0:00

Coming up on this week's show,

0:02

run classic Windows on your Game Boy.

0:05

YouTube turns 20. And

0:07

we chat with id Software

0:09

Legend, American McGee. And

0:18

the Retro Hour podcast is brought

0:21

to you each and every Friday

0:23

with our amazing friends a bit

0:25

mad books and of course today

0:27

American McGee's a guest talking lots

0:29

about classic FPS games and have

0:31

you seen their book I'm Too

0:33

Young to Die the ultimate guide

0:35

to first -person shooters covering the golden

0:37

era 1992 to 2002. All the

0:39

big ones are in there, Doom,

0:41

Quake, Half -Life, some that you've

0:44

probably forgotten as well and some

0:46

that maybe flew under the radar.

0:48

Weighing in at more than 420 pages.

0:50

If you're a fan of FPS games,

0:52

check this out and the rest of their

0:54

retro gaming collection at bitmapbooks.com. Hello

0:58

and welcome to the Retro Hour

1:00

podcast, episode number 477, your weekly

1:02

dose of retro gaming and technology

1:04

news with me, Dan Wood. Me,

1:06

Ravi Abbott. and me, Joe Fox.

1:09

And great to be joining us for the

1:11

podcast that every Friday, of course, brings

1:13

you up to speed on all the big

1:15

happenings in the wonderful world of retro

1:17

gaming and technology and brings you veterans of

1:19

the industry onto the show for an

1:21

interview in the second half. And we have

1:23

got a legendary guest on this week's

1:25

show. More about that in just a minute.

1:27

Nice to have full crew back there. Welcome

1:29

back, Joe. And back, baby.

1:32

You are. Nice to build to cover

1:34

last week as well. Did you have a listen? Yes,

1:36

I did. He was amazing. And

1:38

he put a sweet comment on Facebook. Yes.

1:41

To say it was an honor to cover,

1:43

but it was an absolute honor to

1:45

have Bill cover for me, which was kind

1:47

of blew my mind because I was

1:49

like, Bill's massive. Like, you know, very Amiga

1:52

heavy episode, Joe. So you didn't miss

1:54

out on much. But

1:56

yeah, no. a fantastic

1:58

episode as always and allowed me

2:00

to go on my hollybabs. Yeah,

2:02

but it was honestly awesome to have Bill on. But great

2:04

to have you back, like Ravi said. You rain is in a

2:06

bit otherwise. It does turn into the Amiga hour, as we

2:09

know. So we have got lots of

2:11

chat about all things retro coming up soon. I mean,

2:13

actually, speaking of retro, I've done a few... You actually watch

2:15

this as well, haven't you, Joe, since you got back

2:17

off your holidays? A new series of

2:19

Black Mirror. I've seen a lot of people

2:21

have been talking about episode four. which is

2:23

all about retro gaming, an

2:25

episode called Plaything, which is kind of a, it's

2:27

a bit of a spiritual successor to the Bandit

2:29

Snatch episode they did a couple of years ago.

2:31

Yeah. I don't want to spoil it because obviously

2:34

a lot of people might not have watched it

2:36

yet, etc. I've not. But

2:38

yeah, you know, spiritual successor, it's

2:40

not even, I was going to say,

2:43

like, all there's a link there.

2:45

It's a very obvious link like it's,

2:47

but it's still its own self -contained.

2:49

Story, you know, there's any kind of

2:51

like two scenes that kind of

2:54

link it to Bandersnatch, but it's still

2:56

very cool to see but I

2:58

think the thing that got me and

3:00

Dan talking, a messenger the most,

3:02

was the nods to retro tech and

3:04

retro kind of British culture because

3:06

it's set in 94, isn't it? And

3:09

there's so much in there. And

3:12

there was things that you spotted that I

3:14

didn't spot and then I spotted and you

3:16

didn't spot which was pretty funny to talk

3:18

about which kind of you know takes a

3:20

little bit away from the episode which is

3:22

a really cool episode. You know what my

3:24

missus got so annoyed so i kept pausing

3:27

it to send you and ravi like pictures

3:29

on screen and the cherry jaguar poster. You

3:31

know that's the problem i've not seen it

3:33

yet and i've been seeing screenshots of everything

3:35

not just from you of like you know

3:37

people that have. see albums in the background

3:39

and stuff like that. And it's good when

3:41

we had Charlie Brooker on, you know, Bagda

3:43

Snatch was the first one that was kind

3:46

of doing that. So it's good to hear

3:48

there's a bit of a follow -up episode.

3:50

I'm really excited to watch it. Yeah,

3:52

there's actually a great article on Time Extension

3:54

that I put in the show notes as

3:56

well. If you have watched it, it kind

3:58

of shows you all of the kind of

4:01

Easter eggs that were in there that you

4:03

may have spotted or some that actually we

4:05

didn't miss while watching it. I did see

4:07

the Gremlin graphics poster. On his bedroom wall,

4:09

when he walked in, there's an episode set

4:11

in there, CX. Obviously, Charlie Brooker was the

4:13

guy that created the original computer exchange logo.

4:16

And you see that in there. There's also PC

4:18

Zone magazine that he used to write for,

4:20

little glimpse of that as well. So, yeah, if

4:22

you haven't watched it yet, like Ravi, well,

4:24

I'll give you any spoilers, but definitely worth a

4:26

watch of the new series of Black Mirror,

4:29

episode four called Plaything, set in the 90s, and

4:31

lots of classic retro. gaming and tech Easter

4:33

eggs in there as well. I'll link that article

4:35

in the show notes as well. But

4:37

this week, we're going to be

4:39

chatting to someone actually who was right in the

4:41

middle of all that, actually, creating games that

4:43

were huge back in the early to mid 90s

4:45

and beyond. Of course, he

4:47

worked at the legendary id software

4:49

back in the day. Today, we're

4:52

talking to American McGee. Yeah, I

4:54

can't believe we've got American McGee

4:56

on the podcast. It's a name

4:58

that, you know, I've always heard

5:00

since I was a kid. And

5:02

has been associated with such amazing

5:04

titles, but also like, you know,

5:06

that classic id software period. Amazing

5:09

story as well. I can believe,

5:11

you know, John Carmack was living

5:13

in his apartment. And

5:15

in this interview, he's talking about like, who's

5:17

this guy with this flashy car? What

5:19

kind of job does he do? And

5:21

then it turns out, you know, they

5:23

were all working on Wolfenstein 3D and

5:26

he ends up joining Ed. It's

5:28

just fantastic, you know, the games that

5:30

they've worked on, some of the inside knowledge

5:32

from there, and also that connection with

5:34

Nine Inch Networks as well. Yeah,

5:36

because it is a fascinating story. Actually,

5:38

before we start recording, I always wondered if

5:40

American McGee was actually his real name.

5:43

Yeah. But it was because his mum was

5:45

like a hippie. And yeah,

5:47

she named him that, inspired by a woman

5:49

that she knew in college who called her child

5:51

America, apparently. So, yeah,

5:53

really interesting guy. Like you said, the

5:55

way he entered the video game

5:57

industry, he was obviously a big gamer

5:59

before he worked at Id. And we talk

6:01

a bit about his memories of the Commodore 64.

6:05

But then he was there at

6:07

the absolute peak of Id

6:09

software back then. Just

6:11

as Doom was in development and

6:13

then worked on stuff like Hexen

6:15

Beyond Heretic and obviously Quake

6:17

as well. Then had quite a

6:19

mysterious exit from the company. That

6:21

we talk more about that actually turn that

6:24

to be a bit of a blessing in

6:26

disguise because he went on to work at,

6:28

you know, some of the huge companies after

6:30

obviously the Alice games, but he's very well

6:32

known for two. Yeah. Well, he's, you know,

6:34

his name is at the very front of

6:36

these titles and you don't often get video

6:38

game developers that have that name at the

6:40

front. Alice was a great

6:42

game as well because it was

6:44

it's all about, you know, psychology and

6:47

kind of. History

6:49

and mental health as well and having that

6:51

kind of built into a video game was

6:53

something that was not done before. And

6:55

it became a cult classic as well,

6:57

you know, you kind of dark follow on

6:59

to the fairy tale. So we talk

7:01

about the origins of the game and also,

7:03

you know, that was using the quake

7:05

engine and that kind of connection that it

7:07

had with it. Yeah. So huge guest.

7:10

I know you've been working on getting him

7:12

on the show for well over a

7:14

year, Ravi. So, I'm glad we could

7:16

finally do it. American McGee, the Id Software

7:18

superstar, is on the podcast in around half an

7:20

hour from now. But of course, you know

7:22

the way the podcast works. If you're a regular

7:24

listener, if not, this is what we do

7:26

first 25 minutes or so. We have a bit

7:28

of a chat about what's been happening in

7:30

the world of retro from over the last week,

7:32

the big stories that have been making the

7:34

headlines on social media. And actually, the time we're

7:36

recording this, which we are recording quite late

7:38

this week, as chair mentioned, a lot of holidays

7:40

and stuff recently. We're recording this night

7:42

before the podcast comes out on 24th of April.

7:45

And today is

7:47

actually YouTube's 20th

7:49

birthday. Blowing on us

7:51

is mind that YouTube's 20 years old now.

7:53

It's crazy. It makes me think how long

7:55

we've known each other. Going

7:58

back to, yeah, it was the of

8:00

April, 2005. Very first

8:03

video on YouTube, which is still there, is

8:05

called Me at the Zoo. And

8:07

it was uploaded by Jawad Karim,

8:09

who is one of YouTube's co

8:11

-founders. Billions of views on

8:13

that video now. It's actually

8:15

only 18 seconds long. It

8:17

kind of took me back, actually. Do

8:20

you remember when I was thinking

8:22

when I first got into YouTube

8:24

and I look back on my

8:26

channel and Because the rabbit and

8:28

I have obviously made YouTube videos.

8:30

That's kind of how we met

8:33

But I think my first upload

8:35

was at the start of January

8:37

in 2008 Some of my first

8:39

videos and then Some of ones

8:41

that make me cringe you're there

8:43

are some hidden ones. I know

8:45

Joe has some hidden guitar hero

8:48

They're not hidden. They're out there. They're

8:51

out there. I've been trying to find these for years. I've

8:54

got a, God,

8:56

it's like a fan

8:58

series. We did where

9:00

I'm acting as like two seasons of

9:02

that online as well. I'm not

9:05

going to mention it. Oh

9:07

my God, I need to find that. Screenshots. You

9:09

said you did that and you sent a screenshot,

9:11

but I didn't realize it was like two seasons. It's

9:14

huge. We have some very clever people

9:16

who listen to this podcast. So if anyone

9:18

finds the links to either of these

9:20

videos, I'd be curious to see them. definitely

9:25

do. But I mean, yeah, I

9:27

was thinking back as well. I mean, who

9:29

kind of got you into YouTube

9:31

jokes? I know obviously you've followed

9:33

retro gaming YouTube channels for years.

9:36

Any early ones that you remember? For

9:39

me, I was probably

9:41

quite late. I say late

9:43

to the game. It would have only

9:46

been like two years after YouTube came

9:48

out, but to me and my mate

9:50

Richard at school, like when we were

9:52

finishing school and we're in sixth form,

9:54

which is a, would have been around

9:56

2004, 2005. We used to go on,

9:58

you know, just like newgrounds.com and killstintime.com

10:00

and stuff like that. We'll watch videos

10:02

on there. And then YouTube, I

10:05

don't remember him ever being like, cause I've seen people

10:07

posting stories today of like, oh, I remember I was at

10:09

uni and somebody was like, look at this, it's YouTube. That

10:12

didn't really happen. I think he just.

