Marc Laidlaw Quotes

#1. A game like 'Myst' may be a gorgeous slide show that preserves its beauty at the expense of speed. A game like 'Doom' sacrifices almost everything for action. But the eye soon adjusts: the degree of detail more than adequately conveys infinite claustrophobic labyrinths populated by howling monsters.

Marc Laidlaw

#2. 'Doom' aficionados expand their adventures as far as their imaginations and artistic abilities allow. Once players have exhausted the 'authorized' levels of 'Doom,' they can go on to explore thousands of additional unauthorized levels available in kits and on the Internet.

Marc Laidlaw

#3. I don't just write a script, and then someone takes it away and builds a game. I am continually getting input in order to create a big suspension field to hold the gameplay together so that the gamers aren't doing arbitrary tasks, so that they are doing things that seem meaningful.

Marc Laidlaw

#4. The first 'Half-Life' movie treatment pitched to us climaxed with a tearful reunion between enslaved Vortigaunts and their Vortiwives and children. The last one I saw had Black Mesa invaded by a cavalry unit, just so as to feature a scene of bullsquids tearing into armored horses.

Marc Laidlaw

#5. We built 'Jade Empire,' then we built 'Mass Effect,' then we built 'Dragon Age.' With those last two, when you're dealing with two big ideas that are on their third iterations, you develop some strategies for managing your lore, or you drown!

Marc Laidlaw

#6. The ideal engine of a 3-D game is an intricate and elegant construct of code that allows players to speed through solidly built virtual worlds. The engine allows every picture on a monitor to be drawn there quickly enough to convince hand and eye that it is instantaneous.

Marc Laidlaw