DAVID DOAK Interview (The Making of GoldenEye 007)

Hello ladies and gents. This is the fifth of six interviews recorded for the making of GoldenEye. I'll be uploading these in the order in which they were recorded. This time, I'm talking to David Doke, credited as Original Screenplay. David was responsible for the story and mission side of the game and famously appeared in the Facility level as Dr. Doke. David is a real doctor, so we'll discuss his background prior to working in games, of course, GoldenEye, and beyond.

If you haven't watched the making of Gold Knight, I'd recommend watching that first, as it's better hearing from all six developers together on the development of the game. I'm no professional interviewer, so again, this is quite informal, but David gave me some absolutely fascinating and enthusiastic information on the game's development. I've edited out some pleasantries at the start, so we'll dive right into the questions. Enjoy.

Primarily focusing on the, you know, development of GoldenEye, really. But I wanted to kind of start even before that, um, which you just touched on, your background prior to actually working at Rare and in video games.

Yeah, I mean, I, I trained as a, as a scientist. Now, I did a degree in biochemistry, um, and a PhD in biochemistry. So I, I do have a real doctorate. Um, but, you know, I'd always played a lot of games when I was younger. I mean, I think before uni, you know, my brother and I had a Spectrum and stuff and things, and an old kind of, you know, bitter tone style, you know, paddle, paddle game on the TV. Um, so, you know, always, always really liked video games and board games as well, kind of like D&D and stuff and things. Um, you know, so at uni, I probably, I think it's interesting when I was at uni, that was kind of, kind of the NES and stuff and things, but I didn't, I didn't have one. Um, and, and there was, it's weird looking back, you know, this is like sort of the late 80s, and people, you know, computers were still considered fairly eccentric things. Um, at college, there was like a room with a Mac in it that you had to book time on to go to go and use. Um, so then, and then the, the latter part of my degree and my PhD was working on protein structure determination. Um, and I kind of did this, there was a lot, there's a lot, there's a computational side to that. So I got involved in that, and then particularly to look at these 3D models, again, you needed expensive machines because you couldn't, you know, nowadays you can look at these things in the browser window on, on or on a tablet, on your phone, whatever. But, you know, in those days, it was big, expensive, um, fairly specialized machines. Um, and Silicon Graphics were one of the manufacturers of those machines, particularly for looking at 3D, 3D stuff. So as a kind of byproduct of what I was doing, I, I did a lot of system administration for these Silicon Graphics machines. And I kind of got back into games. We had a Spectrum in my student, um, house, so we were playing all the Spectrum games and things. And, you know, things like, you know, Doom had come about. So Doom was just appearing, and it was, people were starting to have hardware accelerated graphics cards on their PCs and stuff and things. So, you know, it wasn't unusual to go to someone's place and they had a PC, whatever. I got back in the following games again. And Edge was one of the magazines that everyone, you know, Edge was the kind of sophisticated glossy kind of, it kind of, it was like the nerd's face magazine, really, back and back and back in those things. And, um, they were always advertising at Rare for people to, you know, because they were expanding their teams to do the N64 stuff. And then there was an advert which was for, you know, programmers, artists, and, and we need a system administrator for our Silicon Graphics network. So I, I applied for it, uh, not really expecting anything to come off it, you know. I was kind of at that stage, I guess, late twenties, I suppose. Um, and got an interview and was interviewed by Martin Hollis and Mark Betteridge. Um, Mark was one of the directors of Rare, and Martin was leader of the GoldenEye team at the time. Uh, and they offered me the job. So I left, you know, university town in Oxford and went to went to Twycross to work at Rare. Um, yeah, and it was, it was, it was quite straight because I was surprised they offered me the job. And as I got to know them later, you know, they were saying, well, you know, I was the only choice, you know, they, they didn't have anyone else who had the same experience. Um, you know, so quite, quite happy, just completely fortuitous, fortuitous thing. Um, but it was strange. I basically, yeah, I was at that stage, I was geared up for an academic career, you know, I, I, I was, I was doing post-doc, I, you know, done my doctorate, I was teaching, I had a college lecture at one of the colleges. So just kind of, you know, went off and one decided, well, I'll go and do something else.

It's funny that, uh, having spoken to a few of the team, it seems that a lot of people kind of were in the right place at the right time and fell into working at Rare, sort of similar stories. I mean, we were, I think we were a strange kind of wave of change for the, because up until then, Rare had grown organically out of basically Tim and Chris. Yeah, it was Tim and Chris and a few, a few guys they knew. Um, and, and then through the kind of NES years and as they got involved with Nintendo and then the Donkey Kong stuff, yeah, they were growing, but they generally were employing people who, um, hadn't been to college. You know, I mean, they would be really clever people, but people who just came into it younger, because they would, they'd come straight out of hobbyist home coding and stuff and things. And I think with the move to the 3D stuff, there was, there was a, there was a general feeling that they needed to, I mean, certainly on the engineering side, they needed to get people who had more formal, um, you know, C, C programming kind of, um, learning and stuff and things. And then, you know, there was a core of the mathematical stuff, because at the time, the engines were writing the engine and doing all of the maths for that. I mean, it's fairly basic kind of vector maths and stuff, but it's, you know, it was, it was slightly specialized at the time. Um, so, you know, Martin and Mark Edmonds were both, you know, comp sci guys from Cambridge. Um, and, uh, Carl had done, you know, what was probably almost like the first wave of computer graphics degrees, you know, because that was, that was an incredibly new field. Um, but, but then again, you know, the in-house expertise at Rare was, was, was amazing, because, you know, those guys had been, I mean, really pushing the envelope with all of the rendered stuff for the, for the Spectrum games before. So, you know, all the sprites that you see in all that Killer and Donkey Kong and stuff were all rendered NURBS models, um, from, you know, that kind of software. So I just, I mean, look, looking back on, I mean, it is, it was an insane hot house of talent, Rare at that time. And, you know, and, and almost entirely kind of, you know, recruited from, you know, there weren't many people from outside the UK, it was all kind of, you know, um. And, yeah, and I said, just a straight place because it was this, this little country farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. Um, and you looked inside, and it was full of high-tech gear and people, you know, people get, yeah, people effectively competing with the best in the world.

So, so you came on as systems administrator for this SGI hardware. So I assume GoldenEye was your first game?

Yes. So I, I started in, uh, 1995. Um, I can't remember when it was, August or something. And, I mean, immediately it was, I mean, there was, there was, there was one other chap, Paul McKel, who was also doing sys administration stuff. But Rare at that point was, I think it was about 90 people. I think I was employee 85 or something, I can't remember. Um, and, I mean, you needed, you needed more people to, you know, there were things, it's a network, things were going wrong all the time, just things being installed. So I started doing it. And, I mean, after, after the initial kind of, "Wow, I'm here," I, I, I got quite frustrated with it because, well, there really were two things. One was that I was not making, you know, I, I enjoyed games, I talked with everyone about games, but I wasn't making games. I was the guy who came and crawled around under your desk or, you know, fixed your monitor or did this, whatever. So that was a bit weird. It was like being on the other side of the glass. Although, although unusually for members of staff, certainly new members of that, I had access everywhere because, because I, because I had to be able to go everywhere to fix problems. So I, I actually had a lot of, I got to see a lot of what was going on because Rare, the teams were quite separate, so you didn't often get to see what people were doing until it was nearly finished. So that side of it was frustrating. And then the other one thing was just the culture shock off, you know, I, I've been, I've been in in Oxford for ten years as as a student, post-grad, and then, you know, you know, and it's, it was a vibrant university town, so I knew lots of people and we went out all the time. And also the job I had was quite flexible, you know, if I, if I wanted to, if I wanted to bugger off for the afternoon, go to the park, I could go and do it. I mean, you know, you make up your own time. But Rare had this, was very regimented and very institutionalized. Um, and, and, and also it was virtually all young white guys, you know, it was, it was, it was, you know, that's, that wasn't a deliberate policy, but that's just what it was. And I'd come from, you know, a very diverse and interesting place. And I didn't really, you know, didn't, I probably wasn't so much the diversity, it was more the, um, you know, just the, the, the, the step to becoming a, well, not just nine to five, nine to longer, but just being an employee in a very regimented thing. So I was gonna, I was gonna quit. Um, and Martin Hollis and Simon Farmer, who you probably don't know, who was like, kind of production manager, got wind of the fact that I, you know, it was a bit weird. A friend faxed me a job application. And yeah, it was like, well, you don't leave. I said, well, you know, it's been great, but, you know, I'm not really enjoying it. What would, what, what would make you stay? And I said, well, you know, the worst thing is not being involved in the games. And, and Martin said, well, maybe you could come on GoldenEye or a bomb. Because, yeah, you've got my bomb. Yeah. So there was a kind of transition period where I was doing a bit, actually doing better programming on GoldenEye, um, but not, not, not clever programming, the safe, the safe, safe parts. Um, and still doing system administration. And, but just gradually. And then that programming turned into being more focused on getting the level design working and the single player game, really. I mean, I, I, you know, if there's a part of GoldenEye which is my part, it is all the level setup in the single player game and the AI scripting for that.

