WEBVTT - The id Software Story Part Two 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:13.840 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.880 --> 0:00:17.680 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland's senior writer for how stuff 0:00:17.720 --> 0:00:20.919 works dot com, and today's episode is part two of 0:00:21.000 --> 0:00:24.640 the ID Software story. Remember this was a request from 0:00:24.760 --> 0:00:27.560 Dave who wrote to me and asked for an episode 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:30.040 about ID Software. But as it turns out, there's too 0:00:30.160 --> 0:00:32.279 much to talk about for one episode. So in our 0:00:32.360 --> 0:00:36.000 last episode, Early talked about the people responsible for forming 0:00:36.080 --> 0:00:39.959 ID Software and how they found early success with titles 0:00:39.960 --> 0:00:43.440 like Commander Keene and Wolfenstein three D. Today we pick 0:00:43.520 --> 0:00:45.599 up where I left off with the development of the 0:00:45.640 --> 0:00:51.320 blockbuster title Doom. Now, the company was still just a 0:00:51.400 --> 0:00:54.920 small team of developers and they had a problem. There 0:00:54.960 --> 0:00:58.600 weren't enough people to work on a follow up to Wolfenstein, 0:00:59.280 --> 0:01:03.760 and simuled peneously work on the new Doom project. What's more, 0:01:04.400 --> 0:01:07.360 the people at in Software all wanted to work on Doom. 0:01:07.600 --> 0:01:10.080 They wanted to work on something new rather than create 0:01:10.120 --> 0:01:13.399 a sequel to an already existing game, but there was 0:01:13.400 --> 0:01:16.160 a lot of pressure from Apage to create a sequel. 0:01:16.520 --> 0:01:20.280 Wolfenstein had been the most successful title to debut on 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:24.840 apog in its history, so they decided to do the 0:01:24.920 --> 0:01:29.120 reasonable thing. They outsourced Wolfenstein too. They licensed out the 0:01:29.120 --> 0:01:32.920 work to APOG, which got started on the project, but 0:01:33.280 --> 0:01:37.119 after some time in development in software didn't really see 0:01:37.160 --> 0:01:41.880 it progressing very well. They didn't think it was making 0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:44.680 any progress, so they pulled the plug on the project. 0:01:45.560 --> 0:01:49.480 Appog ended up taking these lemons and making Lemonade later on, 0:01:49.640 --> 0:01:53.000 converting the work they had already produced into a brand 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:57.040 new title called Rise of the Triad. Talk a little 0:01:57.040 --> 0:02:00.440 bit more about that in a second. They also hired 0:02:00.560 --> 0:02:04.440 a couple of folks in nineteen One of them ended 0:02:04.520 --> 0:02:06.880 up making a big name for himself a little bit 0:02:07.000 --> 0:02:09.120 later on in the video game world. That would be 0:02:09.160 --> 0:02:13.600 American McGhee. He's perhaps most famous for his Dark Alice 0:02:13.680 --> 0:02:17.200 in Wonderland inspired games, which he made with e A 0:02:17.200 --> 0:02:21.959 after his tenure with ID Software ended in nine. McGhee 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:26.400 started at ID as a tech support worker and eventually 0:02:26.480 --> 0:02:29.640 worked his way up to designer, but there was a 0:02:29.680 --> 0:02:33.600 point where the company decided that McGee's work and the 0:02:33.600 --> 0:02:36.880 company's direction were no longer a good fit, and so 0:02:37.520 --> 0:02:41.280 he was let go. One thing that did make Doom 0:02:41.400 --> 0:02:45.240 possible was the evolution of computer hardware. The team had 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:48.200 been bumping up against the upper limits of the previous 0:02:48.240 --> 0:02:53.000 generation of PCs, but over time, the really expensive Intel 0:02:53.120 --> 0:02:56.720 three eight six microprocessor cost had started to come down, 0:02:57.080 --> 0:03:02.239 and now it was finding its way into consumer level PCs. 0:03:03.360 --> 0:03:06.000 More people were able to afford a three eight six PC, 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:08.920 which was better equipped to handle the demands of a 0:03:09.000 --> 0:03:11.560 beefy game engine, or at least beefy at the time. 0:03:13.000 --> 0:03:15.000 Three six have been around for a while. It first 0:03:15.080 --> 0:03:20.919 launched in this Intel microprocessor. It took about a year 0:03:21.000 --> 0:03:25.280 for manufacturing to ramp up to prod the levels that 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:29.480 Intel wanted, but even when they did reach those levels, 0:03:29.480 --> 0:03:32.079 they were still really expensive, so very few people were 0:03:32.080 --> 0:03:34.800 actually able to afford them. By today's standards, a three 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:39.320 six microprocessor would probably seem pretty crude and clunky. It 0:03:39.400 --> 0:03:44.920 had only two seventy five thousand transistors on it A 0:03:44.960 --> 0:03:50.520 little microprocessor now, I say only because today's microprocessors have 