Carmageddon Reincarnation - Stainless Games Interview

At this year’s EGX Rezzed (Eurogamer Expo) in Birmingham, I managed to sit down with Neil Barnden and Jason Garber of Stainless Games, a pair of gents who are well mannered, but hiding a deliciously dark sense of humour that becomes apparent in their games. We talked about Carmageddon Reincarnation, the fourth Carmageddon game, the first being released since 2000.

I meet them in the crowded and noisy main hall - no place to conduct an interview of any kind. We wander outside to a quiet seating area for an overpriced Starbucks. I nervously fumble to record audio and blurt out questions without thinking at all about how the questions sound or what I am even saying. Luckily for me, Neil and Jason were polite, patient and accomodating. Despite my nervous demeanour they both continue professionally and are more than happy to answer my questions…

• First off, the first Carmageddon game was famously met with controversy, with heavy censoring, but despite this you’re still going forward with the Carmageddon brand, why is this?

Neil Barnden - I think that what’s happened since then is that everything’s moved on, TV, films and games have all moved way, way beyond that stage. Not that I’m saying that anything we did in the first place was particularly controversial, but at the time there were “video nasties” in the news, and it was picked up and put into the same category by ignorant fools who don’t understand video games and had never played them, never played video games, never seen video games. But at the time it was all new, the media wanted things to jump on, and they jumped upon games. We always knew the game was primarily meant to be funny, make you laugh, and do that in a cartoon-violence fashion. We’re doing the same again. No-one has got any grounds to complain now, people are more informed than they were, so I don’t think it should be as controversial.

 

• When the first Carmageddon was released, the graphics were obviously more simple when compared to modern games, do you think that it could be more controversial with more realistic gameplay?

It is an interesting point, and it is one we’ve discussed in regards to how pedestrians look when you run them over. We’ve looked at it various ways, and decided that, really, having pedestrians that ragdoll and just fucking explode when you hit them, it has a humour that clearly divorces it from reality. And the fact that you can run over cows, penguins, polar bears, you know…

 

• Anything that takes your fancy…

Yeah, exactly. And they’re all depicted in a cartoon-like way, with the most ludicrous amount of giblets you could possibly imagine. You pile on that Rivers of Livers thing, and people just aren’t going to be able to say that we’re depicting or tempting reality, or encouraging people to go out and actually run over people.

 

• I feel that something that’s becoming more prominent now is that it’s okay for games to be ‘ridiculous’. Once upon a time I don’t think games such as Goat Simulator would ever see the light of day, especially with the developer even admitting that they’re okay with bugs being in the game purely because it’s funny, it’s entertainment. Do you feel that plays a factor in Carmageddon at all?

I do. I mean, I think that we were pioneers of the physics playground. Back then when Valve developed Source, they brought their own physics engine, that was then taken with Garrys Mod and basically said; ‘Here’s physics, piss about with it’ and I do feel that we were at the pioneering end of that whole idea. So I love to see all the stuff that’s coming out, I think it really is a totally valid gaming experience. Of course we also want to marry that ‘pissing around’ with ‘proper gameplay’, but we’ve always invited our players to mess about and have a sandbox experience.

 

• On the subject of ‘proper gameplay’, do you feel Carmageddon Reincarnation handles it well? Does it cater well to gamers who want a more ‘serious’ experience?

Well we’re going to have a singleplayer career mode, that will involve unlocking as you go, following the traditional Carmageddon way of doing things. We will also be introducing other game modes. In the original Carmageddon every level was played the same way, you could either kill the pedestrians or wreck all the opponents, and you would usually wreck all the opponents. When we made the iOS and Android ports of the original game we actually expanded the game so that you could only 100% complete the game if you had wrecked all opponents, finished all laps and killed all pedestrians. That in itself is expanding gameplay, in that having to tick all three boxes to get 100% for each level is actually really challenging and I’m now like 92% away from finishing the iOS version, which has been out now, what, a year or so? Y’know, I go back it to it every now and then and think; ‘Right, I’m going to kill all the peds’ and you could be there for over an hour trying to hunt them all down.

