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

Quake Wars ended up great

[mahsah]

It was plagued by bad launch decisions though -- no VOIP, in game advertising (which seems to be gone), somewhat outdated graphics, poor performance, etc. Not to mention that the trailers and advertising portrayed the game as a gritty futuristic shooter, whereas in reality it is actually a fairly humorous run-and-gun. (Like the original Enemy Territory)

These have mostly been remedied by patches though. Really it has become a great game -- it remains fairly balanced while still providing a lot of variety between teams. Plus there is nothing more satisfying then calling down a giant orange laser from space onto a group of enemies :3