System Shock revival lures Warren Spector away from academia and back to games

Warren Spector, the veteran game developer who has been teaching video game creation for the last three years, is joining OtherSide Entertainment so that he can create System Shock 3, a new version of the beloved System Shock game series.

The game will take advantage of a strong wave of nostalgia for games like System Shock, a first-person action role-playing game which came out in the 1990s but hasn’t had a sequel since 1999. System Shock was praised as novel for its “emergent” gameplay, where you could tackle challenges in different ways. Nostalgia games are an increasingly big part of the video game market, as fans gravitate to properties that they are familiar with — and then play those games with their kids. It’s a lot like the new Star Wars movie, viewed by both adults and kids alike.