My favorite games of all time, the story of Carmageddon part 10...

For the Kickstarter backers there had been a growing sense of unease about the things they had been promised. Audiences knew that it might take weeks before they got their physical rewards. Some things had to be ordered from a local business, or from China where they would be manufactured, and shipped months later. Whether it was a survival kit, a card game, tee shirt, or other ephemera. These weeks turned into months, eventually stretched into years. Patrons began leaving queries on each Kickstarter update without getting too many responses from the studio. Of course some electronic rewards were available right away. People could access the beta trial, they could turn in their codes for games from Steam. One of the nice surprises came in the form of a comic book for certain backers. Concept artist Daniel Tejnicky had originally done a series of fan comics years ago. He was contacted by the studio to produce the art on an official comic. It was scripted by Neil (Nobby) Barnden. It filled in a lot of the back story for the new tournament, and helped flesh out the world of Carmageddon. Many of the details that audiences were noticing in the game levels were explained in the comics. The art was top-notch, and the comic was filled with gore, nudity, and crass humor. It was everything audiences could ask for. Unfortunately, the comic was not what thousands of sponsors had paid for.

A handful of concerned sponsors turned into dozens upon dozens calling out the studio with every Kickstarter post. Many had not gotten the physical rewards they had paid for. They were looking to get their money back, and many complained to both Kickstarter, and Stainless about it. It got to the point where Nobby had to post an update, and say they were going to look into the delays, and apologized for not being more proactive with physical rewards. The studio was running on a razor-thin budget, and crew. All hands were cranking on getting Reincarnation finished, and out the door. What the studio needed was a full time person handling the PR, and following up with all the clients. They didn’t have anybody for that, and as such many queries were left unanswered. Stainless completely ignored the backers asking about the Linux, and Mac ports that were promised. People still went to the Kickstarter page almost a decade after the campaign ended to call out the studio. The lack of transparency only served to build distrust in the studio, and the Kickstarter process.

There were many things that were out of Stainless’ control. For example one of the tiers was to receive a 3D printed model of the classic Eagle, and the TEZ Eagle. That was the one I had signed up for. Some people, mostly in England, posted that they had received their model. They said when it arrived it was tiny, and brittle, like a dry cracker. Very few received one that wasn’t misshapen. It turned out that the company responsible for printing them went out of business. They dumped a bunch off at Stainless after their promised date, and then disappeared. I never received the ones that I had paid for. It seemed that people outside of the UK, or the EU were out of luck as well. Other reward packages had gotten out. My wife’s with a tee shirt, and post cards did arrive eventually. There was no 100% guarantee for any sponsor, and Kickstarter had a policy asking that clients reach out to the publisher first to remedy any complaints. I knew that Kickstarter campaigns could sometimes be a gamble. I’d rather have my cash go into guaranteeing a new game, if it meant I might not get my physical rewards. I was willing to bite the bullet, but I knew that thousands of backers did not have that luxury.

Stainless Games moved forward as if backers weren’t growing despondent. The studio launched a website in 2012; Carmageddon.com, which is now closed. They posted news, new builds, hosted a forum, and shared links to mod updates. They proceeded with their business as if there wasn’t a problem for backers. It was disheartening knowing that hundreds of long-time fans were getting nowhere with the company. While at the same time the game was earning a new audience. We may never know if the studio didn’t actually care, or because they were advised by their lawyers not to say anything about the crowd funding. The Kickstarter campaign ended in May 2012, and Carmageddon Reincarnation came out for Steam in May 2015. In May 2013 Bullfrog studios founder Les Edgar invested an additional $3.5 million into the game to help with console development. He was rewarded with a playable character Ed Lesgar driving the KVN Toucan, a play on the TVR Tuscan. It was an incredibly tight development cycle, from a very small team. The title was also a flop in the eyes of critics, and audiences. Despite all of the advances in technology, and a return to form it seemed like too little, too late for the franchise. The studio redoubled their efforts, and released a version for the Xbox One, and Playstation 4 in July 2016. This version was a free update for PC’s called Carmageddon Max Damage. It added approximately 40% more content to Reincarnation. It too was snubbed by the gaming community. It seemed that they had moved on.

