Sometimes a job offer arrives at the most unexpected — and fortunate — moment.
Recently Gearbox’s chief spoke with Shacknews. During the interview, Randy Pitchford recalled an occasion when Gabe Newell himself reached out to him.
This took place after Randy left 3D Realms and joined Rebel Boat Rocker alongside former colleagues. The studio’s first title was ultimately cancelled, and some team members later founded what became Gearbox.
Pitchford was determined to avoid the same fate for Gearbox: they decided not to build a brand-new franchise from scratch but to work with an established property — and he came up with an idea related to Half-Life:
Half-Life had only just been released when an idea occurred to me: what if there’s a parallel narrative unfolding at the same time — events we know happened because we played Half-Life, but that we never saw from the perspective of one of the soldiers at Black Mesa — and everyone liked that direction.
As it happened, Gabe Newell learned about what was going on with Rebel Boat Rocker — he became curious and wondered whether the developers would be interested in working on Half-Life:
I don’t buy into omens — I believe in coincidences — and literally that same day, with no prompting from me, Gabe Newell called. He’d heard we’d left Rebel Boat Rocker and that I was starting something new, and he wanted to know if we’d be interested in working on Half-Life.
Randy went on to remember:
They [Valve] told us: “Sorry — Half-Life isn’t actually owned by us. You’ll need to meet with Sierra On-Line and pitch the idea to the publisher. We’ll call them to say you’re coming and that we think you have a strong concept, but ultimately they’ll have to fund and approve it.”
The end result was Half-Life: Opposing Force, which let players experience the Black Mesa incident through the eyes of a special-ops soldier sent to neutralize Gordon Freeman.
Source: iXBT.games