Few game developers have been as successful and well known as Warren Spector. But in a recent LinkedIn post, Spector didn’t talk about his successes. Instead, he shared something more human and acknowledged for the first time to his peers that he is bipolar.
“What I’m about to tell you isn’t about games or game development. Not directly, anyway. Let me cut to the chase: I’m bipolar – Bipolar Disorder 2, not the more seriously life-affecting Bipolar 1. You might be more familiar with the term ‘manic-depression,’ a term which, for reasons I don’t understand, isn’t used much, if at all, anymore. To me it seems more descriptive than ‘bipolar,’ but what do I know? Bipolar it is…”
Spector said he resisted the diagnosis for years, and sometimes he still does. But he noted that three therapists, two psychiatrists and his wife all independently came to the same conclusion. So he acknowledged that the private diagnosis was real. On top of that, he told the whole world in a LinkedIn post.
He said, “So I’ve got it and I want to talk about it. Bipolar 2 may generally be less of an impediment to day-to-day living than Bipolar 1 but being bipolar at all has been both a curse and a blessing for me.”
Spector said the condition has caused him some problems over the years, but surprisingly, he added, “I truly think it’s also partly responsible for whatever success I’ve achieved. And I certainly wouldn’t trade my ‘condition’ for a more ‘normal life. This is who I am and, mostly, most of the time, I’m pretty happy with that.”
This revelation may be helpful to other people, and that’s one reason he has decided to speak about it at our GamesBeat Summit 2025 event in Los …