Concept
pre-production
Pre-production is the “planning and designing first” stage. Before you start building or making the final thing, you figure out what it should look like and how it will work.
Concept
Function first
“Function first” means the car has to work well before you worry about how it looks. You make sure it’s usable and reliable, then you make it look cool.
Concept
SEMA
SEMA (Specialty Equipment Market Association) is a major U.S. trade show focused on aftermarket parts, custom builds, and performance vehicles. Cars shown there are often highly modified, and the event is a common place to discover builders and new trends.
Concept
homage
“Homage” here means paying respect to something that came before. In car terms, it’s like designing with a nod to a classic style or history.
Car
67 Mustang
“67 Mustang” means a 1967 Ford Mustang. It’s a classic year that a lot of people choose when they want a vintage-looking build.
Car
Shelby Cobra
The Shelby Cobra is a famous sports car that’s known for being light and very fast. It’s an open-top roadster with a big V8 engine. People bring it up because it’s a well-known classic that strongly influences other builds and replicas.
Concept
car salesman
A car salesman works at a car dealership and helps people buy cars. In this episode, it explains why Chris grew up around lots of cars.
Concept
car dealership
A car dealership is where you go to buy a car from a store that sells vehicles. They may also help with financing and sometimes have a service shop for repairs.
Brand
Nissan
Nissan is a major Japanese automaker that sells a wide range of vehicles in the U.S. and globally. Mentioning that his dad worked for Nissan helps explain how the family’s car-industry exposure may have centered around Nissan products and dealership networks.
Term
spark plugs
Spark plugs are the small components that ignite the air-fuel mixture in an engine’s cylinders. On older cars like a 1960s Cougar, learning how to change them is part of basic tune-up maintenance and can affect starting, smoothness, and fuel economy.
Term
drive a stick
“Drive a stick” refers to operating a manual transmission car, where the driver uses a clutch pedal and gear lever to change gears. It’s a skill that many older drivers had more commonly, and it matters because manual cars require different driving technique than automatics.
Term
wrench
“Wrench” here means working on the car yourself with tools—like fixing or maintaining it. It’s basically DIY car repair talk.
Term
flooded my carburetor
They mean the engine got too much fuel when trying to start. When that happens, the car may not run right until the fuel clears out.
Concept
wildfire layer
A wildfire layer is a map feature that shows where fires and smoke are happening. It helps you choose a safer route when conditions change.
Brand
Onyx Offroad
Onyx Offroad is a navigation app for off-road trips. It helps you plan routes and can warn you about things like wildfire smoke so you can drive with more confidence.
Brand
FCP Euro
FCP Euro is an online store that sells car parts, especially for European brands. They carry parts for both repairs and performance upgrades.
Concept
lifetime replacement guarantee
This is a promise that if certain parts wear out, the company will replace them. It’s meant to make maintenance costs more predictable.
Term
pothole protection
Pothole protection means the tire company helps pay for a replacement if you damage a tire from hitting a pothole. It’s meant to save you money and hassle.
Concept
car history
A car history is basically the car’s “paper trail.” It shows what work was done and when, so the next owner can trust the car more.
Concept
autocross
Autocross is a timed driving event on a course made of cones. You’re trying to go fast while still keeping the car under control, and wet pavement makes it much harder.
Concept
co-op
“Co-op” means playing together with other people instead of by yourself. It often makes zombie games feel more like a team effort than a solo survival challenge.
Concept
independent game studio
This describes a development team operating without direct control from a large publisher. The “independent” part matters because it affects funding, creative control, and how deals are structured when seeking publishing partners.
Concept
indie studio
An indie studio is a smaller team making games without the big-company backing. When they pitch ideas, publishers may worry about risk because the studio is less established.
Concept
IP
IP means a recognizable brand or franchise, like a series of games. Publishers like it because it’s safer—people may already want it.
Concept
publisher bankruptcy
Sometimes the company that pays for and sells a project runs out of money. When that happens, the project’s future can get uncertain because the rights may be sold off.
Concept
E3
E3 is a big industry event where game companies show off new games. If a game does really well there, it usually means people expect it to be a hit.
Concept
DLC
DLC means extra stuff you can buy for a game after it comes out. Sometimes it’s just cosmetic, but people get upset when it feels like the game was missing content and they’re charging extra for it later.
Concept
tube chassis
A tube chassis uses a welded steel tube frame instead of relying on the original unibody/body structure. It’s common in extreme custom and race builds because it can be engineered for strength, geometry, and packaging.
Term
seat heater
A seat heater warms your seat. It’s mainly for comfort, especially when it’s cold out.
Car
Ferrari Testarosa
The Ferrari Testarosa is a super famous Ferrari from the 80s. It’s known for its bold look and that V12 engine sound, so it’s a common choice for custom builds.
LIVE
And there is a satisfaction of building something
with your hands and seeing something physical
in the real world.
And I'll tell you that 70 Mustang I finished in 2019.
I drove it to work last week and the number of heads
that it turns driving down the road
and the sound of it and the feel of it.
And it's such a cool thing that I still get
to experience that car, you know, six years later,
seven years later versus a video game
that came out seven years ago.
Nobody's playing.
It's just gone.
Mr. Chris Ashton, man.
How's it going?
It's good.
It's good.
We just had our Monday morning meeting.
So I'm still getting started, but happy to be here.
Are you out on the West Coast?
Yeah. Yeah.
Callie, so Cal.
In the Mecca.
You guys have a lot of meetings you actually get worked on
because I feel like I generally just have meetings
and don't do any work.
Oh yeah.
Well, coming from the games industry,
I've always been, I'm used to meetings
and I don't like having meetings.
So we've always tried to have as few as possible.
We just started in the shop here.
We used to be like us, I think four people initially
and then six and now we're 10.
So there's just enough, I think,
where it's good for us to just kind of talk about
what's going to happen in the week.
So just once a week.
Once a week.
We do, we have overcast to be three meetings a week.
I feel like it's like too much.
I always have meetings.
So how is like, I'm thinking of, you know,
coming from like a game developer world,
how has that affected how you manage your shop?
Because I think of like game developer environment
and all the roles and everybody's got their jobs
and they're all working at different things.
This guy's working on textures.
This guy's working on modeling.
How has that affected how you run the shop there?
It's oddly very similar.
And I've actually, the stumbling that I've done
running the shop has just largely been
because of the differences from game studio to hot rod shop,
which is, you would think that they wouldn't have anything
in common, but they're very, very similar
as far as the overall process.
You know, when you're making a video game,
you have to imagine something that doesn't exist
and you have to pitch it and you have to sort of get approval
for that project.
And then you've got a, you've got pre-production
where you make concepts and you try to visualize
and you try to explain how this thing's going to work.
You make plans, production plans,
how are we going to actually build it?
And at the end, it actually has to work, you know?
And so it's the same, ironically, for a car
where we're trying to build a car that's never existed.
We're trying to do something unique
and interesting and different.
And we have to know what that's going to look like.
We have to get approval from, you know,
just even if it's just internally from team members
and everything to kind of all be excited about it.
And then we've got to figure out how to build it
and it has to work at the end of the day.
So it can't just be our cars are not like art pieces.
I mean, I feel like there is a lot of art in them,
but at the end of the day, they're a functional vehicle,
you know, so they have to work.
Function first is kind of our motto here,
like function first and then if it has to be there,
make it look as cool as possible.