So, so when you joined, had a lot of the levels been, uh, already designed in terms of the layout?

Yeah, um, pretty much. I mean, I would say probably, so maybe a third were pretty much in their final state. Um, some still hadn't really been started on. So things like, kind of thinking which ones. Um, yeah, there was still stuff being built. And then, and then there were a bunch of levels that just didn't work because they, they, they had a first pass of building them, but they, the N64 was ultimately a lot less powerful than it was supposed to be. Uh, so things like the Dam and the Cradle just didn't work. Streets didn't work, it was too big. Jungle didn't work. Train didn't work because it was just a big long line and you could see everything. Um, and, and then some levels, I mean, I say, I did some levels were the, the two levels which really were closest to final were the 7iO, the first 7iO bunker level. So, in fact, the start of that level was basically, if you, if you any time in whatever, 1996, 95, 96, started up and went into the, went into the Bond block and saw people screams, it would be the start of that level in the little duct, in a little circular silo thing, the door in front of you, and Bond's gun pointing the door. Because that was it, that that was when you ran again, we always just ran G-Serve, you typed in G-Serve, and that was it, just to test that the game was working. And, and that part of the game where you open that door and there's two guys, one facing away, there's a camera, and there's an alarm and stuff, that really plays very well, plays so well, because that was the test bed for the AI. So that going out, shooting those guys, running about in there, that all worked. But you didn't have, there were no objectives. You could just run around, two people. Um, and Silo was pretty much set up. Well, there weren't any scientists in it, but it was long parts of Silo and the corridors were set up because that was another test bed, um, for running around shooting. Um, and that was pretty much it. And there was a little bit of Archives, but again, it was like a couple of corridors with some guys standing. So it kind of had, it had the basics off the kind of, you know, the, the combat AI basics were there. And there were some special cases where guys could, um, push buttons, set off alarm, or cat, and cameras, cameras worked as well. And that was pretty much where it was. So, and there was all this ambition.

Yeah. So, sorry, no, you, you carry on.

Well, Jeremy just said, yeah, yeah, it was, it was like, you know, and, yeah, at some point the story will somehow work. Um, and then also, yeah, and it would be really, really nice if we got multiplayer to work at some point.

Yeah, I think it's an unusual case because obviously you've got the, the source material of the film. So you know roughly the theme of the levels, the rough story. And, uh, and I think, you know, a lot of the levels, they feel really, um, [Music] they give you a lot of freedom. They feel a lot more open because of that. I think that, you know, you've got, yeah.

Well, they weren't built, they weren't built with, yeah, they weren't boxed out by some designer saying, this is what happens in this level. It was, there is this environment in the film and some stuff happened in the film. So there are some key rooms maybe, or some key, um, vistas that you see. But generally, it's just build that space. So, you know, I mean, if you, yeah, if you, for example, the bunker in, in the film, you know, there's that key room with all the consoles and stuff in it, um, which we kind of don't really, really have. Um, but, you know, there was a room with a, with a, with a big monitor wall. But I think in the film, it's got lots of desks and rows or something. Um, and, you know, and, I mean, like the Archives is another good example. Yeah. So in that, you know, there's, it's, it's, it's archives with bookshelves and stuff, and it has a particular kind of Soviet industrial look to it. But Carl just built, built a building. Um, and, and, and likewise with, I mean, I mean, the Archives is more like a building, I guess, than the bunk. I mean, the bunker, it doesn't matter, it's underground, so it doesn't have to. I mean, a lot of the levels don't have to. They don't. Well, and also because we couldn't, we couldn't have, for just for complexity of rendering, you couldn't have a building where you could be inside and out of it, because it suddenly becomes much more expensive. So, you know, so Carl and, um, you know, Brett and, and, and Eddie Smith were just, we're just building things. I think Duncan, Duncan, Duncan built the, built the caverns. And that was, you know, I mean, he had a, you know, there was an idea in that that there would be, you'd be pursuing Trevelyan or something. And in fact, in fact, the caverns, the caverns on paper, or in, you know, because the cat, the caverns at caverns, water caverns isn't in the, in the film. But the idea, in, in the idea was that the dish, the Arathos dish was full of water, and then it was drained. So the water must have gone somewhere. Yeah, makes sense. So if you look at those caverns, it's kind of, it's supposed to be a place where all this water can go, and then the water level might come up. But we, it didn't get done because it was just an idea.

Great level though.

Yeah, no, it's a lot. It's, it's, it's a lovely level. I mean, we always just joke about it, but the walls, it was, it was that the walls looked like meat. I love it. But that's also interesting because, you know, that's actually, yeah, I don't know if you've spoken to Duncan, because we don't, Duncan built a lot of our assets. Um, um, even, even though, yeah, he wasn't that, wasn't what he was employing me. He learned the modeling software and, and built most. He also bespoke multiplayer levels, though Carl actually carved one of them, I think. But Duncan built a bunch of those from, from bits and stuff, which, which again, I mean, if you've spoken to the others, you'll have got it. I mean, it really was, it was a, you just, you know, we, you would go in, not on a daily basis, but, you know, there was a big task list in somebody's head or in our collective heads, and everything needed to be done. And you would take something that you could do, and you would do it. Or if there was something that nobody knew how to do, somebody would learn how to do it and go and do that. Very much a, very a, very self-managing team. Um, which, I mean, I've done. Yeah, it was, it was, look, I mean, looking back, was a brilliant, brilliant bunch of people. Absolutely.

So, did you, were you given many rules by, uh, MGM on, on kind of creative freedom with this story?