10:15

He showed it me but it was

10:17

just like he just linked it to

10:19

me, you know in it was just

10:21

like oh yeah Here's another thing you

10:23

can watch videos on and then like

10:25

I say we got into Katara here

10:27

around the same time and then around

10:29

2006 You modded his ps2 to play

10:31

like custom Katara videos and we started

10:33

uploading them on YouTube and it would

10:35

it just never really like Cross my

10:37

mind like that. It was this like

10:39

big thing or anything and then it

10:41

was actually I

10:43

was on game trailers. I

10:46

used to go on to game trailers

10:48

every day and watch AVGM, like and

10:50

all those kind of videos, which were originally on

10:52

there. Before the one on YouTube. Yeah,

10:54

and screw attack and stuff. And

10:56

then it, I think it was around

10:58

2007, 2008, when I think it

11:01

was at the end of like an

11:03

AVGM video where it said like,

11:05

you know, more content on YouTube, on

11:07

Cinemastica. So I guess the

11:09

actual first. YouTuber that I

11:11

followed was AVGN which would have been around

11:13

about 2008 and then that's when I

11:15

switched to watching everything on YouTube. I

11:17

don't think I ever went back to anything else and

11:19

now I fall asleep every night watching YouTube. There's

11:22

three that I want to mention that

11:24

were really early on for me. One

11:26

was called Biff's Gaming Videos and

11:28

it's a guy called Biff Malone and

11:31

he'd done video game reviews in

11:33

94 and then he was kind of

11:35

like uploading those onto YouTube. Did

11:37

he do Atari Jaguar stuff? Yes. Yes.

11:39

I remember. And then there

11:41

was another guy, Maximum R .D. as well.

11:44

He used to do like retro stuff. He

11:46

used to also do like quite a bit

11:48

of Amiga content and stuff, but he's been

11:50

on there since 2008, I think. And

11:53

also Paul Smallman as well.

11:55

Paul is the best UK. I

11:58

used to love his stuff. He still does

12:00

uploads. I think he nearly does an upload

12:02

every day or something of a spectrum titles

12:04

and he's still going. And

12:06

yeah, these were Some cool channels

12:08

that were really there before stuff like

12:10

got massive and blew up. Well,

12:13

I'm looking at it because I've

12:15

actually found some of the YouTubers I

12:17

was into when I first watched YouTube. It's

12:20

sometimes a bit sad when you kind of, you know, you

12:22

kind of stop watching that channel, then you look at when

12:24

the last uploaded a video. One

12:26

was at Dino the Legend 87,

12:29

who's a last YouTube upload just

12:31

15 years ago about his

12:34

PlayStation 3. Channel is still there

12:36

though. Another one that I

12:38

got into really early was Steve Benway. Yes,

12:41

yes, with his Friday

12:43

talkies. It's not a playthrough, not

12:45

a review, just me playing the game badly.

12:47

He used to say at the start, he

12:49

hasn't uploaded a video for seven months, it

12:51

seems, sadly, the retro gaming collector. A

12:54

guy called Retro Gamer VX

12:56

is from, like, Sunderland.

12:59

On Newcastle. And if you get those confused people

13:01

get very angry. Somewhere in the North -East anyway. It

13:04

is loads of light. I'm looking at its channel

13:06

now. I actually did a video a month ago.

13:08

It is stuff like repairing old Amstrad Hi -Fies. And

13:10

it did one with like the Quantel Paintbox

13:12

and stuff years ago, I remember. Really

13:15

good channel that is still active by the

13:17

looks of it. Another one is a guy called

13:19

Blutonic78 who does a lot of like pick

13:21

up videos. A lot of like snares and Mega

13:23

Drive and Amiga stuff. His last upload that

13:25

was a year ago. And then there's a guy

13:27

called Michael's retro game reviews they still love.

13:29

But again, his last video was six years ago.

13:31

So it's a lot of these people kind

13:33

of just, you know, do it at

13:35

the early days and then just kind of vanish. It's

13:38

a different world, isn't it? You

13:40

know, we had dislikes and

13:42

it was a star rating system and

13:44

stuff. And it's developed over 20 years

13:47

to kind of become the main thing

13:49

as well. Really interesting. And

13:51

I kind of find it I don't know,

13:53

it seems like YouTube never deletes videos as

13:55

well. Stuff on there from years and years

13:57

and years ago. I guess there must be

13:59

a point where they, you know, delete it

14:01

when it's not got a certain amount of

14:03

views or something like that. not. Well,

14:06

as we know, that does happen, you know,

14:08

stuff like GeoCities at night. You remember when

14:10

Yoho just killed that off, deleted all the

14:12

data. But yeah, imagine

14:14

how big Google's server farm must

14:17

be for YouTube. They've actually put

14:19

together a blog. To celebrate

14:21

20 years of YouTube, there's a couple

14:23

of stats in there they mentioned that

14:25

said from the initial 19 second clip,

14:27

there's now over 20 billion videos on

14:29

YouTube. And there are

14:31

20 million videos uploaded every

14:33

single day to the platform.

14:36

So from humble beginnings, 20

14:38

years ago, YouTube definitely going

14:40

very strong now. So happy birthday, YouTube,

14:42

20 years this week. So I'll link

14:44

up that blog in a few of those

14:46

channels we mentioned in this week's show

14:48

notes. Now,

14:50

um, is a question that,

14:52

um, I didn't think

14:54

I'd answer yes to until I read this

14:56

headline, but now I'm thinking, hmm, actually

14:58

sounds kind of cool. Have you ever wanted

15:00

to run Windows on your Nintendo Game

15:02

Boy? Not really. No. It

15:05

sounds like the most boring car, isn't it?

15:07

Like, you know, someone would be like, I've

15:09

got Tetris. I've got Windows. Well,

15:11

this is a,

15:13

um, a Game

15:15

Boy Color cartridge

15:17

called... GBS Windows

15:19

Operated System V413.

15:22

And it's created by someone called Ruben

15:24

Retro. And there is a video in this you

15:27

can watch, which is all in Spanish. But

15:29

I've watched it with

15:31

the YouTube subtitles on. And

15:33

really this is, it's not actually

15:35

running Windows 3 .1. This is

15:37

more a tribute to Windows 3 .1

15:40

that runs on the Game Boy

15:42

Color, the Advanced, the Advanced SP,

15:44

the Analog Pocket as well, and

15:46

some other systems too. Now,

15:48

what do you guys think of this then? Like

15:50

you say, you've summarized it really well

15:52

there. It's a tribute. You

15:54

know, I think the packaging and everything, before it looks really

15:57

cool, like the physical cartridge

15:59

with the box, like I think he's

16:01

captured the look of Windows 3 .1,

16:03

you know, in the early 90s

16:05

really, really well and incorporated the Game

16:07

Boy into it, into

16:09

the artwork and stuff. I think that's fantastic.

16:11

It's 40 quid. currently sold out on

16:14

his Etsy store, but it's going to be

16:16

more coming. But it really is. It's just

16:18

kind of like a cartridge of like mini

16:20

games. It kind of reminds me of more

16:22

than anything. You know, you've got

16:24

a mind sweeper on there. You've got a version, I

16:26

say a version, pseudo version of

16:28

paint on there. You know,

16:30

you know, yeah, which you can

16:32

print off using the Game

16:34

Boy printer, which is pretty cool.

16:37

Actually, with that, but for

16:39

me, it just kind of looks

16:41

like, you know, one of

16:43

these compilation like minigame cartridges, you

16:45

know, which is based on Windows 3 .1.

16:47

But in terms of like the actual

16:49

interface when you load it up and stuff

16:51

like that, obviously isn't just a list

16:54

of games. It does look a

16:56

bit like what it looks like Windows,

16:58

which is pretty cool. Yeah, I think it's

17:00

got the nostalgia in there. Definitely

17:02

with the 3 .1 look

17:04

and stuff like having the

17:06

DOS sequence loading at the

17:08

beginning and Yeah, it's quite

17:10

nice. You know, I

17:13

don't know if it would work as well

17:15

with Windows 95, actually. And

17:17

I think 3 .1 is an area that,

17:20

you know, it's kind of underused

17:22

because it's got such a nice

17:24

aesthetic. And I didn't appreciate it back

17:27

in the days. But yeah, mean, this is

17:29

something that's kind of been done before. But I

17:31

think the fact that this is running on

17:33

a Game Boy does add some nice novelty there

17:35

as well. There are some useful things on

17:37

here as well. There is a chip tune. Music

17:39

player, so like a version of media player

17:41

that plays chiptunes apparently can also kind of

17:43

pseudo multitasking play the chiptunes in the background

17:46

in while using other apps on here as

17:48

well Yeah, again, I mean this is someone

17:50

that was made using GB studio Which has

17:52

obviously been used for games mainly, but I

17:54

think this does seem like you know quite

17:56

a fun little spoof of Windows and quite

17:58

a novel platform to create it on though

18:00

So I think it is quite cool. I

18:03

like said Joe the fact that it's sold

18:05

out proves that there is a demand for

18:07

it It needs a beeper speaker as well.

18:09

Yeah, I'm sure the Game Boy can emulate

18:11

that. Yeah, beeper mode. Yeah, so if you

18:13

want to get ahold of that, hopefully some

18:15

more coming on sale soon, but I'll link

18:17

up the video. If you want to watch

18:20

it in this week's show notes, then kind

18:22

of run Windows in a way on your

18:24

Nintendo Game Boy. Now,

18:26

this story, since I heard this the other

18:28

day, I messaged you guys straight away

18:30

going, WTF. But the more

18:32

I think about it, maybe this could work. Now

18:35

it turns out obviously we've talked

18:37

on the podcast before about all these

18:39

kind of Sega franchises that they

18:41

announced being turned into movies. Obviously a

18:43

lot of them we kind of

18:45

announced and then we haven't really seen

18:47

anything more. Remember the Golden Axe

18:49

movie? It was apparently in

18:51

development comic zone as well. Dragon's Lair. Shinobi

18:54

was another from Sega. Yeah,

18:57

so it's this one. It's

18:59

a game that to be

19:01

honest didn't have the strongest

19:03

plot. back in the day. But

19:06

apparently there is a

19:08

big budget Hollywood version

19:11

of Outrun coming to

19:13

the big screen with

19:15

Michael Bay and Sidney

19:17

Sweeney attached to this.

19:19

In a world one

19:21

man must drive across

19:23

California in a Ferrari

19:26

with explosions. Explosions.

19:28

Michael Bay, come on. From Michael

19:30

Bay. Why does it

19:32

think about this? Aaron

19:34

doesn't really have a story apart from,

19:36

yeah, you're driving in a race. So I

19:38

guess it could be, you could attach

19:40

any plot to this long as this car

19:42

chases in it. I didn't see

19:44

the, there was a Need for Speed

19:46

movie a few years ago with Aaron Paul

19:48

from Breaking Bad. And I didn't see

19:51

that. And I did remember thinking Need for

19:53

Speed doesn't really have much of a

19:55

plot either. But I've not seen

19:57

that. So I couldn't say what the plot was in

19:59

that. And I was the same as you. I saw

20:01

this and I was like, what? But like,

20:03

And I was, oh, Michael Bay. And then I

20:05

was like, you know what? Like

20:07

it makes sense. Like it's going

20:09

to be a silly, like fast

20:12

paced action movie, probably with, like

20:14

you say, with explosions and stuff.

20:16

Like it makes sense for it

20:18

to be Michael Bay. That part

20:20

makes sense for me. But

20:22

the film itself doesn't really make that

20:24

much sense. Like, well, it's

20:26

very loose. It's like a blank slate.

20:28

You know, essentially, you've just got

20:31

the car. You've got a female partner

20:33

in there. Um, you

20:35

know, it's 80s. Um, yeah,

20:38

California. Um, I

20:40

hope it is. And yeah, he's. Yeah. And

20:42

it's got to be a Ferrari in there.

20:44

It's got to be a Ferrari. Yeah. So,

20:46

you know, there could be, and then, you

20:48

know, what is it? Magical sound shower. You

20:50

can have that come on at one point.

20:52

Yeah. Played by like a heavy metal band

20:54

or something. Yeah. Yeah. And that'll be like

20:56

the key chase sequence or something, but that's

20:58

all you need. Like everything else still hopefully

21:00

come up with, you know. Yeah, I

21:03

mean again, I mean there's some people have

21:05

mentioned in the comments that it's no different to

21:07

the you know ten thousand fast and furious

21:09

movies So, you know, kind of

21:11

why, why couldn't they make it happen? The interesting

21:13

thing there is a Sydney Sweeney's in it, who

21:15

I've seen in a couple of films before. Don't

21:17

know who it is. Well, she's best known for

21:19

immaculate, apparently, which I don't know if that's a

21:21

movie or a TV series. I'm sure my Mrs.