Yeah, it almost, I'm thinking of like the more comparisons
of, you know, gaming development.
You're kind of like when you do, like for example,
the 67 Mustang has a lot of, it looks very trans-am,
kind of to me, like it looks dope, too.
My favorite car at SEMA when I was there,
did a reel on it, loved that car so much.
That's how I found out about you guys
was walking up to the car and being like,
oh my God, who built this thing?
And it's almost like if I was developing a game
and I had to come up with a sequel for a game
that hadn't been out for a really, really long time,
like it's almost like Marathon just came out,
but they also, Ungee did Marathon like decades ago,
but you know, you're carrying forward the name
and it's still got to be kind of like somehow tied to it.
There's got to be like some homage
that you have to be able to pay to the heritage, right?
Mm-hmm, yeah, I mean, and that car was extremely difficult
because people have had what, you know,
60, 70 years to mess around with Mustangs and make them cool.
And they're so iconic and you have the Shelby's
and even the Eleanor is very much a Shelby with a few tweaks.
So we, it's kind of daunting to take on a 67 Mustang
and want to do a version that is vintage,
like looking and feeling and inspired
by vintage racing and stuff, but not do Shelby.
Like that's really hard.
So we were pleased where we ended up.
You know, it's very inspired by Shelby,
but it's inspired specifically by the Cobra
and not by any other Mustangs.
So we just took a lot of Cobra elements and brought those in
and then that helped us kind of stay away
from what everybody else has done with Mustangs.
Yeah, and it's no knock on what everyone else has done.
You know, the path we walk on is paved by those
who came before us, right?
If you think of like Boyd Coddington or Chip Foos
and stuff like that, but I always wonder
why we don't do more like, I mean,
the thing looks really muscly.
And if I was going to build a Mustang,
it would be like a Trans Am, Panosport wheels, slam.
There would be no rake.
It would look like it's set up to actually drive.
You know, it wouldn't look like it's set up to do launches
and, you know, go to the some back alphabet road
and, you know, run one-on-one versus somebody.
I would build it like it was meant to take a corner.
And that's me, that Trans Am stuff.
Look, they were always just slammed too.
Just like on their nuts.
And that's how I would do it.
And kind of, I just don't understand
why we don't see more of that style.
It's like we can't get out of this rut
of that, of what came before
and be inspired by something else.
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, I kind of feel the same way,
but motorsports is the most obvious place
for me to pull inspiration from.
And I'm the same way.
Like the 70 that I built was the first full build
you know, from a stripped down car to a full build
that I had done.
And that was entirely based off of a car
that was I think racing in Australia,
but it was in the same era, you know,
and had bigger fender flares
and so they could cover the slicks, you know?
So the cool stuff for racing for me is that
the race cars look cool,
but they look cool because they function.
You know, it's like they needed to be low
to lower the center of gravity.
They needed to have fender flares
because they wanted to run bigger tires for more grip.
Like there's all of these things, the 69, 70s,
they cut a pie slice out of the nose of the car
so that they could tilt the fenders down and get
and sort of cheat the arrow a bit.
And we did that on the 67 as well as the 70 Mustang
that we built.
It makes it more aggressive, you know?
It's more aerodynamic and they were quicker,
but it also makes them look more aggressive.
So we pull from all that stuff,
but then we bring in the element of streetability.
I've actually owned quite a few cars that were
that were built on real race cars.
And I've definitely been on the other side
where things were too, the cars were too hardcore.
And I got to the point where I never wanted to drive them
because they just beat you up so bad.
Everything's just got spherical bushings
and they're over in everything
and you just no rubber in the car anymore.
You just cannot drive it.
Yeah, yeah.
So we take as much as we can from motor sports
and then we temper it to where you can drive it on the street.
And where that line is is different for everybody.
I remember my girlfriend and I ordering a Lotus Elise
back in the day and everybody talking about in a Lotus,
like is that a car that you can drive every day?
Is it not a car?
Like is it too uncomfortable?
Is it too, you know?
And it's like everybody has a different threshold.
Like the benchmark of all the cars I've built
that thing's a Cadillac.
Yeah, right?
Yeah.
So we're talking about kind of like the point
where we are now, but I want to rewind back a little bit.
Put me in the shoes of Chris as a kid.
What was life like for you?
Were there cars around?
Did you do stuff with your dad, with your mom?
Like what was it like growing up for you?
And what else?
So one of the earliest memories I have
is walking through a parking lot
and telling my dad, seeing a cool car
and telling my dad that I wanted to take that one home.
And he got really confused.
And he was like, we can't take that home.
Like you can't just drive somebody else's car.
And I was like, but why I want to take that one home?
And he realized later that it was because
he was a car salesman and he used to bring demos home
all the time.
So I was kind of used to seeing like all these cars.
And I didn't really didn't know how the system worked.
But yeah, my dad was into cars
and was a car salesman when I was young.
And so I, whether or not it was directly because of that
or whether it was just, I was born with it.
But like, yeah, I always had hot wheels
and I was building model cars
and I was into that stuff my whole life.
Tell me about your dad a little bit.
I want to hear more about your dad and his car dealership
and what was he selling?
What was that, you know?
He just, I mean, yeah, they were,
my mom and dad married super, super young and we were poor
and they had three kids and mouse to feed
and dad just worked at, it's just what he knew.
So he wound up working at car dealerships,
it's just whenever, you know, selling, selling just whatever.
I mean, he worked for, I think mostly everybody, you know,
he worked when I was in high school,
he was working for Nissan, I think.
So it just, it just sort of depended on who was offering.
But he grew up, my grandfather owned a gas station,
one of the gas stations that has like a little repair shop
in it.
So my dad grew up working for his dad as a teenager,
repairing people's cars and stuff.
And this is, you know, when he was a teenager doing that,
this is sort of like when muscle cars were,
and a little bit earlier than muscle cars,
but when, you know, people were getting rowdy
and making a lot of power and stuff.
So he always has like cool stories of like the cool cars
that came into the shop that he got to work on and stuff
when he was a teenager.
But you know, they, my mom and dad divorced
when I was quite young and split up.
And so my mom kind of supported me through my teenage years.
And when I bought a car, I used my college money
to buy my first car when I was 15.
And she helped me do the first, it was a 67 Cougar.
And she helped me do my very first sort of maintenance
on a car ever, which was like changing the spark plugs
and stuff.
You know, she knew enough about cars
to help me do that stuff.
So beyond that, it was-
I think like people had to do that back in the day.
Like they had, like if you were driving a 67 Cougar
in, it didn't have electronic ignition,
you had to at least have some sort of concept of like,
oh, my points might be dirty,
or oh, I got to change my spark plugs more often,
or any of these, it's just everything's,
I mean, I'm sure there were people that just went
to their local shop and just had their points checked
every once in a while.
But I think way more people knew how to work on something,
at least in a really basic spec.
I remember when I called the lady that owned this Mercedes
and I found out, got her phone number and I called her
and I was like, hey, do you want to drive it?
You know, it's got a new engine now, it looks different.
You want to drive it?
And I'm like, well, do you know how to drive a stick?
And she goes, I'm 83 years old.
Of course I know how to drive stick.
So it's like this thing where I feel like
there was a little bit more knowledge back then.
Yeah, well, I think you had to have, you know?
And I kind of credit my sort of background
and the mechanical knowledge that I have of cars
in out of necessity, you know?