So, I, I think, I think what happened was that, you know, there was no, there was no kind of background of success in movie license games. So it was just, I'm sure, you know, that the people selling the game license paid the same attention as to the people selling the plastic thermos flask license. You know, it was just like, well, just get it sold and get a good price for it. Um, and, you know, so consequently, there were things about the license which was strange, which particularly, it was an open license to do the film. But you can basically have anything else from the Bond, um, universe. So consequently, you know, Brett built all the other Bonds, you know, so, or the ones that we thought were the ones, you know, so Connery, Dalton. And then, you know, when, when, when he'd done all the main characters from the film, did the other ones that he fancied doing. So May Day and Jaws and Oddjob. Um, so there was no, no briefing or constraints. So we were just left around devices. And then late in the day, some people from MGM came to basically, I think it was, it was like a sign-off procedure. Um, and, and they were just really surprised that we'd made a violent shooting game. But, but you could be quite, quite pleased with it. But annoying that it was worried that it was overly violent. So there were things that were cut. Some of the death animations were toned down. And, and then also they, they completely vetoed the other Bonds. I think probably, I, I think they probably had a, they probably could have, it was, it probably within the, within their gift, but it would have involved them going to have to go and check the rights. And, and as I understand it, but the thing is, I mean, every time I tell, every time I, I relate this, I'm wondering, am I making this up? But as I, as I understand it, the sticking point would have been Connery. Because because Connery, Connery's contracts would have predated any, any envisaging that it would go into a video game. So there may have been some gray area there legally. And the story that I have continued to tell about it, which is, which would, I mean, I think either we made up or we got from someone at the time, was that if, if Connery ends up in a negotiation, then Moore and Dalton would end up with a negotiation. And, you know, it would be, what's he getting? And, and, you know, and, and from the point of view of the product, I guess they could look at, you know, MGM, can we say, well, you don't need this, you know, what, why, why are you just adding cost? Um, yeah. And also that kind of plays to the, you know, to the weird intertwining of entities that have ownership of a Bond, you know, which, which, you know, is clearly come to, you know, people have been much more speculative about with, with the XBLA, you know, with the remake. You know, you mean, that just bizarrely went into a complete licensing hell. That's why it didn't happen. And nobody's really sure now who, you know, for years people were saying, oh, it was Eon. But now it sounds like that maybe it was Nintendo who vetoed it. Which is a shame, because I've been playing it, and it's very good. Yeah. But I think, I think everyone who wants to play it, that's true. You know, I mean, it's, it's, it's funny, all this stuff, you know, I mean, like, you know, obviously, yeah, the TimeSplitters stuff is, is things that we did later. You know, and you always could be, oh, that'd be great, it was re-released. I'm going, well, why don't you just get it off the internet and play it on there? I know, I, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not going to lose any money if you do that, because I'm not going to get any money from it anyway. So, you know, it's, or, or like me, just play the original one, PS4, or if you got played original, yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, so, you know, you know, so that means that extra, I don't know. And, yeah, and likewise with that, you know, it's, yeah, the, the original creators, you know, the GoldenEye, the original GoldenEye team wouldn't ever see any money from it. And I think probably even now, you know, Mark Edmonds and, and the rest of the guys who did the port, certainly wouldn't see any money from it. So, you know, I think my conscience would be clear. I think, uh, although I know what you're saying. And, you know, some of these really, really releases of sort of money for old rope. But I know that, TimeSplitters is one that people, a lot of people want. Yeah. You know, um, a big fan of that series as well.

So, in terms of, as you're saying earlier, you know, the, uh, the AI of the enemies and the NPCs, how much of that was sort of character-specific behaviors, like special behaviors, and how much was just?

Well, it was, it was one of those things where, so, so, I mean, all of the technical, all of the, the clever stuff in the AI was all done by Mark, by Mark Edmonds. He, I mean, you know, he, Mark, you know, Mark wrote all the character, he wrote the pipeline for importing things in and out of the game. He wrote the rendering system, you know, for all the, for all the anime, all the, all the animation, all the skinning, all the things, all of the things that now, you know, when you, when you fire up Unity or Unreal and, you know, and, and, and think, and think you're making a game, it's like, you know, in those days, there was nothing. You know, it was, it was a, it was a blank screen. And, and Mark, you know, Mark's really clever guy, but also he was intimately familiar with all of this stuff because he had built it. So, you know, and so he basically, he, he wrote this kind of scripting language that drove the connected into the movement and the shooting and all that something. Um, and, and, and, you know, he built what was necessary because you only ever built what was necessary. So he built all of the stuff for characters to go and attack the player. Um, and then also did the other little bits, the non-combat bits, like the running off to press a button. So he'd written all of that. So then I start building up the levels. So I think probably, I think the first one I, I really got stuck into was, uh, Gas Plant Facility. So we started doing that. And then immediately, it's kind of like, right, but, you know, in the film, you've got to meet up with Trevelyan. And there's no AI for characters that don't just attack you. So it's like, well, um, what, yeah? And there's something, what's he going to be doing? He's like, well, I don't know, you've got to meet up with him. And then you've got to, I don't know, then they kind of join your side. And then the worst thing happens is some other NPCs come in and there's a standoff. So, so how do you do a standoff? Well, they've got to come in and they've got to be not shooting at you when they come in, because then you'll shoot them. Or somehow, you've got no shooting's going to happen. And then, then Trevelyan goes up and Aurumob shoots them in the head, but doesn't shoot him in the head. And then everyone attacks you. And also, yeah, there's some dialogue going on. There was no, there was no system for dialogue or anything. Um, so we just, we just built bits. You know, it went through steppy, stepping up. Um, but, you know, and, and then when you've done that, that means when you, okay, so then what, what's going to happen in you? That like, like the 7iO level, the bunker level. So what, I guess the other thing is, we didn't really have the concept of objectives. Wasn't in the original design. It was like, when you kind of do story stuff, but we didn't really have a framework for it. So then the objectives came about. So easy objectives are, go somewhere, that's fine, we can do that. But go somewhere and get something from someone, or interact, get Boris to hack a computer. So again, you know, it would, and Mark and I had this brilliant dialogue, which was, you know, I would say, well, okay, with what we've got, I can kind of fake this, but it falls apart whenever I need this thing to happen. Can we, would it be possible, how about a character who like, or involve a classic example, can I have a character who aims another character? Not a Bond, not the player. So then you do stuff for that. And then, you know, and then getting characters to hit marks, because if they're doing to do stuff, they need to hit a mark reliably. Um, and as you know, I've said to other people, Mark was great because I'd say, what about maybe, could we do this? And he'd go, and then the next day he'd say, you know, that thing you've mentioned? Yeah, I've done that. So you can put it in. And, and it was brilliant, you know. So we would do that. And then, you know, by the end, by the end of setting up the games, we could do like the Natalia thing. You know, Natalia, I mean, although people laughed and had Natalia character, you know, there wasn't a, there was no precedent for that in other games. You know, she's, she's, yeah, it's a character, okay, yeah, she gets shot sometimes, but it's a character that's running around in a gunfight, kind of following you, navigating a 3D space. Other characters, they do sometimes try to shoot at her. And somehow, but then by the time the jungle, in the jungle, yeah, she's running around doing her own thing, you know, running around shooting stuff and things. So, it, you know, we built up this, this framework. And what I think, um, Tommy Thompson, uh, did a really good recent video on it, where he was just looking at, he looks at AI and games and [Music] the AI in GoldenEye has got no right to be as good as it is. You know, because it, you know, it's all built, okay, it's flawed in many ways, but it was all built on a foundation of nothing. And we just added stuff in. And then another thing about it as well, which is, which is, which is not the AI itself, is that all of the motion capture. So Duncan and Brett primarily did all the motion capture, probably in, I guess, I don't know, like 94, 95 or something, when they, when they did it. And it was all with the most dreadful first-generation motion capture technology. I don't know if you've spoken about this thing called Flock of Birds, which was a big umbilical that went up behind you and then had sensors all over your body. So incredibly unwieldy to move in. And, and they collected a set of data for everything they imagined we could possibly need. And by the time I was involved, there wasn't even the opportunity really to go back and capture more motion data because the Flock thing had been disassembled. It was the room it used to be in was used for something else. Um, but, you know, a big part of the believability of the AI is, okay, behind it, there's some kind of state machines making decisions, but ultimately, the player sees animations. And even though it was, you know, a first attempt of doing that kind of thing, that the, the set of animations that was available was, was brilliant. And, and, and I think still, still, you know, okay, it's a bit, you know, girl nice, but this funny thing where if a character is going between two different motion-captured animations, they tween through the, they tween through them. So they'll be doing that. It's like, I'm doing that. I'm going to go and do this. I often will go like, I'm, but even that is interesting because when you're playing the game, whenever the AI drives the character to do something, to change what they're doing, I mean, it's run to here, and when I'm here, do this. It's got this lag to it. So the whole game, your whole interaction with the characters has got this kind of frequency to it that happens on a, you know, there's generally about a second or so between characters doing things, which works really well from the point of view of being the sole protagonist in the world. Now, if I'm shooting at five guys, that guy's about to shoot me. So I know if I shoot him and he does a hit reaction, then he's doing that, and then I can shoot this guy. And, and that wasn't by design, that was by, you know, that was by iteration and just trying to find what worked. So, um, yeah, it was, it was, it was great because it was all, we weren't distracted by looking at what other people were doing. I think that's, there's that, that is a, you know, nowadays you can't, it's impossible to make any kind of game content in in isolation because A, the internet means you can see what everyone else is doing, and there's just so much stuff. So it's like, you know, have you seen this? Have you played this? Oh, they've done that. Yeah, there's nothing new. That was the other thing, you know, you know, I think we did a good job, but we were really lucky because it was all virgin territory. You know, you could do something like the sniper rifle. Yeah, Mark, with the sniper rifle, they're going, oh, that's good. There weren't sniper rifles in games. Um, I was talking to Martin Hollis about saying, but so shooting off me. I remember, I remember putting the, um, we're always trying to find ways to justify locking doors without having Doom-style, you know, key cards. You know, we have some key cards, but we, you know, we're trying to get away from it. And, you know, there's, there's a bit on the Dam where you run up to the gate on the Dam and you have to shoot the lock off. And it was just like, well, yeah, let's try that. But there was no, yeah, there was no vocabulary for that kind of design. You know, I'm not saying we were wonderfully inventive, because it was like, you know, it's a problem with a fairly obvious solution. But it was, it was, yeah, it was very empowering to be doing that kind of thing.