The studio seemed undeterred from the cold reception. They did not want to waste all of the work they had poured into rebuilding the franchise. There were literally thousands of assets that could be used to create new games on other platforms. One of those was Carmageddon Crashers, a mobile game that came out in August 2017. The mobile game featured the rides from Max Damage, with simple controls, and new gameplay. Instead of an open world game the title had players going head-to-head in drag races. This was not the type of drag racing where cars were side by side, the cars were literally heading at each other. What else could you expect from the franchise? The graphics were brilliant, with lots of details, cars to unlock, and upgrade. There was tremendous replay value here. Like many mobile games, it was the perfect way to spend time while waiting in a queue. The one thing Stainless did not say was when there would be another sequel. Things were quiet for about a year when THQ Nordic announced that they had acquired the rights to Carmageddon from Stainless in 2018. That news came to a shock for many in the community. They knew how hard the company had fought to build a franchise, lose it, get it back, only to have to see it go again.

Kickstarter backer Mikko Rasa summed up the theory for Stainless ghosting patrons, and then selling the IP. “I still suspect that the name change from Reincarnation from Max Damage was done so that somewhere down the line they can just drop the promises of delivering physical rewards and ports. After all, those were promised for Reincarnation, which at some point will be obsolete and no longer supported. Max Damage is a different game and no such promises have been made for it.” I’m not sure if there is any legal standing for Mikko’s assumptions. If THQ is on the hook for any broken promises, or what else might happen in the future because of the sale.

I did remember hearing something about the success of the original game, and how Stainless never hit the big time. The first Carmageddon sold about two million copies. Which was not bad for a developer that nobody had ever heard of. We did get the award-winning Splat Pack, and Carmageddon II, both of which also sold well. The studio was nebulous about what happened when they lost the rights. Whether they were contractual, legal, or other issues, it turned out that nobody on the team struck it rich. That was a damn shame. All of the bad press following Reincarnation, plus never getting my pledge rewards left me cold. I steered clear of the series for five years. Then on a whim I picked up Max Damage for the PS4. You couldn't blame me. Four years of dealing with Donald Trump, and an ongoing pandemic brought me to the brink... What I saw gave me a change of heart.

I remember reading things about how difficult the cars were to control, how crap the graphics were, how the physics were broken, how much the music sucked. Some even said this was nothing more than a prettier version of TDR 2000. After I actually sat down, and played through it I’m not sure what those people were griping about. Carmageddon Max Damage was so much better than they gave it credit for. I’m going to give my impressions on it in the next blog. If you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

My favorite games of all time, the story of Carmageddon part 4...

I’m sure you’ve heard the stories about how seriously developers take their art. The team at Capcom working on Resident Evil was said to have studied up on human decomposition, parasites, and viruses in order to make realistic zombies. Hideo Kojima would bring in military contractors to advise his Metal Gear Solid team. In some retellings they gave the team the ability to opt out of the battlefield lecture because they could not unlearn the horrors of war. Over at Polyphony there was a team whose responsibility was traveling the world, recording the actual sounds of modern, vintage, and racing cars to make Gran Turismo accurate. In all of those instances the teams were large, and specialized. None of those people could hold a candle to the dozen people working at Stainless Games. Patrick Buckland was the lead programmer, and co-founder of Stainless Software. Neil Barnden was the other co-founder, and lead artist. They started working on a car game that centered around crashing in 1994. They wanted a high-quality 3D engine, a library of unique vehicles with realistic physics, the ability to go anywhere on an open world map, and the ability to run over pedestrians. Today you could name a few franchises that do this, but it seemed impossible decades ago. Especially for a very small team. This was uncharted water not only for their studio, but pretty much for the entire industry. Carmageddon was born because nobody told them what they couldn’t do.

The studio was familiar with the BRender 3D engine from other projects they had worked on. As they were starting to put together car models they needed to figure out how they were going to create pedestrians. They needed reference material to work from. This was when Tony Taylor stepped up, and donated his body to the cause. They would go out to a parking lot where Tony had all the protection that a helmet, pair of gloves, and some cardboard tucked under his shirt could provide. The studio would then proceed to hit him with a car over, and over. Making sure to get shots from multiple angles. He challenged them to go faster, and faster at him, hoping to get a shot of him rolling completely over the roof. At about 35mph he ended up going through the windshield instead. Nearby residents called the police because they were sure they had just witnessed a murder. It wouldn’t be the first time the people at Stainless would be suspected of criminal mischief. Almost everyone at the studio was engaged in acts of vandalism, and destruction for the sake of “research."