Because I always drove a car that was barely functional
and would break down all the time.
So I had to learn how to wrench just to keep the car going
just so I could go to school or go to my job or whatever.
So I wound up working on all kinds of stuff
just to keep them going.
So it's not really the case these days, you know?
You can buy a car with 150,000 miles and it keeps going
and then when it doesn't, you have no idea, right?
It's not the same as it was in the day, it was so simple.
Imagine back in the day when you were like,
sorry, I can't come into work today,
I flooded my carburetor.
Like, what is that even like?
Yeah.
So what was the, was that, did you love that car,
that Cougar?
Was that the, like, did that kick everything off
for you from there?
Yeah, it did.
And so I got that before I had a license
and I worked on it until I could drive
and that was my first car and it was-
Did you get it for yourself?
Did you save up your mom help or like, how'd that?
Yeah, my grandmother actually had put a bunch of money
into, it wasn't like a ton of money,
but I think there was like, I think it was three grand
that she had in a bank account that was, you know,
she had a bank account for all the kids
and every year she'd put a hundred bucks in it
or whatever, I don't know.
So I had like, I think there was like three grand
or something in the bank.
And I used that money, it was supposed to be for college.
I taught my mom into letting me buy this car with it.
And the car was right down the street at some little,
a little shack and they literally had two cars
and they were both Cougars oddly enough.
One was a 67, one was a 68 and the 68 was a lot worse
and more rusty, so I bought the 67.
And I drove it all through high school
into my freshman year of college
and then I sold it to a friend of mine at the college
and I bought a Volkswagen Beetle.
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All right, so what was that?
Was there any point where you thought
you might work on cars for a living?
Is that anything that crossed your mind?
You know, when I went to a junior college in Utah
and when I went to that college freshman seminar,
they ask everybody, what do you wanna do?
Cause they're trying to help you figure out your major.
And I didn't really thought about it.
I didn't know what my major was gonna be or anything.
And I told them I wanted to build cars, design cars.
And they were like, we don't have a program for that.
So they said like, but we think that you'll probably need
to be on a computer and we have this brand new
graphic design program in the college.
So you should probably get into that.
So I got into-
What was the software we're using?
What, like is this-
This was very beginning.
This is very early, like very early Photoshop,
Macromedia freehand, QuarkXPress.
Dreamweaver.
Dreamweaver, yeah.
I mean, the internet was new, you know?
So it was early times.
So where did the gaming thing go?
Like, how did that happen?
How did you go from like,
oh, I'm doing Photoshop and Macromedia and Dreamweaver.
Yeah, you know, I always,
I had those two loves my whole life,
cars and video games.
And I was either building model cars or driving RC cars
or I was playing computer games.
It was one of the two always as a kid.
I got into graphic design
and I started working for the school
doing their graphic design.
I did their catalogs and their posters
for the plays and all that kind of stuff.
So I was working as a graphic designer for the college,
which meant that I had keys to the computer lab
and I could go in there at 2 a.m.
if I wanted to and work on stuff.
So what that turned into was-
I'm like a lamp heart winning half.
Exactly, yeah, exactly.
So me and my buddies,
I would bring a bunch of boys over from the dorms
and we would play multiplayer games.
This was all a Mac lab,
so we could only play stuff that was on Macintosh
and there wasn't very many.
But it's funny you mentioned Marathon
because Marathon was a hybrid.
They were Mac first, I think.
Bungie was, it was called what,
Pathways into Darkness or something was the first game.
So we were playing Marathon
and Marathon came with tools.
Where you could make your own characters
and you could make your own maps and stuff.
So for months, we were playing the stuff
that shipped on the Marathon CD
and then I wanted to start, we got bored of that stuff.
So I started making levels and weapons
and new sounds and all that kind of stuff.
And we would been doing that for months
and my graphic design teacher at one point just said,
you know people make money doing this, right?
What you're doing?
And I was like, no, I don't know why I never,
it's such a weird thing as a young kid
to not realize that everything around you
is something that was created
by somebody that was paid to do something.
You know what I mean?
You just don't realize what our jobs
even though you're in college
and you're supposed to be aspiring to that.
So as soon as I found out the people made money
making video games that immediately set my path,
because I enjoy graphic design,
but it wasn't, I wasn't super passionate about it.
I was good at it, but I didn't love it.
I didn't like working for clients.
I didn't like designing covers for a bar of soap.
It was just like, it just wasn't fun or cool enough.
So yeah, I set my sights on video games
and I got an issue of like PC Gamer or something
and it said in the back,
they had listed all the game studios.
There was an issue is about trying to help people
get a job in the industry.
And I think they had, I don't remember, 100.
I know it was at least 100 game companies in the US
listed their addresses where you could apply.
So I set out and I literally sent out
a hundred resumes and portfolios all across.
What did you like to say like graphic design,
likes making maps, like what does your resume look like?
Well, yeah, fortunately I did put in
all the graphic design stuff, my artwork stuff,
but because I had been modding Marathon,
I had actual video cassettes of the levels and stuff
and gameplay that I built and us playing through that stuff.
I started working on, in addition to the multiplayer maps,
I started working on like single player mods
and stuff like that with other people over the internet.
So I wound up working on kind of a few pretty big projects.
In fact, Bungie later released like the Marathon Trilogy CD
and on that CD, it had the first all the three marathons
and they also packed in there a bunch of like total conversions
and I'm in two of those.
So it was kind of neat to be on like a published CD
from Bungie, have my work on there.
And it was, I was just a kid in college.
So that stuff got me out of a hundred game studios,
two of them called me and did phone interviews
and one of them flew me to San Diego to interview
and I got the job at Presto Studio.
So what were they making?
What games were they?
They were making adventure games,
Buried in Time, The Journeyman Project.
So this was back in the days of like MIST
that was adventure games were kind of a pretty big,
you know, point and click sort of like puzzle solving stuff.
And I actually had played Buried in Time
and I really liked it.
And so it was cool.
It was a company that I had already played
one of their games and they were just working on,
it was their first real-time 3D game.
It was called Beneath, it wound up getting canceled.
You saw the first game that I worked on for a year
and a half got canceled, which was a bummer.
But that was the first, it was a fully real,
real-time 3D game.
So it was cool, but still one out of a hundred
was just like that.
So I always told that to people,
people that were anybody that is like getting turned down
or struggling to find work is just,
it's like, man, if I wouldn't have sent them out
to a hundred studios, would I be where I am,
would I have had that experience?
I don't know.
So it was good.
So you did the adventure game thing
and then eventually you founded Turtle Rock.
What's kind of in between those two things?
Yeah, a lot.
We'll talk about Turtle Rock in a minute,
but like how do you get to that level?
Because that's, I mean,
that's working for a small adventure game brand
to like holy shit, Leopardette.
So like how do you get between those two things?
The big thing was while I worked at Presto,
I started playing a little mod called Counter Strike
and it was super early, super,
I think it was like beta one or something.
It was very, very, very early.
And I was making textures doing artwork for Presto
and it was high quality stuff, you know, it had to be.
And I had a good art director and really good artists
around me that were helping me get up
to speed really quickly.
So I was playing Counter Strike as a mod
and I was like, this is the coolest thing,
best thing, most exciting thing I've ever played
and I want to be a part of it.
So I messaged the guys that were running it
and said, hey, I'm a texture artist.
I want to join the mod team.
