[Originally written in 1997, Rebelboatrocker unfortunately had their title cancelled by EA some months after this was written, but, having mutated into Gearbox Software with Randy Pitchford in charge, ended up doing the much-lauded "Opposing Force" add-on for "Half-Life", and are now (March 2001) working on the conversion and some original content for the Playstation 2 version of "Half-Life"..]

With an intriguing reputation as the 'loose cannons' of the Quake scene, Rebel Boat Rocker are perhaps the company you can least afford to take your eyes off. Formed from a number of 3D Realms employees, including some of the original "Duke Nukem 3D" team, their insistence that they were working on "Knight Rider 3D" had a lot of people foaming at the mouth with anticipation for a while. Of course, it wasn't true in the slightest. Doh. :)

In this interview with Randy Pitchford, lead level designer at RBR, we get to hear about his own personal views of game design, how he got started in the industry, why RBR was set up, and why their forthcoming title is going to be something very special. He also explains why they've kept kinda silent about it so far. Isn't it always the quiet ones you've got to worry about?

h0l: When did you realize you wanted to be a game designer?

RP: I make games because I love to play them. I want to do the impossible or experience what doesn't exist.  Every time I play a game I often think to myself, "That's cool, but THIS would be cooler."  The first game I "designed" was a text rpg game back in the early 80's that I wrote in BASIC on one of the cpm based machines my dad built.  I had spent countless hours playing the classic "Colossal Cave Adventure", the "Zork"s and early versions of "Hack".  I really liked the role playing and ability building traits of "Hack", but found the text room descriptions of "Zork" and "Adventure" more engrossing than the ANSI character generated rooms in "Hack".  So, my game had many interesting text descriptions of rooms coupled with character stat building and random encounters with monsters.  The biggest text adventure I made was about 150 rooms.  Soon, I got an 8086 with a CGA graphics card, so that was it for all text games for me.  Later came the Commodore computers.   It all seems like ancient history now, but my desire to make things newer and better hasn't diminished one bit.

h0l: Explain how you actually got from wanting to be a game designer to actually, umm, being one? :)

RP: I've done tons of things since I was a pup that have related to game design, from "Adventure Construction Set" games all the way through "DooM" levels, before I actually was paid to create.  I was finishing up a computer science degree in Los Angeles and spending pretty much all of my time with "DooM" and other first person action games, when it finally occurred to me that playing with games doesn't have to be just a hobby.

I looked around to see who was hiring and used all of my contacts I'd made since games went "on-line" and strangely ended up getting a gig with 3dRealms.  Here's what happened: I'd met George Broussard on Compuserve when we were seeded against each other in the semifinals of their national deathmatch tournament.  After I won the tourney, I continued to play George and Stephen Blackburn (also from 3dRealms) as they were good competition.  At E3 in Los Angeles we met and George invited me to a club with a bunch of the other 3dRealms guys.  After I went home at about 2am, I stayed up all night making a level in a copy of Build I had gotten that was an exact replica of the club we had gone to.  The next day, I took the map on a floppy to E3 and showed it to George and the other guys at the FormGen booth where Duke3d was being shown.  Soon, I expressed interest in working for them and dumped about a dozen or so of my classic DooM maps and a couple of Duke3d maps on him.

I was hired to work on the Prey team, but ended up doing the "Duke3d Atomic Edition" and "Shadow Warrior" first.  I quit to form Rebel Boat Rocker with Billy and Jason Zelsnack before Prey was able to rebuild itself after the Hipnotic team quit (eventually becoming Ritual.)

h0l: What's more important, the will to succeed or talent?

RP: You're asking the wrong guy.. I've had some successes but I wouldn't consider myself to have succeeded.. yet.   Certainly, though, most successful people have a lot of both talent and motivation.  I paid my way through college working as a professional magician.  In that gig, success was probably more weighted towards having the will to succeed as the most talented guys I used to work with would never end up on an ABC magic special.  In this industry, I'd say that talent is more valuable. There are tons of people who download QC and call themselves coders, or get a copy of Build and call themselves level designers.  It's exciting to see users giving themselves the ability to get into tweaking the games we make, but there's a reason why guys who get the paying gigs have gotten them.  The users with the most talent almost invariably end up developing professionally.

h0l: Name 6 games that have majorly influenced the way you look at 'the computer game' as a medium.And why they have.

RP: 1) "Colossal Cave Adventure":  The classic text work is the first game I ever played on a computer.  Luckily, it was rich enough to inspire me and captivate me as a gamer forever.  This game taught me that implied information is as valuable (sometimes more valuable) as actual information.  With just a few words of text here and there, "Colossal Cave" was able to create a richer, more visually stunning world than hundreds of high resolution games to follow it.

2) "Pong":  One of my friends had a television set that had pong built into it.  "Pong" was the first deathmatch game ever.  One on One and Head to Head, baby.  "Pong" teaches us that there's nothing like another human brain at the other end of the wire.

