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Valve hires Thief, System Shock designer

By on March 17, 2011

According to Gamasutra, Valve hired PC game designer Doug Church, whose credits include titles in the Ultima, Thief and System Shock series. Church has worked in the industry since the early ’90s, when he contributed to projects from Origin Systems and Looking Glass. He also held a position with Eidos until May 2005, when he left to become an executive producer at EA Los Angeles, where he was associated with a long in-development game codenamed Project LMNO that was canceled.

“Sometimes I think that genre is our shorthand to talk about play, and that’s about as specific as we’d get, because when I show you imagery of a lot of games and the communication message,” he said.

“You know ‘you’re a powerful wizard’, or ‘you’re going to defeat terrorists’ or ‘you’re going to pilot planes’, it doesn’t really tell you anything about what you’re going to actually do? Like: What are the verbs you have? What are the buttons you’re going to use? What sort of mental action do you get? Why are you even there? Why isn’t it just a movie?” he continued.

Valve’s Doug Lombardi told Gamasutra that Church has been with the company for “a couple [of] weeks,” though he was unsure what, if any, specific project the designer has been assigned to.

About David Scarpitta

I am a critical guy, and love to review and give my professional opinion on just about anything. Though have a love for tech/gaming and music alongside the cinema. You can catch me consulting and developing the net any day of the week.