The team, and engine could not create both 3D car models, and 3D pedestrians at the same time. There was just too much work to do that on any reasonable time table. They still wanted a library of different pedestrian types to work from. That was how Tony got involved. He would act out different scenarios, and pretend to be running for his life. Animators worked from this footage when they created the male, and female sprites that would be used in game. The animators then asked for reference material so they could create explosions in the game. They needed references for car explosions, power up barrel explosions, and anything else in the game that might go kaboom! The team used that as an excuse to take propane tanks to an undisclosed area, and shoot them with rifles. They also took a car that had been trashed in a banger race out to a field. Where they then ran out an extension cord, Buckland put a bunch of aerosol cans in a microwave, set the timer, and ran for his life. Banger racing was invaluable for recording the sounds of actual car collisions. Just to be sure that the studio got enough reference material they ran over real estate posts, and studied the damage to the car. No word on if they replaced those signs, but I doubt it. There are stories of home made bazookas, destroying the chandelier that used to hang in their office space, and tons of mayhem during holiday parties. Again, all in the name of research.

The studio cranked away diligently inventing a new genre. Their art team creating new cars, and characters that would have fit in the pages of a comic book, or possibly a James Bond film. Making sure that the game was ready for both the Mac, and Windows meant that they were pulling double duty. Not every publisher had the luxury of hiring a separate developer to handle the adaptation. LAN play was in the cards, and they were all eager to test on that, but the team also needed to make sure they had a demo ready first. This would be used to get certification with game rating boards, and also be used to help promote the title. Time was of the essence, and they couldn't waste it chasing bugs. The studio got creative with the engine when they came across a new issue. One of the first challenges they had to figure out was in making the Hawk, and Eagle. The stars of the game had to be balanced from a game play perspective. It wouldn’t be difficult to assign them similar stats. The graphics engine however required them to be modeled on the same body, but be visually distinct. A paint scheme was not enough to set them apart. Since the modelers were not allowed to create two separate bodies they instead used a reflective texture to create a windshield, and make the Hawk appear like a mid-engine car, and a transparent texture to make the Eagle look like a front engine car. It was an example of the creative problem solving at Stainless. Future versions of those two cars would get their own models.

Another thing that was in the planning stages, and actually promised to audiences, was a vehicle with a trailer. One of the racers was a madman in a hazmat suit known as Firestorm. He drove a stolen tanker truck called Tanka. The website, and official art of the vehicle showed this well in advance. This design was very futuristic, it definitely captured the science fiction world that Stainless wanted to convey. Those playing the demo, myself included, were hyped on seeing the actual truck in the finished game. There was a problem however. No matter how hard the developers at Stainless tried, the trailer portion gave nothing but problems to the physics engine. Sometimes it would clip through the model, and cause the truck to be stuck. Other times a collision would break the model, leaving it inert. There were issues getting it to shift its virtual weight, and turn realistically. There was no way that they would have all the complications sorted in time for release, so they cut out the trailer. This cab-only version of the truck was labeled as a Cheat car, but it was anything but ideal to drive. Without the trailer to balance the front end it bounced around awkwardly in the game. It was difficult to control at any speed, making it of no use in single, or multi-player games. Broken models aside, there was a bigger issue that Stainless, and SCi had to deal with. As much fun as audiences were having with the game demo, there were many seeing this as the next major controversy.

The media began painting Carmageddon as too violent, as too extreme. It was not funny, or enjoyable according to them. The game debuted around the time that Congress in the USA was holding hearings on violence in video games. The popularity of titles like Doom, Mortal Kombat, Twisted Metal, and Killer Instinct had caught their attention. It took a few years for violent games to make it to the floor for an inquiry. Pop culture trends that that were “corrupting the youth" had been the focus of politicians for several generations. It happened with comic books, rock and roll music, heavy metal music, gangster rap music, and now violent games. Adding Carmageddon to the debate was literally pouring gasoline on the fire. The arguments against these things were disingenuous. They never put the media in context. You could take a portion of any creative work out of context to build an argument. A car accident is not funny, a hit, and run is not funny, a traffic fatality is not funny. Why then should a game featuring any of these elements be published? What possible entertainment value do they have?