So, so, uh, just, just in terms of, obviously, um, you know, Mark wrote all the tools for the, for the, uh, you know, for the game. Um, now, in terms of the, you know, the gadgets and what have you, because obviously that was a huge advantage for the, for the objectives. Yeah. So, um, was that difficult, uh, for, for integrating any of those things? Like, you know, obviously the, uh, it's the door decoder that you actually give the player, isn't it, which we'll come to. But I think we just went through, I remember sitting with Martin, sit down and make a list of every gadget in every Bond film, and see if we can shoehorn them in. Um, and then, yeah, and then just people building stuff, you know, like the, you know, like Spike. You know, again, it was like, I mean, Carl, Carl and Brett probably just building things, you know, build a little spy camera. Um, you know, yeah, just, I mean, I, I, I think, I mean, the thing I suppose the thing with the gadgets is that they, the hard thing about gadgets is that they often, you know, if you've been completely faithful to the films and stuff, the gadgets often would necessitate, um, extra game systems. You know, I mean, for instance, GoldenEye doesn't really have fire. Um, so there's no flamethrower, there's no, you know, you can't set people on fire in GoldenEye. Um, but obviously, you know, things explode and there's the flames there and you take damage, but there's no transmitted fire. It's just not, um, you know, the, I'm trying to think, your things sticking, sticking to stuff was good. I mean, the, yeah, so the ma, all the mines things, I mean, that was, yeah. But, and again, that's, I don't think it really was, I, I don't, I don't think we were following a precedent for that. But the idea of you having it, you know, having a, a deployable thing. Um, you know, and obviously, I mean, they're just my minds are awesome. I think it's really funny. It's like, you know, the one of the most horrific examples of the things that people have made for warfare. I mean, yeah, mines are abhorrent, they're just absolutely hilarious in the game. You know, stick a mine on him, or, or over there where it's the, you know, where the armor pickup's going to spawn, stick a mine there. Um, and, and then the knives as well, that was another, yeah, throwing knives. You know, just, and that's so not a Bond thing. Um, I don't know, I don't know why we came up with that. It was like, you know, and if we do, just, you know, and then another thing that supports everything in the game, and, and probably the thing that I took most for granted at the time, is that the, the sound design and the audio. You know, the, the music is absolutely amazing. Um, but, you know, it's funny, because I, I, it really, it wasn't probably until we were doing TimeSplitters, I realized how important sound was. But I've just taken it for granted because it was kind of always there. When I went to work on GoldenEye, it was there. Um, and, you know, I mean, yeah, I mean, Graham, you know, granted, Graham Grant did the music. But particularly, just, I mean, all the guns and stuff, because Graham, Graham just was, he was tireless. He would not stop until he had done the best he possibly could with the sound. And, you know, and then you'd be there doing it. He said, what do you think of that? Oh, yeah, it's great. It's no, no, no, it's not. It's, I need to do this. There's one extra thing I can do. And again, talking about the team, that was a thing. Is it, just people's, people's desire to do the best? You know, it was not driven by, I mean, I don't expect, but Martin will say, I mean, he, you know, Martin, you say it was like, it was like a self-managing thing. You know, everyone's, everyone's threshold for how good something was, was the same. It was like, we'll just, you know, always do your best. Um, and it was that marvelous thing of just riffing. You know, you, you, you know, lots of things in the game need to be touched by many hands to get them into the game. And just having this environment where everyone who touched it, just did their best. And then you, you know, you'd see it as it came together, you think, well, how did that, how did that happen? You know, so, yeah.

Yeah, so the gadgets were also good because they, uh, they, it was a good thing for the objectives because you could make objectives. But a lot of the objectives, you know, you look at them, I mean, they're all, yeah, it's like, get, and just jokingly, it's like, they're just Mario's stars, those red stars, just, but they've got a different name in this level. The red stars are called called components of some tracking device or whatever. Or in this one, uh, you know, um, you know, and then, yeah, and then things like, you know, you take that thing over there and press this button, and then it turns into this thing, and then you take it over there and give it to him. It's like, you know, so lots of, you know, simple fetch quests and stuff and things. But also, I guess we, we really, we, we really liked the Bond fiction. So we were again, without having any external licensing people making sure we were faithful to it, we were self-moderating. We just did the best we could with it.

I think, I think you're saying yourself shortly, a little bit there with with the with them with the objectives because although like, you know, at their heart, they maybe they are simple, like, you know, take this over here and this, that, and the other. Like, for example, in the bunker, you copy the GoldenEye, don't you? And I mean, it feels really Bond, you know, so it works perfectly.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I, I think some of the ones, I mean, the ones I, I always, every time I look at, if I go back and look, I'm always surprised at the getting Boris to go and hack the computer one, because that's, every time I see that, I think that must be really annoying to set up because there's quite a lot of AI in it, because he, and he does that thing where, you know, if he thinks if you're not pointing the gun out, and he buggers off, that's quite funny. Um, and, and the watch. I mean, that, oh, that was absolutely the one, the most nightmare thing to set up was that bloody watch with the cutting the hole in the floor of the train, because that thing, there's nowhere else in the game where you drop through a hole in a floor. And, and there's certainly nowhere else in the game where that place has actually got a door on it before you open it, because the, the thing's a door. Um, and that's got, I'm sure there are a few places like that where it's just all very special case kind of, you know, hacked in. What else is another one that always gets me is the convert install, convert modem, or the tracking bug. So it's like, so you've got this thing, yeah, you've got this, well, I don't know what it is, you've got this bug, and it's so sticky. If you put it in the wrong place, that's it, you, you have failed. And then, you know, in, in a nod to, you know, 1990s game design, we don't actually tell you where to put it. It has to be right on the screen there, and it is. It's quite easy to miss it, actually. And, and also, you know, it's, it's 1997, so you can't go and look it up on the internet. Yeah. And, and for a covert modem, it's like pretty much the size of the screen. So it's just lacking some flashing lights. And again, I mean, that, that level as well, I mean, that's a good example of, so when, when, when Carl built the Dam, he built that tunnel inside the Dam, which is of no purpose at all in, in the film. And, I mean, in the film, he runs out in the Dam, it jumps off it. So there's that. And then that whole thing, well, why, why don't we put a secret room with computers in there and make all. And again, with those, with those objectives, I think the reason, one of the things about it, why it ends up working so well, is that when we were doing the objectives in the levels, we kind of sat down and said, well, every level ought to have five, I think was five, five objectives. And we'll just, because one of the things we noticed was that we said, this fear, the game was way too short. Because like, particularly the Dam, it's like, you know, if the Dam was the film, then it literally is that 20 seconds you get, and you run and jump off the Dam. So it was like, this is a nightmare. It's like, you know, we, we can't have a game which has got, you know, I don't know, 20-minute long levels, it's just, that's not enough game. So we needed to make things to make them more interesting. So we put all of this stuff in. So all the levels were being built with these objectives. And also the default difficulty of the game was was Double O H, was, yeah, it was the hardest difficulty with Double SM. And then to make the simpler parts of the game, we dumbed down the AI until we thought it was laughably, laughably easy, and took out objectives until we thought there was nothing to do. So, but, you know, then, then when the gazette into the world, and people see the game, it, it feels like this evolving toy box that just gets better. It's like, you play the game, and then, ah, but now you go back, and there's other things you can do, and actually the guys are better. And, you know, that was, that was very, very pleasing how well that worked out, you know, because it always, every review of GoldenEye that talks about the single player would say, it's like, well, you know, it's amazing because, you know, it just grows and it's just got this amazing inventiveness. Whereas, you know, we looked and said, well, actually, it's not, it's, it's, it's what it is, and then we stripped it down. So that's, and, and that also kind of, you know, I, I think that feels very, um, it feels very Nintendo as well, that it's kind of like, you know, it's like, it's like the Mario stars, you know, Mario 64 was, you know, was obviously an amazing revolutionary game, but that whole idea that you go back and replay the levels and, and you have a different, a different, you know, different almost like you've, you've made a different choice personally as to what your objectives are, and you get to go back and do things. So, yeah.

