The Origins of MachineGames (Riddick, The Darkness) - Noclip Documentary

0:01 (Ident click) (Droning ambient music) (Click) [Danny] Hello!

0:11 and welcome to Uppsala in eastern Sweden,

0:13 just an hour or so north of the capital,

0:16 Stockholm, and it's here where we tell the story of MachineGames.

0:21 MachineGames has been one of Europe's strongest

0:24 game design exports of the 21st Century,

0:26 helming the remarkably successful reboots of Wolfenstein

0:30 and 2024's "Game of the Year" contender, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

0:34 But the history of this studio reaches back much further.

0:38 The founding members of MachineGames originally worked together at Starbreeze,

0:42 the studio responsible for The Darkness, Enclave,

0:46 the first-person reboot of Syndicate, and (in my own opinion) most importantly,

0:50 The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay.

0:53 And each one of these games, in both good and bad ways,

0:56 was a stepping stone on the development journey of MachineGames.

1:00 The next two episodes of this three-part series are

1:03 going to dive deep into Wolfenstein and Indiana Jones respectively.

1:07 But today, on the first episode,

1:09 we're gonna take a trip down memory lane to explain how MachineGames came to be.

1:14 Our story starts in 1998,

1:16 where a handful of young Quake map-makers have been hired to work

1:20 on a brand new game that will never see the light of day.

1:29 [Jerk] Obviously, we didn't have a clue.

1:31 We were seven people.

1:34 We worked too much, of course– we got in in the morning

1:37 and stayed up late at night– because no one had any families,

1:40 we didn't have anything like that.

1:42 We were all single, pretty young, guys.

1:45 We played a lot of games, we played a lot of multiplayer games

1:49 during lunch breaks and also in the evenings, and we had pizzas and hamburgers.

1:54 We all got pretty fat.

1:56 [Danny] (Laughs) We just lived that life.

1:58 And that was the cycle of life, then, for seven days a week.

2:02 [Jens] We were something like seven people in the office and we

2:07 had this super ambitious video game that we were building called Sorcery.

2:11 And, because we were young and stupid,

2:14 we didn't know what it takes to make a game,

2:18 so the vision was something like Skyrim

2:21 even though this was decades before Skyrim.

2:23 But that's what we wanted to do, like a big, epic fantasy RPG.

2:30 So that's what we were working on but we

2:33 were way understaffed for something like that.

2:35 The publisher was bought by another

2:37 publisher and they were reviewing the portfolio,

2:40 and they came and visited us and they basically realized, "Well,

2:46 this game is never getting finished,

2:48 so let's cancel it." (Laughs) But, from our point of view,

2:53 it was super weird because the strengths we had were very strong.

2:57 I mean, what we had looked amazing, it just wasn't very "playable",

3:01 I guess that was the problem with it.

3:04 But it was a huge learning experience for us.

3:07 It really checked our egos and that was great,

3:11 even though it was super painful at the time.

3:14 So, the way that resolved was that...

3:16 because then we, of course, had no money because we were cancelled,

3:20 so the way it panned out was

3:23 that our company Starbreeze merged with this company in Uppsala.

3:27 What then turned into the Starbreeze that actually shipped

3:31 games was this fusion of original Starbreeze and O3 Games,

3:36 under the name Starbreeze.

3:38 And that's also what really intrigued us about

3:42 O3 Games because they had shipped a game.

3:45 So we were like, "Okay,

3:46 they know how to ship something!" (Laughs) It was called The Outforce.

3:50 [Jerk] And then we got the deal with Swing!, a German publisher, for Enclave.

3:56 And then we started to take another approach

3:59 to Enclave to make it more of a fantasy game,

4:02 'cos initially it was a multiplayer PvP game.

4:04 [Jens] (Laughs) The crazy thing was,

4:08 we were so shellshocked from Sorcery not being...

4:12 not just "not shipping it", but not being anywhere near shipping it,

4:17 what ended up happening was we made this game,

4:20 we put all our hearts and souls into it, we shipped it and then it wasn't good.

4:25 That was another big shock and a big, big learning opportunity.

4:30 "Okay, we put all this effort into this, almost died doing it,

4:35 "and in the end it's not even good?" So

4:39 we really had to step up and figure out...

4:42 A big problem was that it was incredibly difficult

4:46 and basically unplayable because it was so difficult (laughs).

