Masters of Doom

[tentons]

I'm about 2/3rds through this book (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375505245/qid=1107284346/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-1974024-3708107?v=glance&s=books), and it's really inspiring. The id guys were actually making about $50,000-$80,000 per month from Commander Keen and Wolfenstein before Doom ever came out. This was "way back when" so I imagine this is possible, albeit with a lot of work, today.

True, they were breaking technology barriers, but they were also making about $20,000+ per month from Keen before Wolfenstein was released. And Keen had a 4 person team. Many nay-sayers would suggest that type of game is a hardcore market, don't do it, you need more market research, you need a big team, it's too expensive, those games don't sell anymore, etc, but I think there are enough customers out there that it's not as relevant as we're led to believe.

If you can bring something new to the mix, and do with high quality, you can probably make any kind of game you want and sell it. Only time will tell.... ;)

[lakibuk]

Dunno. When these games were released there where not many good games for PC or am i wrong? So their games were top-notch. Nowadays you would have to make something like Halflife 2 to have that impact - impossible for indies.

[Hamumu]

I'm also about 2/3 through, and just yesterday was lamenting to my wife how what they did is not POSSIBLE today. The reason they did so well was that they created things that had never been done before, and people were absolutely blown away to see their computers doing this new stuff (first it was smooth side scrolling, then it was non-wireframe 3D). Computers were new, hackery, and a world of mystery. Today, computers are corporatized tools and there IS nothing new. Yes, you can do things that have never been done, but who's gonna be impressed by it? Here's something huge that can't be done yet, as far as I know: a true voxel world, everything made out of pixel-sized 3D voxels, and the player can go around smashing stuff and knocking the pixels out of it, and say you shoot enough voxels to sever a wing off a plane, and that wing then falls freely off, smashing into other things, and the plane loses control and crashes. Outcast did some voxel stuff (and earlier games like Comanche did heightfields), but not like this. This is truly new, amazing stuff. But who would care? Computer geeks would go crazy, the guys who play Doom and all, but the average consumer wouldn't give a flip. 3D games look good enough as they are. And for that matter, accomplishing something like I just described would be an unbelievable feat of optimization, not something you could hack together just by having a really clever concept and good math skills.

It's a completely different world today... I don't think I can describe how totally unlike those days our present is. Everything was so new and surprising then. There surely must be, and will be, new and amazing things, but they won't be in the video game world, at least not the regular PC game one. Maybe some amazing new peripheral that makes virtual reality or something that some kid solders together in his garage. Something like that. That's what is on the level of what they did, I think (though what I lament is that what they did was easy! They just got to it first). And the other thing to it is that in those days, hackers in their garage were doing the work that was cutting edge. Today, a hacker in his garage can't ever be noticed because he doesn't have a million dollar art budget. I mean, I thought that was so cool how both of them were making games and selling them to magazines as teenagers. I would've loved that.

Sigh, the good old days....

(and I just got past the part where Doom was released, and it mentions some forum posts and stuff, and I'm pissed it didn't mention SPISPOPD once! I worked hard on that!)

[Dan MacDonald]

I bought this book the week it came out. It's very inspirational and an all-round good read.

Haha, and ham, I always wondered why you named your game after a cheat code!

[Hamumu]

They named their cheat code after MY GAME!!!!!!

The true story is actually that we both got our inspiration from the same usenet thread. It's detailed on some website somewhere, the official SpisFAQ I believe.

[Curiosoft]

I'm also about 2/3 through, and just yesterday was lamenting to my wife how what they did is not POSSIBLE today. The reason they did so well was that they created things that had never been done before, and people were absolutely blown away to see their computers doing this new stuff (first it was smooth side scrolling, then it was non-wireframe 3D). Computers were new, hackery, and a world of mystery. Today, computers are corporatized tools and there IS nothing new. Yes, you can do things that have never been done, but who's gonna be impressed by it? Here's something huge that can't be done yet, as far as I know: a true voxel world, everything made out of pixel-sized 3D voxels, and the player can go around smashing stuff and knocking the pixels out of it, and say you shoot enough voxels to sever a wing off a plane, and that wing then falls freely off, smashing into other things, and the plane loses control and crashes. Outcast did some voxel stuff (and earlier games like Comanche did heightfields), but not like this. This is truly new, amazing stuff. But who would care? Computer geeks would go crazy, the guys who play Doom and all, but the average consumer wouldn't give a flip. 3D games look good enough as they are. And for that matter, accomplishing something like I just described would be an unbelievable feat of optimization, not something you could hack together just by having a really clever concept and good math skills.

It's a completely different world today... I don't think I can describe how totally unlike those days our present is. Everything was so new and surprising then. There surely must be, and will be, new and amazing things, but they won't be in the video game world, at least not the regular PC game one. Maybe some amazing new peripheral that makes virtual reality or something that some kid solders together in his garage. Something like that. That's what is on the level of what they did, I think (though what I lament is that what they did was easy! They just got to it first). And the other thing to it is that in those days, hackers in their garage were doing the work that was cutting edge. Today, a hacker in his garage can't ever be noticed because he doesn't have a million dollar art budget. I mean, I thought that was so cool how both of them were making games and selling them to magazines as teenagers. I would've loved that.

Sigh, the good old days....



With all due respect,

"The opportunities have passed" is the rallying cry of all wannabes. What about the folks in the early 90s that said..."the computers have already made an impact...it's time to get out of software"....and of course, they would have missed the Internet boom. Or even after 1999, when everyone said that .coms are overhyped...only to see Google create a lot of wealth for its employees.

The point is, it can be done. Maybe not in the same way it was done before, but there are more opportunities now. Think about how much easier it is to reach a critical mass of people.

I notice one thing that most successful high-growth companies started out with....a team that shared a vision. With the current indie mind-set, working in teams is bad. But the fact of the matter is, use of teams is critical for transcending mediocre work. Having a project house, as mentioned in Masters of Doom, can produce amazing results. Results that manifest itself in the form of hits like doom, etc.