21:23

would know more. haven't seen that, no. That's a

21:25

film, apparently, came out in 2024. Horror movie. Actually,

21:27

I did see that, actually. Yeah, I'm looking now

21:29

at it. But apparently, she's going to be

21:31

the producer of it, but she won't star in the

21:33

film. Now, people are kind of questioning that. But I

21:35

looked up on Wikipedia, apparently, she's like really into vintage

21:37

car collecting. Yeah, so

21:40

I mean, you know, maybe she's on

21:42

board to make sure that, you know,

21:44

the correct cars and stuff and your

21:46

appropriate stuff is in there. Yeah, a

21:48

Sega involved, like, or they just kind

21:50

of like sold the rights. Apparently, the

21:52

current Sega Corp president, Shuji

21:54

Utsumi, is going to have

21:56

a supervisory role overseeing the

21:58

development of it. You

22:01

know, I'm thinking they could go down

22:03

like a Vice City star route. Um,

22:05

I think, you know, a lot of

22:07

these video game movies, people always think,

22:09

oh, it would be like a kid

22:11

film or a fun action or something

22:13

like that. But they could really like,

22:15

you know, it's so loose, they could

22:17

just go into it and have a

22:19

really adult like outrun could be a

22:21

really, really, you know, like Miami Vice

22:23

style or something. I think they'd have

22:25

to go down that route, because I

22:27

mean, obviously It's got our

22:29

face. I mean, movies like Sonic the Hedgehog and I

22:31

had to still appeal to kids today. And

22:33

obviously Minecraft movie, massive at the moment. But

22:35

yeah, something like Outrun, you know, my little

22:37

ten year old nephew wouldn't know what it

22:39

was. So I think if they're using

22:42

that brand, surely it's got to be aimed at kind

22:44

of people that remember it than what it is. This

22:46

hasn't been an Outrun game really for a

22:48

long time. Although that does also excite me

22:50

that, you know, if this does come out

22:52

and also, you know, if it doesn't have

22:54

been a big budget. Smash it at the

22:56

box office. Maybe Sega will make a new

22:58

outrun game. Or just really re -release it

23:00

again. I mean, I've only

23:02

bought it about 50 times. So

23:05

I mean, there was some of the later outrun

23:07

games like Coast to Coast and stuff and Outrun

23:09

2. And some of those are really good. So

23:11

I think even just bringing those to kind of,

23:13

you know, place survive. We just need Road Rash

23:15

the movie. That would be. Yeah.

23:17

Well, wouldn't surprise me with some of the

23:19

other random ones announced over the last

23:21

few years. Wasn't it like a... Missile Command

23:24

movie at one point they announced as

23:26

well. There's so many that we've talked about

23:28

over the last decade that kind of

23:30

nothing happens. But I think this back through

23:32

the 470 other episodes and see which

23:34

ones we've discussed and then mark it if

23:36

it actually came out. I'm sure

23:38

someone could feed it into an AI, you know, the transcript.

23:40

Probably do it in 10 minutes. But

23:42

yeah, I think it just had like

23:44

a quite a plausible idea for a

23:46

film and the fact that these kind

23:48

of well -known names are attached to it.

23:50

Although I think Transformers 3... Was it

23:52

the only movie I've ever walked out

23:54

the cinema to? I've never walked

23:56

out of the cinema. But

23:58

I fell asleep during the

24:00

total recall remake. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

24:03

I remember falling asleep because it was terrible. And then

24:05

I woke up and he was fighting Brian Cranston. I was

24:07

like, what's going on? Start

24:10

eating your popcorn again. Yeah. And,

24:13

you know, that's saying something

24:15

because of around 2010 to a

24:17

2020. So yeah, about 10 years.

24:19

I actually had a cinema card. You know like

24:21

an unlimited card of me and my wife went

24:24

to cinema like three times a week so we

24:26

saw everything. That's the only film

24:28

I've ever fallen asleep in. Well

24:30

Transformers 3 I was technically homeless when that came

24:32

out because I moved out of my flat that day

24:34

and then I was moving somewhere else the morning

24:36

after. So and I was going to work on the

24:38

night shift since I'd like about six hours to

24:40

kill. before I did my last night shift and then

24:42

moved to a new city next morning. So

24:44

I basically had about like 12 hours to wander

24:47

around London, so I went out for a bit of

24:49

food, went to see, yeah, I just thought I'd

24:51

go to the cinema a bit of time before work

24:53

on the Sunday night. And

24:55

yeah, the only thing I thought, the transformers three was

24:57

on, so I watched it and it ran it.

24:59

I got a feeling it was almost three hours long.

25:02

And I remember getting about two hours in,

25:04

like, numb behind, sitting on the seat

25:06

thinking, It was literally just Michael Bay

25:08

explosion after explosion after explosion. I thought, I'll

25:10

just go wander around Covent Garden or something else,

25:12

anything else to get out of here. So

25:14

yeah, if he is going to make this, then

25:17

please keep the running time reasonable. You know, we don't

25:19

want a three hour outrun movie. But

25:21

yeah, it looks pretty cool. There's some big names attached to

25:23

that. So fingers crossed, I'll be decent. We'll keep an eye

25:25

on that. That's something that

25:27

I think looks very cool as

25:29

someone who is really enjoying

25:31

the point and click adventure game

25:34

revival. in recent years and

25:36

Ravi and I were at the

25:38

debug live awards in Nottingham

25:40

indie game awards last month. I

25:43

actually saw a lot of indie developers showing off

25:45

point -and -click adventures. It seems to be

25:47

really hot right now, don't they, for the indie scene? Yeah,

25:49

yeah, really good. And, you know, I'm

25:51

kind of glad the genre has popped

25:53

off again because for years it disappeared. And

25:55

it's such a huge part of my

25:58

youth. And also it's a great way

26:00

of playing games as well because you're

26:02

kind of forced to slow down and actually

26:04

think and use your brain. Always have

26:06

to good point and click. I mean,

26:08

thinking back in the day, obviously the

26:10

Monkey Island games, I love Loom. That

26:12

was one of my favourite, all the LucasArts titles back

26:14

then. I was playing Grim Fandango, the remake

26:16

of that on the plane to America, on

26:18

the Switch a couple of weeks back. big

26:21

ledger suit Larry fan. Yeah, like, I

26:23

had the first game I did, like, yeah,

26:25

kind of, I kind of lost interest

26:27

after that. Yeah, Sam, the

26:29

source of Penita Steel, Sky. That

26:31

was an awesome game back in

26:34

the day. So it's nice to

26:36

see these games coming back. And

26:38

this one is a new PC

26:40

point and click game, heavily retro

26:42

inspired, coming out in a couple

26:44

of weeks time on the 13th

26:46

of May called Neon Hearts City. What

26:49

do you think of this then, Ravi? I

26:52

really like the color palette

26:54

choice. I think it looks really

26:56

beautiful. It's got

26:58

a good voice acting as well, which I

27:01

kind of love voice acting. I

27:03

know some people enjoy just the text

27:05

on screen, but through the trailer, it

27:08

does sound like it's been really well

27:10

done. And, you know,

27:12

there's a lot of dystopian future

27:14

cities and stuff like that in

27:16

games, but this one kind of

27:18

looks like one that I want

27:20

to live in. It looks a

27:22

bit depressing, but not gone too

27:24

far. But also it's a good

27:26

tale of a private investigator. And,

27:29

you know, some of the classic

27:31

ones, like, well, even with Police Quest

27:33

was one that I used to

27:35

play quite a lot as well. was

27:38

investigating or finding out crimes and

27:40

stuff is really, you know, staple of

27:42

point -and -click adventures. Yeah, I love

27:44

the colour palette in this as well. It kind of reminds me a

27:46

bit of, like, degeneration. Yes,

27:48

yeah. the look of it. Obviously, that

27:50

kind of cyberpunk. A bit of the tentacle

27:52

as well. Well, in terms, I mean,

27:54

it kind of looks like... It doesn't remind

27:56

me of kind of the early 90s

27:58

point and click. I'd say it's more like

28:00

mid to late 90s in terms of

28:02

the aesthetic, some nice big

28:05

sprites in here. Quite

28:07

a rich color palette in here too. And

28:09

like you said about voice acting, though, Ravi, I'm

28:12

with you there. If I go back and play

28:14

some of the older games, I always try and

28:16

find a talky version of them. They just feel

28:18

a bit sparse without the voice acting now. Yeah.

28:20

And you used to have that option

28:22

as well, didn't you, voice? Yeah. or

28:24

no voice and I always kind of

28:27

went for voice but would usually be

28:29

with like a slow loading CD ROM

28:31

drives every sentence it'd be like and

28:33

then you get your thing so it's

28:35

quite nice to have it on a

28:37

modern hardware. Yeah and I'm hoping I

28:39

mean you know with this I'm looking at this

28:41

it would probably be possible to get this running

28:43

on retro systems as well. and a lot of

28:45

these kind of, you know, people do D -Makes

28:48

of them for scum VM, that kind of thing,

28:50

which will be cool. But again,

28:52

I mean, this is a PC -only platform, but

28:54

really, like I said, I did play Grim

28:56

Fandango, and we turned some Monkey Island on

28:58

the Switch, just because it was

29:00

like the... the platform i had on me at

29:02

the time when you know was on a

29:04

seven hour flight or whatever yeah i did a

29:06

fimble weed park on a steam as well

29:08

yeah that's the thing to feel better with a

29:10

mouse don't they it's kind of games i

29:12

think so i think this air i'm looking forward

29:14

to getting hold of this um it will

29:16

be on that i I get my hands on

29:19

it. It looks really cool. So if you're

29:21

fun of pointing to adventure games in that kind

29:23

of retro aesthetic, the game's called Neon Hearts

29:25

City only a couple of weeks to wait until

29:27

that 13th of May. And I put the

29:29

trailer in this week's show notes along with all

29:31

the rest of the stories. Now,

29:33

obviously, it is nearly the end of

29:35

the month. We have got our patrons hang

29:37

out coming up this Sunday with it

29:40

being the final weekend of April. Patrons

29:42

hang out. If you haven't joined us for

29:44

one before, it's basically a massive Google Meet

29:46

call. a bit like

29:48

Zoom, if you haven't used it before. Big video call.

29:50

All our patrons are welcome. We geek out for two

29:52

hours on a Sunday night, end of the month, talk

29:54

about anything. You know, it can be pickups, which

29:57

is often a big part of it. You know,

29:59

people have acquired this month. We

30:01

do, like, kind of a bit of

30:03

a help as well, a help section there.

30:05

You know, people, like, if they've got questions

30:07

or I find a load of advice from

30:09

the brilliant, intelligent people that we have in

30:12

our community. We often just veer off into

30:14

other topics as well, you know. Retro media

30:16

mobile phones we have games developers in there

30:18

as well sometimes which is yeah, it was

30:20

pretty cool Yeah, so a great bunch from

30:22

all around the world as well. So I'm

30:24

gonna do now patrons hang out This coming

30:26

Sunday evening if you want to get in

30:28

by today sign up to our patreon right

30:30

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30:32

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30:34

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30:36

we do just for our gold members and

30:38

above which is called the retro hour after

30:40

hours. And at the latest episode,

30:42

episode 47, our top five games of

30:44

the greatest year in gaming, which was a

30:47

fun one to do. And there will

30:49

be new episode of that that will land

30:51

last month. You'll see access to a

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patron's only area of our Discord server.

