How a Quake 3 Mod Team Turned Into a Successful Studio

Paul Williams writes "Develop Magazine has an interesting profile up looking at UK studio Splash Damage, charting its humble beginnings as a Quake 3 mod team through to its status as one of Britain's leading studios — it's currently developing a new game for Bethesda. Most interesting is the assertion by studio founder Paul Wedgwood that UK studios should shake off their low-rent reputation and start modeling their businesses on the likes of Valve, id, and the other envied American independents: 'We'd been to the US and seen companies like Ritual, Gearbox and id, and to us it seemed like the game development industry was seen as better in the US. People sat in cool chairs in cool offices surrounded by action figures — it was nothing like the UK's approach, which was more like a workhouse.'"

Comments

ETQW

[pak9rabid]

I'll have to give it to Splash Damage...they did an amazing job with Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (ETQW). I was a little skeptical about how it might turn out, seeing as how Splash Damage started off as a mod 'company', but I've been thoroughly impressed with their results. Their QA is what I'd expect from id software or even Blizzard. I definitely look forward to future titles from them.

Re:ETQW

[Colonel Korn]

I'll have to give it to Splash Damage...they did an amazing job with Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (ETQW). I was a little skeptical about how it might turn out, seeing as how Splash Damage started off as a mod 'company', but I've been thoroughly impressed with their results. Their QA is what I'd expect from id software or even Blizzard. I definitely look forward to future titles from them.

Blizzard games tend to ship with bugs. Don't get me wrong - they're way ahead of most developers in that respect, and bugs tend to be seldom encountered. Still, I think id manages to beat them handily when it comes to QA, so I'd reverse the order in which you mentioned id and Blizz.

Depends on the American Studio visited...

[kalirion]

I'm guessing they didn't visit EA.

Great work from them

[DesScorp]

Wolfenstien: Enemy Territory surpassed Doom II as my all time favorite game. I still find it more enjoyable than even newer games, like Doom III and it's spinoffs. The fact that these guys started as amateurs is amazing.