Lindbergh, Destructible Environments, The Ringer (2024)

Cite as: Lindbergh, Destructible Environments, The Ringer (2024)
Original: https://www.theringer.com/2024/02/02/video-games/destruction-video-games-battlefield-bad-company-red-faction-battlebit-teardown-the-finals
sha256: c08b87c98476a3390749b7181f0a0b9606520639d7a7f7c0ee63cfcf0c0994ec
Archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20261005173416id_/https://www.theringer.com/2024/02/02/video-games/destruction-video-games-battlefield-bad-company-red-faction-battlebit-teardown-the-finals
Accessed: 2026-10-22
Licence: © the publisher; quoted briefly
Credit: Ben Lindbergh
Notes: Feature (2 Feb 2024) built on Lindbergh's own interviews with Volition's John Slagel and Alan Lawrance (Red Faction) and DICE's Alan Kertz (Battlefield), quoted in the present tense ("Lawrance says"). Kind interview for those quotes, ruled 2026-10-22: a claim citing this source at tier 2 must quote a developer's own words; Lindbergh's narration and paraphrase are secondary, so a claim resting on them stays tier 1. The "subtracted from the world" explanation is Lawrance's, not Slagel's.

Cited on

Destructible terrain

Claims (5)

Red Faction's lead designer, Alan Lawrance, told The Ringer that its Geo-Mod system takes a low-polygon shape that mimics an explosion and subtracts it from the world's geometry, floor or wall, leaving a hole; the team wanted to go beyond destroying a chair, a barrel, or a crate to destroying walls, the ground, or a structure.	`paragraph opening "Here’s how Lawrance explains the Geo-Mod system"paragraph opening "Here’s how Lawrance explains the Geo-Mod system"Red Faction section`	Interview
Alan Lawrance says that when Volition set out to make a game with destruction it looked at what was out there, "and there really wasn't anything".	`Red Faction section`	Interview
The Ringer's Ben Lindbergh sets Red Faction's Geo-Mod against the "more primitive environmental mayhem in 2D games like Dig Dug (1982), Rampage (1986), or Worms (1995)", and says Red Faction debuted in May 2001.	`Red Faction sectionparagraph opening "Sometimes a deadline does wonders"`	Interview
The Ringer reports that John Slagel, Red Faction's lead programmer, wrote a game as a teenager in the mid-1980s on an IBM PCjr in which bombs dropped from an ASCII-art plane left craters in the ground.	`paragraph opening "“It fell on me,” Slagel"`	Interview
Alan Kertz, formerly of DICE, told The Ringer that when Battlefield: Bad Company was made "there were a few games doing destruction, but nobody was doing it on the multiplayer front", and that destruction has to leave craters, negative space, and rubble where players can still hide.	`Bad Company sectionBad Company section`	Interview