4:50 There's one moment where it's like

4:53 an underwater level and the place gets flooded,

4:56 blah blah blah,– and already there, there are some puzzles that you have

5:00 to solve in real-time while you're drowning, basically– but if you somehow...

5:04 And, remember, there are no saves in this game, right?

5:08 So if you die at any point you

5:11 have to replay the map from the beginning (laughs).

5:14 But if they somehow make it through all that, they get to the end,

5:18 they're supposed to save this wizard.

5:19 What we did was, there's some trap there and three levers.

5:24 So we thought, "Okay, let's make a lever puzzle." (Laughs) But then we thought,

5:31 "Hmm, just pulling these levers in the right sequence?

5:34 "That seems too basic and boring.

5:36 Let's do something fun with it." So basically,

5:39 what happened was, regardless of the lever you pulled,

5:42 every time you pulled a lever there was this big spike

5:45 that started dropping towards the guy you were supposed to save.

5:52 So you pull one, and he goes, "Er,

5:54 that's not good." You keep pulling them, it goes closer and closer.

5:58 You pull the last one,

5:59 it impales him and he dies and you have to start the map over.

6:02 (Laughter) So obviously, to the player it's like, "Okay,

6:06 I just have to figure out the right sequence." But the problem is,

6:10 there is no right sequence.

6:11 So the actual solution is,

6:14 there's another lever hidden under the stairs and if you

6:18 pull that lever then you'll just let the guy go.

6:22 (Laughter) So these kinds of extremely idiotic things,

6:26 we did a lot in that game and some of them were, unfortunately, my fault.

6:33 [Danny] After Enclave, the studio began work on a sequel

6:36 but, due to some legal issues with their publisher,

6:39 that game was cancelled and reworked into 2004's Knights of the Temple:

6:44 Infernal Crusade– which was promptly swallowed up

6:47 by one of gaming's most incredible release years.

6:49 But, while Infernal Crusade came and went with barely any notice,

6:53 for a lot of people the studio's next game would leave a lasting impression.

6:59 [Jim] So, Riddick came about, originally, 'cos we had a tech demo.

7:06 John Carmack showed Doom 3 tech, with the stencil shadows,

7:10 and the head engineer saw this, a guy called Magnus Högdahl–

7:14 a brilliant guy– spent a weekend implementing it just for shits and giggles.

7:19 But he did it in the game we were currently making,

7:21 so he had made a demo in Enclave.

7:24 And then, while we were building the initial version

7:28 of Riddick– which was a lightmapped version of the game– he

7:32 focused on getting the technology so we could do the per-pixel

7:38 lighting and shadow stuff that we ended up shipping with.

7:41 [Jerk] Starbreeze then,

7:42 and the work Magnus did on that, especially when it comes to stencil shadowing,

7:47 was a big deal for us.

7:50 And I think the most important thing for us,

7:52 was to be able to get that in and to work with that for the Riddick

7:56 game– and also release it before id Soft's first Doom came out,

7:59 so we were the first in the market with that type of tech.

8:02 So that was a very big deal for us, actually.

8:05 [Jim] And then, I was the fortunate person that had

8:07 to try to get all that working on the PS2 version (laughs).

8:11 And that hardware wasn't really capable.

8:13 If you look on the compatibility stuff

8:16 that Xbox has been doing fairly successfully,

8:19 Riddick is one of the games that still isn't

8:23 doable as back-compat[ible] because we didn't actually follow the rules.

8:28 [Danny] Riddick would establish the foundation

8:30 of how Starbreeze would develop their games.

8:32 Due to working within the narrative constraints of an IP

8:35 with one previous movie and a second one coming out,

8:38 they had to establish the story early,

8:40 and stick to it– a narrative-first development

8:43 cycle that mirrored the pre-production used on films.

8:46 [Jerk] First-person worked well, we thought,

8:48 for that type of game and also the story we wanted

8:51 to tell– because we didn't really have any information about the movie,

8:55 but of course we had Pitch Black.

8:57 I think we can see a lot of that in our processes still today,

9:00 and how we started to map out the game and work with story,

9:03 and let the story drive the decisions for gameplay.

9:06 And I think that's what generated all of these different styles of gameplay,

9:12 or different types of features that we added to the game.

9:14 So, I don't think we ever have been very good– or at least,

9:17 not the best– at specific things, when it comes to gameplay.

9:21 But the mix of it all, and combined,

9:24 I think we do bring something unique to our games.