I'm up for creating a project house with a group of indies. Anyone want to move to San Diego :)

Later,
Curiosoft

[Jim Buck]

I'm up for creating a project house with a group of indies. Anyone want to move to San Diego :)

Whoa, why San Diego?

[mkovacic]

With all due respect,
"The opportunities have passed" is the rallying cry of all wannabes.
I think you're missing the point. In the old days you could get a real competitive edge with a single very smart hack. Not anymore.

As an example, I've worked on an Amiga game (never got past the prototype as Amiga died) that was the only (AFAIK) game that had 248+8 color parallax stuff, everything else was 16+16 (this was on AGA). How we did it was simply to use CPU for drawing the sprites, and using HW sprites for the background layer. Noone did that before simply because nobody thought of using HW sprites like that, and if the game was published it would've been a major selling point.

A similar trick was using the copper for perspective texture mapped floor with almost zero perfomance cost. It's a simple hack, yet results were astonishing for the time. And it worked on A500 ('85. tech).

[edit] Astonishing = having full perspective texture mapped floor in the street-figter style game running at 50fps on A500. AFAIR, nobody did that before early '90s, eventhough it was perfectly possible even in '85.

[Rainer Deyke]

I think you're missing the point. In the old days you could get a real competitive edge with a single very smart hack. Not anymore.

Maybe so, but Commander Keen was and still is a really good game. I still play it occasionally. If a similar indie game of comparable quality came out today, I'd buy it in a second. Sadly, everybody seems to be going supercasual, which does not interest me at all.

[milo]

With all due respect,

"The opportunities have passed" is the rallying cry of all wannabes.

The point is, it can be done. Maybe not in the same way it was done before, but there are more opportunities now. Think about how much easier it is to reach a critical mass of people.
The point is, it definitely cannot be done in the same way that it was done before. iD made great games, but they got noticed because their games were technically astounding and also looked great. Small teams cannot compete on technology or content today, anymore than small movie studios can create the next episode of Star Wars.

If an indie game studio is going to try to become a household name, they are going to have to find a gimmick other than technical proficiency. Perhaps by inventing a new type of gameplay experience, or by creating a new type of emotional tie-in through an unusual narrative structure. I don't know. Personally, I think planning to be "the next iD" is a little bit like planning to create "the new pet rock" fad.


What about the folks in the early 90s that said..."the computers have already made an impact...it's time to get out of software"....and of course, they would have missed the Internet boom. Or even after 1999, when everyone said that .coms are overhyped...only to see Google create a lot of wealth for its employees.
I work in that industry. Hundreds of my friends got out of the industry in 2001-2002, but not through their own intentions or desires. I'm not sure I follow your analogy.

--milo
http://www.starshatter.com

[Nonz]

G'day.

Just wanted to use my first post to say that I think it's perfectly possible to do what ID did back in the days of CK. I used to play those games all the time and frankly I didn't think the graphics were cutting edge or the game technology anything out of the ordinary. There were quite a few smooth side scrollers of that error (like Crystal Caves, the first Duke Nukem and others.) In that respect Commander Keen was just like the others, the major difference was that it was a ball to play.

I've never been one of those rush-around-and-kill-it-if-it-moves types but I loved the way CC would allow you to take your time with it. Of course you could go as fast as you wanted if that's what you desire but you didn't have to. The plots were almost non-existant but that didn't matter much either.

What it all boiled down to was gameplay, Commander Keen was a blast no matter who you were.

Well that's one guy's opinion anyway.

Nonz.

[Hamumu]

Both of those came out AFTER Keen, using the technology that id pioneered. Duke Nukem is mentioned in the book, and Crystal Caves, I just checked the release date on.

I don't know if the book is right, but if it is, the success was all about being dead first on these new things.

[Anthony Flack]

Ah, the crazy world of PC gaming. Is this smooth scrolling such as you might see on the c64 we're talking about?

[princec]

Unbelievable isn't it? Years after it was done to perfection on a home computer with a chip so weedy it couldn't even run a washing machine everybody's amazed because a PC is doing it.

Cas :)

[Raptisoft]

You know, when I read Masters of Doom (right when it came out), my reaction was disgust. These guys were so nihilistic that I can't believe they ever finished anything at all. Smashing keyboards? Destroying offices? Cutting a door down with an axe? Screwing over every business contact they could find? Giving a cat to the humane society when bored with it?

I was one of those guys who grew up in the era of worshipping John Carmack for his tech and John Romero for his vision. But after reading MoD, I just see "Doom" as another symptom of their mental issues, and I can't even look back at it fondly any more (sigh). That it got as big as it was is more a testament to what a dark, unhappy decade the 90's was than to what a great game it was (technology notwithstanding).

[princec]

The 90's was a seriously nasty decade. Strange that they called it the "caring, sharing 90s".

Cas :)

[Bluecat]

I remember reading an article about, or interview with John Romero about his time on Daikatana a couple of years back. The thing I remember was Romero saying that the team was under a huge amount of pressure, and one day one of the developers broke down crying. Romero's answer to this: "I fired his ass"

I remember thinking that the developer was in some ways lucky to get out of such a negative environment.

[halodrake]

, everything made out of pixel-sized 3D voxels, and the player can go around smashing stuff and knocking the pixels out of it, and say you shoot enough voxels to sever a wing off a plane, and that wing then falls freely off, smashing into other things, and the plane loses control and crashes.

You might want to look into Voxlap:
http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap/voxlap03.htm

I read the book quite awhile ago. Interesting read. But no different than a VH1 behind the music. OTOH, Dungeans And Dreamers is a much better book.

Yes, they did name the cheat code after his game, it's mentioned in the Steven Levy book Hackers (I think....)

