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 3...

Carmageddon would never have been developed by any major studio in the ‘90s. No AAA team would  approach the idea. Management would fire anybody that had pitched something similar. Decades later some of the biggest games revolve around sex, guns, violence, and fast cars. Studios are falling over themselves to corner the mature market. The biggest of the mature titles is the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series. GTA V has made Rockstar Games an unbelievable amount of money. Disney, and 20th Century Fox tout the billions made by Avatar, and the Avengers. When it comes to a return on an investment nothing comes close to GTA. Avatar for example made $2.8 billion, on a budget of $237 million. That’s impressive but GTA V made $6 billion on a budget of $265 million. Even if you factor in marketing costs the numbers are simply unbelievable. When GTA was first released in 1997 it was nowhere near as notorious as Carmageddon. I would often have a laugh when people would ask “if you love Carmageddon, why don’t you like GTA?” Back then the camera was top-down, and the game play didn't compare. I would sometimes move the camera to top down in Carma, and say, “there, now it’s GTA.” To be fair there was one other major studio that beat both Stainless Games, and Rockstar to the punch. That was SingleTrac, and their breakout hit Twisted Metal, which was published by Sony.

It was not surprising that Sony published Twisted Metal. They understood that the audiences growing up on consoles were getting older. They were targeting the families that already had a Sega, or Nintendo system. Most of those kids had outgrown Sonic, and Mario. They wanted a game with more blood, and action.  If it wasn't on the Sega, or Nintendo machines, they were willing to switch. The wave of violent fighting games, and 3D shooters in the early ‘90s, such as Atari’s Primal Rage, Rage’s Killer Instinct, Midway’s Mortal Kombat, and id's Doom were proof that mature titles were selling. Aside from fighting games where else could the genre incorporate violence? David Jaffe and his team at SingleTrac melded vehicle combat, with a first person shooter. Throw in an over-the-top story involving a tournament, and you’d think that Stainless Software was poaching the concept. The ideas featured in Twisted Metal, and Carmageddon actually came from many different places. Vehicle combat was nothing new, and had roots in traditional tabletop gaming.

Steve Jackson Games was responsible for publishing dozens of original tabletop gaming systems. Those are the ones that require dice, some miniatures, and a score sheet. One of the more popular titles was Autoduel. This role playing system from 1985, received a PC game by Origin Systems in 1987. The rules of Autoduel would eventually become standardized in GURPS, the Generic Universal Role Playing System, which was first published in 1986. These systems, and games were based on an even older Steve Jackson game. Car Wars the tabletop game series first published in 1980. It has always remained popular in the tabletop gaming community. The sixth edition was published in 2019. The newest tabletop game to join the genre was called Gaslands. It was released by Osprey in 2017. Games Workshop released Dark Future in 1988. It faded in popularity over the years but was brought back as a PC game with Dark Future: Blood Red States in 2019, by developer Auroch Digital. All of these titles had a hand in influencing the creation of the vehicle combat genre. 

Video games would bring the tabletop experience to life. I already mentioned Twisted Metal, however the ‘90s, and ‘00s saw the genre grow. Twisted Metal received a number of sequels. I will talk about the varying quality of those later. Other publishers knew the trend was coming, and had their own games lined up. One of the more stylish entries was Interstate ’76 by Activision. The game came out in 1997 same as GTA, and Carmageddon. Its physics engine was amazing, and stylish polygons gave it a retro feel. The combat mechanics found the line between Twisted Metal, and Carmageddon. The sequel was Interstate ’82, which came out in 1999. The series also inspired the Vigilante 8 games, which were designed with consoles in mind rather than the PC. Rogue Trip Vacation 2012 was a spiritual successor to Twisted Metal by SingleTrac. It came out in 1998. David Jaffe wouldn’t touch another vehicle combat game until 2007, when Incognito Entertainment released Calling All Cars! Not to be outdone Slick Entertainment released Scrap Metal for Xbox Live in 2010. All of those aforementioned games had tremendous planning, and lots of market research. This ensured the publisher could have a game delivered on time, and on budget. Carmagedon wasn't the result of spreadsheets, and data analysis. It came about more by accident.

When the developers at Stainless would get bored with racing games, they would turn around, and see what chaos they could create by driving head first into traffic. They saw that most games handled collisions poorly, if at all. Some didn’t even allow you to turn around completely. They were fans of Banger Racing. It was a sort of demolition derby-style race that had a following in Britain. They knew that there was a market for a game like that, and started putting together a prototype. The work they were doing would influence a generation of game developers. These included Criterion, famous for the Burnout series, Evolution Studios which created MotorStorm, Black Rock Studio which developed Split/Second, and Rockstar which created GTA. Fellow UK developer Reflections Interactive actually beat them all to the market. They released Destruction Derby for the Playstation in 1995. For a console game the physics engine was amazing. It gave a real sense of weight, and speed to the cars. Vehicles were deformed in pileups, this was the opposite of Gran Turismo, where Sony promised the manufacturers that their cars would never so much as be dented in the game. This focus on realism was also very noticeable when compared to Twisted Metal. The engine Reflections built got better in the Driver series, and Stuntman for the Playstation 2, both of which added different types of vehicles.