9:28 And I think that is something that we can still see today,

9:32 even in Indiana Jones,

9:33 and how we let the story drive our decisions when it comes to gameplay features.

9:40 [Jens] I would say, two thirds through development the game got cancelled.

9:45 But our publisher guy didn't tell us about it.

9:50 [Danny] Okay.

9:51 Wow.

9:51 [Jens] (Laughs) [Danny] So you just kept going?

9:54 [Jens] We kept going!

9:56 Because, back then, if you released a movie license game,

10:00 the whole purpose of that was a marketing tool for the movie.

10:03 Unfortunately, the movie studio needed that component

10:07 as part of their marketing plan,

10:09 so they basically forced the publisher to restart the game again, un-cancel it.

10:16 So the game was cancelled for two weeks and we didn't know about it (laughs).

10:21 [Danny] Lots of different systems had to be built for that game as well.

10:24 It was not just, like, a first-person shooter.

10:27 You had disguise systems, and the stealth,

10:30 and lots of conversational systems and things like that.

10:33 [Jim] Yeah.

10:33 [Danny] It looked like a game that the engineering

10:35 team probably had a lot of work to do on.

10:37 [Jim] So the complicated thing is that we didn't have a lot of time.

10:40 It was a very short project, if you look at today's timescales.

10:43 And we also were a very small team.

10:46 Fortunately, the engineering team at Starbreeze was highly competent.

10:52 Really senior people.

10:53 I believe there were six or seven programmers total.

10:57 [Jens] That game, the Riddick game, came together in the last...

11:01 I would say, maybe three weeks.

11:03 Before that it was quite bad,

11:06 but the last three weeks everything fell into place and it

11:10 ended up being close to what we wanted it to be.

11:13 [Jerk] At that time, we were small.

11:15 We were, like, 25/30 people.

11:17 And it was just me and another guy that built all the levels.

11:21 We also, of course, at that time you not

11:24 only did the level design, you also arted it.

11:27 Obviously, you had an artist that did material or textures,

11:32 but when you actually built the level you also art them at the same time.

11:36 And you also did the lighting for it.

11:38 And the lighting was the challenging part,

11:40 but it's because we had this limit of...

11:42 I think we had three intersecting lights that we could have.

11:45 Especially when it was bigger areas, it was very, very challenging.

11:50 I have very fond memories of when I went to New

11:52 York because we did a VO session with him in New York.

11:55 The reason why I remember it so well is that we spent a few days,

11:58 because we were so nervous that he wouldn't show up.

12:01 We knew that we had a schedule and he was gonna come to the studio,

12:05 and we sat there and waited and waited, and eventually he came.

12:08 So everything worked out great, but we were very,

12:10 very nervous about it because this was our one shot to get it.

12:14 Riddick: "Haley says you owe him." Guard:

12:16 "He should get that money from you, Riddick.

12:18 "You screwed my bet on Rust when you downed him." Riddick:

12:22 "You screwed yourself.

12:23 By betting against me." [Jerk] One thing I remember that was fun was we had,

12:29 once, a visit from Vin Diesel there, as well.

12:32 So he came to Uppsala and we were on the balcony with him,

12:37 and we had a cigarette.

12:39 Stood there, smoking on the balcony.

12:42 We had people coming by and looking up, and I think someone recognized him.

12:47 And then he also went down to the pizzeria.

12:50 Sometimes we go there today, and then we come in there,

12:53 and then this guy behind the bar said:

12:55 "Vin Diesel was here in the pizzeria once,

12:58 you know?" So they still talk about it, which is pretty cool.

13:01 [Jens] That was a hugely fun experience.

13:04 There was a lot of technical progress on it and we

13:08 really levelled up in terms of our game development skill.

13:13 Y'know, as always there was a lot of drama too,

13:17 but that was the first time we put

13:20 together something that we understood what we were doing,

13:25 and we were able to ship something that we were proud of, and that people liked,

13:30 and it was a good experience.

13:34 [Danny] With Riddick,

13:36 Starbreeze had established themselves as a premiere studio.

13:40 They had taken a relatively tough external IP and wrapped

13:44 it in an entertaining game with novel gameplay systems.

13:47 And they had done it in breakneck speed.

13:49 Riddick didn't break any sales records,

13:51 but it left an impression and had given the studio more

13:55 experience working with consoles– which made opening doors that bit easier.

