Im spoiled, said Spielberg, as recorded by theLA Times.
Theyre the best company in the world.
It does seem like a marriage that was destined to happen.
It was a marriage that would produce a famously strange child inJurassic Park: Trespasser.
It was a big deal.
Grossman arrived in California at Dreamworks Interactive alongside Seamus Blackley.
To the men and women working in movies, however, they were nobody.
They had never heard of us, Grossman says.
They had no idea what it was we did or where we came from.
The amount of money Looking Glass moved around was nothing to the film industry.
In fact, when Grossman and Blackley showed up at Dreamworks, they were given nothing to do.
We were gonna advise on projects or something, Grossman says.
Which just meant we set out desks and no one wanted to talk to us.
Meanwhile, it wasnt exactly clear to Grossman what Dreamworks was doing either.
Nothing you could easily hang a game off of.
Then the news came down: Spielberg would be directing a sequel toJurassic Park.
I thought, Were sitting here and everybodys ignoring us.
Why dont we do a Jurassic Park game?
Suddenly well matter in the company, and somebody will get to actually do something, Grossman says.
I had no particular interest in the franchise, I just thought it was a strategic play.
In terms of approach, Jurassic Park: Trespasser would be System Shock but moreso.
Emboldened by the success of that vision, the Trespasser team amplified it in every direction.
We had money at the time, Grossman says.
We were going to take everything about System Shock and do the next step.
Blackley handled conversation with upper management.
Seamus spoke that language, he had that kind of personality, Grossman says.
I had very little sense of managerial oversight.
We loved the little physically simulated moments, Grossman says.
Where somebody would shove aside a box, or a box would tumble impressively.
Moreoever, no onscreen ammo count or health bar would distract from this first-person immersion.
The result, Dreamworks hoped, would be more than an FPS.
The gun was a useful tool but it wasnt the only tool.
That was the theory.
It was not the outcome.
The physics system didnt work, Grossman says.
It never worked consistently, and it was crazy-making.
Boxes would collide and fuse together, like Maltesers on a hot day.
Unfortunately, a number of Trespassers puzzles insisted on the stacking of crates.
And beyond that golden path of designer-approved challenges, there wasnt a lot to see or do.
Dreamworks had set up an island far larger than they could possibly fill.
But if you have a big open outdoor space, its empty.
The box here and the box ten metres away from it arent gonna interact.
So we set ourselves an impossible problem there.
Played today, in the age of walking simulators, Trespasser often feels more likeDear Estherthan anyFPS.
Grossman, now an accomplished author, wrote those passages himself.
Trespasser, too, told the story of an ambitious man who enabled a disaster.
Recording with Attenborough is one of Grossmans few unequivocally happy memories of the project.
It was insane that we got him to do that script, he says.
Some people just know how to play the celebrity - we show up and hes hosting the party.
Everybody has a great time.
And we do the script, and we all feel awesome about it.
Thats a man who knew how to be famous.
He made everybody feel cool and did an amazing job.
Extra stardust was added by Spielberg himself, who was a regular visitor to the office.
He was there all the time, because his son was really into games.
As for what the director thought of Trespasser?
I dont think he really knew what to make of it, Grossman says.
Hed just come by and look over our shoulder sometimes.
The pleasure is all ours.
The rock is signed, by both Spielbergs.
While its dinosaurs were thrillingly inscrutable, fending them off with an independently controlled arm often proved absurd.
The idea that we had to represent that body visually was a complete misstep, Grossman says.
I thought to myself, Yeah, thats what that was like.
And you know what?
Rebecca Black is still a musician, and shes quite good.
She has an amazing voice.
AndHalf-Life 2figured out stable physics puzzles which, yes, still relied on the stacking of boxes.
I think that that is true, Grossman says.
Just makes it sadder.
We couldve been The Beatles, we felt like we were going to be, but we were not.
Seamus and I were good friends, but we were never friends again after that.
We just couldnt handle it.
We couldnt look at each other.