Violence, blood, and gore had actually been used for comedic effect for decades. Monty Python and the Holy Grail is considered a comedy classic. It was released in 1975, the same year as Death Race 2000. One of the scenes features King Arthur hacking the limbs off of the Black Knight. The Knight considered the fight a draw once he has been reduced to a stump. There is a power up in Carmageddon that also blows the limbs off of pedestrians, it is called “tis but a scratch," a line borrowed from the movie. In the Addams Family movie from 1991 the brother, and sister pair of Pugsley and Wednesday Adams cut each other open during a sword fight for a school play. They proceed to shower the audience in gallons of blood. It is arguably the funniest scene in the movie. These are examples of an absurd kind of humor. There is nothing inherently funny about amputation, or blood loss. This changes when they are presented in an absurd context. 

To find entertainment value in violence, blood, and gore supposedly goes against our moral compass. It is ironic to laugh at things like this. One of the reasons that people gravitate to these forms of entertainment is for escapism. People do not watch police procedurals because they are criminals at heart. People do not read true crime thrillers because they want to learn how to kill. There is control in the entertainment they consume, rather than the media they are bombarded with. People of every age, and demographic are saturated with images of war, violence, and civil unrest by the news. Viewers cannot control what gets played on the television, only whether or not they want to change the channel, or turn the TV off. When they choose to read a true crime story, watch a horror movie, or play a violent game, they are in control of the media. They know that they are safe, they can get lost in this world, and can control how they choose to react. These things are never debated by the politicians, or news outlets. They only seek an alarmist sound bite. Whatever grabs headlines, and helps keep their agenda on the air is the true goal. As much hand wringing as there was in Congress things were a thousands times more heated overseas in Parliament.

Stainless Games was dragged by just about every media outlet. Nothing they did, or said seemed to convey any truth about their title. Carmageddon was never meant for kids, despite the news perpetuating the myth that the entire game industry targeted children exclusively. The Gen-Xers that made up the majority of game players in the ‘90s were adults, and entering professional careers when Carma came out. Somehow that entire demographic was never brought up alongside the alarmist headlines. When Stainless did interviews, even on the radio, they were set up with loaded questions. Imagine being asked “Why do you think death is funny? Is running over veterans funny?" Stainless would dig their heels in while defending the game, but the attitude did more to hurt their case rather than help. Being contrary, and leaning into the dark humor did not go over well with audiences. Stainless would talk about their game on the air, only to have a parent that lost a kid in a traffic accident be the counter argument. They would talk about the blind pedestrians power up, only to have a the disabled community write the outlets to say there was nothing funny about blindness. 

By picking individual elements out in the game the news took it completely out of context. Just as congress did with fatalities in Mortal Kombat, and gun violence in shooting games. Member of Parliament Greg Pope took exception to the game as well. By using his last name the newspaper headlines made a gigantic scandal out of a game yet to receive certification. Many countries, such as Australia, refused to import the game at all. They were asking for all sorts of things to be removed. At the very least it would have to be censored before they would even give it a rating. Don't get me started on how many concessions had to be made to get the games ported to the home consoles! SCi relented in several cases. Swapping out the pedestrian blood, and guts for green slime. Calling pedestrians mutants, or zombies would get around the ban. In the German N64 version the pedestrians were replaced by green-blooded dinosaurs! Some boards refused a rating at all, they did not want to be associated with the title. One of the most vocal was the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), which rates movies, as well as video games for content. The US equivalent would be the ESRB.

Stainless was very stand offish with the whole process. The issue was one of free speech, and it was taken up by George Carman a QC (Queen’s Counsel), and barrister. The court showed that this form of entertainment was protected, and essentially forced the BBFC to give it a rating. In an interview with Edge magazine (issue 190) Matt Edmunds, one of the programmers remembers taking the game to the BBFC, and letting them play. They were laughing, and having a blast. They got mad at themselves for liking it. Edmunds recounted “They said it made them enjoy the experience of running people over." In the end they gave it a 15 rating, the same rating they had ascribed to the VHS version of Death Race 2000. “No one younger than 15 may rent or buy a 15 rated video work."