30:55

You get the normal podcast ad free and

30:57

early video interviews as well, which has

30:59

started to become a thing. And Dan has

31:01

proposed to me and Joe that we're

31:04

going to try and do. A full show

31:06

on video for the patrons, so that

31:08

should be interesting. We're doing what we call

31:10

a public beta, so the last kind

31:12

of month's worth of interviews that we've done

31:14

on the podcast. You can watch

31:16

the video versions of those on our Patreon right

31:18

now. Next week or two, we're going to try doing

31:21

the news as well. So if you want to

31:23

give us your feedback on that and get access to

31:25

it, all the details to sign up and join

31:27

our wonderful patrons community are at theretrahour.com. We've got a

31:29

few extra news stories on the way just for

31:31

the patrons. But we have got a couple of new

31:33

ones to welcome this month, two new patrons. So

31:35

let's induct them into the most prestigious high score table

31:37

in the world of retro gaming. And that is

31:40

the Retra Hour Hall of Fame. Hall of Fame. I'll

31:42

let you guys welcome them. Who we've got first

31:44

for Abby? Ellie Wood. And

31:46

Steve R. Welcome. Really

31:48

appreciate you joining our wonderful Patrons community. If you'd

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to help out the podcast to make sure we

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31:57

episodes coming out every single Friday. To join Patreon,

31:59

all the details are at theretrohour.com. Now

32:01

that it is almost the start of

32:03

May, obviously, summer, not

32:06

far off. I've got my legs out today, got my shorts

32:08

on. it was a bit nippy walking through

32:10

town earlier. But summer means retro

32:12

events, doesn't it? That's the thing that we

32:14

look forward to. And there's something on, like, every

32:16

other weekend throughout the summer. So we had

32:18

a little idea because we've got a lot of

32:20

people reaching out to us going, oh, can

32:22

you mention my event? So if

32:24

you have got a retro gaming or

32:26

computing event coming up anytime, why

32:29

don't you drop us an email with

32:31

some information and we'll give you a free

32:33

mention on the podcast. So

32:35

the email address is show. At the

32:37

retro hour dot com show at the

32:39

retro hour dot com will try and

32:41

do a mention every couple of weeks

32:43

for what's happening but we have got

32:45

a few that are on the calendar

32:47

already there is obviously a big one

32:49

that I am has been going several

32:52

years now happening on May 31st in

32:54

haze and not far from London at

32:56

retcon. 2025, which

32:58

is on at the Barnhill Community Centre. They've

33:01

got traders there. They've got systems from the 70s

33:03

to today. going to be doing an

33:05

Amiga 40th celebration there. And there's also going to

33:07

be FBS battles, Head

33:09

to Head Quake and Unreal Tournament as well. Some

33:11

special guests there as well. So if you

33:13

want to check that out, I'll link up their

33:15

website for tickets in the show notes. There's

33:17

a virtual one coming up as well in June,

33:19

Ravi. What the dates for this one? Yeah,

33:21

I've got to do this in a cool radio

33:23

voice. You've always got

33:25

a cool radio voice. This is

33:27

the PT -1210 Weekender, which is

33:29

if you're into your Amiga

33:31

mod music and like tracked music,

33:33

there's a whole Weekender for

33:35

people to see different artists, DJing,

33:37

performing, playing online. And it's

33:39

been running for nine years, which

33:41

is pretty amazing. This one's

33:44

called Ancient Technologies and it's got

33:46

like an Egyptian theme. And

33:48

that's on the 6th and the

33:50

7th of June. And

33:52

that's at ptweekender.com. Headlining

33:55

it is going to be

33:57

Citrix and Hoffman as well.

34:00

I'll be DJing too. Extra

34:02

Spike or Michael or extra

34:04

spicy Mike. And PsyGoes

34:06

Retro is also going to be DJing and

34:08

a load more. So it's a whole

34:10

weekend of DJs. So check that out. You

34:12

watch it from the comfort of your

34:14

own house as well. You have to go

34:16

out. Yeah, live stream on that. And

34:18

finally, Retro Messe, that's going to be on

34:20

at Sandifield in Norway. Again, the 11th

34:22

year of Norway's biggest retro event, happening August

34:24

16th to the 17th. Retro Messe is

34:26

always incredible. You've heard us talking about it

34:28

before. You've heard us bring your panels

34:30

from there, traders, systems to play

34:33

on, and that talks with industry legends

34:35

hosted by us guys, because Ravi and

34:37

I are heading out there again to

34:39

host the panels. And they've

34:41

introduced the first guest who's

34:43

going to be coming, and

34:45

that's Richard Jacquez and he

34:47

did some pretty amazing games.

34:50

You know, the music for Jet Set Radio Future, Little

34:52

Big Planet 2, Overwatch 2

34:54

as well, Marvel's Guardians

34:57

of the Galaxy. So, yeah,

34:59

it's going to be a good one. Yeah, worth a

35:01

trip out to Norway. It's only about an hour a

35:03

half flight from the UK as well. So, Retro Mesa,

35:05

in Sandy Fears, you want to check out any of

35:07

those events, I'll put links for tickets in this week's

35:09

show notes. OK, well,

35:11

thank you for checking out the news this

35:13

week. I'll have more for you, of course,

35:15

on next Friday's podcast. And next, going to

35:17

be talking to this week's special guest, the

35:20

legendary American McGee, next on The Retro Hour

35:22

podcast. You're

35:29

listening to The Retro Hour podcast,

35:31

and we're here today with American McGee.

35:33

And it's amazing to have him

35:35

on the show. You know, he's done

35:37

some absolutely awesome titles. Of

35:39

course, Id, there's some great games

35:41

there, Doomquake, some classics, and

35:43

also Alice, which is a really,

35:45

really amazing game that kind of

35:48

had that fairy tale, gone dark

35:50

aspect to it. And also, Alice

35:52

in Madness Returns as well, which

35:54

we're going to talk about. How

35:56

you doing, American? I'm doing very

35:58

well. Thank you so much for inviting me. I

36:01

know it's been, it might have been a

36:03

year that you've been sending me emails to try

36:05

to get me on, so yeah. persistence

36:07

works. Yeah, it's

36:09

really good. Yeah, great to have you here.

36:11

We've got a question that we ask

36:13

all our guests, and that's what was your

36:16

first kind of memory of video games

36:18

or your first video game experience that really

36:20

stood out to you? I

36:22

think the first time I played

36:24

games was on something called an

36:26

Odyssey, which was a console back

36:28

in the day with a little

36:30

spinny controller, and you had

36:32

things like Pong on there. I remember

36:34

that. back when I was still, you

36:37

know, just a boy. But it was

36:39

at someone else's house because my family

36:41

couldn't afford such a thing. But

36:43

I remember that being the first time I

36:45

ever interacted with games. And I was, of course,

36:47

instantly attracted to it. And I wanted that

36:49

friend to then be my best friend so

36:52

I could go over to his house all

36:54

the time and play games with him. Yeah,

36:56

that was a Magnavox, wasn't it? That's right.

36:58

Yeah. Yeah. Nice machine. What about

37:00

your your first personal machine then?

37:02

What was that? So the first personal

37:04

machine I had that I had

37:06

access to on a regular basis was

37:08

actually something called a Timex Sinclair

37:10

2000 which was something you plugged into

37:12

your television and you could program

37:14

in basic and it had you know

37:16

I think 16k of RAM or

37:18

something I mean just super super tiny

37:21

and you couldn't really do much

37:23

with it I think they were sort

37:25

of trying to sell it as

37:27

a advanced personal

37:29

calculator or something like that. I'm

37:31

not really sure who the target audience

37:33

was. I do think it failed

37:35

pretty rapidly, but it gave me my

37:37

first taste of actually programming things. Nothing,

37:40

you know, terribly sophisticated, but that

37:42

was something that you could also build

37:44

very simple games on. And I

37:46

think that that was the first time

37:48

I had that experience of creating

37:50

things for myself. And that led into

37:52

having things like Commodore 64s and

37:54

just, you know, on and on into

37:56

the PC era. You mentioned the

37:58

Commodore 64 there, which, you know,

38:00

probably my favorite machine of that era, the

38:02

8 -bit era. What kind of stuff were you

38:04

doing on your Commodore 64 then? So obviously it

38:06

had, you know, very, very powerful audio for

38:09

the time, and the graphics were fantastic on that

38:11

machine with its hardware sprites. What kind of

38:13

stuff are you doing on it? Well,

38:15

I mean, you say powerful audio.

38:17

I just remember listening to, like,

38:19

you know, all the various MIDI remixes

38:21

of tubular bells or, you know,

38:23

whatever you could download. And

38:25

of course, download speeds were on,

38:28

you know, 200 BOD or 300 BOD

38:30

modems, and you were saving things

38:32

to tape. I mean, it

38:34

was a pretty different experience, but

38:36

it did at that time give me

38:38

access for the first time ever

38:40

to things like BBSs. So you could

38:42

actually interact with other people who

38:45

were also messing around and either writing

38:47

their own programs or oftentimes they

38:49

were exchanging various games or track of

38:51

music to play with the MIDI

38:53

and the synth capabilities of the system.

38:55

And I messed around with all

38:57

that stuff. I remember that my mom

39:00

mistakenly thought that grounding me to

39:02

my room was some sort of a

39:04

punishment. And I look

39:06

back at the fact

39:08

that, like many kids, as

39:10

boys growing up, I was probably, I

39:12

don't know, 10, 11, 12 years old. And

39:15

I was doing all kinds of crazy

39:17

stuff, you know, playing with gasoline in the

39:19

backyard and setting my mom's garden on

39:21

fire. And she would

39:23

say, all right, you're, you know,

39:25

you burned my garden down. Now you're

39:27

grounded to your room for two

39:29

weeks. And I wouldn't really be upset

39:31

about it. I would go in

39:33

there and just stay on that computer

39:35

and interacting with the world outside

39:37

via this very slow modem connection and

39:39

writing programs on my own. And

39:41

I think that I'm fortunate for having

39:43

been naughty enough to require that

39:45

kind of grounding which then led to

39:47

having all that time to mess

39:49

around and teach myself a lot of

39:51

the things that became foundational to

39:53

where I went later on in life.

39:55

I think that's really interesting that

39:57

I see 64 was a bit of

39:59

an escape and. I was

40:01

wondering which titles you were really into. I

40:03

read that you were like Zork and

40:05

Ultima. I don't know if I remember the

40:07

specific titles. I remember titles where you

40:09

know you're adventuring around in the desert here

40:12

or in a jungle there and But

40:14

I wasn't playing a lot of

40:16

games at that period, to be honest.

40:18

I didn't have access to that

40:21

many games other than what you could

40:23

download, which tended to be relatively

40:25

simple things. And even when

40:27

I was messing around with computers later

40:29

on in school, they often limited your

40:31

ability to play games on those computers,

40:33

and it was really more about lessons

40:35

and then also about... teaching us things,

40:37

you know, related to programming. But

40:39

yeah, I mean, you know,

40:41

of course, the Ultima games and,

40:43

you know, Logan's Run and,

40:45

you know, things like that. They

40:48

looked amazing in the box packages. But

40:50

of course, when you actually played them,

40:52

oftentimes they were just very simple, you

40:55

know, 2D top down type of adventures. Yeah,

40:57

your imagination had to do a lot of work. This

41:00

is very true, which I think,

41:02

you know, up until recent. Generations

41:05

has always been the case. I'm always amazed

41:07

when I go back and look at something like

41:09

doom Which or Wolfenstein even before that, but

41:11

I mean it's a 320 by 200 you know

41:13

pixel thing that's going on the screen now

41:15

And now your brain looks at it and thinks

41:17

it just looks like a pile of mush

41:20

I'm sure if I showed that to my kids

41:22

they'd be like what you know, what is

41:24

this? But for us back

41:26

then our brains spent a

41:28

lot more effort trying to fill in the

41:30

blanks and it looked at that at

41:32

that time it looked incredibly realistic of course

41:34

we look at it now and it

41:36

just doesn't look like anything. You mentioned Wolfenstein

41:38

3D there as well which um yeah.

41:40

Before you worked in the industry, you're working

41:42

at an auto shop. Is that correct?

41:44

I mean, we're using games as like every

41:46

hour, like, you know, outside of work

41:48

as a distraction. I mean, obviously that was

41:50

bit of a benchmark at the time.

41:53

So that was kind of the really insane

41:55

thing about the transition into the games

41:57

industry was at the time where I met

41:59

John Carmack and was invited to go

42:01

to work for it. I was working at

42:03

an auto repair shop and they specialized

42:05

in Volkswagen's and, you know, German and Swedish

42:07

and Evolvos and this kind of thing. I

42:11

had in that shop a 286

42:13

that I had asked the shop

42:15

to purchase for the sake of

42:17

being able to create invoices and

42:19

track work and things like that.