[Hamumu]

I just finished the book, and my disgust is in the same place it was prior to reading the book, though much stronger now, and more bemused. John Romero is an IDIOT. He did everything in 100% the precise very exact most perfectly wrong way that he could have. I can't think of anything he could have done more incorrectly (once things started falling apart at id, that is - before that, he was great and I was starting to have sympathy!). I would've hated to work at either company, that's for sure, not my kind of culture. Neither one of them knows how to run a company at all. But it was interesting to note that people on the inside were saying the same things as everyone on the outside was: stop churning out the same damn game over and over and do something interesting instead of tech demos!

Anyway, I thought it was really interesting, though I wouldn't call it inspirational unless you stopped reading at about the 5th chapter! More like depressing (or is it inspirational in the "boy, I'm glad I'm an indie" sense?).

[EpicBoy]

Say what you want about Carmack, but his collection of Ferrari's disagrees with your assessment of his business sense and releasing of "tech demos".

[halodrake]

yeah, but well, he was a dick no doubt about it. Like I said, it's an interesting if you look at it from the POV that it's just a VH1 behind the music sort of thing. It's all about sensationlistic things they did.

on the voxel note, look at these screenshots from a voxlap demo:

http://ged.ax.pl/~tomkh/vox3_en.htm

That's pretty damn impressive.

[princec]

Absolutely beautiful. Check out the movie.

Cas :)

[Coyote]

I've read Masters of Doom twice.

I loved the book. I do find it partly inspirational - and highly educational. I wonder if there's a book out there that studies how success has ruined companies. The days at the lake house would have been PERFECT back in my young & single days. (Of course, at that rate I would have STAYED single... which wouldn't have been so perfect).

But I am glad I never worked for id. Especially during the post-Doom days. Or Ion Storm - EVER (except maybe for the chance to work for Warren Spector).

What IS inspiring was that they were able to forge their own destiny - success was theirs to make or lose. And it seems like they've done a bit of both.

Times HAVE changed - but probably not as much as some would believe (or like to have you believe). I remember going to the library at college during this era and being floored by the sheer quantity of shareware / freeware / public domain games that were available. I filled 3.5" disks with demos of everything from Arkanoid clones to text-adventure games to Rogue-like RPGs to modem-playable 3D space combat games (hmmm... why does that sound familiar?) This was in 1991. Getting noticed in that mess took a combination of a high-quality game, innovation, and good luck. And the numbers sold then weren't too far off from what might be sold today --- it's just that in the mainstream world dominated by megapublishers, the numbers that would designate a game as a "hit" have grown by nearly an order of magnitude (as have the budgets).

I think that's not so different from where we are today. Yes - clever graphics wizardry by a single hardcore coder is not going to cut it anymore for innovation. But there's still a lot of area to explore.

[GBGames]

Dunno. When these games were released there where not many good games for PC or am i wrong? So their games were top-notch. Nowadays you would have to make something like Halflife 2 to have that impact - impossible for indies.

Wasn't there just a Snood thread? B-)

[Uhfgood]

I read it, and wasn't that impressed. Although some of the early days stories were a bit inspiring. When they got to the days of Doom that's where it wasn't very interesting for me anymore. The other thing that made it look unprofessional is the swearing <cussing, cursing?> -- I'm not talking about the id guys themselves swearing... People do it all the time, i'm talking about the author doing it in prose... Very bad form if I do say so myself. It is interesting though how this thread focused more on Commander Keen than Doom, the bit smash hit that doom was... BTW I hated Doom (okay not hated but it wasn't as fun hearing monster sound like they're puking verses Nazi's screaming when dying)

Anyways the first CK was done in about 3 months... (Actually I had emailed Tom Hall he mentioned 1.5 months, although I suspect he meant 1.5 months for the levels as I was asking him about levels) -- Reguardless of whether it was 3 or 1.5 - 3 months for 4 guys is pretty darn impressive and for all first 3 episodes no less.

Can someoe do something like this again... I think so, as long as you're working hard on it. Of course these guys were working for softdisk in the daytime and on CK at night - now that's what I call dedication. Anyone who's dedicated enough to do that can probably do some amazing stuff

just my 2c

Keith

[Bluecat]

I wasn't that impressed with the original Doom either. I played it after playing the original System Shock. I bought Doom hoping for the same level of experience and I was disappointed. System Shock was an awesome game for the time, huge complex levels, excellent story line, and a decent amount of interactivity.

[EpicBoy]

Saying you weren't impressed by Doom when it first came out doesn't make you look smart or cool. Just FYI. As developers, you should be able to appreciate the genius behind Doom and the technology driving it. If not, you really shouldn't be making games to begin with.

[Hamumu]

Or, on the other hand, you can have whatever taste you like, and still be allowed to develop games. I thought Doom, pardon my prose, fucking rocked. Quake, on the other hand, in all 3 versions, was boring crap. I was a big online Quake player though, but what I liked was Team Fortress, after which I moved on to UT. None of that had anything to do with technology, it was all about the gameplay and fun. Doom had it, Quake was dull, Team Fortress made Quake strategic and exciting (but still grotesquely ugly... man!), and UT had it again! Then UT2k3 kinda lost it and UT2k4 kinda picked it back up, but maybe my interest in the whole phenomenon was just waning by then.

I also didn't like Half-Life.

(fingers crossed that this makes me smart and/or cool!!)

[EpicBoy]

*shrug*

(too short ... too short ... too short)

[Bluecat]

Saying you weren't impressed by Doom when it first came out doesn't make you look smart or cool. Just FYI. As developers, you should be able to appreciate the genius behind Doom and the technology driving it. If not, you really shouldn't be making games to begin with.

Huh?

Oh. So if I had said that I thought it rocked. It rulez. iD is da bomb! That would have made me look smart and cool? I'm at the point in my life where looking smart or cool has less and less relevance.

