Turtle Rock Studios Interview April 13, 2006 John JCal Callaham

Introduction

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FiringSquad: First, for people who may not be familiar with Turtle Rock, how was the company itself formed?

Michael Booth: I founded Turtle Rock Studios in early 2002 after becoming disillusioned with the short sightedness and stifling atmosphere of big corporate game development. Seeing passionate, talented people become pigeonholed and embittered time and again proved to me that this was the wrong way to build games.

I have always believed that real collaboration between talented people results in great things. People pay lip service to this, but very few actually practice it. When schedule pressure hits, and the suits need your product for fiscal quarter revenues, the safe game design is chosen and everyone is sent to their cubicles to hammer it out. Ongoing discussion is discouraged, and there is no time for design iteration.

Real collaboration means having artists, engineers, designers - everyone in the studio - feel like they can genuinely discuss the game with everyone else, have some actual debate, and end up with a better game as a result.

That is the reason and principle on which I founded Turtle Rock Studios. We playtest, discuss, and iterate on our games almost every day.


FiringSquad: How did the name of the company come to be chosen?

Michael Booth: I wanted an enigmatic and weirdly memorable studio name without being sophomoric. I didn't want the name to be too specific to a type of videogame because I have a wide range of project ideas.

Finally, the neighborhood where I live encircles "turtle rock hill". The name seemed to be just what I was looking for.


FiringSquad: The company's first project was the official Counter-Strike AI bot, but you quickly branched out by assisting Valve on the Counter-Strike Xbox game and the PC title Counter-Strike: Condition Zero. Were you surprised at how much work the company had to do in such a short amount of time?

Michael Booth: Definitely surprised, but in a good way. It was refreshingly encouraging to see the amount of belief and trust Valve had in my fledgling studio for them to trust such a huge set of projects to it.


FiringSquad: What can you tell us about Turtle Rock's work on Counter-Strike: Source?

Michael Booth: We worked closely with Valve during the development of Counter-Strike: Source before its initial release. While we had been finishing work on Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, an internal team at Valve had built Counter-Strike: Source to a functional state. We then joined the project and helped finalize and polish the initial release.

Since its release, Turtle Rock Studios has taken the lead with respect to ongoing development of Counter-Strike: Source and has continued to add content and new features, as well as fix bugs and exploits.


FiringSquad: How hard is it to port a game that has such a massive following and one which will likely nitpick every change and alteration made to the original game?

Michael Booth: It is absolutely a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it is awesome to be able to work on a game that has such worldwide appeal and such an active online community. You know that *every bit* of detail you work hard to add to the game will be noticed, dissected, and debated.

On the other hand, you have to harden yourself a bit against the very vocal and flammable minority of the CS community that hates everything you do. According to these folks, every release "ruins the game", every new map "sucks", and any new art that is added is "lame". They have been predicting the demise of Counter-Strike for nearly a decade now, in spite of the ongoing growth of the overall community.

I frequently read the various major Counter-Strike forums (as do many people at both Turtle Rock and Valve) and have learned to take the good with the bad. As painful as it can be sometimes to wade through threads of flameage, there is no substitute for getting clear feedback on how an update was received and what the perceived gains and losses were to the game experience.

Turtle Rock Studios Interview (con't)

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Michael Booth: I founded Turtle Rock Studios with the intention of publishing on Steam. I saw it as a crack in the big corporate game development fortress where I could escape with my creative freedom and IP ownership intact.

Over the last four years, my experience with Source and Steam has only made these convictions stronger.

Source and Steam are both polished and mature platforms that have been proven viable in the real world. In addition, Valve has attracted a truly world class collection of talent who are actively working to enhance and evolve Source and Steam.

Valve has also long been a leader at building and maintaining gamer communities. In 1999/2000 when I was arguing with the powers that be in big corporate game development that releasing level editors and supporting the online community was a Good Thing (and being categorically shut down), Valve was already cultivating support for community-made "mods". Counter-Strike itself is a great example of their success in this area.


FiringSquad: Recently Turtle Rock announced plans to release an all new first person shooter using Valve's Source engine and using Steam as its delivery system. What hints can you give us about the game at this stage?

Michael Booth: All I can say right now is that we look forward to playtesting it every night here at the studio.


FiringSquad: How do you see the first person shooter evolving in the next few years?

Michael Booth: Although there are several areas where I see such evolution in the first person shooter genre, such as richer interactions with the environment and deeper plots/scenarios, the area I have long been preparing for is robust and interesting AI.

Even as far back as Ultima Underworld and the first System Shock, I was frustrated by the disparity between the reasonably believable environment and the simplistic actors within them. This has continued to be an issue, and today's ultra-realistic visuals just make the problem more apparent. There are exceptions, such as Alyx in Half-Life 2, that have made solid progress in creating believable personalities. However, most games have very realistic mannequins that run headlong into solid walls, move robotically, and emit a single canned line of dialog when you interact with them. Clearly, more can be done here.


FiringSquad: Do you see digital distribution of PC game becoming more popular, perhaps replacing retail store distribution altogether?

Michael Booth: Digital distribution is undoubtedly where things are going. I don't see it entirely replacing retail sales, but I do think digital distribution will become the primary channel in the very near future. As a corollary, I can't remember the last time I bought a CD - but my iPod is full of new music. In fact, I have discovered more kinds of interesting music in the last couple of years than I ever *even knew existed* when all my music choices came from the retail channels. As a result, I'm enjoying music even more these days.

For the game developer, digital distribution is a far better situation than the traditional publisher model. The overhead of selling and delivering a game experience is far lower than having to invest in manufacturing thousands of boxes, DVDs, and manuals and then shipping them around the planet. In contrast, the internet's reach is worldwide, instantaneous, and fairly inexpensive. Plus, our ability to seamlessly update our game at any time with no user intervention required is invaluable.

It is that last point - ongoing and seamless updates - that really puts the nail in the coffin of traditional retail sales for me. My interest has always been the online/multiplayer community and the kind of game experiences that medium can offer. The combination of online communities and ongoing updates has massively huge potential that we've barely begun to explore.