And they said yes.
And so I made all the textures
that was in the original DE dust.
I made a couple of maps.
What was that game like back then?
Like what kind of, are you playing on a T1 at a place
to go like have some sort of reliable internet connection?
Like college, it must have been really hard
to find a place to play.
Yeah, I think a lot of people were in college dorms
and there were internet cafes were a thing
where people would go to play
because your internet connection at home
was still like dial up, it was still too shitty.
So you had to go someplace
that had like a dedicated, a big connection.
So, and I was lucky because I was at the game studio
and they of course had fast internet.
And so I was playing, yeah, I was playing that stuff,
but it was just, it was so raw and visceral.
It was just such a weird, I'm thinking about like,
if you think about Call of Duty 4,
which is kind of where I think probably gaming started
for me seriously versus playing like Mario Kart, right?
So you go, you're playing Mario Kart on Super Nintendo,
you're not a gamer, you're buying Xbox
and then pretty soon you're playing Call of Duty all the time
and you're watching your gamer score and you're playing
and you're paying attention to your KD
and like all this stuff and you have buddies you play with
and you're all in headsets and you're all like jamming out.
That I would consider more of a gamer.
What period of time, like I'm not,
because as a console player, Counter Strike wasn't,
wasn't ever my thing because I played it.
But like what period of time are we talking about here?
When we talk about Call of Duty 4 original Counter Strike,
that kind of in the same concept a little earlier.
It's a good question,
because I was the opposite side, right?
So I was fully in PC games
and I didn't really play on console.
So a lot of stuff that was on console I missed like.
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I didn't get a lot of those.
I got a look.
Claude will tell me.
Okay, Counter Strike Original went retail with Valve in 2000,
with Half-Life in 2000, Standalone was 2003,
Modern Warfare came out in 2007.
So it's a little bit ahead.
Yeah, so I was working on it way before,
so years before Valve bought it.
So what happened was it was a mod,
it gained a lot of popularity and success,
and it was just a monster on PC.
It was a mod of Half-Life?
Yes.
Yeah, okay, okay.
So then Valve bought the rights to it.
By the time they bought the rights to Counter Strike,
I had moved on from Presto,
and I had gone to Westwood Studios,
and I was working on Command and Conquer franchise.
Yeah, I had to learn.
I played that.
Yeah, so.
I can hear the song right now.
What was the one character, she was a girl,
and she ran her own with a gun?
Man, that was such a great game.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I couldn't compete.
People got really insane with those games, dude.
Yeah, I worked on Red Alert 2,
and I was at Westwood Studios working on Red Alert 2,
finished that game, so I was there for about a year and a half,
and then someone from Valve called,
and they started talking to me about going up there
and working for them,
because they had purchased Counter Strike,
and they liked the texture work that I had done
in Counter Strike,
and they were working on some other projects,
and they invited me up,
and it was one of those sort of like,
being in PC games,
and Valve was really at the top.
I felt like one of the best studios in the world,
so it was a dream job for me,
so I took it and went up to Seattle,
and worked for Valve for a year,
and then I discovered that my love of video games
and working for Valve,
it sort of clashed with the poor weather in Seattle
and my car hobby.
So I was-
What was the thing you liked,
and what were you driving around this time?
I had a supercharged Mustang,
and I had put quite a bit of money into it,
and I was really heavy into autocrossing,
so I was running with SCCA,
and I was autocrossing quite a bit.
I did 11 autocrosses that year in Seattle,
and seven were in the wet.
So I was like, the first couple of times in the wet,
I had never even experienced that in California,
a wet autocross,
so the first couple of times I was like,
this is pretty wild, pretty fun, slippery,
but after that, I was like, okay, this sucks.
Are you telling me that the Turtle Rock Gaming Studio
was founded out of not wanting to autocross in the wet?
Isn't that fair to say?
Well, it's a crazy life.
There's a lot of moving pieces,
and it's complicated how things work out,
but when I was at Westwood,
Westwood got bought by EA,
so it turned into Electronic Arts.
One of the guys that I worked with there at EA,
after I went to Valve,
he started working solo on really getting into AI stuff,
and he wanted to start contracting
and working with other people,
and since I was at Valve,
I kind of put him in touch.
At the time, Valve was building Steam.
Steam wasn't a thing yet, but they were working on it,
and I was like, dude,
if you're gonna do some indie game stuff
or whatever you need to be talking to Valve,
because they're gonna have a way for you to sell your game.
And so he started talking to Valve,
and that turned into contract work
where he was contracting with them on Counterstrike
to build a bot for Counterstrike.
And so that was the CS bot
where you could start playing Counterstrike
and filling in empty slots on servers
or even play by yourself against bots
that were playing Counterstrike.
That job went really well for him
to the point where they offered him,
they said you should start up a game studio.
And at the time, they were trying to get Counterstrike
onto the Xbox,
and they were trying to make Counterstrike
a single-player game because it was such a big franchise,
but it had only ever existed in the multiplayer space,
and they felt like there was a whole group of players
in the world that were interested in Counterstrike
that knew of it, but didn't wanna get online
and didn't wanna try to compete with everybody
that had been playing Counterstrike for years and years.
So Mike Booth, he founded Turtle Rock Studios,
we call it 1.0, and I went to work for him.
I left Seattle, I had gone back to California
because of the car stuff.
I had worked at a game studio called Troika.
They were building a vampire, the Masquerade game,
on the Source engine, which is Valve's engine.
So me coming from Valve was kind of a shoe in.
And then I got that game to where,
I helped get that game to where it was gonna ship,
and then I left and I joined Turtle Rock Studios
to work on Counterstrike.
Again, ironically, having worked on it as a mod,
now I was back working on it,
and helping out with the Xbox version
and the single player version of Counterstrike.
And I worked with Mike at that Turtle Rock Studios
for six years, and we were kind of the custodians
of Counterstrike, like a lot of the versions
and updates and stuff that was all new maps
and revised old maps and stuff,
that was all stuff that our team worked on.
How does it feel to be part of the foundational upbringing
of the adolescent version of Counterstrike
that set the foundation?
Cause I mean, that game is still, if you look at,
if I go on Steam and look at Player Count right now,
that game has gotta be up there.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, it's still-
Not number one, I don't know.
It's probably number one right now.
Maybe Arc Raiders is nipping at its heels, who knows?
But that's gotta be a pretty crazy feeling looking back.
It was cool.
It's a weird scenario.
I wound up working on Counterstrike
even a couple more times afterwards.
I worked on Counterstrike when I was at Valve.
I worked on Counterstrike as a mod.
I worked on Counterstrike at Turtle Rock 1.0.
Were you any good?
There were times when I was good, but definitely not.
You know, that game is crazy.
It's just, I guess it's probably the same with other games,
but if you stop playing for even a month,
it takes a while to sort of get back to where you were.
You have to play all the time.
I worked on it again.
So Valve closed Turtle Rock Studio.
Well, Turtle Rock Studios did work for Valve
for like six years or something like that.
Then the last year Valve bought Turtle Rock Studios
and we became Valve South.
So then I was technically working at Valve again,
but in Southern California.
That only lasted about a year.
And then they decided to close the studio.
And then that's when myself and Phil Robb
and the people that were in the Southern California studio
kind of picked up the pieces
and reformed Turtle Rock Studios.
And then that time, and Mike stayed with Valve.