So, speaking of objectives, the multiplayer objectives, you know, like the, the time trials, and you get unlocked the cheats were involved with any of those?

So, well, yeah, I mean, the, the time thing, I can't remember when we started adding, yeah, I mean, again, that's.

I can't remember why we put the times in in the first place. I mean, that's a good question. I don't know whether the times came before the cheats, or the times were a consequence of wanting to have something to unlock with cheats. Because obviously, there's no score in the game, so you know, to find some metric that you can adjust or, you know, set targets. And also, that's, you know, I kind of, I think again, there, I think we inadvertently invented speedrunning because it was suddenly, it was a thing, you know, the, the game, the game actually encouraged you to speedrun to unlock the three, the cheats. And then in a time when, you know, obviously people falsified some of the records and something, but, you know, because it gives you that, uh, you know, gives you that visual record at the end on the cartridge, on, and records it on the cartridge what your time is, so it's a verifiable thing. So, um, yeah, it's quite interesting.

So, and then the cheat, the cheats were just everything, anything that anyone could think of, anything anyone could think of that would was easy to do. It's obviously difficulty stuff and the messing about, the animations and speed and the, you know, silly noises and guns and stuff and things. Um, and then there's not this, there's another thing about that because I've spoken to some of the speed brothers over the years, but I think it's also really interesting that we had that thing where, you know, because the, because it only records the times to the second, it just creates this wonderful uncertainty as to, you know. So you've got these things like, you know, all these records was like, well, you know, the record is, I don't know, like 32, but we know we can get 31 because if you look at the time, it's actually people are doing 31.2. But well, you know, it's, you know, it's, um, it's probably more interesting than if it gave you it to two decimal places because it becomes much more an event whenever, whenever someone rolls back one of those speed run times by a second. And that record has stood for five years or something, it's a big event. So, um, there was a recent one and it was something, I mean, it was a little many years it hadn't been broken for. And it's amazing what they do that, you know, they're using like grenades to thrust them forward a bit. Yeah. And then, and yeah, they're using a rocket launcher to, yeah, where you, when you, when you damage yourself to get extra movement speed. And there's, there's a video. There's a guy who said Carl Jobst is one of the, um, there's him and then Ryan Goose or whatever, another guy. But Carl did this video. I've never spoken about. There's a video of his which is about the frigate. And his video for the frigate ex because it's highly dependent on the hostages going to hostage release points and stuff and things. And it, it, it's really interesting because, you know, I, you know, I set it up so, I, I, I can remember setting it all up. But I kind of learned some stuff from, because, because there's these weird things like this, there's, there's a goldmine. Does there's a lot of optimizations about how it deals with offspring movement and stuff. And he, in that video, he works out, he back-calculates some things about how the offspring movement must work based on his experience over hundreds of times trying to beat this thing. And he's completely on the money. I mean, he says, oh, I know, I know if I stand in this room and watch this guy running through this room, it takes this amount of time. But he must run through the same room in this amount of time if I'm not looking. And it's a, yeah, it's, it's, it's fascinating.

Um, another, another one I know on the speedrunners is obviously in Facility, it's, it's where Dr. Duke will pop up, um, which is quite random. And that makes a huge difference. Kind of using that as a segway to, uh, yeah, using that as a kind of in to talk about, uh, your likeness in the game and your name. Um, I know obviously a lot of the team were mapped as the NPCs and everything, but how did you actually, uh, come about, you know, how did it come about you were actually named as a character? So in each of the levels, I mean, the way it works in the game is that the guards, I think there, there are sets of like maybe six heads or something. Um, and when you run a level, it randomly selects one of those sets for the NPC heads or randomly selects six heads. I don't know which way it works. Um, and yeah, I mean, as you say, so everyone on the team and, you know, loads of people from Rare, um, are our heads in the game. So again, you know, so because I was doing the setup, um, that Dr. Dope objective, it's, you know, it's, it's a, it's a dressed-up door key objective, really. I mean, it could just be a key. Um, but obviously if it fits the fiction that you're meeting a double agent or something. Um, so, you know, did, did it, you know, meet me, assign this thing? And yeah, and, and because we always used to joke because that that Facility is like a lab stuff, it's called The Scientist because I was a scientist. So I think I put myself, you know, forced it to use my head. Um, because you could do that, you could force a character to be a particular character. Um, and, and, and, and don't put the, put the strings into me. But yeah, but when I did it, it was entirely in the expectation that it would get taken out because, um, Tim and Chris were very much, you know, Rare was supposed to be this kind of monolithic thing. Face, yeah, if you go, if you go back to Ultimate days, yeah, Ultra Ultimate was exactly, yeah, it was Ultimate Games where came from this mysterious place and all that, like all the Spectrum games and, you know, that that boxing they did for the, for the, when they, when they managed to crank the price up to a tenner instead of a fight, the black boxes and there was all this kind of fetishizing of the thing, but nowhere on it did it say any names of anyone involved. It just came, it was made by the video game elves in this magic place. And, and, and that was pretty much they, the way that they worked through all the NES and SNES stuff. Although, I mean, obviously the games have got their end credits, people's names on them, but people don't have cameos in games. But then Goldmine was weird because we, because of the face mapping thing, um, you know, we put pictures of ourselves in there. Um, so I put my name on it just as a joke, really. Um, because, you know, the expectations have come out. But again, they're just loads of stuff like this, like Carl, Carl and Brett put their names all over the place in the game. You know, there's, there's, there's lots, like in the Depot, there's lots of KHS and BJs in any, any, any place for this opportunity to stick some random letters on, um, they'll be there. So it was kind of, it was equivalent to that, but it was, it was, it was too obvious, really. So I was expecting it to be taken out. And, and, and Tim, Tim saw it and told Martin to take it out. So it got taken out. Um, I can't know what we changed it to, but changed to something else for a while. I think it was still my head, but the string got changed. Um, and then I think Martin put it back in again because, just, we, we were, we were a bit rebellious. I mean, being told to do something was a sure way to make us try to do it. I told not to do something wrong, so that, yeah. And, and, and when we put it back in, and I don't, I'm pretty sure it wasn't my decision to put it back in. I think it was, it was Martin to say, I'll just change it back. Um, it was quite late in the day, so already the string tables had gone off to localization, so that was like a separate file that went off and obviously got localized. And we made some ridiculous argument that it would cause trouble because not only would we have to change the English file, we'd have to change the other ones. Um, so, so it stayed in, um, which is good. It's been, it's been a sort of, it's been a source of pleasure. Immortalized. Yeah. And the, the, the thing I think that's really nice about it is, if I, if I meet people and they kind of, you know, they find out that I was involved with the game, um, and, and that there's me, well, they always remember the Doctor. But it's always like, you know, oh, I must have shot you so many times because, you know, because the nature of that character in the game is that, you know, he's supposed to be on your side, but he's quite annoying because of the randomness. And particularly, you know, it's not even if you, not even if you're a speedrunner, if you're interested in getting that cheat, I think it's the invincibility. It's a really good cheat. It's like a, the timing is, you, you're going to end up playing that level many times. And sometimes you will fail because Dr. Doke's in the wrong place. And if he's in the wrong place, obviously you're going to shoot him because you're going to be so pissed off. Yeah. So, um, so it's, it's quite, it's quite nice.