Destruction Derby, and Twisted Metal helped put the Playstation on the map in 1995. Stainless had started working on their own vehicle combat system in 1994. One of the things they were trying to figure out was how to avoid pedestrians in their open-world game. They decided they should make running them over a part of the game play. There weren’t any publishers willing to take the call to talk about their idea. Fellow Brits at Sales Curve Interactive (SCi) had worked with Stainless in the past. Having the studio adapt PC games for the Mac. They decided to take a chance on the game. To increase the odds of getting published they were looking for a license to attach the game to. One of the front runners was the Mad Max series. The trilogy by George Miller started in 1979, and had sequels in 1981, and 1985. The films had a cult following the world over. The title character fought roving gangs in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. It is entirely possible that Max Damage was named after Mad Max. At the very least some of the “Auto Scum” gang members in Carmageddon could be traced to designs featured in the Miller films. The series was big enough to be recognized, but not so big as acquiring the license would be wildly expensive. SCi had difficulty finding out who owned the rights to the property. Since Miller had made the films in Australia, different studios in the US, and the UK were responsible for rights, and distribution.

SCi hit a literal dead end trying to get the rights for Mad Max. They didn’t pull the plug on Stainless. They kept them in business by assigning them other projects in the interim. While doing research SCi discovered an even older cult film revolving around cars, and violence. This film had even more in common with what Stainless was going after, including awarding points for killing pedestrians. Death Race 2000 had been released in 1975. Featuring David Carradine, an actor that became famous from the TV show Kung Fu. As well as a young Sylvester Stallone before he created the first Rocky movie. The characters were very crass, and over-the-top. Carradine played two-time winner Frankenstein, “who lost a leg in ’98, an arm in ’99, with half a face, and half a chest, and all the guts in the world.” His face was covered by a rubber mask, and he sported a helmet similar to Darth Vader’s two years before Star Wars premiered. Many people noticed that Kutter from Carmageddon looked very similar to Frankenstein. Stallone played mob enforcer Machine Gun Joe Viterbo, his moll Myra was played by Louisa Moritz. These were not unlike Alfonzo Spaghetti, and Madam Scarlett respectively. There were many more such characters in the film, such as Nero, Calamity Jane, and a Nazi named Matilda the Hun. Each character  had an outlandish supercharged race car, covered in spikes, horns, and even teeth. The Hawk, and Eagle from Carmageddon were undoubtedly based on The Monster.

In the film the high-speed cars run a transcontinental rally, rather than just around a city. The rule changes for the year 2000 were explained in the film; women are worth 10 points more than men in all age brackets. Teenagers are worth 40 points. Toddlers under 12 are worth 70 points. Anyone over 75-years-old was worth 100 points. The movie featured nudity, sex, drug use, vulgar language, and misogyny, on top of all that violence. Of course audiences accepted that this was a dark comedy set in a dystopia. Many films from the ‘70s were about exploitation. Death Race 2000 had shlock value like other titles from that era. With the fancy sets, actual race car props, and various locations used, it was essentially a polished “grindhouse” movie. A full year later the video game industry had its first controversial game. The title was called Death Race, it had nothing to do with the movie, you could imagine that many people assumed it did. Exidy had released its first title Destruction Derby (no kidding!) in 1975. Their follow up was Death Race, in which the Grim Reaper in a hot rod drove over “gremlins,” and not people. Each time players ran over a character there would be a scream, followed by a tombstone left on the screen. The game made headlines as parents were upset with the content, trying to get arcade operators to pull the cabinet. Reporters were shocked as well, and published brutal reviews. This negative publicity of course increased orders through 1977.

SCi had no luck with the owners of Death Race 2000 either. They were afraid that a video game allowing you to run over pedestrians was too controversial. It would bring down the value of their film. Yes, the same producers that had no problem with Sylvester Stallone punching his girlfriend in the face, a man getting stabbed in the crotch by a bumper-mounted knife, a Nazi expounding the values of the master race, and Frankenstein assassinating the President of the USA was okay. A video game with only a fraction of that content was simply too much! The talks seemed to be going well for Stainless, or so they thought. The studio didn’t even get a chance to change the program name before the it was published. If the title managed to suddenly quit on the Mac, or PC it would say that “Deathrace” has crashed. This did not deter the team from putting their efforts into making the best game that they could. That was easier said than done. No other studio had attempted what they were going for. Stainless didn’t really work from a template, they literally made things up as they went along. Part of this meant doing research on actual car crashes, as well as running over pedestrians. No, really!

On an earlier blog I mentioned that Tony Taylor played Max Damage in the “Prat Cam.” He was a general handyman, and a friend of the team. He was also a sort of amateur stuntman. When the studio was recording footage for the Prat Cam he yelled, and jerked himself around as if he was in the Eagle. In order to get the shot of him getting crashed into from behind he had the team hit him as hard as they could in the back of his head with a pool cue. Thankfully he was wearing his helmet at the time. It was only the beginning of his exploits. I think the statute of limitations has expired on the things that Stainless Games had gotten away with during the development of Carma. Frankly it’s a miracle that nobody was killed! We will look at what the creative, and physical risks the studio took 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!