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:53.840 more than a billion transistors on them, so two five 0:03:53.880 --> 0:03:59.080 thousand is nothing compared to today's uh microprocessors. The clock rate, 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:03.200 as in how fast the three D six microprocessor could work, 0:04:03.720 --> 0:04:06.440 was between twelve mega hurts up to forty mega hurts 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:09.480 if you're overclocking it on the extreme end. And again, 0:04:09.520 --> 0:04:13.080 your basic smartphone today can outperform those specs. But at 0:04:13.080 --> 0:04:17.040 the time it was a state of the art machine 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:19.800 and it was just what it needed to take the 0:04:19.839 --> 0:04:23.800 next step in game development. John Carmack, at the ripe 0:04:23.839 --> 0:04:27.240 old age of twenty one years old, began to experiment 0:04:27.320 --> 0:04:31.320 with stuff that older game engines just couldn't handle. That 0:04:31.400 --> 0:04:36.120 included creating irregular shapes in the environment like uh, irregular 0:04:36.160 --> 0:04:39.600 walls or floors that sloped around. He also wanted dynamic 0:04:39.720 --> 0:04:43.200 lighting and the option to move in or outdoors. These 0:04:43.200 --> 0:04:46.359 were all elements that would have been really challenging back 0:04:46.560 --> 0:04:50.080 in the older Wolfenstein days, that that game engine just 0:04:50.120 --> 0:04:53.400 couldn't handle this kind of level of complexity. And then 0:04:53.560 --> 0:04:56.520 he also had another goal. He wanted gameplay to be 0:04:56.600 --> 0:05:00.560 immersive and fast. Fast was really importan and it had 0:05:00.600 --> 0:05:03.000 to be a fast paced game and really get the 0:05:03.040 --> 0:05:08.320 players blood pumping. So he wanted these abilities, this ability 0:05:08.400 --> 0:05:11.400 to make more complex environments, but not at the expense 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:15.320 of the speed of the game. As Carmack worked on 0:05:15.400 --> 0:05:20.719 the engine, uh Romero started programming the levels and designed 0:05:20.800 --> 0:05:25.000 much of the look and sound of the game. For inspiration, 0:05:25.040 --> 0:05:28.559 the team looked at the art of hr Geiger, and 0:05:28.680 --> 0:05:32.279 that was Geiger's work that inspired the Alien film franchise, 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:36.000 so the team used that art to guide decisions in 0:05:36.160 --> 0:05:40.240 level and monster design. The walls in Doom sometimes have 0:05:40.360 --> 0:05:44.080 hideous faces incorporated into them, and many of the demons 0:05:44.120 --> 0:05:46.920 look pretty monstrous as well. Romero points out that by 0:05:46.960 --> 0:05:49.960 today's standards, uh they might seem a bit cartoony, but 0:05:50.000 --> 0:05:52.520 at the time it was considered a really etchy approach 0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:55.840 to game design. Tom Hall, who had put up some 0:05:55.920 --> 0:05:59.880 resistance during the development of Wolfenstein three D, campaigned for 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:03.359 are a rich story for Doom. He had in mind 0:06:03.400 --> 0:06:05.640 an opening scene that would set the rest of the 0:06:05.720 --> 0:06:08.160 game in motion, and in that scene, the player would 0:06:08.160 --> 0:06:10.240 be taking on the role of a soldier in the 0:06:10.240 --> 0:06:12.479 middle of a card game with the rest of his squad, 0:06:12.839 --> 0:06:14.719 and in the middle of the game, a demon would 0:06:14.720 --> 0:06:17.880 burst in, killing everyone but the player, and then the 0:06:17.920 --> 0:06:21.720 game would start, and his ideas helped shape design decisions, 0:06:21.760 --> 0:06:24.640 but as he tells it all later on, the focus 0:06:24.720 --> 0:06:27.480 was really more on the technical side of making the 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:31.000 game work and less on the narrative or story side. 0:06:31.640 --> 0:06:35.080 He'd say it would be a few years before you 0:06:35.080 --> 0:06:39.039 would see a first person shooter incorporate deep story elements, 0:06:39.400 --> 0:06:42.120 and the game he sites is really nailing. It was 0:06:42.240 --> 0:06:45.279 Half Life, which was a from a totally different company. 0:06:45.320 --> 0:06:48.080 It's from Valve, That would be the first real example 0:06:48.240 --> 0:06:51.120 of that sort of thing. But he wanted it to 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:54.320 be Doom, and he started to feel really discouraged that 0:06:54.360 --> 0:06:57.159 a lot of his ideas were being rejected. He wanted 0:06:57.279 --> 0:07:00.120 rooms to have a purpose in Doom, so that when 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:03.520 you walked into a room in the game, you understood 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:06.839 why the room was there. It had a reason for existing. 