I’ve actually planted a show of heads on the map in every level on the iOS version just to make it a little bit easier! The information is of course out on the net now as to where they are. Similarly we will do the same thing with Reincarnation, we also have other game modes like Ped Hunt where an individual ped will get labeled, and all other cars will have to go for that pedestrian, the one who gets it gets the point, bringing everyone together. Checkpoint Stampede is similar, checkpoints spawn, everyone has to go for that checkpoint, and it means meeting with cars on the way, which is great for gameplay. We’ll have races, as much as we don’t necessarily feel racing is important to Carmageddon, some people do. Some people really like to do the races, so the AI now is really good at racing and you’ll be able to have a really good race with them and of course multiplayer opponents.

 

• On the subject of multiplayer, how do you think online multiplayer will be changing a game like Carmageddon?

Jason Garber - In my opinion it’s biblical, because of course the singleplayer is as fun as it’s always been, but the multiplayer, which will likely get its debut before E3 on Early Access, I think it’ll be another turning point in how the game evolves and will just get more people involved. When you get the chance to wreck your opponent who is a friend of yours it’s so much more fun.

NB - Yeah exactly, it’s absolutely core to the game. Of course you could play it LAN back in the day, but there weren’t that many people who could get together and play it together, but now the whole world can play it together. It can be one massive smash-’em-up multiplayer party.

 

• How would you describe Carmageddon to someone who isn’t really a gamer?

NB - Well we describe it as the antidote to racing games, and it is the most fun you can have using your car as a weapon!

JG - Most people like to categorise it as a racing game, but we like to categorise it as an action game. What we tend to say is a ‘first person shooter with your car as a weapon’. That really encapsulates what you do with it, you go about, try to race, kill people… Etcetera. That’s probably the most simple way we could describe it!

 

• You think of it as more of an action game than a racing game?

JG - Well if you looks at the qualifications on iOS and even the qualifications on Steam, we specifically don’t put it in a racing category because… There was an article about it recently about World of Speed, racing games have a very linear, logic-based gameplay which is go as fast as possible and finish first. So there are a lot of losers, a lot of people who are not winning, because unless you place First, Second or Third it’s pretty much over. In our game, we don’t even reward you with bonus seconds when you hit a checkpoint, because that’s how detatched we are from racing. You get to the checkpoint, that’s fine, but did you smash the opponent?

Most games you have a penalty when you destroy your car, but not with us. You can repair the car, and we encourage you to smash your car, repair it, and then go back and smash it again, and that really builds upon the gameplay we want. It’s not about racing, it’s about having fun with your car, discovering, for example, a couple of cows standing in a beautiful meadow where you can just ram right through and have fun with the cows. It’s more about the non-racing than the racing.

 

• How large can we expect the areas to be in Carmageddon Reincarnation?

NB - Well you get a pretty good idea of that if you look at the Early Access build we released, where we have a coastal track, which is actually a remake of a coastal track that was in the original game. The scope and size of that is considerable. We have a industrial area too, again, based on an original map. They’re similar sizes to original maps, in some cases a lot bigger. More than enough room for exploration and for us to stick hidden Easter Eggs and power-ups.

JG - The Early Access version that came out had to do really big things for us, one really important thing was show the gameplay, and the best way to do this was a smaller level, an ice level, which you start with on Early Access. That has power-ups and pedestrians placed the way we think they should be. The other two levels shows the scope of things, and a lot of people have asked about ‘how does the first level compare to the other levels’ and it was really just to get through that old demo scene, where you play a level and are encouraged to buy the game… That’s what we were aiming for with that first smaller level.

 

• It’s been a long time since Carmageddon first released, how do you think the industry has changed? How do you feel about Early Access and the state of AAA gaming?

NB - A very big question!

JG - State of the industry? Well, I think the state of the industry is very interesting right now. Both with consoles, mobile and everything else… We’re very agnostic about what platform we work on because we can do, basically, anything. What we have done as a company - what Neil and I are doing - we’re focusing on the IP, Carmageddon. We think Carmageddon is good enough to play on any device. We’ve started with Steam, which is a logical first step, followed by Mac and Linux also of course. We have the intention to go to consoles, in what capacity we don’t know. In eight to twelve months, the whole console situation could be very different to what it is right now.