42:21

And I had also said to

42:23

the guys running the shop that

42:26

I would build an inventory management

42:28

system for them. And so I

42:30

began working on this thing that

42:32

was going to link up with

42:34

the sort of Volkswagen master catalog

42:37

parts system and then keep track of

42:39

what was in the shop and then

42:41

make a note to order stuff in

42:43

order to keep stuff on the shelves

42:45

that was needed there. So

42:47

when I went down to the swap meet

42:49

to buy this 286, the guy

42:52

that sold the computer said, here's this

42:54

new hot thing called Wolfenstein. And so when

42:56

I brought this computer back to the

42:58

shop, I plugged that in and I might,

43:00

you know, It blew my mind. Just

43:02

the fact that it was so immersive and

43:04

amazing. Of course, as we said, I'd

43:06

been playing a variety of other games up

43:09

to that point. But until that point,

43:11

we really hadn't had that sort of immersive

43:13

running around inside of an environment type

43:15

of game to play. So I remember

43:17

on my lunch break, I'd kind of split my time

43:19

between working on this inventory control program

43:21

and playing Wolfenstein, you know, whenever anybody came

43:23

over and looked to see what I was

43:25

doing, I switched back to the, you know,

43:27

to the work. But if there was no

43:29

one there, I was playing Wolfenstein.

43:31

And then lo and behold, it

43:33

turns out that the guy living in

43:35

my apartment complex was the guy

43:37

that had made this game. So

43:40

as soon as I met him and

43:42

understood where he what he was, it

43:44

was quite a shock. It was like, wait a

43:46

second, you're the guy that's the game that I'm

43:48

playing, you know, they're there at work. So

43:51

that felt like a really small world

43:53

at that moment. So John Carmichael was

43:55

one of your neighbors then, was he?

43:57

Yeah. So I lived in an apartment

43:59

complex and a friend of mine named

44:01

Chris Chester lived in that complex as

44:03

well. And he and his partner were

44:05

John's direct next door neighbor. They, you

44:07

know, their doors were right next to

44:09

each other. I lived in another part

44:12

of the compound but when I would

44:14

go to visit Chris then John would

44:16

often be somewhere in the vicinity and

44:18

of course they became curious about him

44:20

as a neighbor immediately because he would

44:22

come home driving in a Ferrari. And

44:25

I remember early on we were speculating,

44:27

what is this guy? Why does he drive

44:29

a Ferrari? But he's living in this

44:31

relatively low rent apartment complex, which seemed kind

44:33

of odd. And his

44:35

license plate at that

44:37

time said IDTEK. And

44:41

so we thought, well, maybe he's a

44:43

PI because he's driving this car that

44:45

looks very much like the one that

44:47

Magnum PI drove in the TV show.

44:51

We speculate anyway, we finally met

44:53

him and found out that no,

44:55

he's in fact running a game

44:57

company. And then he

44:59

began inviting us up to the office

45:02

to test the games and then

45:04

eventually he asked me to join full

45:06

time. That's always kind of a

45:08

thing with early successful video game developers

45:10

buying a flashy car with so

45:12

many stories of people doing that and

45:14

they usually crash them as well. Quite

45:18

early on. I

45:21

was wondering what the

45:23

setup was like then. What

45:26

was the kind of place like?

45:28

Was it a basement that people were

45:30

just all kind of working in

45:32

or was it an office? It was

45:34

on the sixth floor of I

45:36

guess a 10 or so story tall

45:38

building in Mesquite, Texas, which is

45:40

one of the only office buildings with

45:42

any height to it at that

45:44

time. And Mesquite, Texas,

45:46

you know when you drive in there,

45:49

there's a big sign that says welcome

45:51

to the rodeo capital of the world

45:53

So I mean it's not at that

45:55

time. It wasn't known for high tech.

45:57

It was known for cowboys and rodeos

45:59

and The office itself was just as

46:01

nondescript as you could imagine, but you

46:04

know glass You know looking out to

46:06

the world outside to the freeway to

46:08

the shopping mall across the road You

46:10

know it was a typical kind of

46:13

office environment, nothing really special about

46:15

it. But, you know, in

46:17

the cubicles were the, at that

46:19

time, you know, six, seven,

46:21

eight guys that were working on

46:23

various, you know, programming or

46:25

level design. And, you know,

46:27

it was sort of a, it

46:30

had a kind of boys, you know,

46:32

dorm room kind of feel to it,

46:34

you know, a little bit disheveled, little

46:36

bits of tech and sound cards and

46:38

whatnot, you know, strewn about. I mean,

46:41

it wasn't kept incredibly, you

46:43

know, clean. But

46:45

it wasn't, you know, empty pizza boxes

46:47

everywhere either. You know, it was sort of

46:49

a place that had a you felt

46:51

there was a purpose and that they were

46:53

they were at a purpose, right, to

46:55

get stuff done. So it was a place

46:57

when you walked in, everybody felt very

46:59

focused. And they seemed that they had a

47:02

mission and that the place itself was

47:04

sort of built for that mission. You joined

47:06

when doom was kind of starting. And

47:09

Was it established by the time

47:11

you joined? When I started

47:13

beta testing, I was testing on

47:15

DOOM. DOOM was already heading

47:17

towards the end of production. And

47:20

when I was hired, I was

47:22

hired as DOOM was launching. And

47:25

then initially, I was doing tech

47:27

support. So you would call and

47:29

we'd say, you know, thank you

47:31

for calling id software. You know,

47:33

what's the problem? And then we

47:35

would diagnose problems related to DOOM.

47:37

And then That

47:39

became, it became clear that the

47:41

two of us who were doing that,

47:43

myself and Sean Green, were

47:46

not going to be sufficient manpower for

47:48

the amount of success that the game

47:50

was experiencing. And so that

47:52

was eventually outsourced, but we

47:54

were moved. He transitioned into doing

47:56

programming and I transitioned into

47:58

doing level design. And so that

48:00

was around the start of

48:02

the production, the development on Doom

48:05

2, which is why I

48:07

ended up having, you know, Contributions

48:09

to level design in Doom 2.

48:11

Were you a fan of the

48:13

overall kind of heavy metal look of

48:15

it and you know, Adrian Carmack's

48:17

art style as well and Like

48:19

that kind of darkness around it.

48:21

Yeah, absolutely because when I was

48:23

younger I was what you would describe

48:25

as a goth when I was

48:27

in high school and I was

48:30

listening to music that very much

48:32

aligned with the aesthetic of what they

48:34

were doing in the game and

48:36

I was sort of Because I

48:38

was raised in a very strange

48:40

environment. On the one side was a

48:42

heavily religious, fundamentalist Christian

48:44

family, which is where my

48:46

half -sister lived and where I

48:48

spent my summer. So I

48:50

was being exposed to very

48:52

heavy religious, Christian religious indoctrination.

48:55

And on the other side, living with

48:57

my mom, she was, you know, what

48:59

you described as a liberal hippie,

49:01

you know, that side of the family

49:03

was pot smoking, you

49:06

know, creative, just

49:08

not exactly aligned with, right?

49:10

So I had one foot

49:12

in both of these interesting

49:14

camps. And as a result,

49:16

I had a fairly... I

49:19

don't know about cynical, but I had a

49:21

creative view on the world and I had a

49:23

creative view on things notions like hell, you

49:25

know, the philosophy of hell. And I

49:27

remember getting in trouble with the

49:29

religious side of the family because

49:31

the t -shirts that that we

49:33

wore as people working at id

49:35

would say things like go to

49:37

hell on the back and I

49:39

remember my sister's family getting mad

49:41

and I said to them but

49:43

you don't understand you're going down

49:45

there to kill the demons right

49:47

you're you're doing the Lord's work

49:49

um so but you know by

49:51

that time they already had seen where

49:54

I had gone culturally, which aligned

49:56

very, very much with the sort

49:59

of horror, the

50:01

sort of goth, dark, you know, aesthetic,

50:03

that type of art, that type of

50:05

movie. So, I mean, they

50:07

weren't surprised, but I wasn't invited over

50:09

there very much more after that. I

50:12

love that next time I play Doom, I'm going

50:14

to think I'm doing the Lord's work. That's going to

50:16

stick with me that is. Well, you are. I

50:19

mean, this is always the thing that kind of made

50:21

me laugh was the people who would be, you

50:23

know, sort of up in arms about the game. And

50:25

you'd say, but you're, you're fighting the demons. Like

50:27

you are killing those guys. What side

50:29

does that put you on? And that

50:31

obviously Doom was a big set of PCs

50:33

at the time. I remember being, I

50:35

was a Commodore Amiga user back then. a

50:37

lot of friends that owned them and

50:39

then suddenly won by. I won the All

50:41

-Star buying PCs when Doom came out. But

50:43

there were some console ports as well.

50:46

I know in particular, id Software

50:48

put quite a lot of effort into the

50:50

console port of Doom to the Atari Jaguar,

50:52

which is generally considered one of the best

50:54

ports of Doom to a console of that

50:56

era. I mean, you got any memories of

50:58

that then and the amount of effort that

51:00

went into getting it running on the Jaguar

51:03

and what did you think of that system? I

51:05

sat one office over from

51:07

John and so oftentimes he would

51:09

try to Invite me

51:11

into his his thinking as he

51:13

would think out loud Which you know,

51:15

he was looking for a sounding

51:17

board, but he might as well Have

51:20

been talking to the dog, you

51:22

know for a lot of stuff that

51:24

I didn't understand about what he

51:26

was saying I do remember that this

51:28

kit came in the development kit

51:30

and it was a it was a

51:32

fairly big piece of kit as

51:34

opposed to, you know, what the final

51:36

size of the production hardware was.

51:38

And I remember that was sat on

51:40

the pool table, if I remember

51:42

correctly. But I mean,

51:44

that was, I think, for

51:46

the most part, John by

51:48

himself doing that work. I

51:50

don't think that there was much involvement from

51:52

the rest of the team. There

51:54

may have been a few places

51:56

where we had to do simplification of

51:58

geometry in the levels, if I

52:00

remember correctly, but I don't

52:03

think that it really went beyond

52:05

that. That was pretty much

52:07

a one -man job that John

52:09

undertook to port that over. Yeah,

52:12

it was still very quickly as

52:14

well, which is really interesting. Yeah,

52:16

that's right. He got in there, did

52:19

it. In a few weeks or less

52:21

and then and then was done but

52:23

yeah i remember having the thing in

52:25

the office and i remember that we

52:27

would. The rest of us would play

52:29

through it looking for visual anomalies and

52:31

crashes and things like that as john

52:33

was working on it but you know

52:35

back then i mean that was one

52:37

of the really interesting things about working

52:39

in the presence of someone like john

52:41

was that. You know games

52:43

were still simple enough and he's

52:45

obviously brilliant enough Was then instilled

52:47

is But but the technology at

52:50

that time was still simple enough

52:52

and game production was simple enough

52:54

that you could have this sort

52:56

of one -man do -it -all machine

52:58

who could just Go and do

53:00

a complete port job like that

53:02

by himself or could write an

53:04

entire rendering engine by himself Or

53:06

could rewrite someone else's work that

53:08

had taken them months In

53:10

a night by himself and of

53:12

course games have become so much more

53:14

complex now. I'm not sure that

53:16

he's still Capable I mean, I'm sure

53:19

he's capable. I'm just not sure

53:21

that the technology is is accessible in

53:23

that way any longer But back

53:25

then it was and it was pretty

53:27

interesting To witness that kind of

53:29

rapid development of technology that he was

53:31

able to do I have seen

53:33

some videos on YouTube of the id

53:35

offices in that era. And it

53:38

looked like multiplayer death matches were quite

53:40

a common theme on evenings and

53:42

weekends. I mean, did you get involved

53:44

in many multiplayer matches? And how

53:46

good did you get at the games

53:48

compared to Mero? That

53:50

was the really crazy thing

53:52

about about the work ethic combined

53:54

with the types of products

53:57

that we were making was that,

53:59

you know, we would oftentimes

54:01

be in the office for 12,

54:03

14, 16 hours a day. And

54:05

that was a non -stop Monday through

54:08

Friday kind of thing, especially

54:10

working around John Carmack.

