Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Some weeks back, I visited Splash Damage to take a peek at how their upcoming shooter Brink is coming along. Thanks to the invaluable assistance of Master Transcriber Jim Rossignol, I finally have a textual record of my interview with SD’s Senior Game Designer Ed Stern. Read on for an avalache of Brink-o-facts…
Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, I saw Brink, a game whose substance no-one had hitherto seemed terribly clear about. Pray allow me to try to correct this…

You can tell this is a Splash Damage game because it’s about two teams of players fighting an eternal, bloody war against each other in objective-based maps. It’s not nominally an Enemy Territory game (as have been SD’s two titles to date, Wolfenstein: ET and Quake Wars), but for all the Kent-based developers’ claims that Brink is something of a new beginning, it’s very much a natural extension of what they’ve done previously.

You can’t tell this is a Splash Damage game because, well, everything.
Read the rest of this entry »

After a mysterious announcement of Brink last week, we tracked down Splash Damage at E3 to see the game running.

With over a billion matches played over six years in Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, London-based developers Splash Damage feel pretty cocksure of their multiplayer prowess. What makes Brink so interesting is that rather than simply repeating a tried and tested formula, once again they’re attempting something new. Brink is… well, this will take some explaining.

Read the rest of this entry »

Splash Damage’s new game, being developed in conjunction with Bethesda, is called Brink. It’s a game of future war. The teaser trailer below offers very little in the way of additional clues about the title. Eyes, it seems, will feature in the game. And you can bet it’s a multiplayer FPS (because we know it is). It’s scheduled for Spring 2010. That’s all eye got. (Sorry.) Perhaps you guys can speculate the game into existence, below. Oh, and the official site is here, although it doesn’t contain much more than the video, yet.
Read the rest of this entry »

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars developers Splash Damage have taken on the prenhensile-snouted jungle dwellers as their unofficial mascot for some time now, and were keen advocates of World Tapir Day. However, rather than simply using the beast as a crazy icon for their blog-posting shenanigans, they’ve actually decided to take some action in helping save the endangered ungulate.

As overdue recognition of the sterling service our Tapir friends have done us in our work, Splash Damage are delighted to announce that we’re donating a GPS collar to help keep track of one of our Tapir cousins in Costa Rica via the excellent SaveTapirs.org. Here in the office we’re also making individual contributions to help this very deserving conservation effort, and we’d encourage any and all of our readers and players to do likewise.

Now if only a few other folk would help out, the tapir might actually have a chance of not being wiped off the face of the planet. What animal have you helped survive its human enemies, readers?

Sat around a table on the mezzanine of a poncey San Francisco hotel were Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s international agent, Jim Rossignol; PC Gamer’s poseable action editor, Tim Edwards; and droopy-fringed Official Xbox 360 Magazine editor and frequent PC Gamer contributor, Jon Hicks. Joining them for man-to-man chat were three members of the UK-based Enemy Territory: Quake Wars development studio, Splash Damage: Owner and lead designer, Paul Wedgwood; business development director, Steve Gaffney; and Splash Damage’s newly promoted art director, Richard Jolly. They all had a nice chat about running a game community, the tribulations of game development, the PC, and how the game that follows ETQW could be “deeper yet more accessible”.
Read the rest of this entry »

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars went on sale in Europe on Friday and on Monday and the US. Clearly RPS has been a little distracted with Team Fortress 2, but there’s every reason why we, and you lot too, should be playing ETQW. It’s ludicrously good.

Fortunately, should you (like me) be intent on remaining posted at your keyboard 24/7, you’ll be able to download the beast on October 5th in Europe and October 9th in the US: Steam is taking pre-orders for ETQW now. Why does it come out in Europe first? I have no idea.

In some ways it’s a shame that ETQW’s demo level was that particular map. It’s one of the more underwhelming designs that Splash Damage have come up with. Just in terms of the palette used, it’s rather middle-ground and didn’t really sell the game. The mission itself might have been representative of the game mechanics (and therefore good for beta testing) but part of ETQW’s appeal is the sheer beauty of its wartorn terrains, and some of the other maps simply have far more intense objectives built into them. The island (pictured) and the beach assault are particularly solid, while the Slipgate map… well, I’m going to post in detail on a couple of my favourites next week.

As fun as I’ve found Team Fortress 2, I think I’m going to be finding a more satisfying long-term gaming outlet in ETQW. With vehicles, larger maps, and absurdly varied selection of classes, it simply caters for a wider range of possible actions and experiences. It’s a harder, bigger, brasher game in all kinds of ways, and yet still pretty accessible, I think. Anyway, perhaps we’ll sort out some RPS Steam community games later in October. I’ll also be arranging an interview with Splash Damage to chat a bit about the community end of things, and what they’ve learned from clan gaming in the past.

This feature on the origins of the Enemy Territory: Quake Wars team, Splash Damage, was originally published in February this year by the world’s cleverest games development website, Gamasutra. The piece is based around an interview with Splash Damage owner and founder, Paul Wedgwood. I’ve updated it slightly, to reflect the fact that we’re now rather close to the release of the game. That meeting with Wedgwood went on to provide material for my book about gaming, which I’ll pimp to death on here once it’s approaching publication. Anyway, read on for the story of the little mod team that ended up making one of the games of 2007. If you want to make it big in games, this is a pretty good way to go about it.

This interview was an odd kind of reunion. I had been acquainted with Paul Wedgwood for many years, long before we met in person. Back when I was an obsessed Quake player he was one of the people organising the communities, writing columns, administrating games, and commentating for an Internet TV show for which my Quake clan played numerous exhibition matches.

Now that his life has taken quite a different path – into the highest echelons of game development – you might expect him to have left his fan community roots behind, but quite the opposite it true. It is the first-person gaming community, and its focused, implacable gamers, that have made Wedgwood and his company what they are today. These guys are fans, and utterly in love with living a geek dream. You can tell this because of Wedgwood’s enormous collection of sci-fi miniatures in the boardroom… But there’s much more than that to this particular group’s development credentials.

Read the rest of this entry »