BeyondUnreal: We've served up hundreds of thousands of modification downloads here at BeyondUnreal, yet relatively few are played online. Keeping in mind that many of the top mods have minimal or nonexistent bot support)... why do so few play them online? Do modifications tend to stray too far (or not far enough) from the retail gameplay? Has something fundamental changed in player expectations or play patterns that keeps people away from them?
Steve Polge: It's unfortunate that some of these great mods aren't seeing more players. I think part of the problem is that there are so many online multiplayer FPS games out there that it is much harder to gain a critical mass of players for a mod. Back when counterstrike first became popular, it wasn't competing against many online FPS's in the same genre. Today, a new mod typically competes against many other mods and full retail games if it chooses a conventional genre, such as a tactical shooter or WW2 FPS, while it has to be overcome player inertia to get past its learning curve if it is unconventional (Air Buccaneers).
Both these scenarios require a mod to be very polished to have a chance of gaining a significant player count - players have many other options rather than sticking with a mod that is still very much a work in progress.
I don't mean to suggest that mods can't be successful in today's environment, but rather that mods are likely to need to be further along in terms of polish and completion before they can start attracting a big following. This means more perseverance on the part of the mod team during the early development phase when they aren't getting a lot of positive feedback.
BeyondUnreal: What was the biggest surprise of the MSU contest? Any personal favorites?
Steve Polge: The biggest surprise for me by the end of the competition was how strong the non-FPS mod category became. At first, it was much weaker than the FPS category, but by the grand finals it was overall the stronger category. While Red Orchestra won overall (and I'm a big fan of RO), most of the mods that most impressed me were in the non-FPS category (like Air Buccaneers, Alien Swarm, Damnation, and MetaBall).
BeyondUnreal: Any interesting stories you can share about the creation of UT2004? Surely bringing in all of the outside help yielded a good tale or two!
Steve Polge: We had a couple of dramatic car wrecks during development, one of which resulted in the death of the Epic Megacar (a car that Epic had owned since the Unreal 1 days).
Phil Cole was involved in both of these.
Phil Cole:"The first car accident happened on the way to a lunch meeting with some people from Atari. We were headed to Red Hot & Blue. Cliff was in his Viper with one of the Atari folks, Rogelio and I followed in Rogelio's Neon, we were followed by a car filled with 4 including Per, Dave Hagewood & a couple others(Matt Oelfke and Eric Schwartz?). Rogelio and I had no idea where we were going and were expecting to follow Cliff. Cliff had no clue that we were planning to follow him and took off on the curving onramp like a rocket. Not wanting to get lost, Rogelio sped up to follow. The curve tightened and we caught some of the shoulder of the road and overcorrected in the other direction. We basically hit the end of the onramp like a jump and flew through the air perpendicular to the highway. We hit nose first and nearly slid into oncoming traffic.
The car caravanning behind us stopped and Dave Hagewood got out and started to jog towards us. He saw me smile and started laughing to ask us if we were all right. The front end of Rogelio's car was damaged and ended up requiring about $3,000 in repair if I recall correctly. I have the front logo of the grille in my office as a reminder.
Rogelio then drove his car straight back to work. I squeezed into the other car with the other 4 and went to eat. "Hey guys, I almost died right now. I'm hungry."
Steve Polge: The other accident happened toward the end of development. Laurent had the Epic Megacar and was driving home in the snow. He was in the left turn lane that leads to his apartment when an oncoming car slid out of control and hit him head-on. He spun around, broken glass, airbag, engine fire, insanity.
I was at work late and got a call from him saying "I've just been in a bad accident." My phone was cutting out and I heard he was near his apartment so I rushed as fast as I could in my rental Neon in the snowstorm to find him. The Megacar (a Ford Escort I believe) was toast.
We waited in my Neon freezing our asses off till 2 or 3am waiting for the tow truck to arrive. He gets there and starts to hook the car up to the winch. Laurent told me right afterward that the tow truck driver took a leak on the side of the Megacar! We snapped a ton of pictures that are on the server somewhere."
Laurent: "3 cars were involved in the accident. The worst was this car hitting me head on, the car following me hit me one the side, but that was very minor. Luckily we were not going very fast because of the snow, however the shock was still very violent. (window exploded, air bag came out, engine burnt). It took me a few seconds, that seemed like an eternity, to figure out if I was injured or not, realizing I was in the middle of the road with a burning engine, so I removed my seat belt and ran to the side of the road.
The impact was pretty violent and happened in a fraction. But before that, I could see everything in slowmotion. I saw the car in the opposite lane loose control and come right towards me. 2 seconds where I knew what was going to happen, that felt like 20 long seconds in slomo. Of course, there's nothing you can do. I tried turning the steering wheel to avoid the guy, but seeing there was no chance avoiding him, I covered my face with my two arms.
The worst was yet to come, having to wait almost 3 hours under the freezing snow with no gloves. I came back under shock calling my parents, and I could not feel my fingers nor toes.
That was quite an experience... I came the following morning to Anne, saying that I killed the legend, the myth! It was like killing elvis!
I still have the front logo of the legendary Epic Megacar with lots of pictures of that crazy night. If I remember correctly it happened on feb 27th 2004."
Steve Polge: For me personally, the biggest story is that my twins were born in October 2003, in the middle of UT2004 development (and a month after we had started crunching to complete it). As a result, I pretty much gave up sleep until UT2004 shipped.
BeyondUnreal Thanks, Epic, for the great game and for the thoughts. Here's to many more!