If you had read my post, I said I played System Shock before playing Doom. This was back in the early 1990s when I didn't have internet, and bought games from stores. I didn't know Doom even existed before I had played SS and was looking for something else like it. And for the record, System Shock crapped all over Doom when it came to technology. I could jump on things, it was (or appeared to be) true 3D, whereas Doom was 2.5D. The game was far more interactive, and had a much cooler story.

I was also a gamer back then, not a game developer, and didn't know a lot about the technology behind the games. I know a lot of people were influenced by Doom to get into the industry. For me, it was System Shock that got me interested in the technology behind computer games.

Look, don't get me wrong. Doom deserves respect for the technology and for the influence it had. I think the guys at iD deserve a whole lot of kudos for what they have done over the years. They have created a legacy. But appreciating the cleverness behind something and appreciating the something are two different things.

[Dan MacDonald]

DOOM pwnd! (bad moderator!)

[EpicBoy]

It's not about liking or disliking the game, it's about claiming to be unimpressed by it. That's bullshit. No self respecting computer nerd could have looked at Doom when it was released and not bask in its technical glory.

[Bluecat]

It's not about liking or disliking the game, it's about claiming to be unimpressed by it. That's bullshit. No self respecting computer nerd could have looked at Doom when it was released and not bask in its technical glory.

You're talking about when it was released. True, I'll grant you that. If I had never played, or had been exposed to any other FPS, I would have been impressed with Doom. But that wasn't the case. I reckon it was a couple of years (at least) after it had been released before I even knew it existed, and I had played a better game previously. So that's not bullshit. I wasn't impressed... and yet I am still a computer nerd. Hell you can take the computer out of that sentence. I am a nerd.

[EpicBoy]

That's great. But since you're admitting in the same paragraph that you did NOT see it when it was released, but rather several years later, my post doesn't apply to you now does it?

Thanks.

[george]

my breath was taken away when i first played it. when you would walk, your gun and hands would move pseudo-realistically. there were levels with multiple stories, buildings that you could go in and shoot out of the window. it was great. graphics were great. that shotgun sounded awesome.

[george]

oh man, and the multiplayer was fun! my friends and i would play modem-to-modem (this was way back when not that many people were on the internet), so we would call each other's phone numbers and the computers would answer... we played for hours and hours. and we would connect to bbs's that had multiple nodes, so then more than 2 people could play. pure gameplay!

[Anthony Flack]

Yeah, my jaw hit the floor when I first saw it too. I was also impressed by the first prerelease Quake demo (even the pickup items are in full 3d!). But I didn't really like the game much when it was released. Or anything id has done since. But Doom was different.

[Coyote]

I initially had to play Doom on a 386/40 - so the experience wasn't all it shoulda been. But it was still amazing. The game - particularly the initial shareware game - really dominated my life in the same way that a few other games of the time did (Wing Commander, X-Com, Master of Orion, Ultima 7 and Ultima Underworld, Frontier: Elite 2, and Falcon 3.0).

The technology was a big part of what made Doom work. It was a novel experience - the closest thing to "being there" that anyone had ever seen at the time. (Though personally, I thought Ultima Underworld achieved nearly as much, a couple of years earlier!)

One of the things which Doom had which many of the later FPS games DIDN'T have is the level of interactivity with the environment. Including the Quakes. In Doom there were things to explode, platforms to raise and lower, secret doors to find, "trap" walls that would drop down suddenly, and so forth. By comparison, too many FPS games in the last decade since Doom have seemed pretty boring in their level design, in spite of enjoying a 'true' 3D environment. There are some brilliant exceptions of course.

[george]

I initially had to play Doom on a 386/40 - so the experience wasn't all it shoulda been. But it was still amazing.

i was lucky, i had a super computer at that time: 486/66mhz w/8mb ram. it was amazing :-)


I was also impressed by the first prerelease Quake demo (even the pickup items are in full 3d!). But I didn't really like the game much when it was released.

i agree. i played the pre-release also, and i was amazed by the full 3d models. but i also didn't like the game much, it just didn't have that same feeling that doom or wolf3d did (at least for me).


particularly the initial shareware game - really dominated my life in the same way that a few other games of the time did (Wing Commander, X-Com, Master of Orion, Ultima 7 and Ultima Underworld, Frontier: Elite 2, and Falcon 3.0).

same here. don't forget strike commander, x-wing, rise of the triad, jazz the jackrabbit, xargon, eye of the beholder, cyberia, megarace, raptor, duke nukem2, duke nukem3d, and the list goes on and on... man those games were fun! i'm not too much of a gamer these days, but i have played enough new games, and i can say that these new games are definitely not as good as games used to be back then (of course there are exceptions).

[Uhfgood]

I'll still say I wasn't impressed. I was impressed with wolf3d simply because it was in 3d, it was almost magical. When doom came along I had seen enough.

BTW I didn't say it so I would look 'smart' or 'cool'. As a developer I could care less about any so called 'genius' behind any game or any technology driving it. Just because I didn't jump on the bandwagon doesn't mean I shouldn't be developing games. I'm making games because I want to, not because some nerd thought he was great for doing perspective correct texture mapping, volumetric lighting, or any of the other hundreds of 3d graphical terms of which I have no knowledge of, nor care to have knowledge of at this time.

[Nemesis]

Both of those came out AFTER Keen, using the technology that id pioneered. Duke Nukem is mentioned in the book, and Crystal Caves, I just checked the release date on.

Just thought I'd share some trivia: I wonder if anyone ever noticed that the better looking map tiles in Duke Nukem were ripped straight out of Turrican I from the Amiga.. so much for copyright :)

I never figured out what the fuss about DN and other PC platformers of the time, coming from the Amiga culture.. the Amiga was doing the same stuff way better almost a decade before! What did make a difference IMHO is Wolfenstein 3D and the FPS genre that has spawned from it.

