Looking Glass Studios was one of the most innovative, interesting and all-around amazing developers of the 1990s. The company's staff members, who came and went with some regularity, were generally amateurs in the field. They were musicians, physics geniuses and (almost always) overly-ambitious MIT students. They didn't have great business sense, and their development processes tended to be chaotic. Somehow, it usually worked out in the end, and LGS managed to produce legend after legend: Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Thief, System Shock 2, Thief 2. Projects like Flight Unlimited and Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri aren't remembered as well today, but they were acclaimed at the time.
There will inevitably be controversy about the scope of this topic. Most of this stems from the question of Looking Glass Studios' true origin. The company took its name after a merger between Blue Sky Productions (developer of Ultima Underworld) and the little-known Lerner Research (whose development credits are difficult to ascertain). Depending on one's interpretation, this might mean that the topic should include Car & Driver (video game)--or perhaps even F-22 Interceptor. I have tried to hash this issue out multiple times, and the current scope reflects the consensus reached then. Please read the discussions here, here and here for more information.
In conclusion, I'll just say that this topic has been seven years in the making. I started back in 2007 with System Shock and, via off-and-on editing in the years since, the LGS video games topic has become a reality. Most of the users who helped with this topic are now inactive. User:Zeality, User:TKD and User:Prime Blue assisted me at various points with copyediting; User:Noj r co-wrote Thief with me and single-handedly took System Shock 2 to GA. The only major contributors to the topic still kicking around Wikipedia are User:PresN—a FL grandmaster, who did much of the work on List of Looking Glass Studios video games—and User:Hahc21, who got System Shock 2 featured. I've listed them both as contributors above. Finally, all thanks go to User:David Fuchs for creating the beautiful topic icon. This topic has been the work of my Wikipedia career, and I plan to retire from article writing if and when it passes GTC. Thanks for reading this overlong introduction; and I hope you find the topic to be worthy of a green circle. -- JimmyBlackwing ( talk) 07:13, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
Looking Glass Studios was one of the most innovative, interesting and all-around amazing developers of the 1990s. The company's staff members, who came and went with some regularity, were generally amateurs in the field. They were musicians, physics geniuses and (almost always) overly-ambitious MIT students. They didn't have great business sense, and their development processes tended to be chaotic. Somehow, it usually worked out in the end, and LGS managed to produce legend after legend: Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Thief, System Shock 2, Thief 2. Projects like Flight Unlimited and Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri aren't remembered as well today, but they were acclaimed at the time.
There will inevitably be controversy about the scope of this topic. Most of this stems from the question of Looking Glass Studios' true origin. The company took its name after a merger between Blue Sky Productions (developer of Ultima Underworld) and the little-known Lerner Research (whose development credits are difficult to ascertain). Depending on one's interpretation, this might mean that the topic should include Car & Driver (video game)--or perhaps even F-22 Interceptor. I have tried to hash this issue out multiple times, and the current scope reflects the consensus reached then. Please read the discussions here, here and here for more information.
In conclusion, I'll just say that this topic has been seven years in the making. I started back in 2007 with System Shock and, via off-and-on editing in the years since, the LGS video games topic has become a reality. Most of the users who helped with this topic are now inactive. User:Zeality, User:TKD and User:Prime Blue assisted me at various points with copyediting; User:Noj r co-wrote Thief with me and single-handedly took System Shock 2 to GA. The only major contributors to the topic still kicking around Wikipedia are User:PresN—a FL grandmaster, who did much of the work on List of Looking Glass Studios video games—and User:Hahc21, who got System Shock 2 featured. I've listed them both as contributors above. Finally, all thanks go to User:David Fuchs for creating the beautiful topic icon. This topic has been the work of my Wikipedia career, and I plan to retire from article writing if and when it passes GTC. Thanks for reading this overlong introduction; and I hope you find the topic to be worthy of a green circle. -- JimmyBlackwing ( talk) 07:13, 17 May 2014 (UTC)