Game:

Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (1992)

Duration: 1:06:30

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7

Matthew Weise @sajon77 writes: Part 7 of a continuing series, where I interview members of the now-defunct but highly influential Looking Glass Studios (1990-2000), which wrote the book on 3D first-person narrative game design throughout the 90s, in such games as Ultima Underworld, System Shock, and Thief.
This week is Marc "Mahk" LeBlanc. Marc was a programmer/designer at Looking Glass for most of the company's life, and was one of the major voices in shaping the overarching design aesthetic of the company. This is partially what lead to Marc being a thinker, writer, and educator on game design, developing the MDA framework (Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics) as a simple tool for creating emergence-centric games. I talk with Marc about his time at Looking Glass, how he remembered dealing with simulation, fiction, and emergence across various projects, and how those lessons and strategies have filtered out into the rest of the games industry after the company folded.

If you ever wanted to know how performance-enhancing drugs can help you in System Shock or what the exact difference is between the design philosophies of Deus Ex and Thief, give it a listen.

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The Looking Glass Studios Podcast is a special audio series which features discussions with makers of some of the most influential video games of the last 20 years. http://gambit.mit.edu/updates/audio/looking_glass_studios_podcast/

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