What person or studio would you have liked to apprentice under?

jbskaggs

I watch a lot of game dev biographies and company histories. There are some people I would have really wish I could have apprenticed under. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberta_Williams is one as they made so many game leaps and changed the market so much at the time.

Maybe I would have enjoyed working with Troika or TellTales games.

Of course Id love to be able to have hung out with the "Woz" I have written several Breakout games and he invented that.

Who would you have liked to have studied under?

cybereality

Probably Masamune Shirow, who created Ghost in the Shell. That is my favorite anime, and it's amazing to me how innovative that was in the 90's and also the manga source material. His ideas were revolutionary to cyberpunk, and also some pretty crazy stories (that didn't all make it into the films). Like one chapter in the manga where some company copies the mind of a real girl and then inserts it into companion bots. But then the girl wants to be free, so she makes the bots start killing the clients, and the whole detective story trying to figure out what's going on. Who even thinks of that?

jbskaggs

@cybereality said: Probably Masamune Shirow, who created Ghost in the Shell. That is my favorite anime, and it's amazing to me how innovative that was in the 90's and also the manga source material. His ideas were revolutionary to cyberpunk, and also some pretty crazy stories (that didn't all make it into the films). Like one chapter in the manga where some company copies the mind of a real girl and then inserts it into companion bots. But then the girl wants to be free, so she makes the bots start killing the clients, and the whole detective story trying to figure out what's going on. Who even thinks of that?

I think Phiilip K Dick had very similar stories, and then in the 1960's there the concept of "demons" by other authors where wealthy people could assume the bodies of commoners and commit horrible crimes. But the commoners would be held accountable a the courts did not recognize demons. Of coure Black Mirror had an episode where a women enslaved a copy of her own mind as a virtual slave.

What do you think Mr. Shirow would be able to teach you then? World building?

cybereality

I think just in terms of the story telling. I have some ideas, sure, but I like things that blow your mind. The Ghost in the Shell anime movie came out in 1995, it was crazy, and I saw it in IMAX a few months ago, it is still good. Kind of slow now, but still a great movie. I think people want compelling stories. That is why fiction books are so popular and movies. I think games can be good without a story, but at the state of the art (I mean like AAA productions) you want the full package. And sadly most AAA games are not deep at all. Some games that actually did research and pulled it off are like Life is Strange, Senua's Sacrifice, State of Mind, and maybe some others. But the popular games like Far Cry or Call of Duty totally miss the mark.

jbskaggs

Far cry was developed as a tester engine I think.

I agree- story is the number one reason I play. Vampire the Masquerade games did a great job at story too

Megalomaniak

@cybereality said: Probably Masamune Shirow, who created Ghost in the Shell. That is my favorite anime, and it's amazing to me how innovative that was in the 90's

Probably worth including some of his other cyberpunk stuff like Appleseed too, that ones from 80's. And original GitS was first drafted 89 too. :)