Horowitz

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