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        <h1><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b><i><a href="../../index.html">loonygames</a><br>
          <font size="1">a <a href="http://www.bluesnews.com">blue's news</a> 
          publication</font></i></b></font></h1>
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<p>&nbsp;</p>Vol. 
                2, Issue 1<br>
                November 10, 1999
                </b>
             <br>
              
                <b><i>Beaker's 
                  Bent:</i></b></p>
                <b><i> 

                  Beaker's Back</i></b></p>
                by 
                  Rich &quot;Beaker&quot; 
                  Wyckoff</p>
              
              

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               It&#146;s 
                been quite a few months, but loonygames is back, and Beaker&#146;s 
                Bent is back with it. To anyone who might be a regular reader, 
                welcome back. And to those of you who are reading this column 
                for the first time, let me use this first of a new series of Bents 
                to explain a few things about the column. I&#146;m a professional 
                game designer and started my career at Looking Glass Technologies 
                just after their golden years when they released <b>Ultima Underworld</b> 
                I and II and <b>System Shock</b>. Looking Glass was a company 
                that never had to make wild proclamations about the importance 
                of design as has become the vogue among recent startups because 
                every person in the company at that time was so strongly steeped 
                in game design that it just went without saying that design would 
                be the first priority. </p>
              </p>
              I was 
                lucky enough to spend my first couple of years in the industry 
                in this environment. Even though during that time the company 
                came close to collapse and many recently hired people such as 
                myself found themselves without jobs and without any projects 
                as significant as LG&#146;s first set of successes on their resume, 
                everyone who spent time in that environment came out of it with 
                strong ideas about and experience with game design and development 
                that I have come to realize are far from common in the industry.</p>
              </p>
              I next 
                spent nearly two grueling years on the famous failure known as 
                <b>Trespasser</b> and since this spring have been at Knowledge 
                Adventure, working on an <b>Unreal</b> engine project which is 
                still unannounced and which I probably won&#146;t be able to discuss 
                for some months yet. In these post-LG years, though, I have gathered 
                ample evidence that it is design, pure and simple, that determines 
                the success of a project. Well-designed games can still fail, 
                of course, and though traditionally developers mistrust or even 
                loathe marketers, I am well aware that marketing plays a key role 
                in the eventual monetary success of a game. However, even great 
                marketing cannot sell a horribly unfun game or one which has such 
                a poor design that it is impossible to even ship it.</p>
              </p>
              The first 
                run of Beaker&#146;s Bent contained a mixture of discussions of 
                design philosophy and critiques of industry trends. This will 
                remain the trend for the new run of the column. I have been doing 
                a fair amount of reading about business and design since loonygames 
                went on hiatus, so hopefully I&#146;ll be able to bring in some 
                published justification for many of the ideas I have been fixated 
                on since entering the industry. I believe that the new Bent will 
                consist of much shorter entries than the old columns, however. 
                I think this will make it easier for me to get them in on time 
                as well as less overwhelming for the average reader to wade through!</p>
              </p>
              In this 
                new spirit of brevity, I&#146;m going to end this re-introductory 
                column here. For the many who wrote responses to my Baldur&#146;s 
                Gate column, which I hadn&#146;t really intended to be on 
                display for so many months while the site was on hiatus, I apologize 
                for not being able to respond to all of your letters. Now I finally 
                know what it is like to have more correspondence than you have 
                time to deal with. I also need to state that though I seem to 
                be the only member of the <b>Trespasser</b> team who is publicly 
                accessible, I really don&#146;t have anything more to say about 

                that game. There are wild rumors floating around on the net which 
                people keep asking me about, but I have not worked at Dreamworks 
                for an entire year and I have no inside information about or interest 
                in anything <b>Trespasser</b> related. The team has moved on as 
                has the industry and most of the gameplaying public, so it is 
                time to bury those dinosaurs once and for all.</p>
              
              <i>- 
                Richard &#147;Beaker&#148; Wyckoff is a game designer, not a level 
                designer, damnit!<br><p>&nbsp;</p> 
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<p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2">Credits: Print CGI is 
  &copy; 2000 <a href="http://www.square8.com">Square Eight</a>. Used with permission. 
  Article is &copy; 2000 its original author. All other content is &copy; 2000 
  loonyboi productions. Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited. You got that??</font></i></p>
 