When I read the story of the BBFC I remembered how our college was a microcosm of politics. Carol our Dean was a woman held in high regards. She had crafted school policy for some of the biggest colleges in Southern California. Several of her policies are still in use today! She would never be seen playing this game, or admit to it. Yet she actually had fun when she tried out Carmageddon at our department party. Not that it mattered for Stainless, all of the negative publicity had done its damage. Only deviants could possibly enjoy the title. For the rest of history Carmageddon would be associated with controversy instead of the fact that it was a great game. Normally this would be the end of the experiment. Publishers could not be expected to take this kind of heat again. Stainless Games was nowhere near done pushing the envelope. An expansion, and the fan community would pull together to make a great game even better. We will look at this on the next blog. If you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

My favorite games of all time, the story of Carmageddon part 2...

When the final version of Carmageddon was released in February 1997 it was so much greater than I could have anticipated. I brought the box purchased from CompUSA (ask your parents) into the computer lab early on a Saturday. I didn’t normally work weekends, thankfully we were only open for a half day. After we rushed the last student out we locked the lab doors, and fired it up, sitting through the opening cinema and getting hyped. The intro animation was burned into the memories of a generation. So much so that a fan recreated the opening using the in game camera of the latest version of the game. You can watch the original intro below, be forewarned, it mirrors the dark violence of the series.  

 

It turned out that not all of the cars, and features were available from the start. Which bummed us out, we were ready for multiplayer madness out of the box. It made sense from a game play standpoint. What was the point of playing if you had access to every level, and every car right away? You had to earn everything, as it was with all great games. It made me appreciate having to grind through the experience, and sharing everything I earned with the staff. I would gladly go through the game on breaks, and after work. Mastering every stage, and vehicle along the way. I even wrote up a 70-page strategy guide for my coworkers by taking screenshots, and writing tips for each level. I even included bios, and maps. I’m sure it’s saved on some Zip drives in my garage (again, ask you parents). If you’ve never played we should begin with the stars of the game. The biggest titles always had some sort of main character, or mascot that they could build a franchise around. Carmageddon was no different. Even though it was about vehicle combat the game had two stars; Max Damage, and Die Anna. Each with own signature car, the Hawk, and Eagle respectively. Think of the relationship between the characters, and their cars just like the stars in the Twisted Metal series. They were interconnected.

Max, and Die Anna were seen on the “Prat Cam” it was supposed to be the drivers in the cockpit reacting to the race. The two would laugh like maniacs as they ran over people, whip their head around after getting in a wreck, scream as they fell off of a building, and even swear under their breath. It gave a lot of personality to the characters, and added another layer of dark humor to an already absurd premise. At the start of the game the cars were nowhere near as fast, or as powerful as they were in the demo. They were easy to wreck, and could be pushed around by opponents, and police cars alike. Earning enough credits to power up the vehicles, and unlock opponents would test my patience. It turned out that the demo stage, and cars were approximately where the cars would have been at about 90% through the game. Their armor, their offense, and their engines had been heavily upgraded by that point. There were many miles of virtual racing to actually get to this point in the full release.

The game began with you ranked 99th in a tournament. Your goal was to finish every race in the series, and become #1. There were almost 40 levels in the game in which to accomplish your goal. Players could skip ranks depending on how many points were earned during each level. It was not uncommon to jump 7 ranks or more for a particularly violent contest. The specific how, and why the Carmageddon tournament was created was never fully explained. This was perfectly fine, as audiences were left to fill in the blanks. Between the opening cinema, and clues picked up from the races we could gather all the information we needed. The tournament was held all around the world, and only the most dangerous racers were invited. These included murderers, celebrities, gang members, cops, and even robots. When races took place in a city, the outskirts, and main roads were walled off. Anyone that remained inside was left to fend for themselves. Other stages were set on an island, or enclosed circuit. This was also not a post-apocalyptic race for survival. You could never mistake the locations for the wastelands of the Mad Max universe. The Carma world was set in living, breathing factories, towns, and vacation resorts. The tournament was a violent satire of the real world. Take it as a futuristic gladiator battle, broadcast to the masses to appease their blood lust.

