The Origins of Fallout, by Lead Designer R. Scott Campbell

Brother None

Brother None

This ghoul has seen it all
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Fallout 1's first lead designer R. Scott Campbell is often cited by other Fallout developers as one of the most underestimated key creators of Fallout. NMA and Michał "deadlus" Bielerzewski sent him the developer profile and other questions a while ago to get his take on the history of the game. Since answering the questions became quite a story in itself, he decided instead to write out his memories of the origins of Fallout instead.

The 25-page document was submitted to NMA (again with thanks to deadlus). We've split it into three parts, added some formatting, links and images, and now offer you the first part, which is mostly about his own history with Interplay and the very beginnings of the GURPS project, as well as the hilarious first drunk draft of the game's story.<blockquote>When Interplay approached Steve Jackson Games for GURPS, they were extremely skeptical. They were told of the long line of great RPGs that Interplay had made. No response. They were told that they would have creative control over the game. Still no response. Then they were told the up-front license money they would be getting. Suddenly, there was a response.

With GURPS given a green light, Tim assembled a team, and (because SimEarth was just canned) chose me as the Lead Designer. It was a bit of a rocky start, as much finagling was needed to secure people for the team from other projects.

Once the contract was signed, Steve Jackson came to the studios for a meet and greet with the team. I remember him being extremely cool with our overall ideas about handling the game. One pointed question was, “What do you think about blood and violence in the game?” With a smirk and a wave of his hand, he answered, “The more the better!”

Words that would eventually come to haunt us.</blockquote>
 
25 pages, what the hell. :) I should print it out and read it tomorrow when I am out of the house half the day.
 
Yes, I'm totally going to make a pdf of this once it's all ready.

Thanks NMA/all involved. So far it's great, glad he went into details on his personal history of getting a job there.
 
We're going to offer a PDF version once we're done. Possibly two, one with images and one without.

There was the Lord of the Rings: CD-ROM, where we digitized clips from the Ralph Bakshi film and interspersed them throughout the original LotR PC game. What made this so memorable was that it was on a CD-ROM. These things were still new devices for PCs, and the newly retail CD burners were vicious temperamental beasts. They were the size of a suitcase, and would frequently create bad sectors if it couldn’t get the data as fast as it could burn – which was x1, by the way. I remember that we kept the burner in the hall initially, but quickly found that if anyone walked by while it was in use, the vibration of their footsteps would misalign the head and create another 70 minute waste of disc – which ran about $20 a piece at the time! I remember one of the worst mistakes I ever made. Holding the gold master to be sent to duplication for LotR, after waiting the excruciating burn time and checking for hours to ensure there were no disc sector errors, I gleefully and obliviously scrawled “Gold Master” - across the back side of the disc. Sigh.
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Loved this bit.

Genius.
 
Great, fun read. I didn't know anything about Scott and I don't much about Interplay history either, so this comes really nicely.
Thanks deadlus and NMA team!
Keep it coming!

P.S. There's some broken linking at the Waterworld bit.
 
Voting for a Kickstarter project to build the time-travel game. :p
 
Lexx said:
Voting for a Kickstarter project to build the time-travel game. :p
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Tim Cain (I think) talked about that concept too, but he made it sounds like something they honestly considered (though perhaps not in the exact form Scott lays out), but that there was just no way to make a B-roll budget stretch that far.
 
Great read, truly excellent. He should expand this and create one of those small digital books to sell on amazon and Itunes, it would sell like cupcakes.

Come to think of it we should do one of those things, not about the beginning but about the ending of old Interplay, with the proceeds going to improve NMA. Hmmmm, let's start thinking about that, if there's interest in the community, I can help a lot now, I'm unemployed anyway, and still have tons of info that could be of interest.
 
Nice read, but unfortunately I didn't get very far before I was distracted by missing words, errors and typos. Proofreading doesn't do it unless you fix it too.. :wink:

I would like to submit my suggestions for corrections, but I am afraid I am too tired at the moment. What format/document type would you prefer?
 
Janmanden said:
I would like to submit my suggestions for corrections
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No thanks.

Briosafreak said:
Hmmmm, let's start thinking about that, if there's interest in the community, I can help a lot now, I'm unemployed anyway, and still have tons of info that could be of interest.
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Sure, anything you need. Not sure about this whole selling it idea, but documenting this stuff is always good.
 
A proper document, distributed in .pdf here to the community, and later expanded and sold on the new digital platforms, to reach a wider audience, and get NMA some funding for, hmmm, new ideas and experiments. Might work. Has to be a collective endeavor though, to allow more objectivity and better productivity.

I'll start collecting ideas this weekend, no kids at home and no money to get out anyway.
 
Briosafreak said:
A proper document, distributed in .pdf here to the community, and later expanded and sold on the new digital platforms, to reach a wider audience, and get NMA some funding for, hmmm, new ideas and experiments. Might work. Has to be a collective endeavor though, to allow more objectivity and better productivity.

I'll start collecting ideas this weekend, no kids at home and no money to get out anyway.
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Well, feel free to cite the interview I did with Damien about the end of IPLY/BIS, BG3 and FO3 getting axed, etc, if need be. A few months back I noticed someone updated the wikipedia articles for Jefferson and Van Buren and a large percentage of the citations were from that interview. Actually Briosa, I always wondered if you were the one that did that. Whoever did gets a big thanks from me.

And this was an excellent read. I thought I was fairly informed about the "old days" but I honestly never knew about R. Scott Campbell until today. Looking forward to the next instalment.
 
Very informative and fun read. Keep it coming.

I would love to see a book of all the info about Interplay and Fallout the NMA collected over the years. Make it a pdf and sell it for 3-5$ dollars each. We can all help :)

P.S. I would so much love to play that "acid trip" of the game they were proposing for GURPS :D
 
It wasn't me, but most of the Van Buren wiki stuff came from me, Odin, Killzig or kumquatq3, with additional stuff from Kharn, Stillife, you and NCR_Ranger, Ausir and others just compiled it. We should start checking notes and recollections, and I should really dig again on the Van Buren Leaks cd's I have, to try to find the IRC and ICQ logs from those days.

Can't wait for the next installment of this.
 
What's the timeline plan for releasing the stuff, btw? Once per week? Every two days?
 
That story outline is delightfully pulpy and "dumb" in a way that videogames today don't really manage to capture. Would have been really cool for it to see the light of day, though I can't see why it didn't (and they didn't really even consider it in the first place).

Also man, Campbell's early career was full of "bummer" moments. Worst thing is, today, many people, me included, don't really realize today how important he was for the original title. It's like the worst "bummer" of all.
 
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