NB - Early Access is fantastic. Here at Rezzed, look at the range of games that are being self-published! The Game Jams, the guys spending a week or a few days developing ideas that they have a chance to spread to a market is brilliant. It’s democratising the whole process. You don’t have to go out and get a deal with a publisher to actually release a game anymore.

JG - The whole AAA game development is a difficult one to do if you’re an upstart, you have to find the right deal and that’s not an easy thing to do.

NB - Publishers are to a certain extent, understandably, battening down the hatches now, even with a brand like Carmageddon. When we went out to talk to publishers about getting funding, they were all very positive and thought it was fantastic that we’re bringing it back, thought it’s a brilliant story, and basically said; ‘when you‘ve finished it, come back to us, we‘d love to talk about publishing it’. But they didn’t want to put money into it, because it’s our IP and we’ve spent years negotiating to get the IP, and they knew they weren’t going to end up with a cut of the IP.

 

• They don’t want to fund something they can’t make money from long-term…

NB - Yeah, exactly.

 

• Do you expect the game to be released simultaneously on all platforms, or will there be a delay? Also, did you consider/are you still considering a WiiU port?

JG - We do not expect to deliver on all platforms simultaneously. Even with the PC version, we deliver WIN first to be followed by MAC and Linux at a later stage. The subsequent consoles (whichever they may be) will therefore not be simultaneous. We have never considered a Wii port at any time.

 

• Do you think it’s better working in a small development team or a large one?

NB - That’s interesting, because we started the original Carmageddon with a team of eight, and a lot of those guys are still with us now working on the new game, but we’ve now got over fifty people working on it. It means that you have to be prepared to distance yourself - I have to distance myself - from day to day development, which I was obviously right up to my armpits in originally. But that means you have to trust the people you work with to produce something you’re happy with, and that’s what we’ve got! I guess part of that, perhaps it’s down to geography being on the Isle of Wight, so we attract certain sorts of people, maybe?

We’re like-minded people, and the team still feels like it has that small-team feeling. Even though there are that many more people working on it, it doesn’t feel that it’s too different than it used to be. We obviously had to have all the right management structure in place to handle all that, and it was a big learning curve for us, but we’ve had years and years and years to get to where we are now, and it’s great that we’re still one of the indies, even though we’re a slightly bigger one.

 

• So, even though the team has grown substantially, it still feels like a family?

JG - Our mentality is still the same. We still try and make good games, fun games, games that we enjoy playing. The last two weeks we were at GDC and we were doing the same thing we’ve always done, which is drawing straws in the morning to see who gets to show the game off to the publishers, because everyone wants to do it! That encapsulates the atmosphere that we have, we really also believe in the game, A, because we have the IP back, and B, because we feel that the gameplay is there and fun. It’s the same situation now as we had fifteen years ago.

NB - The feedback is unanimously that; ‘this is it guys, you’ve nailed it, this feels like the original’ and that affirms how we feel, but we knew it anyway because we’re the ones who’ve been playing it and working our way towards it feeling like the original.

 

• Last quick question, when can we expect the full version?

JG - Well, we have an answer for that. Basically it will be before the end of this year, we feel it will be Autumn, but the ideal situation would be that we get it out around August, as that’s our 20th anniversary as a studio, which would be a poetic thing to do. It really depends on how the Early Access period goes, because we’re getting a lot of feedback, we’re trying to react upon it and fit it into our development process. Definitely before the end of the year, likely Autumn, but hopefully August.

 

• Thanks a lot guys, you’ve both been absolutely great.

 

What I learnt during my short time with Neil and Jason is that they truly believe in what they’re creating. They want to create memories between friends, and they want to do that by forcing you against one another in a supercharged death machine that moves much faster than it should. Which is awesome. Their development team is dedicated to making a fun game, and in the modern gaming world of intricate storytelling, photorealistic graphics and ultimately disappointing and bland games selling purely off hype alone, it is so refreshing to meet a developer that just wants me to enjoy myself whilst playing a game and nothing more.

Carmageddon Reincarnation is out now on Steam Early Access, with the full version to be available later this year. For more on Carmageddon Reincarnation and Stainless Games, stay tuned on Worlds Factory.