Can you guess which 2 mysterious games Deus Ex director Warren Spector secretly worked on, but decided not to be credited for?
Veteran PC game creator Warren Spector is credited with working on 46 games on Mobygames, though that may not be a perfectly comprehensive list for a designer and director who’s been making games since the 1980s. Actually, it’s definitely not a perfectly comprehensive list—while Mobygames has Spector’s credits on the likes of Deus Ex (producer and project director), Ultima 6 (writing), and Epic Mickey (creative director), there’s no way for the Mobygames database to include projects he wasn’t credited on to begin with.
As Spector revealed in PC Gamer’s roundtable interview with other longtime game creators, there were a couple games he decided not to be associated with during his career.
“I worked on two games that I took my name off of because I don’t want to be associated with them,” Spector said. “I have never revealed what they are. But if anybody guesses—both games shipped, they just don’t have my name on them.”
I asked Spector if he’d like to give a hint, but he quipped back an immediate “no,” so your only clues are his lengthy resume and the fact that the games did actually end up getting released. Across his 30+ year career Spector’s naturally worked on some other games that sadly didn’t see the light of day, including one that old school RPG heads would likely have been all over.
“I’ve had to kill a variety of games, one of which was Arthurian legend—we were going to do an Arthurian game using the Ultima tech,” he said. “We had a team, we had missions planned out, we had a map, we had all sorts of stuff. That had to die unfortunately. It all came down to marketing and funding. We all love marketing and funding stories.”
You can check out the rest of the ’90s PC gaming veterans roundtable in the YouTube and Spotify embeds here, or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.