54:12

I mean, he's really

54:14

just a work machine,

54:16

right? So

54:18

he inspired in the rest of the team

54:20

a similar sort of like, you got to

54:23

be in the office all the time. But

54:25

the thing that I think a lot of

54:27

people don't understand was that we might have

54:29

had, you know, in a given day, six

54:31

hours or eight hours of focused work producing

54:33

level content or creating sound effects or whatever

54:35

it was that people were doing. But

54:38

the rest of the eight hours

54:40

in a 16 hour day was spent

54:42

playing deathmatch. And there was a

54:44

huge, huge, huge amount of time spent

54:46

playing the games as we were

54:48

developing them. And I think that, you

54:51

know, I remember there were times where

54:53

people like John Carmack might have felt a

54:55

little bit of frustration that the office

54:57

often descended into these giant deathmatch. you know,

55:00

just big long free -for -alls that went on for

55:02

hours. But I

55:04

think that one of the benefits from

55:06

that was that these maps that

55:08

we worked on got incredibly well -tuned,

55:10

as did a lot of the mechanics

55:12

for the weapons and the sounds

55:14

that were triggered as you moved around

55:16

the maps. And just a lot

55:18

of the notions of like what Deathmatch

55:20

was and what made Deathmatch fun

55:22

and interesting came out of this constant,

55:24

constant, constant. playing and iterating and

55:26

playing and iterating. And I

55:28

think that's why when those games were

55:30

released, the deathmatch element of them

55:32

felt so fun. It felt so polished

55:35

was because huge amounts of time

55:37

were devoted to playing and iterating while

55:39

we were developing. Well,

55:41

obviously, Wolfenstein 3D and then Doom

55:43

even more so were massive hits. What

55:46

are your memories of Quake when

55:48

that was in development and was there

55:50

was a big pressure? to deliver

55:52

again and have like a third hit.

55:54

At the point where we started

55:56

work on Quake, I guess

55:58

that we understood, like everyone in

56:00

the office kind of understood

56:02

that we were now within some

56:04

realm of, you know, developer

56:06

celebrity, I guess you could say.

56:10

And that there were expectations and that

56:12

there was pressure and that there

56:14

were, you know, that there was an

56:16

expectation of releasing something that would

56:18

achieve a certain level. of

56:20

technological advance and quality

56:23

and things like that.

56:25

But it was... I

56:27

remember that John took

56:29

me aside to start

56:31

work on the tools

56:33

for Quake, the level

56:36

editing stuff, and QC,

56:38

the scripting language prior

56:40

to, I think, two

56:43

being complete. And

56:45

I just remember that... I started

56:47

messing around in the tools and

56:49

he got the first iterations of

56:51

the renderer up and running and

56:53

you actually had a 3d space

56:55

with much more complex geometry and

56:58

of course geometry on top of

57:00

geometry through true 3d, you know

57:02

six degree of freedom whole which

57:04

the world at that point I

57:06

mean outside of tech demos or

57:08

rendering engines that were specific to

57:10

animation and things like that, you

57:12

know for running around with proper

57:14

physics and all that didn't really

57:16

exist. And I just remember that

57:19

as we were building in the

57:21

early tools, you already knew that

57:23

this was going to come out

57:25

and be leaps ahead of anything

57:27

else that was out there. There

57:29

was an awareness of, you know,

57:31

competition from Epic that, you know,

57:34

that, you know, Sweeney

57:37

was sort of John's

57:39

evil twin. I don't

57:41

say evil like that. I just mean,

57:43

we understood from the id office that there

57:45

was John had

57:47

a sort of technological doppelganger, somebody who

57:49

could probably keep up with him

57:51

and produce another engine that could keep

57:54

pace with or even best whatever

57:56

was happening in our office. But at

57:58

the moment quite began development, we

58:00

had this sense that, hey, we're in

58:02

the lead and something really fantastic

58:04

is going to form from what's being

58:07

done here. And once

58:09

the tools were put into the hands of everyone

58:11

else in the office, And as

58:13

the tools evolved as we were developing,

58:15

it was just every day that someone

58:17

would take you aside and be like,

58:19

cool, come look at this. Come look

58:21

at how these skyboxes work. Look at

58:24

how the particles do this. Look at

58:26

how the doors and this. I mean,

58:28

it was just, look at how the

58:30

AI, the creatures, look at the knock

58:32

on effects of physics, exploding barrels, plus

58:34

creatures, plus, right? And it

58:36

was just this constant kind of

58:38

like... Um, just wow, you know,

58:40

we, we, you felt it just,

58:42

wow, this is really great. We're

58:44

building something that the world has

58:46

never seen before. Um,

58:49

and I think that took a lot of

58:51

the pressure off to, to, um, answer

58:53

your question during the development of Quake one,

58:55

as I recall, it went fast. It

58:57

went fun. Um, you know,

58:59

there, there were bits of it

59:01

that were kind of. foggy

59:04

you know what was the story like what

59:06

was going on but it didn't matter because

59:08

we had rocket launchers and we had monsters

59:10

to blow up and we had really beautiful

59:13

environments in which to do it and that

59:15

at the time felt like it was enough

59:17

i remember the involvement of nine inch nails

59:19

as well. What was

59:21

that like them being involved with quake

59:23

and also later on you had nine

59:25

inch nails involved with. um alice as

59:27

well yeah that was cool i mean

59:30

they they sent a fax i think

59:32

it was a fax to the office

59:34

at one point so they were going

59:36

to be doing a show in dalis

59:38

um and invited us to that so

59:40

at that time i was already a

59:42

huge fan um john was as well

59:45

and um we would listen to their

59:47

music all the time before the invitation

59:49

um so being invited by them was

59:51

like Again, it was like one of

59:53

those moments of like, are you kidding? This is so

59:55

amazing. You know, we love these guys so much. And

59:58

we met with Trent, met,

1:00:00

you know, Vrenna met the rest of

1:00:02

the band and we hit it off.

1:00:05

They proposed almost immediately that they wanted

1:00:07

to find a way to collaborate. And

1:00:10

so there was the usual sort

1:00:12

of you know, wrestling match between

1:00:14

the lawyers and the biz managers

1:00:16

and things like that to sort

1:00:18

something out. But once the deal

1:00:20

was sorted out, yeah,

1:00:22

I mean, it began

1:00:25

a process of developing the

1:00:27

game alongside them creating

1:00:29

sound effects and music. And

1:00:32

it was just really cool. I mean, it was

1:00:34

like they were fully on board for that project, for

1:00:36

the duration of the project. I was

1:00:38

flying down to New Orleans every couple of

1:00:40

weeks to work with them directly and bring back

1:00:42

hard drives full of music and sound effects

1:00:44

and all kinds of cool stuff. And

1:00:46

then integrating that stuff into the game. So

1:00:48

it was really a lot of fun. They

1:00:51

put a lot of passion into it. There

1:00:53

was a lot of humor during the development of a

1:00:55

lot of the stuff that they did. And

1:00:58

for me personally, it was a lot

1:01:00

of fun. I was the conduit between what

1:01:02

was being done in New Orleans and then

1:01:04

also I was the one responsible for integrating

1:01:07

all the sounds and all the music and

1:01:09

stuff into the game. So

1:01:11

I had a very hands -on with

1:01:13

Trent and the guys and also

1:01:15

with the tech and also building

1:01:17

the levels around what was coming

1:01:19

back from them. So that was

1:01:21

a lot of fun. Did that

1:01:23

really help with the connection with

1:01:26

Alice as well? Well, by the

1:01:28

time it... I went on to

1:01:30

create Alice. Yeah, I mean, I

1:01:32

was still hanging out with the

1:01:34

guys from Marilyn Manson and I

1:01:36

was still hanging out with Chris

1:01:38

Verena. And it was actually Manson

1:01:41

who I was visiting in Los

1:01:43

Angeles at one point that I

1:01:45

was talking to about game concepts.

1:01:48

And I believe he was the

1:01:50

one that said someone should do

1:01:52

an Alice in Wonderland game. And,

1:01:54

you know, he and I also

1:01:56

often talk about alchemy, which

1:01:58

ended up being a big piece

1:02:00

of what's contained in the Alice games.

1:02:03

And I kind of brushed

1:02:06

it off. And then I

1:02:08

went back to to Redwood

1:02:10

Shores, I went back to

1:02:12

San Francisco. And I remember

1:02:14

driving in my car one day, and

1:02:16

this song came on, it was by

1:02:18

the Crystal Method, and it mentioned A

1:02:20

Land of Wonder. And it was something

1:02:22

about the vibe of that song. And

1:02:24

then thinking back to having these conversations

1:02:26

with Manson about Because we would

1:02:28

talk about a lot of different properties and

1:02:30

ideas for games. You

1:02:32

know, Alice wasn't the only thing that

1:02:34

had come up in our conversations, but

1:02:36

I didn't really see it when he

1:02:38

mentioned it until I was in the

1:02:40

car and I heard that song. And

1:02:42

then it all kind of fell into

1:02:44

place, this vibe, the style and

1:02:47

everything. And I got super excited. It

1:02:49

was like I'd been hit by a

1:02:51

bolt of lightning like, oh. I see

1:02:53

it now, you know, I get how

1:02:55

this could work. And

1:02:57

I rushed back and started work

1:02:59

on it. So, yeah, I

1:03:01

mean, there was throughout all of

1:03:03

that, there was a through

1:03:05

line from Id and having met

1:03:07

the Nine Inch Nails guys

1:03:10

and developed a relationship with Manson

1:03:12

to these conversations that I

1:03:14

would have with him about games

1:03:16

and met mystical stuff and

1:03:18

all this and psychology that then

1:03:20

led into. this sudden

1:03:22

formation in my head of like what

1:03:24

this whole product could be. Well, I

1:03:26

mean, going back to it, I mean,

1:03:28

when, you know, Quake came out was

1:03:30

a massive hit. Quake 2 was in

1:03:33

development. And then in 1998, you left

1:03:35

id Software. And I've read

1:03:37

various different stories about this online. I

1:03:39

mean, what kind of happened from

1:03:41

your perspective? I don't know.

1:03:43

I got fired. And to

1:03:45

this day, I'm not even sure exactly

1:03:47

how it happened. I'm

1:03:50

sure you've seen some

1:03:52

of the theories that have

1:03:54

been floated by various

1:03:56

other former id guys. But

1:03:59

I was taken

1:04:01

aside one day

1:04:03

during the initial

1:04:05

conceptual work for

1:04:07

Quake 3. And

1:04:11

so I had been doing the conceptual work that

1:04:13

I'd been asked to do. We'd

1:04:15

finished up Quake. And

1:04:18

and so there was these series

1:04:20

of sort of I don't know what

1:04:22

to call them They were sort

1:04:24

of conceptual tests, you know, hey American

1:04:26

go build some architecture Trying to

1:04:28

come up with various ideas for doors

1:04:30

and for levels and all this

1:04:32

kind of stuff And I was doing

1:04:35

that and I felt it was

1:04:37

kind of odd because it was like

1:04:39

I hadn't I'd never really been

1:04:41

tasked with tests in the past if

1:04:43

you if you know or with or

1:04:46

with sort of conceptual challenges, you

1:04:48

know, it had normally just been, here's

1:04:50

a texture set, here's a theme,

1:04:53

go do what you do, right? And

1:04:56

at that time, I mean,

1:04:58

and even today, if you go and you look at

1:05:00

what people talk about when they talk about the levels

1:05:02

that I designed, I think I was pretty good at

1:05:04

level design, I was fast. And

1:05:07

I thought I had a fairly

1:05:09

consistent style and a style that

1:05:11

people liked. I thought

1:05:13

that my levels were imminently playable.