[Anthony Flack]

Yeah, same here. I'd experienced everything the amiga could offer, and having later seen what was going on on the PC, I was quite unimpressed. I thought PCs were obviously complete crap for games.

Until Doom.

If Uhfgood was unimpressed with Doom, that's fine though, isn't it? In fact it's quite interesting. I don't expect him to have to lie about it!

[tentons]

I'm also about 2/3 through, and just yesterday was lamenting to my wife how what they did is not POSSIBLE today.
I just don't agree. The technology isn't what made people buy and keep playing the game! The gameplay is. The technology is certainly the vehicle by which they popularized and advertised the game, but it's not why people laid down cash after playing it. If that was the case, SIGGRAPH would be full of millionaires who've made great tech demos and sold them without any gameplay included.

What I'm saying is that if there was an audience big enough to make them that rich back then, there's still an audience big enough to make plenty with today. The market is certainly more crowded, and you'll have to get exposure, but it's not impossible. You don't need million dollar budgets to compete. You need a great game, albeit, a great game is nothing common. But let's not get the reasons for success confused.

I was inspired by the book. I guess some people see a cup half-empty. Don't you get tired of being told (by others and yourself) that what you want to do is not possible? I, for one, am not going to let conjecture and negativity sway me from my goals. :)

[tentons]

I think you're missing the point. In the old days you could get a real competitive edge with a single very smart hack. Not anymore.
Perhaps it's you that missed the point. :) A "competitive edge" doesn't yield instant, high volume sales. It yields a competitive edge. You have to have a game, not a tech demo.

[halodrake]

I'd have to say on the whole can't or can be done again front is pretty simple- Doom didn't just break one boundry, it broke a ton of them. It wasn't just neat innovative 3d engine, it was that combined with a very very very Mature theme (which seemed to chime well with the metal underground at the time- I'm quite sure all of the Metallica and Cannibal Corpse fans picked it up no sweat), brilliant level design *and* networking. It wasn't just one thing- it broke so many barriers it was a must own game.

OTOH- Myst was mostly just a pretty game with no gameplay. I remember owning both at about the same time in the early 90's- and was most addicted to Doom. That odd thing was I also had a lot of 2D games as well, and it never seemed to me (at that time) that 3D games would dominate the market as much as it does now. It didn't seem like the 3d was the part that made the games good- it was a neat trick. If you look at all of the psuedo 3D games from the late 80's early 90's (Space Harrier, AfterBurner, et al) at the time when they came out, it didn't seem like 3D would be something that took over everything. And I still wonder why it did. Why are people drooling over the graphics in impressive 3d games and yet say games like La Pucelle or Disagea have "retro" graphics and these graphics are what set i back visually? I don't quite get it.

/end rant.

But do I think it's possible to make a game that's a technical marvel with an indie group, and then still market the technical game on it's technical aspects? I think so. PC Game mags still look for the uber-groundbreaking 3d game. As you can see with the VoxLap cave demo that not only is it possible to still make technical marvels (let's see cellshaded poly's do that, heh....and in real time in software on a decent machine...)you can do it with only one person (Voxlap was only 1 person). If you showed a game off with a revolutionary graphic engine of sort to a PC Game mag, I'm sure they would flip and give you that sort of exposure.

BTW, I really don't find the Doom book all too inspiring. I found the group to be a bunch of immature twits we just happened to be very talented, and was able to hire a very talented Mormon level designer to make Doom rock solid.

[KNau]

If anything I would wager that it's easier today to hit those kinds of sales numbers and public mindshare. Remember, back in the day they were selling games mostly through mail order with advertising in magazines and newsletters. There is more competition now but the size of the market that you can reach is exponentially larger and the platform market much less fragmented than it was back then. Also, back then there was 1 market - hardcore PC users and compared to today it was a really small market.

Technology may explain how the word got out about their games, but not for their longevity. Technology was just the "hook" that drove demo downloads, the game still had to be good.

I agree with tentons, these boards occasionally need a dose of optimism.

Speaking of technology, that voxel demo is pretty damned cool! *hint* I'd like to see what a good game designer could do with it *hint*.

[tentons]

Doom didn't just break one boundry, it broke a ton of them.
I definitely agree with that. Doom broke several barriers at once. But also notice that they were making very good money from Commander Keen before Doom was ever released.

$50,000 per month is good money--and from a platform game, no less! That's what inspires me and is maybe being overlooked. They didn't need Doom to get rich. They had Ferraris before Doom was released. So, while Doom was definitely their "big splash" into the public consciousness, they were very successful even before then.

I'm not saying I'm planning to be the next id, but I'm planning to make a very respectable living by making good indie games.

[Dan MacDonald]

I played doom on a sweet rig as well, 486dx 66 with 8MB ram. It has a gravis ultrasound soundcard (one of the first 16bit soundcards). Man that thing flew, still had a "turbo" button on it so you could slow it down to 33mhz for older programs. Ahh those were the days, that rig cost 7grand too. My how the times have changed.

The thing that is amazing to me is that all those orders for all that money were over the phone and mail in orders. Just crazy.

the thing was because the Internet wasn't wide spread, the game required that people share it with one another in a physical way, on disks etc. What better way to build demand for your games? having your customers actually sell other people on the coolness of your game. That's a much more effective mechanism then any demo. Sure it still requires a demo for the "sold" individual to try out. But the demo isn't the primary sales mechanism, it's the person giving it to them. I think that this can still be applied in a digital world, google is a great example of this.

