April 25, 2012

A to Zed - C is for Church, Doug

'C' is for Church, or Doug Church, a game designer currently enlisted within the ranks of game company, Valve. After leaving post-secondary, Church went on to begin his career working for Looking Glass Studios. The company, along with Church have received renown as creators of various innovations in video games, all the while still retaining interesting and engaging stories. Funnily enough, their games almost always did quite poorly in sales compared to their contemporaries, and were often regarded as "ahead of their time."

Various titles he is known to have worked on while at LGS include:  Ultima Underworld 1 & 2, System Shock, and Thief. Though I will strain right now that my main interest in this man and his work is for System Shock, and its sequel, System Shock II. He has proven to be an innovative member of the gaming industry time in and out, creating intricate and lively worlds that keep me coming back, even now, when DOS has all but died off.

For what time he has been involved with Valve, we can see his tendrils at work in Portal 2. His work has also influenced spiritual successors Deus Ex and BioShock. And though the company has not said what position he keeps, we can expect from what has been leaked on the internet, that he is involved in another game quite possibly similar to the previous System Shock games. The future can only tell what more this man has in store for us.

2 comments:

  1. You are citing several of my favourite games in this post: Thief (in deadly shadows - f***ing brilliant and atmospheric), Portal 2 - funny and frustratingly hard at times, Deus Ex - still yet to finish it, and Bioshock - again, fantastic atmosphere, though for some reason I feel that Bioshock 2 doesn't match up?

    Good posting, bud :)

    PS: odd you mentioned knees on my training post - my right one (one I had an op on) is giving me all kinds of grief at the mo. Did you jinx me? ;)

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    Replies
    1. Ha, who knows?

      Thief is brilliant. Portal 2's got some excellent puzzles to best, and Deus Ex is lovely. One thing that always impressed me was that one could play through the whole game and beat it without killing anyone.

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