So then at that time, myself and Phil Robb became
the owners of Turtle Rock Studios.
And it was like sort of 2.0.
Same group of people, even the same computer equipment stuff.
Where did that come in?
Because that's one of my favorite games of all time.
Can you tell me a little bit about the conception
and the development of that game?
Yeah, that was during Turtle Rock 1.0.
It really kind of came about because of the mod community.
So ironically, well, maybe not, it's not very ironic,
but like a lot of game ideas come out of mods,
a lot of cool ideas that pick up steam.
We had been working on Counter-Strike
and developing the CS bot.
And one of the things that you could do with the bots
was you could give them different personalities,
you could give them preferences,
weapon preferences and stuff,
and you could also constrain them.
And we built that stuff into the UI
where you could set up the enemy team to only use knives,
for example.
And so it became kind of a mod that people were doing,
what was called bots with knives.
And they would just set up,
it would be like me and you and somebody else maybe
with M16s and we would set up on the other team
to have 20 of the terrorist faction
that only had knives, right?
And the bot behavior,
they would play to whatever weapon they had.
So if they had a sniper rifle,
then they would sit and skulk and sit in the background
and take these longer shots, right?
But because if they only have a knife,
they become extremely aggressive
and they just charge at you, right?
And so people are playing bots with knives
and we started seeing a lot of people do that.
And so we were trying to figure out like,
why are people playing this and what's fun about it?
And we started to play it in the studio.
And it felt like you were fighting zombies,
like these rabid zombies,
because they just came charging at you
and slashing at you and stuff.
And so we had, we were working on Counter-Strike,
we had the source code, we had the maps,
we had all that kind of stuff.
So we started to, I took like CS Italy,
which is like one of the most popular maps, right?
And I made it nighttime and I made it spooky
and Phil took some of the skins
and made them like zombified.
So they were still like the terrorists or counter-terrorists,
but they had like, you know.
Yeah, scan peeling.
Skeleton face and stuff like that.
And so we started playing it bots with knives,
but dressed up as a zombie game.
And at that time we were,
Turtle Rock was pushing its own game idea.
Valve wanted us to develop a brand new IP.
And so we were working on this other game idea.
And that kind of fell through.
And when that fell through, we were trying to think,
okay, well, what else, like what do we do next?
And Valve really wanted Mike and the studio to push on AI
and not do multiplayer,
not do specifically like team versus team
because they had Counter-Strike already
and they had Team Fortress.
Just leave it a thing
because we're talking about PVE really.
Yeah, yeah.
Was there much there in that genre at the time?
There wasn't a lot, not much.
And I think that was the resistance, the hesitancy.
So we started talking, well, let's do this zombie game
against AIs that are zombies, you know?
Let's do co-op against AI.
And it was a lot of kind of pushback on it
because number one, there weren't any big zombie games.
I mean, there was Resident Evil,
but that kind of is kind of zombies.
It's kind of different and it's only on consoles, not on PCs.
There really wasn't much by way of like big name zombie shooters.
So everybody felt like it was a risk.
And then the co-op thing was interesting
and we felt like we could do it.
And really the thing that kind of made us push hard on it
was 28 days later came out on DVD
and I brought it in to work and we watched it during lunch.
And Mike, who kind of owned the studio
and called the shots back in the day,
he had been seeing the zombies as the classic sort of shambling zombies and stuff.
Slow zombies, yeah.
Yeah.
And when he's...
There's also a battle, right?
Do you want a movie?
Can either be slow zombies or fast zombies.
I always feel like they would be fast at first
and then just get slower as their arms fall off.
Well, 28 days was kind of the first to kind of redress zombies as like a virus, you know?
And these were, they were super fast and super aggressive and it was a virus.
They weren't the undead, it was people that were infected, you know?
And it made it serious and I think it changed Mike's view of it was like,
oh, this could be actually, this could be intense and it can be scary
and people can take it serious.
And so really from that point on, we started to push on it
and we did, we spent a couple of weeks building a little demo
and then we showed it to Valve and they loved it
and we just started building it.
When you show a game to someone like that, do you get them together and go,
hey, all right, sit down on this keyboard mouse and play it?
Or do you show them someone else playing?
Like, how does that process work?
So it's different for different, like for most of the time for in the rest of the industry,
if you're pitching to a game publisher or something, you don't usually have a playable.
You're usually pitching ideas and you're trying to translate that with videos
or a slideshow or something.
If you are lucky enough to have done some development to have a playable demo,
then you'll talk about it and then you show them.
And then usually it's too rough for them to do hands-on,
but we really built all of our games,
kind of like what we were building our cars, like functionality first.
We were prototyping everything and we didn't really care what it looked like.
The point was to test all of the gameplay.
And so we had a thing of playable version and the early versions of the game,
by the way, were like, because we were going off of Counter-Strike,
you would, you were going into zombie territory, infested zones, and planting a zombie bait.
And then the bait would attract all the zombies out of the area and you had to exterminate them.
So it was definitely a riff using all the pieces that we had from Counter-Strike.
And so we talked to Valve about it, we told them what we wanted to do,
and then they started playing it, you know, and they had a group of,
I mean, obviously they had access to the source code, you know,
and they had a group of people up there that were playing it nightly
and then would give us feedback and had ideas.
And it just, you know, everybody there was really excited about what we were doing.
And so they basically funded us to keep going on it and build,
to build Left 4 Dead. That's what became Left 4 Dead.
And it's one of the widely, very widely acclaimed, man.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it's not like,
it's not like, you know, somebody had a grandiose, like, this is my vision
and this is we're going to execute on it, you know, I,
That's some knives, man. That's crazy.
Yeah, it's just this weird evolution of circumstance, you know,
and the ability for us to be in a position to where we could take advantage of it,
and we could, you know, grab on to opportunities that presented themselves and
prove it in the play test, you know, build it,
prove it in the play test, if it's fun, it's hard to argue against it.
So when I kind of look at like the tail end of the studio stuff,
um, when I, when I talk to AI or Google or whatever,
it seems like this evolved THQ situation comes up.
Like what kind of happened there and how did that lead to the end of
gaming for you and opening, uh, Rufian?
Uh, yeah, um, we, so after, after we kind of rebooted the studio,
um, we, we continued to work with Valve for a little while.
I think it was, I can't remember for sure, but I think it was roughly two years,
just a really, so I think we were 10 people.
So it was just, it was a bunch of us in a warehouse, um,
working on Counter-Strike stuff, um, they had, they had also done
Leoparded 2, Valve built Leoparded 2 internally and, uh, but then we built DLC for it.
So it was a fun, it was fun to get back into Leoparded.
Um, but at some point the Valve stuff started to dry up, the work started to dry up.
And so we, we had to like kind of put our big boy pants on and go be a real, uh,
independent game studio and go find work.
And so we put together a pitch for this game
and started pitching it around to different, um, publishers.
And most of the time when you pitch stuff as an indie studio,
the response that you might get is, oh, that's interesting.
That idea is interesting, but we have this IP that you,
that we want you to work on.
So the expectation was that we would pitch this game.
And that's something that's like already been established, already has sales.
Nobody wants to take the risk and stick their neck out for what was basically
original Monster Hunters kind of, right?
Yeah. So, um, THQ though was in a really tough spot.
Like we knew it going into it.
They were, effectively they were desperate.
They didn't have any multiplayer games.
They only had single player stuff and, um, they were really struggling
and they were looking for new IP.