And lastly, the ultimas were impressive. Origin made worlds, I remember stealing mugs and candles off the tables of every house I went into. Perhaps one of the greatest influences in my decision to dedicate myself to making games was the potential to create worlds. Very cool stuff, anyway.. thanks for the walk down memory lane... :)

[mahlzeit]

. . . the game required that people share it with one another in a physical way, on disks etc.
And that spawned the (now defunct) business of public domain distributors, many of whom took out full-page ads in gaming magazines to list their collections (usually in very small print :)). I still have the letter I got from 17 Bit Software after I had sent them my game for inclusion in their library. Very cool. :)

[Jim Buck]

Actually, in my neck of the woods during that era, BBS'ing was the popular way of cool shareware games spreading. It was all about the modem. :) (Oh, countless hours were spent playing head-to-head Doom with my buddy across the phone..)

[Dan MacDonald]

The interesting thing about the BBS model and the "Friend" model is in both cases you get the feeling that you belong to a select group, and you are dealing with limited quantities. It's not like ID had this huge BBS that EVERYONE could connect to and they had avertizing on all the other BBS's promoting their BBS. It was still very much the responsibility of the fans to spread the word...

It seems like now a days, we try to get all the exposure and all the eyes on ourselves and our own pages. I wonder if we would be better off letting / enabling fans to do the work?

[EpicBoy]

That's basically word of mouth, and if your game is any good it should be happening on its own. I can't count the number of people who have contacted me with, "Hey have you seen this cool game called Gish?!"

[george]

if you build it, they will come ;-)

hey i remember paying for demo versions. for a couple bucks you would get the first episode of the game on a floppy disk from your local computer store.

if you think about it, it was MUCH MUCH HARDER marketing your shareware back then when there was no internet. you would have to upload your demo to countless bbs's (and hope someone would come accross it and then decide to buy it). you would have to contact countless magazines, cd compilations, etc. etc... you hear about those shareware success stories where a kid's shareware income paid for his college education... how in the hell did they do it?! it's so much easier to get your product out now, but there is more saturation, so i guess it is an even trade off. so i guess we are lucky to be in these times, because with very little you can do a lot. all we need is great products... if only we stopped wasting time on these forums and get back to programming... ;-)

[Ratboy]

Perhaps it's you that missed the point. :) A "competitive edge" doesn't yield instant, high volume sales. It yields a competitive edge. You have to have a game, not a tech demo.No kidding. The feel I got from the early part of the book is that their games were smart, violent and funny, and that's what drove their sales. For me, that's inspiring.

(sorry to get to the party late; I just found time to read this book...)

[Abscissa]

I read the book and liked it, but one has to keep in mind that the book was written from more of a standpoint of telling an interesting story than being an primarally-informational documentary. A lot of people have (including, but iirc not limited to, Carmack and Romero) made subtle and not-so-subtle hints towards that. I guess that just makes it somewhat of a one person's word vs another's word sort of thing, but just something to keep in mind.

[Evak]

heh yeah, I still had an amiga when I first sayw doom at University. One of my house mates had a 486DX and would have pot parties where everyone would play doom half the night. A lot better than the amiga pinbal dreams or fantasies game I had to show off the Amiga's graphics with lol.

Thought MOD book was ok, but the ID crew were a little too imature for my tastes. I always found splater/slasher zombie stuff dull beyond extreme, and ID allways seemed to embrace that type of thing. So despite the amazing immersive graphics the content didn't do much for me generaly. But with 3D like that it didn't really matter, you had to play it because there wasn't anything else quite like it.

Not sure if I saw doom or doom 2 first to be honest, but whichever one it was, it was a real eye opener at the time.

[Bamafan77]

You know, when I read Masters of Doom (right when it came out), my reaction was disgust. These guys were so nihilistic that I can't believe they ever finished anything at all. Smashing keyboards? Destroying offices? Cutting a door down with an axe? Screwing over every business contact they could find? Giving a cat to the humane society when bored with it?

I was one of those guys who grew up in the era of worshipping John Carmack for his tech and John Romero for his vision. But after reading MoD, I just see "Doom" as another symptom of their mental issues, and I can't even look back at it fondly any more (sigh). That it got as big as it was is more a testament to what a dark, unhappy decade the 90's was than to what a great game it was (technology notwithstanding).

It is kind of hard to believe they finished anything, but they loved what they did and John Carmack seems to have the ability to maintain a certain focus level that is able to overcome any of his other...defeciencies. :)

This book does sort of demystify the guys at id. In many ways, they are just like everyone else -- they've got their own various idiosynchracies and issues to overcome just like us. I think a lot of things that would kill normal businesses, simply don't apply to them. For example, as a coder, as brilliant as he is, Carmack is able to get away with a lot of stuff that you couldn't do at say EA or IBM. Writing unreadable code and shipping a year or more late is OK when you control your own purse strings and are a small group, but that doesn't fly when you have to answer to Wall Street or have other people that need to read and maintain your code.

They also did some things that were pretty unethical (like using their employer's equipment to profit for themselves). Unfortunately for many, it almost seems like it takes this kind of attitude to reach that level of success.

[Evak]

I had an art director that would break mce and keyboards out of sheer frustration. What we ended up doing was having a kitty, where everytime someone swore thay had to put a quarter in the kitty pot. That money was used to replace keyboards and mice.

Annoying thing was that the only person that could break stuff was the art director, as he was one of the company owners lol. only happened 1-4 times a year.

I felt much the same way as Raisoft about ID. A lot of people like to stick the finger at carmak and state that he's mor emachine than robot. To me at least, he seems one of the few that had their head screwed on straight. Not sure I'd have had the patience to put up with all that nonsense myself and have quit sooner or later.

[Bamafan77]

I felt much the same way as Raisoft about ID. A lot of people like to stick the finger at carmak and state that he's mor emachine than robot. To me at least, he seems one of the few that had their head screwed on straight. Not sure I'd have had the patience to put up with all that nonsense myself and have quit sooner or later.

You wouldn't be the only one. "Masters of Doom" implies that there were some talented people (Michael Abrash and Brian Hook) who couldn't really deal with the "unique" environment of id and so left fairly soon after joining. As talented as these people are and as much as you can learn from them, working with them is probably not a walk in the park.