14:01 (Bang) [Danny] The studio's next game,

14:05 The Darkness, would be another first-person shooter,

14:07 set in an established intellectual property, with novel combat systems.

14:13 In typical Starbreeze form,

14:14 they ran into trouble with who was paying the bills on this project:

14:17 The original publisher,

14:18 Majesco, dropped their support of the game midway through development,

14:21 but Starbreeze struck a deal with 2K to complete the game.

14:25 It was around this time that some new collaborators joined the team...

14:29 [Axel] I was applying for an internship

14:33 at Starbreeze and I got the position due to...

14:37 I did a "demon generator" in [Adobe] Flash where

14:42 you can randomize the demons– and the current art director,

14:45 he thought that was cool and was like, "Yeah,

14:47 this is a good fit for Starbreeze." The first one I worked on was The Darkness.

14:52 [Danny] Okay.

14:52 So what were you doing?

14:53 Were you hired as a concept artist?

14:55 [Axel] Yeah.

14:56 So, primarily, I started to work on...

15:00 demon designs.

15:01 (Laughter) [Axel] And on environments.

15:04 So, spooky castles, and other things.

15:06 But yeah, it was a very, very cool project.

15:10 (Screams) (Gunfire) (More screams) [Jens] Either we had

15:22 the audio of a character speaking and then we

15:25 had the actors in the mo-cap volume trying to act that out and make it all work,

15:29 or the other way around:

15:30 We had the motion capture of the people and we had to match that.

15:34 So I was thinking, on The Darkness,

15:37 isn't there a way to record voice and body at the same time?

15:41 Like, there has to be a way to do that?

15:43 So I started brainstorming that with the mo-cap guys and they were like,

15:47 "Maybe we can do something with timecode," and stuff.

15:50 And we would bring them into the booth and they would perform everything,

15:54 and act it out with their body as well,

15:57 and then we used some timecode to sync that up afterwards, yeah.

16:01 It wasn't sophisticated enough where people would

16:04 be interacting with props or each other,

16:06 we couldn't have two people in that volume, or anything.

16:09 It was one person at a time doing stuff, right?

16:14 [Jakob] Yeah, that was interesting.

16:15 That was an adaptation of a comic book and we did our own take on that.

16:19 And I came in working on combat,

16:22 shooting, first-person stuff, dual wielding, things like that.

16:26 [Danny] Yeah, it's a tricky game when it came to combat because

16:28 you had the gun stuff but then you also had your creature,

16:32 tentacle stuff as well.

16:33 [Jakob] Yeah, that's true.

16:34 We had to find a balance between those so we wouldn't use only one or the other.

16:38 Yeah, that was a nice challenge (laughs).

16:43 [Jens] That whole thing was kind of a pet project of mine.

16:45 The TV channels, because it's all about making the world feel real,

16:51 and I found all of these different things that were in the public domain.

16:56 I was able to source all of those things.

16:58 To Kill a Mockingbird is in the public domain!

17:01 So that's cool.

17:01 And that was kind of the best movie that was available.

17:07 [Danny] I loved, also, the gameplay implications of like...

17:09 The movie doesn't stop.

17:10 So when you sit down to watch it you're like,

17:13 "How much of this fucking movie did they put

17:15 in this game?" It's 10 minutes in, and you're like,

17:18 "Wait, is it the whole movie in this game?" And then you

17:22 feel bad 'cos there's a prompt to get up and away from Jenny.

17:27 [Jens] Yeah, yeah (laughs).

17:28 [Danny] So it becomes this weird game

17:30 of chicken between the player and the developer.

17:33 [Jens] This is the kind of thing that we

17:35 really weren't sophisticated enough to think about, back then.

17:39 There's a lot of those problems in The Darkness.

17:43 [Jerk] The Darkness I remember,

17:44 because it was a big deal for us to work on, because we

17:48 did actually do a PlayStation version for Riddick too but it never was released.

17:53 But The Darkness, that was the first game

17:55 that we actually got to release on PlayStation.

17:57 So it had quite a lot of PlayStation focus on it.

18:00 But what I remember most is probably also some of the mistakes we made.

18:04 Same thing, some related to scope.

18:08 We had a very challenging and tough crunch period for it

18:11 and I think a big part of that is also the additional multiplayer,

18:16 which obviously, no one really wanted to do.

18:20 But we had to check that box.

18:23 So we spent a lot of time on that and it deviated from the core game experience.

18:29 So that was the challenging part with it, I think.

