Garry Newman, creator of the wildly popular Garry’s Mod based on the Source engine, spoke candidly in a recent interview about his motivations in creating and continuing the mod as well as the state of the PC mod scene.
Speaking with Shacknews, he said he initially started tinkering with mods while doing work for a dating website service. He was way over his head and grabbed tools and examples left and right during his first go at Garry’s Mod.
“Yeah, it was a total experiment. I was really out of my depth in the Source engine at that point. I had no idea how anything worked, but managed to throw version one together by thinking back into Half-Life 2 – to work out where I’d seen the feature before,” he said.
Newman said he was motivated by a receptive audience and his competitors at the JBMod. He started with a rope gun and eventually added rag doll poses, random objects and the gravity gun.
Newman said there is more pressure on mod-makers to come up with more creative and high quality content because the bar has been set higher.
“Making a mod is now a well established path into the industry, so they’re making the mod as the portfolio piece. Where as before it was just a couple of guys slapping code about to extend the life of their favorite game,” he said.
Newman recommends an open process to any prospective modders, saying it is better to have a product scrutinized while in development than it is to have a finished product which no one likes.
Garry’s Mod, which receives regular updates, is available for $5.95 via Steam.
