Good Interview with Robert Sirotek

[Elite77]

If anybody's interested, jagged alliance talk starts around the second half of the interview.

 

[Elite77]

10:00 the Jagged Alliance talk starts, rather. He talks about industry stuff in later half and why Sir-Tech closed down, due to weird deals made with publishers and retailers who sold marketing space, and lots of other crap nobody wanted.

Edited May 23, 2023 by Elite77

[Solaris_Wave]

That was an excellent video. Thanks for linking that. I watched the whole video because I find talking about old games and their origins can be fascinating, especially compared to today's big corporations and their AAA games.

When he was talking about JA1's release window being at the same time as UFO/X-COM, it makes me think that, had I seen JA1 first, I would most likely had bought it and enjoyed it. I don't agree with his assessment that JA1 was a better quality product than X-COM. For me, X-COM knocked it out of the park in every way possible. X-COM II was better in terms of interface but I didn't enjoy it as much. X-COM: Apocalypse was very good but the real-time mode wasn't that great and the graphical theme was awful. Therefore, X-COM's influence was starting to wane. JA2 filled that gap for me and then some. It took turn-based squad games to new heights. Therefore, when Robert Sirotek was talking about a Jagged Alliance game being the better quality product, I would definitely apply that to JA2 more than JA1.

 

It was also fascinating to hear him talk about the way things were going in terms of corporations, marketing and the money spent. Film tie-in games were very common in the 80s (most pretty average), less so in the late 90s but by that point, you were seeing companies absorbing others, becoming ever larger and going bigger on advertising (even more than the publishers that usually created the film tie-ins a decade before). Some games didn't even get a look in, in that fashion. Even if they were good, they could easily get overlooked, especially if you couldn't find them on the shelf of your local games store. Game boxes were huge too. The bigger the box, the more appealing it looked and the more shelf space it took.

What he says also reveals a lot about games being shipped before they were actually ready. It was surprising to hear him talk about games having too much content back then, especially as I think too many games today have too much.

Edited May 23, 2023 by Solaris_Wave

[Elite77]

There's a bunch of other interviews I can link, and articles about Jagged Alliance and original Sir-Tech team that created it.

Edited May 24, 2023 by Elite77

[Elite77]

Maybe developers would be so kind to have a stream with, or post a video interview with Ian Currie.

I know it's not exactly their business to make videos, but all you'd need is just to record a video of them having a podcast style of conversation about a few topics, whether in the past, or current state of the industry, or what they did with JA3. And I think it would help PR to do so, put out a cool video.

There's a big drought for this kind of content. It's funny because there's plenty of streams, but no real serious discussions about industry or JA franchise or anything like that. Only a few people do long form content on the industry like Raycevik and GManLives. Would be good PR I think for devs to do it with Ian (if he wants to of course).

[Solaris_Wave]

I'd like to see that. I even enjoy reading or seeing interviews that cover older games. I don't know if it is just something that older gamers think as a form of reminiscing, or whether older games were often made with more passion and fun. So much now seems more…corporate.

[Hendrix]

Slightly of topic, but Timothy Cain has recently started uploading fairly short videos of his time in the game development business. I have found them really interesting to listen to.

[MateKiddleton]

5 hours ago, Solaris_Wave said:

I'd like to see that. I even enjoy reading or seeing interviews that cover older games. I don't know if it is just something that older gamers think as a form of reminiscing, or whether older games were often made with more passion and fun. So much now seems more…corporate.

The cost (and time) of development was much lower back in the 90's.

[Solaris_Wave]

That is very true. As computers get more powerful, it opens up more flexibility but often too much for 1-2 people to handle everything. In terms of 40 years of home computers and consoles, we have come a long way.