When Half-Life 2’s Source engine was released to the public, Garry Newman created the free sandbox building tool Garry’s Mod. Valve loved it, signed him up, and this year the game celebrates ten years on Steam.
Were games always a part of your life? What were your favourites growing up?
Early on, my family had a Sinclair Spectrum. Every game that I played was on the Spectrum and it was the Dizzy games that I played most. I loved adventure games.
Was making your own games something you always wanted to do?
The Dizzy games were made by the Oliver twins obviously, so it was always in the back of my mind – when I was around six or seven years old – that these 12 and 13 year old lads had made these games. I was always like, ‘well, if they can do it, surely I can.’
When did you learn to code yourself?
Hmm… I don’t think I’ve actually learnt yet – I’m still learning! No, it was probably when I was about eight or nine when I was learning to read. I’d often type sentences into the Spectrum and stuff happened. I’d clear the screen, start again and it just evolved from there, really. I suppose it was programming websites that threw it forward a lot – there’s a lot in common with programming the back end of websites that helps you learn C++ and stuff like that.
You were originally working on a game called Facewound – what was it about and what happened to it?
That was a sidescrolling 2D shooter where you shot zombies. It was kind of like Mario versus Half-Life. I was working on that non-stop and then when Valve asked if I wanted to sell Garry’s Mod it fell by the wayside. It was hard to do but this happened because no one was interested in Facewound, really, and everybody was interested in Garry’s Mod. It was a common sense thing to do.
Would you ever return to it?
We actually have a version of it working in Unity, but I don’t know if it’s fun and I don’t know if we can be bothered to complete it. We might release it for free at some point. Never say never.
Is it true Garry’s Mod happened totally by accident?
Yeah, there was another mod called JB Mod and everybody was playing that. Half-Life 2 had come out and the Source engine had been released. While Half-Life 2 was enjoyable, I felt like you never had the chance to explore the engine – you saw physics but you didn’t really have the chance to play with them. There were a lot of objects that we saw in the game fleetingly, however we didn’t get to play with them properly. When the Source engine mod came out and you could spawn these things and tie things together, that was interesting.
The JB Mod had at that point started to stagnate – the guy that made it got into World Of Warcraft and stopped making it, I think – so I started playing with it a bit more and began to work out how easy it was to do certain things. It snowballed from there.
Was there a point where you realised it was beginning to take off, that people were interested in Garry’s Mod?
Because people were into JB Mod so much, there were some people asking why I was trying to copy it – it was a little bit aggressive at first. As Garry’s Mod got better, and when people could see it was different from JB Mod and was advancing, they started to come around. It seemed most people then preferred Garry’s Mod.
Then Valve began to show interest. How did that feel?
It was pretty incredible, really. I remember playing the original Half-Life and I must have played through the opening metro level – where the names are rolling at the foot of the screen – I must have seen those names hundreds of times, so to be emailing those very people years later was crazy.
Up until the Steam launch, Garry’s Mod was free – when did you realise this could be an actual career for you?
I didn’t realise until about a week after we’d started selling it. I expected to sell a couple of thousand copies, and then it would die off and that’d be it. It sustained the sales and I quickly realised that I earned more in a week than I would at a job in a year. It seemed ridiculous not to pursue it.
What was the reaction of people around you at that point – family, friends etc.?
My mum and dad still don’t really have any idea what’s going on. I talk to my dad and he’ll always be like, ‘what do you do all day?’ and ‘so you just look at a computer and press buttons?’ He has no idea. I think they might even have been suspicious at first – I flew out to America to the first dev days just before signing Garry’s Mod when I was 19. I was flying to the US and they couldn’t get their heads around it. I think at the time there was a story about a man meeting someone online and eating him so they were worried in that way as well. It took a lot of convincing to prove to them it was legitimate.
Garry’s Mod costs a mere £6.99 and has done since 2004. How did you decide on
the price?
I think the price has something to do with modesty, in a way. I don’t see it going up. I had $10 in my head because it was free before that and I didn’t want to ask people to pay crazy money for it. I remember being at a meeting with Valve where everyone was eating Subway sandwiches – I suggested $10 and they said even if people complained at that price, the sandwiches they were eating cost more than that. Really, in the scheme of things, it was no big deal.
With little prior coding knowledge – is it safe to say you were learning on the job?
With Garry’s Mod, definitely. I was telling some of the lads in the Facepunch Studios office the other day that with the first two versions I didn’t have any Source control, so if the game was crashing I literally had to throw all of the work up to that point away and start again. I’d then hope it’d be a bit neater that next time.
How do you deal with that frustration?
It was hard work, but when you have something like that you learn more than when it’s easy. You have to work through it; that’s why you’re there.
And is this learning process something you’ve carried over into the development
of RUST?
[Laughs] I like to think we’re a bit more professional now. It’s less trial and error. Well, it’s less trial and error in terms of gameplay. In terms of coding – we hope we’re mostly getting it right.
What do you think it is about sandbox games where players can craft what they want that’s so appealing?
I suppose it’s about using your own imagination and being able to do whatever you want. You can get a game like chess where it’s just one game – there’s only so many things you can do with it. With a game like Garry’s Mod you can come up with your own ways to play and if you get bored of that you can write your own mods or create your own add-ons; there’s the Steam Workshop to download new stuff. It’s unlimited content if there’s enough people involved.
This year marks your tenth year on Steam – could you have foreseen its popularity and success a decade ago?
No way. When Valve first suggested that I sell it I thought it was a stupid idea. That no one was going to buy it and why would we even think about charging for it. Luckily, the guys at Valve were really persistent to put it up on Steam – my life could have worked out a lot different otherwise.
Will there ever be a Garry’s Mod 2?
There will be, yeah. It won’t be called Garry’s Mod, though. I hate that name so much.
Really? Did it just stick at the time?
Everybody tells me it’s a good name and that it speaks to the modesty of it, but I hate having my name in it. When people ask me what games I make and I’m forced to say my own name… I hate it.
What would you have called it instead?
I can’t really say because that’s going to be the name of the second game and I don’t want people to buy all the domain names ahead of time!
What’s your fondest or funniest memory of making Garry’s Mod?
There are lots of stories – deleting the code during the first versions is probably the funniest. When I told Valve no at first, that I wasn’t going to sell Garry’s Mod, and they came back and convinced me, I remember I had to fax the contract off. They asked me if I had a fax machine, and, wanting to act professional, I said yeah. I went out and bought one and they asked me to sign the contract and fax it back. I said no problem, but then faxed it upside down. At their end this meant they received ten sheets of blank paper. They told me that it had come through blank and asked that I send it again. I did the same thing. It must have been about four or five times before they said: ‘are you sure you’re scanning the correct side?’ There’s a few stories like that. I probably should have read the instructions on the fax machine!
Find even more fantastic interviews like this and behind the scenes content on classic games with Retro Vol. 9, available now
