Interviews// Paul Wedgwood - Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

SPOnG: So what’s the current size of the team here at Splash Damage?

Paul Wedgwood: We’re at 40 now. With a core development team of around 30 people. Started back in 2001 with 2!


SPOnG: So, going by the rock band analogy you mentioned, would you say that the way you work is a fairly collaborative creative process?

Paul Wedgwood: Yeah, with Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (hereafter ETQW) we started out with a list of ideas that were left out from Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, of really cool things that we wanted to put in the new game.

I work very closely with Kevin Cloud – who’s co-owner of id and creative director of this project – and we work pretty much like co-designers. The team here tends to write the game design document then it goes over to Kevin in the U.S. The feedback and the high concepts and so on get iteratively revised and built-up and improved in a collaborative way.

So initially, for the first year or two on ETQW, id acted as our surrogate technical director and our surrogate art director, because we didn’t have those posts filled and we didn’t have the experience of making a completely original AAA-title. But as we have developed the company and grown it – which we’ve managed to do quite organically – we have a core team with the lead artist, lead level designer, lead programmer and tools programmer all originally being from the Q3F team - a core group of guys who are very talented, loyal and committed.

It’s certainly not particularly through much stuff I personally contribute because I’m not a programmer, artist or level designer. I just use Word and write ideas down. And ideas are cheap! [laughs]


SPOnG: OK, let’s talk a little more now about ETQW. Can you tell us more about the background story, which has been referred to as Quake Zero?

Paul Wedgwood: ETQW charts the invasion of earth by the Strogg – the bio-mechanically augmented race from the original Quake series of single player games. It takes place in around 2065, prior to the retaliation against the Stroggos civilisation that takes place in Quake II. In that game the Earth retaliates against Stroggos because they reverse-engineered the slipgate technology the Strogg used to arrive.They launch an attack on the Stroggos using these dropships, but you are the sole survivor and that’s how Quake II starts…

ETQW is back on earth prior to all of that happening. Essentially, earth has been the subject of a series of natural disasters and the Global Defence Force [GDF] are not much more than a paramilitary organisation… and so the earth in general hasn’t really advanced as much as people would have thought. Which is the reason why you have a fairly conventional military force, the GDF, fighting against this incredibly advanced alien race, the Stroggos.

The back story has been developed between id and Splash Damage – Kevin Cloud over at id wrote the original story on Quake II and Ed Stern, senior game designer and writer at Splash Damage – have worked closely together to get all of the background spot on. So everything that you see in the game – say, for example, a gravitonic repulser engine on a hornet hovercopter… there will be a page or two about that tech and why and how it exists, that helps drive the development of the concept art…

Read Part 2 of the interview right here.