The rules for the tournament were simple. Each race could be won in three ways, you could complete the required laps, destroy all of the opponents, or kill every pedestrian on the map. The third was the most difficult, but also potentially worth the most points, and prestige. The opponents themselves were a cross section of archetypes, and stereotypes from pop culture. You can imagine that the Black community did not like the representation in the game. There was the pimp-coded Otis P. Jivefunk, and his leopard print top “Caddy Fat Cat.” To be fair the Caddy Fat Cat was the car I used most often in the game. It was fast, heavy, and could take a lot of damage. Then there was the former football star-turned-murderer OK Stimpson, driving a “Fraud Broko.” For those that don’t know the story he was based on; former pro football star O.J. Simpson killed his ex-wife, and her boyfriend in 1994. He was caught in a Ford Bronco during a slow speed pursuit as he tried to flee the country. I would argue that Stainless Games wasn’t making fun of one ethnic group as much as every person in the game was an ugly parody. Also Stainless admits that they pre-censored themselves. They had men, women, cops, and elderly people that you could run over in the game. Artist Terry Lane put his foot down when they said pregnant women should be pedestrians too. They were also mindful that if they had Black pedestrians the racists would go out of their way to only run them over. So they made all the pedestrians white in the first game. They wanted audiences to know that all pedestrians were equal targets in their world. Black, and brown pedestrians, as well as better Black driver archetypes would appear in the sequel.

These drivers, as offensive as they were, and their respective vehicles did not all show up right away. As with all great game design, the opponent rides were equal to, or slightly better than the Hawk, and Eagle at the start of the game. Early races were long, drawn out battles. Opponents smothered players at every turn. Throw in the police which were randomly dispersed through each stage, and the car battles became harder. Only by winning races and increasing your stats could you hope to make the later stages any easier. To balance out the game more difficult opponents would join the tournament as players increased in rank, and as their car became faster, and stronger. Every opponent vehicle had its own strengths and weaknesses. Some were blindingly fast, some were heavily armored, but all could potentially be unlocked. In order to do so you had to outrank your opponents, and destroy them in the level. Once acquired you could drive that specific car, and also increase its armor, offense, and engine. Every vehicle in the game was unique with the exception of Halfwit Harry, and his sister Burly Shirley. Harry, and Shirley had a respective green, or pink Hummer-type off roader. In any instance the diversity of vehicle types, the way they controlled, and benefits really gave Carmageddon a lot of replay value. Some of the cars were labeled Cheat, not necessarily because they had an outright advantage, but because unlocking them seemed to be more random than other cars.

The full version of the game also meant that we had a soundtrack to play along with. Original music was one one of my elements of great game design. Carma did not disappoint. So what kind of music went well with all of that mayhem? We needed something that could get the adrenaline pumping right away. So it was heavy metal of course! Not just any type of metal, but industrial, and electronic. The tempo, and riffs hit like a punch to the chest. They seemed to go very well to create an aggressive, yet also futuristic atmosphere. The biggest name on the soundtrack was Fear Factory. Three of their songs appeared in the game, including Zero Signal, which was also on the Mortal Kombat movie soundtrack. Composer Lee Groves had several tracks as well, which complimented the themes of the major areas of the games. These included “industrial, coastal, desert, and winter wonderland.” Stainless sound designer, and composer Chris Melchior had a few tracks, including music on the expansion as well. The music, screaming peds, explosions, and collisions all blended perfectly. They audibly brought audiences much deeper into this world.

The sudden increase in car types, and multiplayer game modes went over great at work. The other lab techs also began using their break time to get better at Carma, and learn which cars were most advantageous. We began setting parameters on which vehicles were allowed in certain game modes. Some cars were banned outright because they were simply too powerful, or because they had some other unfair property. Stella Stunna for example, a rubber-clad sadist, drove “Electric Blue.” Her car had a built in Electro-Bastard Ray. This was normally a power up that only lasted for a few seconds in other cars. For Stella it was permanently enabled, and could zap pedestrians with a bolt of lighting from up to 10 meters away. This meant that she could easily rack up points in multiplayer games, and power up her vehicle on the fly. This left no pedestrians for the rest of the players.