3) "Ultima":  This is the first game I ever purchased with money I earned myself.  The "Ultima" games taught me about challenge and reward in a statistical sense.  Garriott is cool..I thank him.

4) "Wolfenstein 3d":  This was bliss.  My best friend was actually better at Wolf3d than I was.  We'd go down to the local software shop once or twice a week and he would gather a crowd of people around him watching him play the game.  He was THAT good AND the game is THAT good.  Sure, there had been games with a first person perspective before, but Wolf3d taught us that 1st person and high-speed action belong together.  Wolf3d changed the gaming world.  It started a genre. It allowed Apogee the clout and dough to gather the team that would make Duke3d.  It introduced id software to the world.  It inspired the creation of an on-line gaming community that still thrives today.

5) "DooM":  The best word I can use to describe "DooM" is: SOLID.  "Doom" helped me understand the rules of balance and the importance of solidity in head to head combat.  So far, I believe the "Doom" years to have been the best and worst of my life.  One summer in 95' I spent nearly every hour of my life attached to my computer creating worlds in the nutty hours and destroying the on-line community over my modem when they were awake.  I lost a lot of weight and probably developed a little carpal tunnel syndrome.  I've never done any drugs or alcohol, but I'm pretty sure what "Doom" did to me was roughly similar to smoking crack.

6) RebelBoatRocker's Current Project:  I am currently in a state of bliss. I'm working with the best talent I could imagine.   We're using the most advanced technology that could possibly exist.  Collectively, we're pooling our combined experience in game playing and game development to deliver something really solid, really unique and really fun.

h0l: 'Cookies are the foundation stone on which Western society is founded' Discuss. 0:)

RP: I don't know about that.  Around here Coke, Deathmatch and Crisco parties are the foundations of our little society.

h0l: "Duke Nukem" has obviously become a major phenomenon, yet Duke himself is hardly a recognizable character like Mario. He's a caricature of violence, if anything. Why did this end up working so well?

RP: The third Duke game ("Duke Nukem 3d") was pretty good.   Also, the character that came through because of his voice makes us laugh when we play.  Duke I and II didn't have a voice and couldn't really compete technologically no one cared about the character back then.  I think that we (as in "the players") got lucky with Duke3d in that it was a rare collection of the right kind of talent at the right time.  Ken Silverman's Build engine was remarkable and Allen Blum's brilliant design with guys like Dirk Jones, James Storey and Chuck Jones doing the art for his and Levelord's maps was just one of those rare things that we (again, "we" as in the players) are all grateful happened.  I feel very lucky to have been able to work with those guys on the "Duke 3d Atomic Edition", and now with Dirk and James at Rebel Boat Rocker.  It's a shame most of the Duke team isn't together for the next couple of Duke games, but Allen's a great designer and since they're using Quake they don't need to worry about code as much.   We'll all play it, but I fear that Duke3d was a one of a kind thing.

h0l: Why was Rebelboatrocker set up?

RP: Two reasons:  Creative freedom and business sense.

Every person on this team has had more experience with games than any other thing in life, except maybe sleeping.  It may sound pretty pathetic, but it's what we love.  It's our passion.  As a result, we know 'The Right Thing' and are really enjoying making those decisions ourselves.

Also, as many development teams are figuring out, there's really no need for a middle man like 3dRealms anymore.  It's the publisher that's doing the marketing and distribution and the talent that's making the game. 3dRealms supplies office space and computers and some small benefits at a cost of more than half of the royalties from the game, but that stuff isn't so expensive as to make independent development prohibitive.

Since we've started, we've found that if you've got the talent you're no doubt better off fiscally and creatively doing it independently. Besides, I've always maintained that the greatest games ever were products of passion from small focused development teams, not giant production warehouses who are driven by numbers and market analysis.  If you look back on my list of most important games above, you'll find that each one of them was created as an endeavor of passion.

We're driven only to create what we want to play.  We're creating fun. After all, isn't that what games are about?

h0l: Why the 'Knight Rider' fascination at RBR? :)

RP: Ha!  That happened on accident.  Billy made a .plan update where he joked that his .project was "Knight Rider 3d".  That night, Landon and Brian read Billy's .plan and independently added to the joke with ample amounts of sarcasm in their .plan files almost legitimizing it as an actual project. We got some mail asking about it and decided to goof around for a couple of weeks on the web site with that concept.  In essence, the whole Knight Rider joke was a dodge.   We've been really quiet about what we're working on for a couple of reasons.  One, we're not going to be ready until Q4 '98 and an early hype machine just sucks.  I hate it when I really want a game that feels like it's never going to come out.  Take Prey, or Unreal, for example.  Both of those games have been hyped for at least two years and they both sound like something we'd like to try.  When I first heard about them I thought, "Wow, I want to play those games." But it feels like a constant teasing when the product's projected release keeps changing.  It sucks. We want it now.  The other reason we've been quiet so far is that we're really proud of some of the things we've developed and are developing and we really need to keep these innovations to ourselves.  After we've had a hit and are a little more secure I'll have no problem reinstating my philosophy that all information should be shared.  I respect guys like Carmack and Dave Taylor releasing source code and works in progress and such.  That kind of shared information only helps the community as a whole.

h0l: Explain why the new RBR title rules above all other first-person games. Is there a name for the game right now?