18:32 And also, we worked a lot with performance capture, we worked a lot with actors,

18:37 we worked a lot with making sure that everything we do,

18:40 in terms of storytelling, has an important part in the game.

18:44 So there's very little room to move something out,

18:48 or it's very hard for us to scope down.

18:51 And that is probably what, I think,

18:53 we have been working more with towards the later parts of our career:

18:57 how we can be a little bit more flexible in terms of our scope.

19:02 The approach to storytelling,

19:03 and how that determines what type of gameplay features we're adding,

19:08 that came out of Riddick, and that we're still doing today.

19:15 [Danny] After The Darkness, the studio would go on to sign a two-game

19:18 deal with their biggest publishing partner yet: Electronic Arts.

19:23 The first game would be a reboot of the isometric Bullfrog title, Syndicate,

19:27 while the other was a game based on the Jason

19:30 Bourne franchise– two exciting projects for any games studio.

19:33 But sadly, for many of the developers at Starbreeze,

19:36 this partnership spelled the beginning of the end.

19:39 [Jerk] I think it was...

19:41 I mean, it's a lot of different reasons.

19:43 For myself, and also I know for Jens and Magnus, it came down to us...

19:48 We felt that we'd lost a little bit of our creative control.

19:52 And I think that was the big one.

19:54 We started with Swing!, we moved over to Vivendi,

19:58 and then we did The Darkness with 2K, and then we moved over to work with EA.

20:03 So the publisher also got bigger, and bigger,

20:06 and bigger and they had different processes.

20:08 It was a challenging time, because first we were split up a little bit,

20:12 in our core team because we had one part working on the Syndicate game with EA

20:18 and then me and a couple of other guys starting working on a Jason Bourne game.

20:24 So we ended up, at Starbreeze,

20:26 with not "competition" but at least we were fighting for resources,

20:32 internally, which was a challenge.

20:34 And it's very easy to end up in a situation where you have

20:38 one A team and one B team which is not very healthy either.

20:42 What would happen was, we would present an idea and the publishing

20:47 layer that we were interfacing with was like, "Yeah, that sounds good.

20:50 Let's proceed on that." We started building it,

20:53 and then six months later that information would trickle up

20:56 to their superiors and their superiors would say: "No, no.

21:00 This is the wrong direction.

21:01 Make the team change it." And then we were like, "Okay, fuck it.

21:06 We stop everything.

21:07 "Stop development.

21:08 Let's reboot it.

21:09 We're gonna build something else.

21:11 "Tell us exactly what you need and we'll build

21:15 something within that framework." And they're like, "Yeah, okay.

21:18 We're thinking this and this." Okay.

21:20 So we start building that.

21:21 And then they're happy.

21:23 And then six months later their bosses see it and they're happy.

21:27 And then a few months after that, their bosses see it and then it's like...

21:32 (Laughs) "No, no, no!" So that game was like stop, start, stop, start.

21:38 Eventually we were like, "Okay, it's impossible.

21:41 There's no way." Because it's not like they give

21:44 you more money and more time to accommodate these changes.

21:47 You're still on the same budget and timeline.

21:50 We basically came to the conclusion that, okay,

21:53 we need to start something new where we can control this better.

22:01 [Danny] When the founding members of MachineGames

22:03 left Starbreeze they did so with no deal,

22:06 very little money, and in the aftershock of the 2008 financial crash.

22:10 What followed was an 18-month period of failed pitches,

22:14 depleting resources, and eventually, the opportunity of a lifetime.

22:19 [Jim] It was an experience I wouldn't wish on anybody else.

22:23 It was fun and cool for the first 8/10 months.

22:30 But when we were just waiting on getting communication data,

22:34 like, "Are we moving forward with this?

22:36 Is this happening?" and no responses, we'd get an e-mail every two months?

22:42 That was a nightmare.

22:44 [Jerk] We invested all the money we had in MachineGames,

22:47 we were seven of us at the time.

22:49 Two had dropped out during these one and a half years.

22:54 Five of us stayed on, in trying to really get something going.

22:58 We had, I think, four concepts.

23:01 One was called Steel that we pitched pretty hard, where you played as a robot.

23:08 [Jim] We figured out that, for the company, we would create co-op games.

23:14 We would do four-player co-op games, that was all we would do.

23:17 And then we would set up five different pitches.

23:20 We had a robot game, we had an air game where there

23:25 was no ground-level because the world was polluted.

