When a Q&A kicks off with the reply "I am currently in a bad mood," you've got my curiosity. That's not how the usual polite back-and-forth tends to go! And when the reason for that mood turns out to be "because yet again I have been given a book on designing computer games," well, I'm hooked.
Those were the first words out of the mouth of Paul Barnett, then the creative director of MMO Warhammer Online, in the June 2009 UK issue of PC Gamer magazine. "Warhammer Online's Creative Director has become legendary for his comments on orcs, the competition, and his own corporate paymasters," we wrote at the time. Spicy!
While you may not know Barnett's name today, his comments in 2009 foreshadowed many of the games industry's challenges in the 2010s and particularly the 2020s—he spoke critically of games following patterns laid down by other games, calling them "design memes" and warning of the risks of trying to replicate what's already successful and popular:
"If you have enough gravitational force, well, enough people are going to believe you and your idea becomes consensus driven, and that consensus is limiting. It's int...
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