RP: It's a near future, military, sci-fi, action adventure.  We haven't mentioned the name of the game yet or talked about the plot at all.  We're working on some really cool stuff, though.  Just about every aspect of our game has evolved established concepts into a richer experience.  One thing we're really taking advantage of is the engine's ability to move polygons around or rotate them arbitrarily for practically no cost.  So, most of what you see in the game actually does something.  Also, Billy has earned himself a reputation as a lighting genius and he's really outdone himself with this one.  The rbr1 engine's lighting is really astounding and the dynamic lights and shadows he's invented are a brilliant innovation. As far as the game goes, we're treating the solo game very cinematically.  We're really putting the player into some intense and awe striking situations.  The deathmatch game is all about solidity, though.   We're all massive deathmatchers so expect a seriously balanced and intense multiplayer game.  I'm bringing back the hard core nature of the DooM][ ssg..no doubt about it.

As for "ruling above all other first-person games", that's a little loaded.  As a game addict, I'm going to play them all.  You're going to want to play our game, it's really cool.  But, if you're a true gamer, you better go out and pick up some of the Quake engine games that are coming out, too.  I've got friends working up in Seattle at Valve (Chuck Jones, Doug Wood) who are going to make sure that Half-Life is a fun romp.  And, our Ritual brothers here in Dallas are going to give us a really fun game with SiN.  So, don't expect one "ultimate game" that is the only one you'll want to play.  You'll want to play them all and you're really going to want to play ours.

h0l: Name a game that has been a big hit but has genuinely bored you.

RP: "Microsoft Flight Simulator".  When I got the original version that I played on my dad's first XT I thought the WWI dogfight was pretty cool, but poorly designed as a "game" goes.  MFS isn't even really a game.   I mean, there's slight challenge (mostly studying the manual) and there's really no integrated reward.  Yet, this baby is consistently on the top 15 sales charts for as long as I can remember.  Microsoft...oh well.

h0l: What work have you done on the new RBR game today? (or yesterday if you're answering this first thing in the morning, heh!)

RP: Well, yesterday I spent about 6 hours or so working on the entrance to a research facility I'm constructing.  I also spent a couple of hours building modular corridor pieces based on existing textures Brian and James had done.  Our poly budget is so high for this game that just about every surface feature that's larger than one inch in relief is going to be geometric detail and not texture detail.  It looks really sweet.  I also did some management stuff like contact a writer who wants to do our strategy guide, help prepare NDA's for a couple of future mappers and read some material from programmer applicants.  It was an average day of productivity.  Late that night we played some Quake2 and Red Alert then we decided to break into a little DooM][ deathmatch.

h0l: What do you want to say to all those wannabe designers out there?

RP: It's all about doing.  If there's something you want to make, go ahead and make it.  Program it, map it or paint it, but do it.  If you don't know how, learn.  And put it out there for the world to see.  If it's good, you'll get respect.  If it's really good, try to show it to design teams you're a fan of.  Pay attention to what's going on and get involved.  If you're patient and have the skills, you'll get somewhere.

There's other ways in, though.  Some of the larger companies do internships and such.  One of my colleagues, Brian Martel, started at Microprose while he was still in art school.  He got a chance to work on some of the all time greats like the original "Civilization" and "Gunship 2000".  He eventually became art director on a couple of projects there before moving on the 3dRealms.  Since we were such a great design team on Duke3d and Shadow Warrior we made the decision together to join up with Billy and Jason Zelsnack for Rebel Boat Rocker.  It was the best decision I ever made.

h0l: What's more important, the looks or the intelligence?

RP: I'm going to go with intelligence on that one.

Have you ever seen a game developer?  I look around my office...I look in the mirror.  I KNOW what a geek is.   I think we should all do the world a favor and take it upon ourselves to not expose our physical appearances to the world.  I don't want to insult my friends at Ion Storm for that ad they've been running.  Especially Tom Hall who's one of the coolest cats I know.  But creating an image isn't the same thing as an actual image, if you know what I mean.   If we were intended to be seen, we'd be in movies.

h0l: Finally, say a few words to the masses.

RP: May the Super Blower Cannon of life detonate where it feels best.  If you can't find a Super Blower Cannon, go ahead and use a BFG <g>

h0l: Thanks, guys!