Before Garry's Mod, online gaming just wasn't the same. By allowing players to exploit the physics-based Source engine of Half-Life 2 with ordinary objects and custom tools, GMod brought out the best and worst of a creative community of gamers. Spawning everything from comic books to hilarious videos, mod creator Garry Newman has helped to redefine the boundaries of what an online game can be.

Above all else, the game engenders a sense of teamwork and cooperation that is wholly unique and refreshing. While that idea is being expounded on by games like LittleBigPlanet (PS3), Garry's Mod continues to grow and expand. Last year Newman announced a deal with Valve Software which saw GMod version 10 being made available on the Steam network of downloadable games. For a price of $9.95, players have received regular updates and support, further cementing GMod's position as anything but a passing fad.

In the first of a series of talks with mod developers and industry experts, I take a look behind the mustache of this elusive, influential mod scene figure. We discuss the early days of the mod, how it has evolved in the years since, Garry's views on the community, and his future plans for GMod.

Shack: Thanks for taking the time, Garry. So, what was life before GMod like for Garry Newman?

Garry Newman: I was a php programmer on a dating website. It was pretty basic work, for pretty basic pay. I got fired from that because I had set my own dating website up in my spare time. He gave me the choice of shutting it down or walking. I decided I couldn't work with him after that shit, so told him I wouldn't be coming back.

Shack: When did you start work on Facewound?

Garry Newman: I had been working on Facewound while I was at the dating website. The idea was that I loved 2D games and wanted to make one using all the 3D accelerated features that 3D games benefit from.

My plan at the time was to build up a library of shareware games to sell over the internet. I figured that if I could scrape together a living from doing something that I love, it'd be much better than working my balls off in an office making other people rich.

Shack: Do you plan to finish Facewound at some point?

Garry Newman: The problem with Facewound right now is that the coding is awful. It really makes me cringe. When I started coding Facewound I didn't really know what I was doing. I was learning as I went on, which meant that a lot of the times I came up with really, really stupid solutions. For example, instead of raycasting, it checks each pixel along a line.

This was one of the good things about GMod. I could see the right way to do stuff because a lot of the time Valve had already done it somewhere else in the code. So their code would teach me. I'm not the kind of person that can learn from books, I really need working examples.

Shack: You've said the JBMod inspired you to work on Garry's Mod. At the time, did you know how far you wanted to take it, or was it more of an experiment?

Garry Newman: 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. For example, the rope gun. I didn't know how to make rope so I thought back and realized that the Barnacle's tongue was rope. So I just pretty much copied that code into a simple weapon and it worked. Well, kind of worked.

Shack: What did the first version of Garry's Mod look like?

Garry Newman: The first version added a crossbow that allowed you to rope objects together. That was pretty much it. I don't think the physics gun was even in the first version.

Shack: How did you motivate yourself in the early days of development?

Garry Newman: There were probably a couple of things. First off, the people playing were really easily impressed. So when I added something new it was like adding a ghost house in Theme Park, they'd all go "Oooohh."

The other thing was JBMod. Throughout the entire development of GMod, [the team at] JBMod were constantly warning of their impending release, which was totally going to destroy GMod and take its community. So I coded my balls off to make sure that whatever they released wasn't better. I guess a little bit of competitiveness never hurts.

Shack: What was your relationship with Valve like as a modder?

Garry Newman: Valve has mailing lists for coders and mappers. They'd usually reply there if you asked a question, but they're pretty approachable if you email them with a question. I never got a "fuck off" reply anyway.

Shack: Is there a feature in Garry's Mod that you knew as you were coding it that it would be great?

Garry Newman: Ragdoll posing immediately springs to mind, mainly because I couldn't ever remember any game allowing you to do that stuff. I implemented it on accident and immediately made some crude poses--then ran off to the forums to blow their minds.

Shack: Did you involve the Something Awful community from the beginning?

Garry Newman: Yeah, SA is the only place the first five or so versions were released. I didn't really expect (or want) it to be a really big thing, so I didn't see the point of releasing anywhere else.

Shack: How important was community feedback at that stage?

Garry Newman: It was totally important. I'm only one guy, so I'm only going to play it one way. GMod has a bunch of subcultures that play differently. I need people from each of those subcultures to tell me why it's rubbish for them, so I can make it not so rubbish.

Shack: How close is GMod to what you envisioned?

Garry Newman: Right now, GMod 10 is pretty close to what I was aiming for when I started recoding it. But to be fair I never wrote a game design down so it was always just a plan in my head that was constantly changing.

I don't think I ever abandoned features, I just put them on the back-burner. There were a few of these. I had an in-game camcorder almost working, but I need to hold that until Valve does some stuff to let me do some stuff.

Shack: Are you ever surprised by the stuff people create in GMod?

Garry Newman: Constantly. I regularly jump from server to server to see what people are building, what they're moaning about. I jumped in some guy's server and he had a robot that you could get inside and control. It actually walked around.

The people at SA are pretty crazy too. I remember Sun_Dog and some other people made a huge, huge robot. Each person controlled a limb. They had a robotic hand that could pick stuff up. Each person controlled a different part of the hand--wrist, fingers, thumb--so they had to coordinate to do stuff.

Turn the page to learn about Garry's deal with Valve, his thoughts on the state of the mod community, and his future plans for GMod.