And then here was this group that did a whole bunch of Left 4 Dead work,
um, and Turtle Rock, you know, sort of had that name associated with,
and so they were interested, um, and, you know, funded us.
And it got us through several years of development,
but eventually that sort of caught up with THQ and us, I guess,
in a way, uh, THQ filed for bankruptcy and they auctioned off all the games.
What was that all like, man?
That's rough. It's definitely a rough time in the studio.
You know, we had, we had hired on a lot of talent.
I think we were a hundred people.
Oh man.
Um, so you hire on all this, all this talent.
You move people from out of state to California and you're working on this thing
you're so excited about.
And then the publisher is in financial trouble and filing for bankruptcy
and everybody wants to know like, are we going to have a job next week?
And you don't really have the answers to it, you know.
Um, but we always told everybody like the game speaks for itself.
Like anybody can come play the game.
It's awesome.
We had had a really good E3.
Um, it was super successful.
We won like best of show at E3.
Like, you know, all signs were pointing towards the game being a really big hit
and being successful.
So we just kind of leaned into that and we just let everybody came and played the game.
So Microsoft, Activision, everybody, everybody, any publisher could come visit the studio,
look at our, our money situation, look through our, all of our documentation
and play the game.
And then all those people went to court and they bid and it sold to the highest bidder,
which was 2K.
So, yeah, yeah.
So, uh, how does you feel about that?
Were you like, this is, was it the right developer in your mind at the time?
Or I don't want to try to make two on earth.
Uh, I throw them under the bus, but.
Uh, man, I, it was, it was, it's tough because you don't, we had developed
a relationship with THQ over time, right?
There was no relationship with 2K.
Like we didn't, you know, we don't know them.
They're just, they're the highest bidder.
So I feel like there were definitely sort of worse situations for us to be in.
So at least, you know, at least the contract was moving forward and the game was going to
see light a day, which is, which is kind of the big thing.
It's a big one, right?
Yeah.
And everybody got to keep their job and so we just, we just kept going.
But obviously that's, that's a bit of turmoil, um, creatively, you know, to switch hands from
a different, obviously 2K is going to have a different idea of what they want and what they
need and timing with release and all that kind of stuff with all of their portfolio versus what
THQ had going on, right?
So it's going to, it's going to throw a big wrench into the works.
But, um, yeah, we got, we got through it and, um, release the game and, uh, we had some bad
timing on, uh, we had like, um, we had stuff available that you could buy in the store on
day one. Uh, and it was all cosmetics.
It was nothing functional, but, um, if you look at what goes on now, right?
Yeah.
So, but we got burned at the stake, you know, for that stuff.
And, uh, the game got such a bad name for DLC and for selling stuff.
If you had like, let's say you kept the DLC off the side.
Like a lot of times now the stuff is kept, right?
It's like, maybe developers learn their lesson from this, but the DLC is usually
kept on at the end of season one or the end of season two, the DLC starts to come, right?
Yeah.
Had that happened, do you think people would have not complained because they wouldn't
have known that this other stuff even existed?
Yeah.
Was there enough of a game there, right?
Well, yeah, I think so.
Um, it, it was, it was definitely bad timing.
You know, it was like right in, um, the community was, was just really upset.
And really at their, at their limit with games, um, with DLC, selling DLC, you know,
stuff that they considered being developed during, during the production of the, of the game and
then being sold later for extra money and all this kind of stuff.
So we kind of wound up unfortunately being the poster child for that stuff.
And it was crazy.
I had, I had friends of friends who weren't even gamers who knew about evolve just because
of that negative bit of story, right?
They didn't know how the game played or how it was reviewed or anything.
They just knew that, um, you know, they would, they would talk about us being greedy and
stuff like that.
So it was a
It was a fun gaming in general, man.
I mean, even, you know, Battlefront came out a little while later and that game has been
excoriated for many different things.
Mass Effect had a ton of DLC, you know, all these different games.
I think it was just like, I think it was kind of the corporate demand of how do we make
more money off of these games rather than just, and now I would say that's a critique
that I would lay out today.
And maybe you can let me know how you feel about in the, in this gaming chapter discussion,
like how do you feel gaming is today, the state of gaming from a guy who went through
so much and built some really incredible properties?
Where do you think, how do you think things are doing?
It's, uh, it's really tough place to be right now.
I think we're seeing the gaming industry in the worst place it's been and, you know,
that I, that I know of, um, all the game studios are hurting.
People are putting time and money elsewhere.
People are trying to figure out how to monetize like, uh, video games didn't go up in price,
which is part of my understanding of the problem is that, you know, the legend,
the legend of Zelda on Super Nintendo was like 50 bucks when it came out.
And, you know, people still were expecting games to be 50 bucks, but the, as the fidelity
of the games increased, the time it takes to create just the labor involved in creating
these more fleshed out, these bigger games, uh, the labor rate just increased and, uh,
but we weren't selling the games for any more money.
So now it meant that if you couldn't sell 10 million copies, then you are going to lose money.
You know, so it just, it just, it was this big bubble that was, um,
destined to run into something, right?
So then you inevitably start running into DLCs and season passes and all these other ways.
Like how do we make money?
How do we make money?
How do we make it just make our money back from what we're investing?
I would pay like when, uh, Grand Theft Auto comes out, people are saying it's going to be a
hundred dollar game, right?
It's going to be a hundred dollar game.
I would pay the money for the good game.
I would pay, I would pay seven arc Raiders was 40 bucks or whatever.
I would have paid seventy five dollars for the game.
It's great.
I'd pay seventy five dollars, a hundred dollars for battlefield six.
Just make the game good, make it right to begin with.
Stop giving me beta games and then having me test them for you and then fix them.
Yeah.
Everything's just so messed up right now.
It's so messy.
And, um, yeah, it's tough because the cost of production has continued to go up.
Unfortunately, it also.
Hackers are like brutalizing games.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, that's awful.
You spend so much money just trying to address that stuff and trying to protect
yourself against that stuff.
And even though, even the way that you, you know, you, you'll develop a game now to where
it runs on the server, you know, you stay away from client side stuff because this
client side stuff can be hacked so easily.
So, um, but then that means that you, your game has to run online and you're paying
dedicated server costs.
Right.
So you're to make your game more secure also makes your game a lot more expensive
because you're paying Amazon to run these servers in the background.
You're paying it for every hour that you're running that server.
So, um, it's, it's in a tough spot and I don't know what the solution is.
It's going to be interesting to see what Grand Theft Auto does.
There's been a few games that have tried to increase the price point, uh, and there's
been enough backlash from the community and stuff that they, they, they rescinded on that
and went back, um, Grand Theft Auto, uh, I'm sure they're going to release for higher
mounts, uh, dollar amounts and I'm sure people are going to pay it.
So maybe it opens the door to sort of a new norm.
Um, but right now everybody's struggling to figure it out.
So, so in with gaming, you're building things that you can't touch, right?
It's a digital world.
You are now building physical things.
Um, what do you get more reward out of?
Which one, which one is bringing you the, the, the good feels?
The physical stuff for sure.
I mean, that's, I think that's inherent to human nature.
I think we're, I think we're still all cavemen, you know, and, uh, that's the way things have
worked for, for thousands and thousands and thousands of years is like, um, you, you, you
plant seeds and grow vegetables and eat vegetable, right?
Like the things that you do with your hands have real results in the real world.