23:30 We took two of the five pitches, I believe?

23:32 And took them to the...

23:33 Like, "This is what we can go and pitch to companies." [Jerk] We went around,

23:38 we pitched those games, we went to Bethesda too,

23:40 and then we did that for about a year.

23:45 But then, also, we were out of money.

23:47 And I also...

23:48 I had to sell my apartment here in Uppsala,

23:50 so I had to move back home to my hometown.

23:53 But it became pretty tough for us.

23:55 We started to look into...

23:57 I talked to Jens, because he was working at Lucas[Arts] So we

24:01 had a few of those backup alternatives if things wouldn't go our way.

24:06 We were very, actually very close to giving up.

24:09 [Danny] Right.

24:09 [Jerk] It was just a matter of weeks, I would say.

24:13 [Jim] The first company, I believe among the first companies,

24:16 we had met with was Bethesda.

24:18 They were interested.

24:20 Everybody else was like, "Eh, not really right now." [Jerk] Late spring in 2010,

24:26 then Bethesda got back to us and we got

24:29 this opportunity to spend three weeks at the id Software office.

24:34 [Danny] How much in the conversations with Bethesda is

24:38 directly the idea of you guys working on a Wolfenstein?

24:40 Is it 1 and 1, is that the sort of reason, or...?

24:44 [Jerk] Erm...

24:44 [Danny] Or did that come later?

24:47 [Jerk] I think it...

24:48 No, it came pretty early on because they...

24:52 id (Software) was working on Rage and Wolfenstein was...

24:56 They didn't have any plans on working on it.

25:00 They did work on the next Doom game as well, they had started work on that.

25:04 So I think Wolfenstein was one of those IPs that they

25:07 wanted to really use because they recently acquired id Software too.

25:11 And I think they saw MachineGames as a good fit for taking that on.

25:17 [Jim] They wanted us to go visit id in Dallas, likely to get evaluated,

25:24 but also to do a game pitch and also look at the tech that they were doing.

25:29 'Cos originally, when we started the company,

25:31 we had our own tech but two of the three engineers

25:34 who built it left the company before we got to that point.

25:37 But we were in talks with Bethesda.

25:39 It's like, "Eh, let's just use id tech." It was kind of a natural fit.

25:43 So going to Dallas to look at it was hugely beneficial.

25:48 So we were there for three weeks?

25:50 [Jerk] Obviously, that was a way for them, also,

25:53 to see that we can work in that environment.

25:55 Basically to "prove ourselves" a little bit, right?

25:58 But we went there, we were only seven of us then.

26:02 [Jim] We got there, came into the offices, introduced everybody.

26:06 I got to meet my childhood– well,

26:09 "childhood"– hero, John Carmack which was amazing.

26:12 One of the first things I got was an e-mail address that had "@idsoftware"

26:17 so I had to send an e-mail to a bunch of friends back home.

26:20 (Laughter) [Danny] He said the same thing.

26:23 [Jim] Yeah!

26:23 [Jerk] First, I sent mail home to all my friends (laughs).

26:26 "Gustafsson@idsoftware", that was super cool.

26:31 And, obviously, we went all in.

26:33 We said to ourselves, "This is our opportunity,

26:36 this is our chance." [Jim] The pitch

26:39 that we had brought when we came initially...

26:41 Well, we brought three pitches.

26:43 They were all co-op, four-player based.

26:46 But that was with the old tech– and with id Tech's,

26:50 it doesn't have this capacity.

26:52 So if we wanted to be confident that we can do this we should

26:55 look at what Rage is and use that functionality to build our first game.

27:00 So we don't have to build as much tech,

27:02 'cos then that allows a focus on finding the people,

27:04 building the company, building the game, rather than also building tech.

27:08 [Jerk] And then we looked at Rage,

27:10 because they were working on Rage at the time,

27:12 and they asked us, "Maybe you would

27:14 be interested in doing Wolfenstein?" And, of course,

27:16 that was a big deal for us too because it's

27:18 such a classic IP and the grandfather of first-person shooters,

27:21 and all these things.

27:23 [Jim] The entire storyline was put down during those three weeks.

27:28 We pitched it to the group at id.

27:31 Not entirely confident that they were super sold on it,

27:33 but there was like a, "Let's move ahead

27:36 with this." 'Cos I've heard stories otherwise, after the fact.