1:05:16

If you look at the rankings that people

1:05:18

talk about, you know, which are their favorite

1:05:20

deathmatch maps, a lot of times, you know,

1:05:22

mine are up there. And also just

1:05:24

in terms of the breadth of the content

1:05:26

that I contributed. So if you look at the

1:05:28

number of maps that I did for Doom

1:05:30

II or for Quake or for Quake II, in

1:05:32

addition to the amount of work that I

1:05:34

put into integration of sound effects and music and

1:05:36

the work that I did down there, developing

1:05:38

sound effects and all that kind of stuff. Like,

1:05:41

I didn't feel like I slacked. So,

1:05:43

um, so it was a little bit, and

1:05:45

I also didn't feel like there should have

1:05:47

been any question about like, what does this

1:05:49

guy do? Like, I'm, you know, it was

1:05:51

pretty obvious what I, what I was capable

1:05:54

of doing. So I felt, I felt it

1:05:56

was a little bit odd that I was

1:05:58

being tasked with things that kind of felt

1:06:00

like, Hey, we'd like to test you for

1:06:02

your, your abilities and okay. Anyway,

1:06:04

apparently I failed that test

1:06:06

because at one point I

1:06:08

got called into the art

1:06:10

room where John Carmack was

1:06:12

sat with Adrian Carmack and

1:06:14

Kevin Cloud and they said,

1:06:16

we're letting you go. And

1:06:18

I remember asking why and they

1:06:21

gave a non -answer. It was sort

1:06:23

of like it's just not working anymore,

1:06:25

you know, this sort of

1:06:27

thing and that was it. They didn't

1:06:29

want to discuss it. They didn't want

1:06:31

to reconsider it. Um, I

1:06:33

remember I started crying, uh, because it

1:06:35

was a shock. I mean, like it

1:06:37

was an absolute emotional shock to come

1:06:39

into work one day, feel that everything

1:06:42

was relatively normal and that I had

1:06:44

been doing good work. And then to

1:06:46

be told, but it was like having

1:06:48

your world turned upside down, right? Totally

1:06:51

out of the blue, totally unexpected. Um,

1:06:53

then obviously, I mean, it wasn't a kind

1:06:55

of situation where you've got a company that's

1:06:58

in distress or they're trying to save money

1:07:00

or anything like that, you know, and also

1:07:02

it wasn't a, hey, we're warning you, uh,

1:07:04

you need to straighten out XYZ or we're

1:07:06

going to fire you. There's none of that.

1:07:08

It was just one day, everything's normal. And

1:07:10

then one day they walk in there and

1:07:12

they go, you're done. You're fired. Um,

1:07:16

so again, uh, I don't know.

1:07:18

I don't know what happened. I still don't know

1:07:20

to this day what happened. But

1:07:22

I'll say that

1:07:25

on the drive home,

1:07:28

it was like this miraculous

1:07:30

transformation. As I was driving

1:07:32

back home from being fired,

1:07:34

I went from having this

1:07:36

sort of sense of dread

1:07:38

and breaking down to suddenly

1:07:41

thinking, oh my god, I'm

1:07:43

free. I don't

1:07:45

have to go there and spend 16

1:07:47

hours a day under all this tremendous pressure.

1:07:50

And I feel like I was like, oh,

1:07:52

man, I actually feel like maybe I'm a

1:07:54

bit burnt out of all of this, and

1:07:56

I don't need to do that anymore. And

1:07:58

I'm really glad to be free of it.

1:08:00

So I had an almost immediate realization just

1:08:03

on the drive home that I was glad

1:08:05

to be free from it. And

1:08:08

looking back, I'm exceptionally happy that

1:08:10

they fired me. Like I could not

1:08:12

be happier because, you know, all

1:08:15

the events that took place after that

1:08:17

were fantastic all the way up

1:08:19

to where I am today, you know,

1:08:21

where I'm sitting today. I

1:08:23

mark John Carmack as

1:08:25

being one of the people

1:08:27

most influential in my

1:08:29

life and turning me towards

1:08:31

something creative and interesting

1:08:33

and wonderful. And I mark

1:08:35

being fired from that phase in my

1:08:37

life as opening the door to allow me

1:08:40

to leave Texas and become a citizen

1:08:42

of the world and make my own products.

1:08:46

It's one of the reasons why I don't question it

1:08:48

too much and I'm not that bothered by it. Yeah,

1:08:51

sounds like it might have been a

1:08:53

bit of a blessing in disguise. It

1:08:55

turns out that most things are. It's

1:08:57

one of my favorite Chinese parables is

1:08:59

this one about the farmer and, you

1:09:01

know, his son goes to ride

1:09:03

a horse and breaks his leg and he thinks like,

1:09:05

oh, this is terrible. The son has broken his

1:09:07

leg. And then the farmer says, let's wait and see,

1:09:09

you know, we don't know if this is good

1:09:11

or bad. And the next day, the army comes through

1:09:13

and starts conscripting all the young men to go

1:09:15

off to war. And it's like, oh, look, breaking the

1:09:17

leg was a good thing, right? But then, of

1:09:19

course, the farmer goes, let's wait and see. We don't

1:09:22

know yet. And, you know, the story just goes

1:09:24

on and on and on like that. And that really

1:09:26

is how life is. Well, talking

1:09:28

of change, you kind of went

1:09:30

and joined EA. So before

1:09:32

Alice, I was wondering what you were

1:09:34

working on there. So when I

1:09:36

got hired to EI, I was actually

1:09:38

working at the Maxis office in

1:09:40

Walnut Creek, and I was going to

1:09:42

work inside the same building where

1:09:44

Will Wright and his team were developing

1:09:46

the Sims. And so

1:09:48

when I first got to that

1:09:50

office, they would

1:09:52

invite me into the

1:09:54

design meetings for the

1:09:56

Sims, but I was... I

1:09:59

was a bad influence, I guess.

1:10:02

Will and I got along really well. I liked

1:10:04

him a lot, and he liked me. But

1:10:07

the team around him, a lot of them

1:10:09

didn't like me very much. So when the

1:10:11

Sims pee on themselves, because they can't get

1:10:13

access to a bathroom, those

1:10:16

were the kind of ideas that I would

1:10:18

suggest in those meetings, right? Um,

1:10:20

they started work on a concept for

1:10:22

SIM Mars. And I think that was the

1:10:24

kind of straw that broke the camel's

1:10:26

back because at one point they were talking

1:10:28

about balancing out, you know, as you're

1:10:30

going to Mars and you have to use

1:10:33

resources and you've got people there. But

1:10:35

if they die, it lowers morale. I

1:10:37

remember saying something like, well, wait a second, I've

1:10:39

got a backhoe and I can dig holes, right?

1:10:41

Yeah. And if I take these

1:10:43

guys far enough away from the, the. the

1:10:45

base and put them in a hole. The

1:10:48

other guys won't know, right? You know, they

1:10:50

would say, okay, you know, Americans not

1:10:52

invited to the design meetings anymore because

1:10:54

he keeps coming up with these weird

1:10:57

ideas. Of course, you know,

1:10:59

sometimes they made it in and they

1:11:01

were kind of funny, but and that

1:11:03

was that was initially and then there

1:11:05

was a whole period of time where

1:11:07

they hooked me up with or I

1:11:09

got hooked up actually. Yeah,

1:11:11

as I was working there, I also went

1:11:13

off and was working with Michael Crichton on

1:11:15

a thing that was eventually got called Timeline,

1:11:17

which got made into a book and a

1:11:19

movie and a game. And

1:11:22

that was also in collaboration with

1:11:24

EA, but that was a little bit

1:11:26

later. So there was

1:11:28

a period of time working with

1:11:30

Crichton and his team on

1:11:32

that, which led into working at

1:11:34

the Walnut Creek office with

1:11:37

Will. And then at some point,

1:11:39

somebody from the from the big office,

1:11:41

the head office came over and said,

1:11:43

hey, we think you're kind of, you

1:11:45

know, marking time here. Do you want

1:11:47

to work on a project of your

1:11:49

own? And that was the

1:11:51

that was the invitation to do

1:11:53

Alice. And so

1:11:55

at that time, you know, I kind

1:11:57

of searched around for some fairly, you

1:11:59

know, lengthy period of time trying to

1:12:01

figure out what that would be until

1:12:03

I finally hit on the concept for

1:12:05

Alice, at which point they said, Right.

1:12:07

Go ahead and do that. That's really

1:12:09

interesting that you were just given that

1:12:11

kind of independence at one point and

1:12:13

like told to go with a project.

1:12:15

Absolutely crazy. I don't know

1:12:17

what star I was born under

1:12:19

that would allow such weird things to

1:12:22

happen. I'm incredibly thankful to Rich

1:12:24

Hilleman who was the VP at

1:12:26

EA and the head office there

1:12:28

that opened up that opportunity to me.

1:12:31

I don't know what I did to

1:12:33

deserve that nor do I think

1:12:35

a lot of times that I would

1:12:38

have that I have the skill

1:12:40

set to justify that sort of decision

1:12:42

being made around me but you

1:12:44

know they seem to have faith in

1:12:46

the concept and they hooked me

1:12:48

up with a really good uh

1:12:50

executive producer named RJ Berg who

1:12:52

you know went on to become one

1:12:54

of my best friends and my

1:12:56

writing partner um you know he he

1:12:59

kind of completed the other half

1:13:01

of the equation so i brought you

1:13:03

know the core concept and the

1:13:05

kind of the dark gothic you know

1:13:07

characters and all of this and

1:13:09

he brought the the narrative the the

1:13:11

sort of dialogue writing to sell

1:13:14

the story that I wanted to tell,

1:13:16

right? And then

1:13:18

we actually lucked into being able to

1:13:20

work with these guys in Texas that

1:13:22

I'd worked with alongside at ID, at

1:13:25

Rogue Software, at Rogue

1:13:27

Entertainment, and again. We

1:13:29

were really lucky there because they

1:13:31

were really good with the tools with

1:13:33

the quake engine tools RJ was

1:13:35

really good with dialogue and you know,

1:13:37

I brought this sort of concept

1:13:39

a vision and All of us together

1:13:41

managed to pull off something pretty

1:13:44

pretty cool But why we were given

1:13:46

that opportunity what why EA took

1:13:48

that chance on us. I haven't I

1:13:50

really have no idea I think

1:13:52

these days, you know, they they don't

1:13:54

take those kinds of risks so

1:13:56

much anymore But back then,

1:13:58

we just happened to be in the

1:14:01

right place at the right time. And

1:14:03

I was going to say that a

1:14:05

quake engine connection must have really helped,

1:14:07

you know, with your past experience on

1:14:09

it, also the team, but then changing

1:14:11

it to add different elements like platforming

1:14:13

and puzzling there must have been quite

1:14:15

good fun using that engine in a

1:14:17

different way. It was one of

1:14:19

the things that I definitely came

1:14:21

away from id feeling like I thought

1:14:23

that the engines were being underutilized

1:14:25

by the guys at id for what

1:14:27

they could do. And of course,

1:14:29

during that same period of time, we

1:14:31

saw that the guys at valve,

1:14:34

you know, had done half life and

1:14:36

introduced really, you know, complex storytelling

1:14:38

and intricate, you know, interactions with the

1:14:40

environment and things like that to

1:14:42

the 3d gaming space. And that was

1:14:44

very much in line with what

1:14:46

I thought while I was id that

1:14:48

that team should be doing, right?

1:14:50

And to be honest, like a lot

1:14:52

of the guys that did were

1:14:54

very much in the sort of story

1:14:56

and game is about as useful

1:14:58

as story and pornography, right? That was

1:15:00

that was a thought that existed

1:15:02

at id in a very strong fashion.

1:15:05

And so You know, that was another one

1:15:07

of the reasons why when I was let

1:15:09

go, I felt it kind of like freedom

1:15:11

that, oh, hey, not being there means I

1:15:13

have the opportunity to do some of the

1:15:15

things that I think could be done with

1:15:17

this tech. And of course, what EA handed

1:15:19

me was that opportunity on a golden platter.