Um, it, it's different.
Like it's a, it's a different sort of, uh, it's a longer circle, right?
In, in video games where it's like, okay, well I'm building something virtual and that's
getting me paid and then I go to the grocery store and I buy food and then that's feed me.
So it kind of comes back around.
I'll kind of, it kind of works the same, but it doesn't feel the same.
And there is a satisfaction of building something with your hands and seeing something physical
in the real world.
And I'll tell you that I, that 70 Mustang I finished in 2019.
I drove it to work last week and the number of heads that it turns driving down the road
and the sound of it and the feel of it.
And it's such a cool thing that I still get to experience that car.
You know, six years later, seven years later, versus a video game that came out seven years
ago, nobody's playing. It's just gone, you know, it just disappears into the ether.
And that's years and years of your life that you've invested it, four years and evolve
to get that game out the door.
And then a year later, it's gone, you know, so I much prefer the physical stuff for a number of
reasons.
Like in the sand for cars, after all this stuff went down, was it, was that, was it a reaction
to what happened or are you like, I'm going to build a physical thing?
Is that where, why you did this or how did this end up, you know, becoming a business?
It was part of it.
But like I said, when I was trying to get into college, that's what I told them I wanted to
do. So it was like this, it was also this not, you know, this unrealized bit of passion.
And I built two cars while I was still heavily working in games.
And so I was doing, you know, working in the evenings and working on the weekends.
And if I had Christmas vacation, I was working on my car.
I got done with those two cars and I thought it would be like a hobby.
Like I've had other hobbies and they've come and they've gone, you know,
but I got done with those two cars and it's all I wanted to do.
I just wanted to do more. And I made a list of cars that I wanted to build in my lifetime.
And I also looked at how long it was taking me to build the cars.
And I was like, I can't do it. Like I don't have enough time
to build all the cars that I want to build. So either I got to be fine with that,
or I'm going to have to hire some people and build cars faster.
And that's kind of the direction that I went.
Cars on that list get built there for someone else as long as you built it?
Like is, or these, is this list for you?
No, I think definitely building it is a large part like that satisfaction of the whole sort
of creative process and having a vision and hopes and dreams and having that realized.
I think there's a ton of value in that.
I don't think that I need to keep them around. We're just doing this year,
we're working on half the cars we're building our client builds.
And so probably next year will be the first one that gets done that is for a client.
So it kind of remains to be seen, but I think because that might in my, in my head,
I know that this is a car for somebody else that I, I'm not going to have any
emotional attachment to it other than being proud of, of our work.
But it's, it's like getting a call to me like, Hey, I want you to build me a car.
For, for, I mean, for us, it's, it's incredibly exciting assuming that it's the right person,
you know, so right now when I get a cold email or a cold call or something,
I'm usually pretty nervous because I have to figure out, is it a good match for us?
You know, I don't want to get, we don't have to, we don't have to build a car for somebody. So
we're only going to take jobs that we're interested in and clients that we like working
with and stuff that we feel good about. It needs to be a good partnership.
What are the, what are the things that you won't do? Where it's, what's the, I guess, let me
say this, what's the, the flag that goes up here? Like, well, the same, the guy, not like traditional
don't say this in your email to Chris or he'll never build you a car.
Some of the stuff is just, and so one of the reasons, one of the strategies for us was to build.
So when we went to SEMA and you saw the 67 Mustang and you saw the 64 Galaxy,
the Galaxy is kind of like really wild paint scheme and it's on a full race car chassis,
like tube chassis. It's like very, very extreme and the 67 Mustang is very,
it's like very tastefully done. It's more traditional and very clean.
And, and so I wanted to have those two examples that we could show the world and say, okay,
here's kind of, this is Ruffian. Like this is the spectrum of Ruffian
with the hopes that the people that we did attract to us, like obviously for us racing,
inspiration, motorsports is a, is a huge part of what we do. So if you come to me and say that you
want a low rider with a full leather interior and, you know, a killer sound system in it,
I'm, you're way better off going to another shop, you know? So we've never put a stereo in anything
that we've built so far, you know? So it's like weird, oddly enough, stereo might be a,
might be a deal killer for us. If you want a stereo, you're probably talking to the wrong person.
I just put an armrest in my 911. Am I out? I just, I, oh armrest and like, man, this would be really
nice 10, 12 hours in the car driving across the country to scout for a rally. I need an armrest.
I threw it in there. No, I get that. Anything that you need for, that makes the car experience,
driving experience better, I buy into. I'm not opposed to like a seat heater or even seat cooler,
like, but that's part of driving the car though, I feel like, you know, so, and, and I've got,
you know, I understand I've got cars with that are, that are more comfortable or not,
not made for performance or whatever. I, I like cars a lot, a wide range of cars, but
as far as what we're good at and what we know and what we build is, is, is all that kind of stuff,
motorsports oriented stuff. And largely American, American brands, muscle car era,
partially the muscle car era because we're in Southern California and California won't let you
touch anything that's newer than 75 or you've got emissions problems,
but partially because that's what I know. I grew up reading Hot Rod Magazine. The first car I had
was a 67 Cougar, which is the muscle car era. Like, I know it really, really well and I can pull from,
we used to go to vintage racing and stuff all the time, I can pull from
all the stuff that these other people did before me and sort of crafted into something new.
But if you told me that you wanted me to build a, a bitch in like BMW European build, like,
I like BMWs. I think they're cool. There's definitely some,
ones that are favorites of mine, but I don't feel like I know, I don't know BMW engines. I don't
know transmissions. I don't know drivetrains. I don't know what parts would be cool to put in it,
what parts wouldn't be cool to put in it. I don't know enough about it.
You've already proven that you can learn though, because if like you look at like,
if you look at either of these builds, you had to have learned an enormous amount of,
of stuff to be able to put those cars together. So surely you could learn. Like,
if someone brings you a 3.0 CSL is like, Hey man, I want the, the you version of this.
I know. Yeah.
I think you'd figure it out. I think you would do it. Right?
It's, it's on, like a CSL is on the, is on the list, that list that I created,
the CSL was on there. I'd like to get to it at some point. I just, I don't,
yeah, it's, it's, it's not my comfort zone. So we're,
we're, we're starting to push some of that stuff a little bit more now trying to push the comfort
zone. But we've got a, what's that? If you look at that list in your head, what's the thing that
would surprise everybody that it's on there? Anything? I don't know. There's just a wide range
of stuff. There's a, like a 928. I'd love to build a Porsche 928 one day. I'd like to build a Ferrari
Testarosa one day. Now a bunch of people built Testarosa. So it doesn't seem so, so wild. But
like when I made the list, there weren't any, like nobody had taken and cut up and done like a wide
body Testarosa or anything like that. So yeah.
Like an old Yalpa or those old Lamborghinis that are kind of strange and weird and some of that
old exotic Italian stuff that nobody's ever heard of. Yeah. It's so tough because I personally love
that stuff. But, um, and maybe the Plymouth, we did this 35 Plymouth recently and it's done really,
really well for us. We're on the cover of Hot Rod, this issue, the spring issue of Hot Rod
Magazine, that Plymouth is on the cover of Hot Rod Magazine. We've been to a bunch of shows.
It's won awards. Like it's done really, really well for us and got a lot of attention. And I,
I didn't think anyone would care because people built 32 Ford's, you know, those are known.