[Bamafan77]

Say what you want about Carmack, but his collection of Ferrari's disagrees with your assessment of his business sense and releasing of "tech demos".

You have a point, but it also has to be considered that maybe Carmack was uniquely positioned at a point in time where he could fully exploit his talents to make money and overcome any other shortcomings he had/has. If they were to pull the same stunts today (i.e., an age where what they're doing isn't new stuff), I wonder if id would be the successful company they eventually became. My personal feeling is that they'd still be successful because of the talent involved, only LESS successful. I only say that to say that there are probably other factors that lead to John's success and that he may have become successful *in spite of* his lack of business sense. But of course, I have absolutely no way of backing up such a hypothetical. :)

[Triple_Fox]

I've always felt that part of the reason for id's success lies in how they were able to develop their talent as a team over an extended period at Softdisk, just when substantially-sized teams(more than two or three guys) for game development started to become necessary for a top-notch title. Thus, during the Keen-to-Doom period they were leading the field and made some technically awesome and very fun games.

Quake was very different; I still liked it because the potential of true 3d to create interesting environments and to render characters that could pose themselves in any way imaginable seemed colossal to me at the time. Nowadays I realize that most people just aren't capable of designing levels that use 3d to its full potential, but at the time it captivated me and the "megamods" people made for Q1 with dozens of weapons and items and experience and spells were fun to play with. Have to agree on the lousy singleplayer though.

Anyway, nowadays it can't happen quite like it did for them. You can still make a very fun game. You can also make a very creative game, or one with great emotional impact, or one that explores a type of simulation that hasn't been done, or done in a great level of detail. And all of those are valid paths to success; but unless you're Ken Silverman toying with voxels you're probably not going to be doing something that's technically impressive on your own. (And on that note I should point out that Ken's PNGOUT tool offers on average the best compression of any PNG compressor, so if you haven't used it on your images you can probably save substantially on bandwidth or download size)

[EpicBoy]

Speaking of Ken ... Is there any equivalent book (or website or e-book or PDF) that gives the same treatment to Ken Silverman and the build engine? I'd love to get a detailed history of that whole process as well.

[Sparks]

Wasn't Rollercoaster Tycoon equally successfull as Doom ? Or Deer Hunter ?

[Abscissa]

Heheh, as seems to be the norm for me, I'm the weird one on this stuff:

As far as "immaturity", the way I figure is: There are "mature" people all over the place. Unfortunately, the majority of them just happen to be complete idiots as well (Not that they're idiots because they're mature, but just because I'm quite a pessimist when it comes to normal human intelligence in general ;) ). The id boys were smart and talented enough (rare qualities, IMO) that I can easily overlook the fact that they weren't a bunch of, ahem... "mature", uptight suits, as most (not all, but most) of the business-types/MBA-types I've met tend to be. In my typical weirdass way, I actually found their colorful personalities and pragmatism ("We don't need fancy office crap") to be more respectible than anything. But that's just me ;).

As far as Quake: I do agree that they seemed to be slipping all the way from Doom 2 (Their peak) through Quake 3 Arena. But I really enjoyed the single-player modes in Quake 1 and 2. And I especially loved the somewhat alternate-hell atmosphere of Quake 1 (Although I found the controls frustratingly difficult until I started using the mouse). I never liked the multi-player in any of id's games, but I've always found multiplayer FPS to be mind-numbingly boring and repetitive (With the exception of Rise of The Triad).

[EpicBoy]

Wasn't Rollercoaster Tycoon equally successfull as Doom ? Or Deer Hunter ?
Perhaps, but they weren't nearly as influential.

[Evak]

I've thrown people into the pool fully clothed at parties for far less that ID's silly behaviour. Hardly mature but I've seen 7 year olds behave better than the ID kids the way they were portrayed in the book anyway.

Was interesting to read about Romero's family being from this neighbourhood and his kid living here someplace heh.

[Dan MacDonald]

I always thought the real star of Masters of Doom was Scott Miller... but that's ust me :)

[Uhfgood]

Indeed, without which we may have never heard of ID - depending on their ambition.

[Sparks]

I think the influence of DungeonMaster and Bard's Tale was much larger than the one of Doom.They were FPS, too :)

[halodrake]

Really? I don't remember shooting anyone in Bard's Tale.

If you mean FPP (first person perspective) rather than FPS (first person shooter), than yes, yes it was.

[Coyote]

Yeah, I remember playing Star Wars in the arcades in 1983 or so... that was a first-person shooter... kinda :)

You can argue semantics all day or what game probably influenced what other game. But id was undoubtably the "firstest with the mostest."

[Ricardo C]

A little too biased for my tastes, but an interesting read nonetheless, a rebuttal of sorts to Masters of Doom:

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/05/05/doom/index1.html

[Hamumu]

Yeah, that is interesting... "pretty good games", right. Was it written by the disgruntled author of Ultima Underworld? Obviously not written by an FPS fan. It makes a point that I noticed in the book though - the book acts like the whole world was full of this attitude, and I knew it was all this one weird, black-cloaked, mountain dew drinking, niche crowd. But I think with regard to Underworld being first and 'better', the book actually says that (maybe I'm biased, since I knew that). What Id did was make it FAST (at the expense of quality). You'd get seasick if you tried to play an FPS in the UU engine at 5fps. Which is what I read in the book, but again, I already knew this stuff, so maybe it isn't really made clear. Or maybe this writer is an elitist ass.

"mediocre games"... this is ridiculous! Snobbiest article in the world, and the Columbine jabs make it worse. The guy can't appreciate entertainment that isn't about moving emotional drama. I give it two "Bah"s!

And I don't even like Id!

[Ricardo C]

You should read his entire works, it gets even better when he practically has an orgasm reviewing the original Thief, geeking out on HIS choice of 3D game, with the same seal and giddiness as the average FPS junkie. Of course, the irony is completely lost on him.