1:15:21

What were the reactions to doing a horror

1:15:23

game? Because obviously in Alice in Wonderland, it's,

1:15:25

you know. thought of as a kid's kind

1:15:27

of fairy tale. And obviously the game

1:15:29

kind of focuses around her experiences, you

1:15:31

know, trauma, mental state as well. And the

1:15:34

game actually got an M rating in

1:15:36

the end, too. So, I mean, was there

1:15:38

any kind of feedback on that, whereas

1:15:40

anyone at EA worried about the concept being

1:15:42

a bit too risky? Oh,

1:15:44

sure. I mean, famously, at

1:15:47

that time, the CEO of EA held

1:15:49

up the Alice game when it was finished

1:15:51

and said, this is not the kind

1:15:53

of thing we're going to be known for

1:15:55

making, which pretty ironic, given where they

1:15:57

eventually went with violence in the games, being

1:16:00

pretty graphic. But at

1:16:02

that time, I believe that

1:16:04

Alice and Clive Barker's

1:16:06

undying, they were neck and neck

1:16:08

for, I don't know which one was

1:16:11

the actual first M rated game that EA

1:16:13

ever produced. But what one of them

1:16:15

was and. There

1:16:17

was there was internal pushback for

1:16:19

sure and and market -wise I

1:16:21

remember that a lot of the

1:16:23

retailers didn't want to Carry the

1:16:25

box that had a cover where

1:16:27

she had a bloody warple blade

1:16:29

They demanded that EA remove the

1:16:31

blood from her and also to

1:16:33

switch the knife for the the

1:16:35

ice wand So I mean You

1:16:37

know though when you when you

1:16:39

go back now and you play

1:16:42

Alice you laugh at the idea

1:16:44

that that's an emirated game because

1:16:46

it's so tame right? It's

1:16:48

not a there's not a single human that

1:16:50

is that visibly dies in that game

1:16:52

You know you're only killing monsters and even

1:16:54

the blood that is in there is

1:16:56

very cartoonish right so I don't think that

1:16:58

if you were to make that game

1:17:00

as it is As it was then, if

1:17:02

you were to make it now, I

1:17:04

don't think that people would suggest that it

1:17:06

needs an M -rating. It doesn't come across

1:17:08

as an M -rated game. So obviously, you

1:17:10

know, morals and thoughts on that kind

1:17:12

of thing have shifted a lot, but back

1:17:14

then it was, it was pretty controversial. I

1:17:17

think having that kind of personality

1:17:19

and psychology in there was really interesting

1:17:21

compared to someone like the Doom

1:17:23

guy or, you know, the main character

1:17:25

in Quake that just goes through

1:17:27

killing, like having a personality. We see

1:17:29

a lot of that in games

1:17:32

now and We see a lot

1:17:34

more kind of reaction, but it was

1:17:36

one of the first type of games

1:17:38

that really, really pushed that, I think.

1:17:40

Yeah, it's a topic that's incredibly interesting

1:17:42

to me and it all kind of

1:17:44

stems from my past and, you know,

1:17:46

events that took place, you know, when

1:17:48

I was a child that then led

1:17:50

me to be very interested in childhood

1:17:52

trauma and in psychology. I mean, that's

1:17:54

still the same thing that we're doing

1:17:56

these days with the plush toys, right?

1:17:59

And I'm glad to see that that

1:18:01

kind of stuff is being integrated

1:18:03

more into games, you know, these days.

1:18:05

I think that games have the

1:18:08

opportunity to have that kind of healing,

1:18:10

introspective approach to them. But yeah,

1:18:12

I think for a while

1:18:14

there, there just wasn't the... You

1:18:17

just didn't have the depth within

1:18:19

the games to really touch that

1:18:21

type of stuff. Obviously, when the

1:18:23

game was released it got very

1:18:25

good reviews and I did have

1:18:27

read for years, you know, about that

1:18:30

there's going to be a movie version of

1:18:32

Alice and, you know, there's rumors that,

1:18:34

you know, Wes Craven was connected to it.

1:18:36

I think Sarah Michelle Geller bought the

1:18:38

rights at some stage. I mean, do you

1:18:40

know what kind of happened there? Thanks.

1:18:42

It's kind of remained in development hell, it

1:18:44

seems, for many years. I guess the

1:18:46

problem with all of that was that around

1:18:48

the time that the game was being

1:18:50

released, there were some producers from Hollywood who

1:18:52

came up and they purchased the the

1:18:54

rights to the linear media. So, you know,

1:18:56

when you have a property like Alice,

1:18:58

you've got media rights that exist in two

1:19:00

spaces. One is the interactive media. So

1:19:02

that's going to be video games. And the

1:19:04

other one is going to be linear

1:19:06

media, which is going to be books, television

1:19:08

and film. So these guys

1:19:10

came up and convinced EA to

1:19:12

sell them the linear media

1:19:14

rights in perpetuity. So they just

1:19:16

lock, stock and barrel. This

1:19:18

company now owns. these rights. I

1:19:21

think there's some people at EA

1:19:23

these days that regret that, that I

1:19:25

think that they wish they had

1:19:28

maybe put some sort of a time

1:19:30

limit on the option for these

1:19:32

guys to work with the property, but

1:19:34

they own it outright. And

1:19:36

I think that with

1:19:38

every attempt to get

1:19:41

a movie off the

1:19:43

ground, what I've

1:19:45

seen is that the people who

1:19:47

own the rights um, seem not

1:19:49

to understand what it is that

1:19:51

the property is really about. Um,

1:19:53

and they don't understand who the

1:19:55

audience is. And that leads to

1:19:58

a disconnect between, uh, let's say

1:20:00

that, you know, there's somebody at

1:20:02

a studio that's considering that, oh,

1:20:04

I love American McGee's Alice. I

1:20:06

would like to see a movie

1:20:08

made of this. And then when,

1:20:10

when all is said and done

1:20:13

in this, this. You know yet

1:20:15

another presentation has been made for

1:20:17

what that might be alongside a

1:20:19

budget and you know a director

1:20:21

and it doesn't align with the

1:20:23

expectations of the person that's purchasing

1:20:25

or that's committing to fund this

1:20:28

thing getting made right so in

1:20:30

other words You if you know

1:20:32

what Alice is but then once

1:20:34

a pitch gets made It

1:20:36

feels like something completely different because

1:20:38

there's a romantic love interest or, you

1:20:40

know, some other elements in the

1:20:43

story have been gutted. You'll

1:20:45

say, but that's not what

1:20:47

I came here to buy today.

1:20:49

And I think that more

1:20:51

often than not, I've seen that

1:20:53

disconnect between what the product

1:20:55

actually is and at least the

1:20:57

story in the game and

1:20:59

what gets pitched. It. that

1:21:01

kind of makes things fall apart.

1:21:03

And that's happened multiple, multiple times

1:21:05

now. Yeah. There's been like, after

1:21:07

Alice, there's been lots of different

1:21:09

kind of stuff that was proposed

1:21:12

and stuff that was going to

1:21:14

come out and everything. And eventually

1:21:16

we saw Alice and Madness returns

1:21:18

as well. What was it like

1:21:20

kind of working again on the

1:21:22

brand and also being able to

1:21:24

get stuff out? Because I

1:21:26

can imagine with legal issues and stuff and

1:21:28

EA, it must have been quite up and

1:21:30

down for quite a while. So when we

1:21:32

worked on Alice Manus Returns, that was great.

1:21:34

I mean, working with EA was great. I

1:21:37

think it was John Rigatello, who he's

1:21:39

a big fan of Alice. And,

1:21:42

you know, he's been a supporter of mine

1:21:44

for a long time. He was the one that

1:21:46

said, right, green light this will let these

1:21:48

guys go and make another game. At that time,

1:21:50

I had moved out here to Shanghai, China,

1:21:52

and I had built an independent studio of my

1:21:54

own. And we had

1:21:56

released a game called Grim using

1:21:58

the Unreal Engine. And so

1:22:00

we had. experience under our belt

1:22:02

doing rapid production and fairly high

1:22:04

quality production. And

1:22:07

we were just kind of

1:22:09

ready to plug and play.

1:22:12

And so the experience

1:22:14

overall, working with EA, with

1:22:16

the team that we built up, all of that,

1:22:18

it was great. It was one of the most

1:22:20

fun projects that I've ever done in my life.

1:22:22

We of course had our moments, you

1:22:25

know, ups and downs here and

1:22:27

there. But I think

1:22:29

in general, EA

1:22:31

got what they set out

1:22:33

to get. We

1:22:35

converted their cash very efficiently

1:22:37

into a very big and beautiful

1:22:39

game. And I think that

1:22:41

for myself and for the team, we

1:22:43

got a lot of creative satisfaction. And

1:22:46

I met a lot of the

1:22:48

goals I had for the story I

1:22:50

wanted to tell. And I know

1:22:52

that we also achieved pretty interesting stuff

1:22:54

in terms of artistic presentation, in

1:22:56

terms of technological advancements that were made

1:22:58

inside of the engine, things like

1:23:00

that. I

1:23:02

think the main thing is if you go back and you

1:23:04

look at that game right now today and you'll see

1:23:06

that people are still playing it, it holds up really well.

1:23:09

Narrative, it holds up. The visuals

1:23:11

hold up. The gameplay a little bit, you

1:23:14

know, I think that's the one place people feel

1:23:16

it's a little bit shaky. But

1:23:18

other than that, you know, it

1:23:20

doesn't look like a sort of how

1:23:23

old is it now? 15

1:23:25

years. Yeah, it's 21. Yeah. So

1:23:28

I think we did okay, and I think we

1:23:30

had a lot of fun making it. Would you

1:23:32

ever like to revisit Alice and do another game

1:23:35

in the series? Not

1:23:37

particularly. I'm

1:23:40

sort of burnt out on

1:23:42

game development in general, and

1:23:44

I don't mean that from

1:23:46

like working with the team

1:23:48

stuff. I like development, I

1:23:51

like telling stories, but the...

1:23:53

the sort of corporate interaction,

1:23:55

the managing the money, the,

1:23:57

you know, managing a studio,

1:23:59

all that kind of stuff

1:24:01

is not particularly interesting to

1:24:03

me anymore. And then I

1:24:05

think also we're at a

1:24:07

different time in terms of,

1:24:10

I just think the

1:24:12

politics around um,

1:24:15

games, story and games,

1:24:17

uh, you know, the demands for

1:24:19

representation, things like this. I'm

1:24:21

too far out of touch

1:24:23

with it because I've been living

1:24:25

in China since 2004. So

1:24:27

we're, uh, no, sorry, 2000, um,

1:24:30

did I move here? Yeah. Yeah. 2004. Um,

1:24:33

so we're going on 21

1:24:35

years. Um, and

1:24:38

there's a lot of times I

1:24:40

just feel like I, I'm too,

1:24:42

um, How to put this, I

1:24:45

can be my own

1:24:47

worst enemy for not being

1:24:49

sufficiently in touch with

1:24:51

the sort of language of

1:24:54

Western culture, if that

1:24:56

makes sense. What are you

1:24:58

up to nowadays then

1:25:00

in China? So

1:25:02

we were making plush toys

1:25:04

a couple of years ago. I

1:25:08

guess it's been five. five years

1:25:10

ago or so, we launched a

1:25:12

plush toy brand and that was

1:25:14

off the back of the Patreon that

1:25:16

I was doing to try to

1:25:18

get a third Alice game made. And

1:25:21

at one point we decided to

1:25:23

make one of our Patreon rewards as

1:25:25

the rabbit that she's seen clutching

1:25:27

in the opening scene of the game.

1:25:30

It's this distressed white rabbit that

1:25:32

Alice holds. And so

1:25:34

we made a plush toy

1:25:36

of that and they just

1:25:38

Sold out they were just

1:25:40

gone, you know, and then

1:25:42

we made another series of

1:25:44

plush toys and those just

1:25:47

sold out and Suddenly I

1:25:49

started getting requests from people

1:25:51

who were saying You know

1:25:53

look can you do something

1:25:55

having to do with this

1:25:57

or that anxiety social anxiety

1:25:59

or medical issues or lgbt

1:26:01

culture or just culture in

1:26:04

general and we continued basically

1:26:06

taking requests for various designs

1:26:08

and came up with this

1:26:10

notion of crowd design so

1:26:12

that people could first request

1:26:14

a particular design and then

1:26:16

as that design was being

1:26:18

developed, it was the voice

1:26:21

of the crowd that guided

1:26:23

the development. And that's

1:26:25

done very well for the business, though,

1:26:27

in the last year, we've sort

1:26:29

of restructured and remodeled that because as

1:26:31

the brand became more popular and

1:26:33

as those voices became louder, they're also

1:26:35

started to become a fair degree

1:26:37

of, I don't know, discordance. You know,

1:26:39

there was, you sort of had

1:26:41

factions that would fight with each other

1:26:43

over what the proper design for

1:26:45

something ought to be. Well, American McGate's

1:26:48

been an absolute pleasure to talk

1:26:50

to you. Thank you so much for...

1:26:52

on and sharing some of your

1:26:54

memories. Really enjoyed the insights there as

1:26:56

well. Sounds like you're enjoying life now too. I know

1:26:58

you're talking about spending some time on the boat

1:27:00

before we started recording as well. So I'm glad everything's

1:27:02

going well for you out there and keep up

1:27:04

the good work. Thank you so much for coming on

1:27:06

and being our guest. Thank you

1:27:08

so much. It was great talking to the both of you. you

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