Yeah, I heard, I don't know how true this is, the, um, obviously, you know, the Facility time was very difficult because the cheat was such a good cheat, like you say, I think it was invincibility, right? But I heard that, um, it's Runway that's just very easy. So you just cut, you even if you don't realize the the times are a thing, you would just get it. Yeah. So that's that's by design. So that was, you know, so we obviously had all those cheats, but it doesn't, yes, yeah, it's that whole, you know, it's the, it's the, your first, your first sample of the drugs is free. Just put it in your top pocket, take that home with you, see you later. Um, you know, and then, yeah, but that's a very, you know, it's a, it's a strong design principle with rewards and games, you know, yeah, you inadvertently stop and then you feel ownership. It's like, oh, I did that. And also, I wasn't even trying. Bet you I'm really good at this. Um, yeah, Runway. I, I, I'm just trying to think, I'm sure that squishing people with the tank might have been something MGM weren't too keen on as well, because that's kind of, you know, that's mean. It was quite a mature game for the console, to be honest. Yes. Yeah. And, and we were, I think we were quite fortunate in that at the time, Nintendo of America, uh, Howard Lincoln was the boss. Um, and I, I think, yeah, I know because some, we had a thing we got, and he, it was one of the first games that he actually had taken home to play or something or showed any interest because he didn't really like video games. Um, but he was, you know, but it was, yeah, he, I think he had some military connection or something, but it was, you know, it was just like the, it wasn't people from Psycho, but he just, you know, just like appreciated the, um, you know, the thought, I guess, that got into it. And yeah, again, again, you know, I mean, the other, the other, I mean, two Rare games that really broke the mold there for Nintendo are GoldenEye and Conker. They're both completely outside of, I mean, you know, effectively Rare was, you know, first-party, really. Um, and, you know, those games wouldn't have come from from Kyoto. They wouldn't come from, you know, like, um. And, you know, looking, let me, looking back in the, you know, the, again, the animation, some of the animations are, you know, the death animations are are quite graphic. I mean, they clearly are people writhing in agony. Um, but then it's kind of, you know, it's, it's offset by the, oh, I've been shot in the nuts while they're going, I'll just start going around playing the game just to try and get the guy, you know, that kind of like, you know, shot in the butt or stung by a bee kind of animation and stuff and things. I love the ones where if you know, because they got limb-specific animation, so if you shoot them in the arm, they try to sort of shake it out like, oh. But there's, I get, again, I mean, that's, you know, that was Duncan in that godforsaken flock of birds motion capture thing. Um, you know, trying to do these big theatrical. And the brethren just brilliant. I mean, yeah, they're really, really good. And also, I mean, people probably don't realize how much, you know, now, I think just the way the data capture was done, but then also the data that came out of that stuff was absolutely crap. So, so Brett had to take it all and clean it all up. Um, and, you know, and now, you know, I teach some game design stuff. I watch the students. It's like, oh, well, you know, I'll just get the third-person character, just get some animations off Mo-Cap and drag them on to it. No, there you go. It's like, no, that's not how it worked. Yeah. So all, you know, all of, all of that, you know, just bring. And then things like, you know, that a lot of those animations are not the death ones, like the face plant ones and things, literally were, you know, Duncan standing with a crash mat in front of him with his eyes closed and, and Brett poking him with the broom or something to knock him over, you know, just because to make it look like, make it look like you're really getting hurt. That's dedication.

Now, I know a lot of the team played a lot of GoldenEye during development. Was it the same for you? And did that influence the the design choices much? What would be what play play during the development? Yeah, actually playing the playing. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be the game that it is if we just weren't playing it continually. I mean, particularly that, I mean, that, you know, I guess, I mean, you know, I think, I mean, so with with the single-player stuff, the story stuff, um, you know, I flatter myself, I probably was quite a good judge of what was going on because, you know, those story, the level setups, I would just play them to death before they went anywhere testing. I mean, obviously, there'd always be problems and stuff with them, but, you know, a lot of it was trying to, certainly one thing was, we were really worried that the game would just feel very samey all the way through. So trying to make different levels play in different ways. So, you know, like, you know, the Silo is very much a prolonged corridor shooter kind of thing with interesting, you know, you come in and there's some guys in boxes. Where other levels are more kind of freeform of necessity, like a lot of the, you know, the, the particularly exterior levels like the Seven Eye exteriors and things. Um, I mean, it's basic, they were, we always thought they were crap because it's basically you, you're just, you're in a, you're in a big huge big room that's pretending to be a snowy environment. And these guys, all they can do is come at you. But you're trying to moderate it in ways that make it feel like it's a bit more kind of, um, I don't know, there aren't just a whole bunch of people running at you out of the dark trying to kill you. Um, and then when the multiplayer, we always played the multiplayer constantly. Um, and I mean, again, I mean, that's, you know, it did, yeah, famously, it didn't get put in until very late in the day and was almost kind of like a stretch goal. Um, but all of the, you know, it's, it, there wasn't a, I don't remember there ever be any kind of design for the multiplayer or list of things we would have, but it was just like, you know, or what can we possibly do? So, and that, and then all of those things like, you know, the game modes like the Golden Gun and you're only left, they're all just, you know, completely freewheeling brainstorming, what can we do and how can we make it themed at all to Bond in some way? Um, and, and, you know, the weapon sets and stuff and things like that, handicaps and all that kind of thing. Um, I don't think we did. We didn't. Well, yeah.

[Music] Yes, that's the one. The one thing that that Brett and and Duncan didn't foresee with the motion capture was we needed to have some animations for people running around crouched. So when they were doing the capture, that was never going to happen because AI was never going to be doing that. The player could do it, but the AI was never going to be doing it. So who's going to, nobody's ever going to be looking at it. And then it's like, oh, so there's that. There's that, which is the famous, you know, slide around. Um, and then the other one is, okay, you know, so you're playing multiplayer, um, or in the game, it's like, you know, you know, Bond when he hasn't got a gun, he has a punch. But we didn't have a punch animation. So [Music] the thing with that, so the hand, the way the hand was modeled is it, it, well, it wasn't rigged, so you couldn't animate the hand. You know, there's the hand, there's the hand that's on the gun, and then there's the hand that looks like this, and you can only draw it from certain angles. So I think Steve, Steve, that's done in code, that animation that you, the judo, the judo chop slap. And there's a, I think there's, there's a, have you ever seen the thing about the, the paintbrush? So the hand model is that with a, with a cuff that's, that's the extent of the model and it cuts off here. If that gets rotated by 180 degrees by mistake, it looks like a paintbrush as it goes past. This, there's some, there's some hack you can do when you get the hand the wrong way around and it looks like a paintbrush. And then the, yeah, and then the AK, the AK-47 looks a bit like a pencil or a Duracell battery, just because of the foreshortening, you know, yeah. But yeah, and the game, that was kind of when we started to realize that that the game was going to be, well, people wouldn't think it was crap because we, we were always incredibly self-critical. So always thought, you know, A, it's really late, you know, we missed all the dates we were supposed to hit because they were just overly ambitious for what it was we're making. Um, so it's gonna come out, no one's gonna care about it because it's a bomb game because, you know, we missed, missed films and licensed games in general didn't have games. Yeah, you know, Nintendo, yeah, I'm going to promote it. And when it went to the testing, we just started getting really good feedback from internal testing and then from Nintendo of America testing. And then when the multiplayer was in, just everyone at Rare wanted to play it. So, you know, there was a black market between the teams at Rare that, you know, GoldenEye team would supply ROMs to other teams for playing out of hours. And one with the Killer team, I think, well, they were probably, well, they might have been the Conker team by then. So Chris Sieve, Chris Tilson, um, those all those guys, they used to play, they used to play Bond, play, play, play multiplayer, build my after hours. And we did a special version. So that the team got us to make a special one. Chris Tilton on the team, who was kind of like the lead designer, whatever, he was always boasting about being better at it than everyone else. So we did a special version because people were playing on their dev kits, I guess. And there was a special version that changed his hitbox on his dev kit so that he just always lost, basically. And then as a wind-up. Brilliant.