His description of "the grid" in the Columbine article disturbed me, though. Anyone who experiences that should be on some serious medication. Or perhaps already is and needs to up the dosage.

[Triple_Fox]

I'm in the 'nays' on that Salon article as well. It reads something like "if those losers hadn't become successful the industry would be way better today. moan"

Trivia note: The first game I know to use a Wolf3d-style raycaster was made in 1986, for the 8-bit machines - that was Alternate Reality: The Dungeon, an RPG. Low frame rates and small view of course, but still quite impressive. But they didn't actually show the technology off in the game, which is the reason why nobody hears about it; the designers instead decided to remain consistent with the game's more primitive prequel and only let you move perpendicularly. With a little more foresight they could have made the most of their graphical coup and at least included some turning animation, or even make the player stumble a bit when he gets drunk.

AR was quite an ahead-of-its-time game in many respects, and if it has one fault it's in the high difficulty level ;)

[tentons]

Interestingly....
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=4946


Austin, Texas-based Ion Storm, the game development studio founded in 1996 by a group of designers including Warren Spector, John Romero, Tom Hall, and Todd Porter, has finally closed its doors, after creating games including the Deus Ex series, Anachronox, Thief: Deadly Shadows, and the infamous Daikatana. Spector, the last of the company's founders remaining at Ion Storm, left the development house in November 2004 along with Harvey Smith, director of Deus Ex 2: Invisible War.

[gpetersz]

As an old gamer (and developer more or less ) as I am...

(I play games from 1983 when I got my first smuggled ZX Spectrum (you know, you couldn't import these COCOM things to Hungary) and played Manic Miner and Atic Atac the first time)

I mostly agree with this long thread about what's ID done.
But why is it so that since Q3Arena (which is a perfect deathmatch "tool") I prefer to play the UT line? I can answer it in no time: I need games. Real games. (not that I'd play UT hours...)

I just tried Doom3 2 weeks ago (one of my friends lent it to me) and I nearly was crying... We got a great engine again with great improvements, the leading one in the market of 3D engines! And nothing more. There isn't any creative genius in ID anymore, I think.
I was struggling for 2 hours with the game, and with boredom. Great physics engine and fantastic lighting, 3D technical wizzardry and NO game behind it. Nothing to spice me up. A Half-Life (the first one) clone...

In my opinion ID's days have just ended as the former and renewer of the market. They made: the first fine scrolling in CC, the first FPS IN Wolf, the first multiplayer game & the first non-blocky 3D in Doom, the first real 3D game in Quake.

And as I look back, I think all the games made the atmosphere on the technical, they all lacked gameplay (Mostly. Can be argued this though)
Go and kill, go and kill. Find powerup and... go and kill. They invented the FPS-s. Nowadays they make,... well, engines. Engines and nothing more, in my opinion. Moreover, their previous games are mostly engines (even if i loved them too).

Now, my favourites are from other authors. I still enjoy games from years before. I still enjoy games those are utterly outdated because they have that little sparkle of uniqueness or creativity that makes them GOOD, even today. I don't enjoy playing wolfeinstein, Doom or Quake anymore. Why is it so?
Because the engines usually get simply outdated... good games never do so.

With the highest respect for ID, their influence (in the gaming area) can only be measured to Microsoft's (in operation systems area).
Everybody wanted to be ID (or one of them).

Even if they were psychopatic or idiots. I always suspected when I was reading the interviews in magazines with these guys that I would never drink a beer with any of them, but I only heard about tearing a door with axe or something. I am not surprised. Sex, drugs and violence...

So at the end of this long post: this post could be written in 3 sentences.
Id came. Id ruled. But not anymore...

[20thCenturyBoy]

Doom3 does indeed suck gameplay-wise. And really, the graphics are nothing special. Compare for example, the lab room that you see in HL2 when you first meet Alex, with the lab rooms in Doom3. The HL2 room is uber-detailed, even my wife (who hates games) thought it looked amazing. By comparison the textures in Doom3 are more generic and plainer, as well as being endlessly repeated. It's a travesty it got 96% in PC <spit> Gamer.

I think Id is just a hobby for Carmack while he builds rocket machines.

[Evak]

yeah well, I have had experiences with PCgamer in the past which I can't go into. But you also have to reaise that a world exclusive of what was the most hyped game ever, and with ID holding all the cards. A mainstream mag like PCgamer will do whatever they are told to get the scoop.

I was more disturbed that so many other mags folowed suit, and my leadfoot partner wasn't far behind. It was a pretty good engine, spoilt by lack of creativity, overly simple trigger AI, and poor art direction.

Riddick which has much simpler less detailed environemnt blows it away in almost every way, even the more subtle shadow lighting seems to kick Doom3 all over the shop. It's also pushes the FPS genre away from gun on a stick in front of a camera and shoot everything. It plays more like a stealth RPG with 75% of the combat being melee with no guns at all for much of the game.

I preferd it to HL2 too. I think it probably the most underappreciated FPS of 2004 mostly because the movie flopped bigtime.

[Abscissa]

My main complaint about Doom 3 at the moment is the crappy performance (around 6-14 fps) on my 1.2GHz. I know that's below min spec, but Half-Life 2 and FarCry, which also push graphical boundaries, have no problems at all on this machine and still look great. Kinda dissapointing coming from the former kings of game optimiztion.

[Abscissa]

It plays more like a stealth RPG with 75% of the combat being melee with no guns at all for much of the game.
Which means it's in a totally different sub-genre and thus somewhat of a pointless comparison. Can people really fault Serious Sam for not cramming in a bunch of RPG and stealth? Of course not, and I don't think many people have really tried to. So why do so many people get so worked up over Doom3/HL2 being in the same sub-genre of Doom1/HL1? Does anyone ever expect the next R-Type, for instance, to suddenly add platforming and puzzles?