Nobody builds a 35 Plymouth. Like it's just not a, it's just not a,
a thing for traditional Hot Rod-ing.
So like generally I try, I, I, we've been trying to stay with cars that are more popular and more
well known or whatever. And part of that thinking was like, okay, if you're on Instagram and you,
and you do like hashtag Mustang, because you like Mustangs, then maybe ours will pop up.
But no one's going to say like hashtag 35 Plymouth. Like no one's going to be like hashtag tag
Lamborghini Europa or a Lotus Europa. As you prove your, oh, that's, that's a good one, dude.
Yeah, I know, right. But as time goes on, people are going to be looking up hashtag roofing to see
what you're doing. Yeah, yeah. So I think that Plymouth kind of, the Plymouth is the one that's
kind of showing me that maybe it's okay to go down the road of like, I like different and weird
oddball stuff. That's why I like the 928 so much. I just love that the 928 pissed a bunch of people
off because it was front engine and it was a V8. And for some part of me, like I love V8s,
I'm used to V8s, American muscle cars. When I was in college, there was a guy that had a 928
in town and he had put glass packs on it. And every time I'd hear a muscle car go down the road
and I turned around and look and you'd see a 928 and I was like, what the hell? Like that's the
coolest thing I've ever seen. So I do like the redheaded stepchild, you know, models of a lot
of these car manufacturers and stuff. And what I'm hoping is that we'll get some clients that'll be
like, hey, you know, build me a AMX, you know, or I actually wanted to, I went pretty deep in this
project where I was going to buy a used Lamborghini Evo race car and then put AMC, the X3, I think
it's called, body on top of it. So it would be sort of AMC's version of the DiTomasso, you know,
an exotic muscle car era car. But a concept artist, Andreas, that I work with, he was like,
everyone's just going to think it's a kick car. And I'm like, yeah, that does kind of suck to put,
you know, half a million dollars into a build and then have people just like be like, oh,
it's a kick car. I don't even know what that is. Look at this thing. This is my favorite muscle car
right here. I've seen these at Road America and the Vintage races all the time. I mean, this is,
you know, this is almost as good as it gets for a muscle car for me.
Yeah, the Javelins are really good. They're another one where it's like,
it's definitely on the wish list. And there's been a couple of big high dollar builds. Ring
Brothers did one that's super gnarly. Yeah, those are, there's also, so I've been pining for a,
I keep, I'm in the, and I've mentioned this on the podcast before, but you don't know this,
but I am in the short stroke 289 algorithm right now. Okay. I get served
289 Mustang sounds almost as much as attractive women. So it's like half attractive women,
289 Mustang engines, which is a crazy ratio. What would you, if you were me, who's a guy that
loves old European stuff, what would you put a 289 engine in? Because I don't want a Mustang.
I mean, I kind of want a Mustang, but I don't want a Mustang. I want it to be,
like I put an S 50 in this Mercedes. So I can, I can do it. I can put it in whatever.
What should it go with? What should I, what would you do?
Uh, I don't, that's the thing. I just don't know them all that well. There's a little,
I don't know what it is, but there's a little tiny, one of the little tiny Mercedes,
uh, two doors. Like, uh, it's a little convertible thing. Yeah.
Um, it's, it's this thing, right? I'm going to pull it up. Like, I know what you're thinking.
These guys, this what you mean? Oh yeah. Yeah. Something like that with the 289 in it and
some fender flares on it. Be super rowdy. I'm, I'm, I want to do, I mean, how about, how about this?
You just, I'm, I'm just basically seeking for approval now is, um, I'm thinking, uh,
almost in that vein is, is this is where my head is at. Come on computer.
I'm in this world right here. The R 107 one body style newer cause these things are,
uh, like $10. Yeah. And the other one is like $50,000. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
That makes sense. These are like free. They're borderline free and I'm taking the engine out
and throwing it in a trash anyway, where it belongs because Mercedes engines are absolutely
dog shit. Um, so this, this feels, this feels like the way to go.
Yeah. That would be fun. I, I, I guess the thing that you would want is to try to
try to lighten it as much as you can. You know, the two 89 is going to,
the, the more weight you can take out of it, the better. Yeah. For sure. What weight is king?
Always, always, always. Um, well last question, you know, you started with a cougar.
When are you building a cougar? It's weird. We've got, uh, so Drew, who works for me,
he's 18. He has a wide body cougar. It's a 68, I think. Um, we have a cougar in the shop right
now. It's a 67 that is Deans from SoCal classic car storage. And Mike, uh, a Mikey who works for
me has a 69 cougar that he's building, kind of like Trans Am style. So it's like, I don't have one
and I don't know that there's going to be a Ruffian one soon, but there are three in the
shop right now. So it's kind of a weird thing. It seems like it would be the natural fit for you,
man. Yeah. They're a little tough with the, with especially just the front grille. Like the grille
is so iconic and it's cool, but it's also so, um, old, like hard to get away from it being like
really vintage and old. So it's like, how do you restyle that and not lose the cougar,
but modernize it enough to where, you know, a modern chassis and stuff under it doesn't,
isn't weird. That sounds like a problem we're solving. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen some interesting
takes on it, but, uh, yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Right now I kind of, I'm trying hard to get away
from doing Ford's just because we've done so many that everybody thinks we're a Ford shop
and I got to get out of that. So the Plymouth at least was, was one that got away from that
and we have a El Camino we're doing soon. Um, but we're also doing a 90 Fox, uh, Mustang for,
for Sean Autotopia LA right now. Um, that car's gonna, I'm really excited about it. It's a lot
of fun because I graduated high school in 93 and 93 was the last year of the Fox and it was, uh,
the local dealer had like, had like three, um, 93 Mustang Cobras on the lot and I,
I went there multiple times and drooled on those cars. So I've always wanted one, never had one.
Um, I might not still, I might still not ever own one, but, um, I'm at least getting to build
a Ruffian version of a Fox now. Thanks to Sean. That would be, that would be sick to Fox, but he's
always good. Um, Chris, dude, it's been really great talking to you. Your journey is really
incredible. I think it's really cool what you've built, um, from Left 4 Dead to my favorite Mustang.
It's, uh, one of my favorite games to one of my favorite cars. That's like two of my very well,
uh, I'm glad you were born. Thank you. Awesome. Yeah. I appreciate it. All right. You take care
of yourself. We'll see you around. We'll talk to you again in a few years. See where you're at.
Okay. That'd be, that'd be great. Cool. Take care. You too. Bye.
About this episode
Chris Ashton of Ruffian Cars connects his hot-rod shop philosophy to a career in game development, tracing how “function first” drives both. He compares building cars to pitching and prototyping games, then dives into his path from graphic design and modding Marathon/Counter-Strike to working on Valve projects and founding Turtle Rock, where Left 4 Dead emerged from a zombie-bot mod concept. Later, he recounts the studio’s turbulence through THQ’s bankruptcy and the backlash around Evolve’s DLC. The conversation closes with Ruffian’s motorsports-inspired builds, client boundaries, and his love for physical craftsmanship over digital ephemera.
Original notes
Chris Ashton is the founder of Ruffian Cars, one of the freshest and most innovative custom car shops in the country. What you may not know is he also co-founded the game development studio that worked on Counter-Strike and built the legendary Left 4 Dead. Thirty years building worlds you can't touch, and then he decided to build ones you could.
Overcrest
Kris Clewell / Overcrest
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