The making of: Garry's Mod
When Garry’s Mod debuted on Steam nine years ago it cost a meager ten dollars (seven pounds). Today, it costs the same. Given how much it offers players in return - an open, manipulatable sandbox with almost limitless possibilities - and as a mod that labels itself one “you definitely can’t win”, it seems like a pretty good deal. A win, if you will.
In 2004, creator Garry Newman launched his eponymous project to the world free-of-charge. After all, he thought, who would pay for what is essentially an idiosyncratic take on a free Source engine mod? Fast forward two years and a dedicated, burgeoning community had blossomed, the press were fighting for coverage, and Valve themselves had approached Newman to discuss bringing the mod to their digital distribution service.
At this stage it seemed Garry’s Mod had transcended its nominal “mod” appellative, becoming a fully-fledged game in its own right. Newman describes the hype at this time as “crazy”, but recalls refusing Valve’s first offer. “The price goes back to the original days,” he explains. “We decided to have it that cheap because when Valve originally asked if we wanted to put it on Steam I said no. I thought: who would pay for it? When we were first talking about price we thought $10. If we’d have priced it at $50 or $30, or even $20, I don’t think it’d have lasted ten years.”
Back then, Steam was a far cry from the juggernaut it is today. In 2006, although into its third year of existence, many still saw it as an inconvenience - a tedious install that obstructed direct desktop access to Counter-Strike. Granted, Newman saw great potential in the digital platform - it was going to big - but was nonetheless unsure of where Garry’s Mod fitted into that projection.
“We were expecting it to sell, like, ten to 20 thousand copies in the first day. Maybe the same over the course of a month, and then basically die off,” admits Newman.”It could’ve gone either way, so it is a big surprise to be sitting here ten years later and be thinking about when I was in my mum and dad’s house making this game. I didn’t really have a clue that it was going to change my entire life.”
Nine years since first landing on Steam and close to nine million units sold later, it’s clear Garry’s Mod very much altered Newman’s career path, which once consisted of blue collar agency jobs and factory work. Although still baffled by the logistics of his son’s choice of employment to this day, it was Newman’s father who introduced him to videogames in the mid-’80s, at just eight years old, by virtue of the Sinclair Spectrum.
A combination of learning to read and an admiration for the prodigious Oliver twins stirred Newman’s first interest in making games. Philip and Andrew Oliver were developing games in their mid-teens whilst still at school, thus their work was stuff of legend as far as Newman saw it. The Dizzy series in particular were games he and his father would often play together.
“We’d play so far,” says Newman. “But obviously there was no saves or anything back then - we’d have to leave the game on overnight and write a little note on it for my mum not to touch the computer in the morning!”
By the time Newman reached his teens, developing videogames of his own had become a non-paying, time-consuming hobby - a result of zero prior formal coding experience. Facewound - “Mario with guns” - was to be his ticket out of the monotonous nine to five cycle he’d landed in after dropping out of college, and Facepunch Studios was the banner he’d do it under. In the background, Newman was also tinkering with what would become Garry’s Mod.
Not before long, work on Facewound stalled. It’d become a chore to develop and, conversely, Garry’s Mod was a lot of fun. But Facewound had a purpose. It was a ‘game’ as per the archetypal definition; there were levels and objectives and incentives. Garry’s Mod, on the other hand, was a distraction - it was Garry Newman messing about with a Source engine mod whilst holed up in his room at his parents’ house. He was merely pushing the engine to its limits, seeing what he could make it do.
By 2004, Newman had placed Facewound on indefinite hiatus and released a free version of Garry’s Mod into the wild to a mixed reception. “There were two major reactions,” he says. “The first was like, ‘Oh yeah. This is good. Make more.’ At the time there was another [Source] mod called JB Mod and [Garry’s Mod] was kind of similar. The other reaction, then, was from their community basically saying ‘Fuck off. This is still making me want to play JB mod’.”
As word spread, the former remarks soon eclipsed the latter and it became clear Newman was onto something special. With Facewound now all but extinct, Newman championed Facepunch Studios as a one-man team, but as the Garry’s Mod community continued to thrive, other players stepped in to aid development in the push towards Version One - the iteration rewritten from scratch to justify its Steam price tag.
“People were suddenly contacting me all the time,” says Newman of the maelstrom that enveloped his initial success. “I’d played Half-Life to death so the people who were in touch - I recognised their names from the game’s intro when you’re on the train heading into Black Mesa. That was pretty crazy. When I was playing Half-Life, I could never have imagined that these people would be emailing me - especially given that Garry’s Mod is essentially a pirate version of Half-Life!”
After just six months on Steam, Newman realised game development had become his full-time job. He was now getting paid for doing something he’d enjoyed doing for free for several years, yet he was always learning on the job - particularly in the game’s earlier renditions.
GMod 2 (Placeholder Name) CONFIRMED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Interesting article in general but you forgot to push the key point here :D