"GI: You obviously worked with the Madison, Wisconsin folks of Raven Software quite a bit in the past. What was it like to give them your baby with Quake 4?

TH: You have to have a lot of trust there. But we’ve worked with Raven long enough where that wasn’t really a concern, because we know the Raven guys and we know they’ve got the talent. Really it was, “Are they going to approach it with the same level of enthusiasm that we would?” They were completely gung-ho about the project. The thing is about the Raven guys is they’re a completely unique company. There’s not a huge development business up in Wisconsin.

They’re sort of out of the limelight, but that’s their approach – they’re very workman like. Cause those guys could work on their own property, obviously. They don’t have to take directions from us on Quake, but not only have they been willing to accept our input on Quake but they’ve eagerly solicited it. They really want to do a great job for us, and of course for the fans as well. And those guys check their ego at the door on stuff like this. The fact that they’ve been able to do the job that they’ve been able to do, and at no point has there been any friction or raised voices or anything like that, because you know you get passionate about this especially because you spend years of your life working on things like this.

I have an enormous amount of respect for everything they do, and I like Brian Raffel, who’s the head of the studio there, and I don’t think you’ll find a nicer guy in the videogame business."