Yeah, I mean, in terms of success, uh, commercially, it was, it was, uh, it was quite a slow burner because it just kept, every Christmas for, for, you know, the two, three years, the sales were just increasing, increasing, right? Yeah. And it did, yeah. So, you know, I think the, the first runs of it were quite conservative. I mean, obviously, this is in the days where there was that, you know, actual cartridges were made. And, you know, if you don't sell them, you end up with a warehouse or a, um, dumpster full of cartridges. So, yeah, it was done, done and runs. And, you know, reviewed well. Um, Ken, Ken Lobb was, uh, um, I mean, Ken Lobb was kind of like the guy who was, he was almost like an honorary member of Rare. You know, and I think he, he was, I only kind of found out that this later years. He, I think he was responsible by, he made a couple of brilliant, um, he had some input into the marketing and, and stuff in the States. And, and he got NOA to supply copies to Blockbuster for free for rental, just because he knew that if people played it, they'd want to buy it. So I think a lot of sales were driven through that. And, and there's an interview with him somewhere. He says about how it's, as you're saying, it's like, it's sales, it was doing more in its third year than it was doing at the start, just because it just had this, this word of mouth thing. Um, which, which is extraordinary. Yeah, that's just so, I don't know, I suppose the only game I can think of in in the modern era that has had that legs is maybe GTA, like GTA 5 or something, you know, see, yeah, it's, it's still, it still sells. Um, yeah, but was mostly now it's like bang, and then the price goes, goes straight down. Um, yeah, so, yeah. And, and, I mean, and now, you know, I've gone to kind of like retro shows and stuff and things, and it's, it's still highly sought after. You know, I just, I just, I love, I mean, that's it. It's a shame that's kind of lost from the games world now, but that whole thing of, you know, printed parts and manuals and a cartridge and stuff and things. Um, yeah, really very special. It's a great privilege to be part of that. And even the going to, I mean, I remember, you know, obviously it was the first game I'd ever worked on. But remember, you know, my mum's saying, oh, we, when we went into that shop in town and we saw your, your game was there, you know, we told, we told the guy that our son worked on it. It's very special to go and see something at the shop, I guess.

Bet do you remember, um, industry reactions like E3 or anything? We, the year, so '97 when it came out. So E3, which I guess, I mean, it was May or something, I can't remember. So the game was pretty much finished and we were in late testing because otherwise we wouldn't have been allowed to go. I mean, we still were busy, but it was, you know, there was a long, there's a long testing cycle and stuff and things. But we were able to, we were, we all went to E3 '97. And that's when the game, you know, had its first proper public showing. And it was really strange because, you know, we had, it was like about, I think it was about eight booths or something. It was on the Nintendo side. It was quite, it's quite prominent. And we were all there kind of like helping demo it to people and stuff and things. And, um, it was kind of over the three days, more people would come. And then I think another thing was like people coming saying, you know, playing, I said, oh, yeah, it's Rio. It would start up in the morning and just have the Dam level unlocked. And people play the Dam. And then they go, oh, that's really, yeah, I love it, great demo. And we said, well, you know, you play the rest of it. And, you know, people coming back, you know, like the third day, going, oh, you know, what, how much if it's unlocked? So I can play all the, or all the levels of things. And, and I think people were really surprised that it was, you know, it wasn't just this part of the game, it's like it was, was the whole thing. And again, the multiplayer and stuff. And I, I remember we, you know, did have like, you know, you know, PC gamers who would have come to scoff eventually, coming later in the, you know, over the three days to play, actually, this is really good. Um, so, you know, all of that. And then when the reviews came out, I mean, you know, the reviews were all very good. Um, but then, you know, the multiplayer, um, I mean, I think, you know, wouldn't be, I think the multiplayer was its USP, really. You know, that was that was the thing that that sold it. Um, because it enabled you to play, you know, prior to that, yes, as we talked about with PCs and stuff, you know, yeah, there's no online. If you want to play a LAN game, you've got to bring a whole bunch of stuff. It's an absolute nightmare. Whereas this was, you know, perfect for college dorms and stuff and things, you know, grab your N64, grab your controllers, you don't need anything else, go for it. Um, so, you know, just open, open doors for that. And I remember at Rare, you know, Tim Stamper was always very cynical about the idea that you would have this game which was a kind of competitive first-person game, but everyone could see everyone else's screen. But it just, it just makes it different, you know. Um, so that, yeah.

Um, and then another from, I think it's probably ECT '98, I guess. And Martin and I were at ECTS, this used to be the London show. Um, [Music] and, and it's funny, it didn't really, didn't really mean that much at the time, but, but Valve were showing Half-Life or showing a build of Half-Life. Um, and Valve were very small at the time. And we were talking to them, and they were going, yeah, we, you know, we played your game and, you know, it's like, it's made us change our minds about, well, I think, I think what the impression I got from them was that it confirmed to them that the things that they were doing were, were, you know, we're going to be successful in the world because they, you know, Half-Life has got a lot of stuff in Half-Life. It's, yeah, it's, it's GoldenEye style. I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't derivative in any way, but it's just that that kind of, that was how first-person games were evolving at that time, you know, how do you make it, how do you make it not just about running around with red, blue, and, you know, yellow key cards and stuff? I mean, I, you know, I tremendous respect for for Doom. And, you know, particularly, particularly, I mean, Doom, the early Dooms were transformative, really. I mean, there was nothing before them. Um, but there's not really the story is, you kill monsters. It doesn't try to, you know, you're not trying to have any kind of subtlety to it, really. Um, so, yeah, well, yeah, I think, uh, it was hugely influential on, uh, on the industry, particularly multiplayer, like you said. And, yeah, it's, uh, it's still very, very much loved today. By me, it's nice to see. It's nice to see that, I mean, I think one of the things that I really, I didn't think I'd get so much about it. I've not played the expert label. I've watched people playing it, um, on online. But one of the nice things about it is that, you know, as time goes on, the Goldmine has always had this thing where people say, oh, it's amazing, it's amazing. But there's always this, yeah, but it doesn't control very well if you play it. Because obviously, when we were making it, there was no, there was no accepted convention for how you would do those controls. And also, there's only one analog stick. So it kind of, it, you know, it creates issues. So the controls are what they are. And I think, I mean, we, we tried every combination under the sun. And I think that default controls for Goldmine are the right controls. Um, but you always have this niggling thing of people kind of going, yeah, but, you know, it doesn't stand up if you play it today. You know, it's like, it controls really badly. It's, you know, the frame rate was terrible. But the XPLA reissue, I mean, essentially it's the same game code. It's the same, everything's the same. But it's hitting consistently a good frame rate. And you can play it with dual analog. And lots of people saying, actually, you know what, it plays really well. Um, so that, that, that's a nice thing to get that kind of out there. And, you know, getting, yeah, it's just, it's a, personally, it's a thing. I, it always kind of ranked with me, you know, that whole thing like, yeah, yeah, well, it was good for its time, but it doesn't stand up. Um, you know, I think it does stand up. Um, yeah, obviously, obviously, you know, blocky fists Natalia getting in your way. Yeah. I, I often have disagreements over that. That, you know, you can't compare the modern game to something that's 23 years old anyway. You could, the same as you can't say, oh, this 80s game is no good on the BBC Micro or whatever, because, you know, it doesn't matter if the game plays there. It gameplay. But obviously the face buttons don't do that on that. So I'm like, uh, hang on, it doesn't work. But I like the original controls. And I think, you know, the, the controller is the thing that's that's odd. And I think Gold Knight is the game that really makes the most of that controller. If you look at other games, we all, and we always, I mean, I, I always hold it. I, yeah, I was, I was played with my right hand on the middle prong with my right, right thumb on the analog stick. And I operate the face buttons by flicking my thumb over. I didn't play the Lauren another team. I think there was, there was, there was a split between people who play it one way or the other. And it's funny, if I play it now, well, on the original Hot Rocks, I did. Funny, just just before last year, just before lockdown, there was in Norwich, one of the model, one, like, one of the, there was like a pub there. They, they'd have a, they outraged the Gold My thing. It's quite funny because they, they're supposed to think about it on social media. And I, they didn't even know that I live or that I lived around here, whatever. I kind of just replied to them and said, come on, come on. But it was, it was funny because we played, you know, it was really nice, you know, with it, with a fairly small TV and stuff and things. And we played, played there. And, you know, when you start off, it's like, you're, you're not playing it for ages. And you're running around looking at the floor. But after, you know, after about 15 minutes, it starts to, it starts to come together. Um, and, and you can kind of forget about it. It's, it's a weird thing that that readjusting. And see, yeah, particularly if you go back, I mean, yeah, not just all those, like, you know, particularly PlayStation One games and stuff and things. I think they're really interesting revisiting them because people were much more open about what you, what the controls might be. Whereas now it's kind of this, you know, it's, yes, I mean, I think the consensus about how things work is, is a good consensus. But you get unnecessary kind of sniping of things just because they do something a bit different, different. Um, you know, I'd rather play something different. Like you said, back in the 90s though, there were no rules. So it was kind of, you know, better for it. And I think some of it's come back with indie games now and, and stuff. But yeah, good times.