27:39 [Jens] We had these four ideas,

27:41 three of which were in the normal Wolfenstein universe,

27:44 and the fourth one was this more retro sci-fi futuristic version.

27:49 And Kevin Cloud was like,

27:51 "Which one do you like best?" And I was like, "We love this one,

27:54 the retro sci-fi one." "Okay, so let's proceed with that then." And then,

27:58 meanwhile, they're having arguments internally, but we don't know that.

28:01 Of course that came up way later.

28:03 "Are we really letting them do this to Wolfenstein?" (Laughs) But somehow

28:08 we managed to earn enough confidence from them during that period of time.

28:14 [Jerk] And at the same time, we also spent a lot of time learning the tech.

28:19 So we built the map there in the editor.

28:22 So we did that towards the end as well.

28:24 We showed them what we had done in the actual Rage engine too.

28:29 So it was not just that design phase

28:32 of us putting the New Order game on the wall.

28:35 It was also learning the tech and the tools.

28:38 We spent a lot of time on that.

28:40 [Jim] And then we kept talking to Bethesda and they

28:42 figured "Why should we give you this amount of money?

28:45 "We could just invest it in some studio we already own?" "Okay,

28:49 let's go that direction." [Danny] The original MachineGames company was folded

28:56 and a new version was created with Bethesda Softworks as owner.

29:00 And it would be under this umbrella that the studio would

29:02 create their next 16 years of hits– and in this series,

29:06 we're going to explore the design and development of those titles.

29:09 The next episode in this three-part series explores the design

29:12 of MachineGames' Wolfenstein series and if you're a Noclip

29:16 Early Access Patron You can watch that video right now

29:20 over at Patreon.com/Noclip a full week before its public release.

29:23 But before the studio could begin on Wolfenstein,

29:26 they would first need to hire some extra help.

29:28 Some faces may have been new, but most of them were very familiar.

29:33 [Axel] I was very happy with Starbreeze, it was a very cool company.

29:37 And, obviously, because it was a company I worked

29:39 where a lot of the people I'm working with now,

29:42 formed and were my co-workers for a long period of time.

29:46 So switching over to MachineGames was basically

29:49 like coming home again to some extent?

29:52 I had a very short interview process.

29:56 The current art director/creative director, Jens Matthies,

30:00 he basically had one question for me and it was something along the lines

30:04 of: "Do you want to draw and design retro-futuristic Nazi robots?" I was like,

30:12 "Yes." (Laughs) He was like, "Cool.

30:16 When can you start?" [Jerk] My brother moved to London at the same time

30:25 when I moved up to the north at the start of Starbreeze in '98.

30:28 So I'd been visiting him quite a lot of times

30:30 and he lived at this road called Northcote Road in Clapham Junction.

30:38 And they had this restaurant called Nando's,

30:41 which is like from South Africa, I think, a Portuguese chicken restaurant.

30:46 So we went there to eat every time I visited him, because I love Nando's.

30:49 And then we had two beers and some extra hot chicken.

30:54 And every time I went there with someone from the studio,

30:57 too, we always went to Nando's because it became a "thing".

31:01 And then, we said, "If we ever get a contract with MachineGames,

31:05 "if we ever get a publishing contract or we're acquired,

31:08 whatever it may be, "then we'll go to Nando's and celebrate." So,

31:12 what we did then, the five of us that were still left,

31:15 then– we brought Magnus, who had jumped ship a little bit earlier,

31:19 but we brought him with us anyway–

31:21 and then we also brought our two first employees,

31:24 Magnus Auvinen who is now our Technical Director,

31:29 and also Torbjörn, who is our lead level architect.

31:33 So, those were our two first employees.

31:35 We brought them too.

31:36 So we actually took a plane to London early in the morning from Stockholm.

31:42 And then we just took a taxi from Heathrow to the closest

31:47 Nando's and then we spent pretty much four or five hours in Nando's.

31:52 (Laughter) Ate a lot of chicken, drank a lot of beers,

31:55 and then we took a taxi back to the airport, and flew off.

31:59 [Danny] No?!

31:59 Oh my...

32:00 Wow.

32:00 [Jerk] Yeah, so that was pretty fun, and I have some images of that still.

32:04 That's a fond memory, actually.

32:07 [Danny] The ultimate "cheeky Nando's"?

32:09 [Jerk] Yeah, that was our big "getting acquired" celebration.

32:13 (Ident clicks) (Click)