The other car that was banned from competition was The Suppressor. In the game, as in real life, the cops had access to the biggest and baddest vehicles. The squad car in Carmageddon weighed almost 3 tons, and could go 150mph. It much closer to a supercharged armored personnel carrier rather than the traditional cop car. A group of them could turn any stage into a nightmare, With about 90% of the game complete players would have earned heavy-hitters that could eventually take out a squad car. However the supreme heavy hitter in the game was called The Suppressor, piloted by Police Chief Biggun. It weighed 5 tons, and could reach 250mph. The first time I saw it was actually on the stage featured in the demo. You can imagine my surprise. I was going through the route that I had raced hundreds of times before. I reached the top of a skyscraper, and it was waiting where no cops were previously. I had a fraction of a second to ask myself “what the hell is that?” Before it ran me off the roof and destroyed me with a couple of hits.

I fought tooth and nail against the Suppressor again, and again with different rides until I was able to unlock it. My favorite heavy-hitter was the Plow, a four wheel drive bulldozer formally piloted by Don Dumpster. I used that to great effect against the cops in the game. In LAN matches when using the Plow I would sign in as El Don. Once the Suppressor was in the garage the rest of the game played relatively easily. Again traditional game design dictated that the best weapons were only accessible near the end of the title, otherwise the experience would have felt cheap. The team at Stainless Games knew what they were doing. They even went so far as to highlight it as the vehicle you were rewarded with in the final game cinema. During the awards ceremony the organizers of the tournament are presenting a trophy to an unknown driver. Then in the dark a six-wheeled beast rides up the podium, and flattens everyone, including the cup. I suppose the lesson for Carma was never was about becoming the best, it was about the enemies killed along the way... We were having an absolute blast at work. With the exception of Stella, and Chief Biggun, all of the cars were fair game in multiplayer modes. Depending on my competition I would choose the car that would be the biggest nightmare for them. This frustrated my coworkers to no end. For every one game they won I would often win the next eight. 

   

The end of the semester tournaments were even more exciting now. Not only that, but as our computer lab expanded, we had more hires that were becoming solid players. The bigger labs also meant that we were getting more attention from other departments looking to create their own computer labs. Carol was our Dean, and would show our labs off to other college admins. This included the VP, and President Carol stopped by for the end of the semester party one year. She was always a bubbly presence, and welcome whenever she visited. She wanted to sit in on our tournament, and see what the fuss was about. The boss lady Alison wasn’t too sure about it, but I insisted. Carol gasped when she found out the game was about racing, and running over pedestrians. After the initial shock wore off she asked, “is it okay if I try it?” We had her sit down, and watched as she drove around the virtual block a few times. She screamed when she began running over pedestrians, “oh no, oh no!” Then she began giggling as she started running into other drivers. After a few minutes she was red in the face from laughing at the mayhem she had participated in. She assured Alison, and even Phyllis our department head, that the game was as much fun as advertised. From that moment on we would be sure to invite her to the tournament each semester. She would decline, but asked that we enjoy ourselves. I can’t imagine that any other college had an administrator that was half as cool. Carol eventually became a Dean at an even bigger college. She retired years ago, but we stay in touch on Facebook.

It turned out that as other departments opened up their own computer labs they were eager to hire our staff. In a few instances they had poached talent from our labs. Carol, Phyllis, and Alison met with the other departments. They said they did not mind sharing talent, or having lab techs train alongside us for a few weeks so they could get up to speed. Poaching our team was not a good look. I remained with our department because as I discovered from my friends in IT that the other labs had far more restrictions than we had. They had their computers on lock down. No games, no demos, no fun. The IT department mostly left us to our own devices because we were good at maintaining our own systems, updates, and security. When I wasn’t playing the game I was researching it. I learned lots about Carma from the game forums, including how it was made. It turned out that there was a huge challenge in trying to get it published. It made me appreciate it that much more. We’re going to look at why nobody was willing to sell Stainless a license in the next entry. If you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!