Well, this point, I mean, it was just, it's just insane. So spoiled for choice now. Um, and I know, I mean, it amazes me how inventive people are. I mean, you know, I think I've played recently, which is just, is that Loop Hero? Have you played that? So it's, it's this, it's this weird kind of, I don't know, it's a kind of cross between a kind of deck builder and a dungeon management game and stuff. And it's, it's, it's all pixel graphics. And there's nothing about the game. I mean, it's a bit, it's probably a bit intense in terms of performance because in the background, it's doing a lot of things. But you could have done a game like it on the NES. You know, it, but it, it actually has the mechanics of it are born out of things that have happened in board games over the years. Things have happened with auto battlers and all those kind of stuff. And it's just, it's, it's a completely different design. You know, so it's, yeah, it's an example of something where still there is just amazing innovation going on. Um, whereas if you look at first-person shooters, and choose gentlemen, it's much, it's much harder because it's just so many people have made games in those genres in the last 20 years. It's just, you know, it's almost impossible to think of something new to do. But then you get something like Bullet Per Minute, you know, like a rhythm, it's a rhythm action first-person shooter. You know, so I can't, I, I miss the, I, I miss the, I miss the being able to play. I think I often say to people is that in the 90s, you could play every important game that came out in the year. You know, there were probably, you know, if you played the 20 biggest things, you'd pretty much touched everything. Whereas now, you know, in a week, there's probably 20 things you would have played. And, and, and also looking back to, you know, again, those things like, you know, arcade games as well for a while. And I mean, particularly those kind of like, you know, early 3D games, there's a lot of really interesting design stuff tied up in games that nobody's heard of anymore. You know, I mean, I, I, I just do some teaching at Norwich University of the Arts. You know, we'll be talking about something or, you know, or some students will be making something. I'll go, oh, that's a bit like this. And there you go. Okay, let's go on the internet. Yes, there you see that, that arcade game from, you know, 1983. [Laughter] But yeah, it's a great, a great, a great industry, great thing. Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you so much for talking to me. That has been, uh, a pleasure and really, uh, invaluable information. Well, no ways, people now. I couldn't talk to you. Thank you very much. And, you know, you know about Drew Rollers? Are you, are you doing this for, um, internet or, yeah, this is like, uh, YouTube. It will be okay. Yeah, because, um, there's a chap in Australia who's been working on a kind of 20, you know, 25 years. I've got it. It's more about the influence of the game, probably, rather than the actual production of it. Um, but that's supposed to be coming out next year, I think. Yeah, I think they followed me on Twitter a couple of weeks ago. And it's, it's cool. Got no documentary or something. It's something like that. Yeah. I thought, oh, but yeah, I have to keep an eye on that. So are you, presumably you're in that? Yeah, a lot of us have spoken to him. I mean, he's been doing it. He's been, it's been doing over the probably the last two or three years, I think he's first got in touch with us. Um, but he did, I know last year, I mean, well, the year before, obviously everything's a bit crazy now. He, before the, before the COVID stuff, he had gone and done, um, talking to lots of journals and stuff, you know, about, about, you know, the ongoing influence, I think. So yeah, I mean, I think it looked much more, uh, high production value than my channel. But yeah, yeah, but I mean, yeah, I mean, there's plenty, plenty to talk about. Yeah. And there's a GoldenEye like spoof film. If you, yes, that's Jim. So Jim Stallone. Um, so he did, he did the, the first one, the Going for Gold Knight. Um, and I mean, it, we only found out any of us only found out about that after after it came out. Um, and he's a lovely, he's a lovely guy. So he's, he's, he did a sequel to it. Um, and I'm in it. I don't do, I think that's coming out this year. I think he's pretty much done. Grant, Grant's doing the music for him. Yeah, that's how I found out about it. Grant told me, tell me about it. Yeah. Um, yeah, I don't know, should be honest. It's really, he's, he's, he's a lovely guy, basically. To James, Jim's business is, he's an online forest. So he, he, he worked for a guy who was not on my side. This is his story. I said, how did you get into? Well, I was working for this guy who did, oh, you know, it was not my fault. He had a really, really nice house. I thought I could do that. So he set up on his own and he's been really, really successful. Um, but he really loves his games. Um, so he did, so that the first Gold Knight, I mean, just, he did it as just a passion project. The first one. And then the second one, he got more professional people. I mean, the actor, I think the actor, a lot of the actors, professional. The first one, the second one, he got some professional people to direct it and stuff and things. And he was kind of like this, you know, producer or whatever. Um, and, um, yeah, but he's gonna, he's, he's, it's, it's, I think he's gonna do well. He's gotta deal with some streamers straight or, you know, like Netflix or something. But it's going to be free. So he's, that's his thing. He's saying, he said, I'll make it, if I make it free, then there's no way Microsoft or Eon can come. So it's free with donations to charity. And it should be quite, is it, it's, it's quite, I mean, this, it's a very kind of, um, Spinal Tap kind of a thing. I mean, the gist of it is, there's this Golden Eye World Championship. And the guy who in the first one is, he's just a complete idiot, um, who wins it. Um, and then it's a kind of like, they've got this, yeah, and I think, and then, and then Jim is, he messed up with Drew, who's doing the, the documentary. Um, and, and he's been, I think he's been helping Drew with that with the funding for it and stuff and things. But it's completely, completely a passion project. He's got, he's got a, he's up in them, he's at the leads, I think that's why I went. And he's, he has a gaming father, but he only opened it just before the COVID thing happened. So when, when it's, when it's all blown over, you know, I'm hoping to take it up to you. Well, Gardner is obviously getting a lot, a lot of love still. But the XVLA thing has been funny. That's just people. I know it's, yeah, I mean, next year's 25th anniversary of it. Um, I don't know where all that time went. Terrifying, by the way. Yeah. Give me a shout if you, if you need anything else. Just give me a shout. Um, but, um, yeah, thank you very much. No worries. Okay. Have a great weekend. Yeah, you too. Have a good one. Cheers. [Music] You.