0:07:06.880 --> 0:07:09.800 It wasn't just one in a series of rooms that 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:13.960 make up a level, or just a weird, interchangeable environment 0:07:14.040 --> 0:07:18.160 with undefined spaces. In his Doom, you wouldn't wonder why 0:07:18.240 --> 0:07:21.520 two rooms connected together, or what purpose a weird path 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:24.120 might serve. It would have a reason and you would 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:28.480 understand what it was. To him, level design needed to 0:07:28.520 --> 0:07:31.400 make sense and serve the story, but the development of 0:07:31.400 --> 0:07:34.680 the game didn't really allow for his designs, and so 0:07:34.720 --> 0:07:38.920 the levels were less detailed, less logical. Hall himself designed 0:07:38.920 --> 0:07:42.400 about seven levels, according to his own estimation. He said 0:07:42.480 --> 0:07:45.280 Romero was responsible for some of the more iconic levels 0:07:45.280 --> 0:07:49.440 in Doom, particularly the ones that used multiple vertical planes, 0:07:49.800 --> 0:07:53.720 you know, multiple levels within a game level. So I'm 0:07:53.800 --> 0:07:57.360 using level in two different ways here, game levels meaning 0:07:57.680 --> 0:08:00.440 at a stage in a game, and love was within 0:08:00.480 --> 0:08:05.000 the game or within that stage rather meaning different vertical platforms. 0:08:06.520 --> 0:08:09.320 Hall's account of those days sound like they were pretty rough. 0:08:09.360 --> 0:08:11.960 He said that the team was working every day, seven 0:08:12.040 --> 0:08:14.560 days a week, for up to sixteen hours a day, 0:08:14.960 --> 0:08:18.320 and he said he was feeling increasingly isolated at that time. 0:08:18.560 --> 0:08:21.400 The rest of the team sensed this as well, and 0:08:21.520 --> 0:08:27.200 eventually in Romero invited Hall over for dinner and then 0:08:27.240 --> 0:08:31.679 told him they were letting him go. He was essentially fired, 0:08:31.960 --> 0:08:36.080 but they had also secured another job for him over 0:08:36.120 --> 0:08:38.120 at Apog, so he already had a place to go. 0:08:38.200 --> 0:08:40.640 It wasn't like he was just cut loose, and in 0:08:40.640 --> 0:08:43.559 two thousand and fourteen, Hall said that ultimately this came 0:08:43.640 --> 0:08:47.160 as a huge relief. After the Shock War off, he 0:08:47.200 --> 0:08:49.760 was the first of the four main founders of IT 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:53.360 to leave it's software. He would move on to Apog 0:08:53.480 --> 0:08:56.440 and work on Rise of the Triad, which I mentioned earlier. 0:08:56.760 --> 0:09:00.800 It was the game that Wolfenstein, too, would turn into 0:09:01.600 --> 0:09:04.080 He'd work on other games too, before moving on to 0:09:04.160 --> 0:09:08.120 co found another studio. The other studio he co founded 0:09:08.360 --> 0:09:13.240 was one called ion Storm, rather infamous in video game circles, 0:09:13.400 --> 0:09:18.079 and a fellow co founder was John Romero. But we'll 0:09:18.080 --> 0:09:19.680 get to that part of the story a little later. 0:09:19.920 --> 0:09:22.840 And ion Storm could be its own episode all by itself. 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:25.520 It was a heck of a story. I remember when 0:09:25.520 --> 0:09:32.240 all of that was was unfolding. Meanwhile, in Adrian Carmack 0:09:32.520 --> 0:09:35.160 relished the subject matter of Doom. It was kind of 0:09:35.160 --> 0:09:38.280 like the opposite of Tom Hall's reaction. He thought it 0:09:38.320 --> 0:09:42.160 was fantastic. He took great delight in designing and drawing 0:09:42.240 --> 0:09:46.520 numerous demonic critters and nightmarish environments. He was happy to 0:09:46.600 --> 0:09:49.440 move away from the more family friendly art style that 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:53.800 Tom Hall held dear. He and Kevin Cloud, his assistant, 0:09:54.080 --> 0:09:57.640 designed tons of monsters and then they commissioned a sculptor 0:09:57.960 --> 0:10:00.400 to come in and create three dimensional mob as of 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:03.520 the monsters out of clay. Then they would paint the 0:10:03.559 --> 0:10:07.360 models and scan them in to create virtual models for 0:10:07.440 --> 0:10:11.439 the game itself. And it gave Doom a really unique look. 0:10:12.120 --> 0:10:16.600 And I realized that really unique is redundant. Someone who 0:10:16.679 --> 0:10:20.840 joined in Software during the development of Doom was Sandy Peterson. 0:10:21.800 --> 0:10:24.880 He was a programmer who had worked for Micropros before 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:29.280 joining ID Software. Micropros was another huge game that name 0:10:29.320 --> 0:10:32.440 in the computer gaming industry in the nineteen eighties. In particular, 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:35.199 one of its founders is a real legend in games, 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:40.480 Sid Meyer. Peterson would end up designing nineteen levels for Doom, 0:10:40.559 --> 0:10:43.959 even though he joined the project after it had already started. 0:10:44.720 --> 0:10:48.160 As the game neared completion, they had a big decision 0:10:48.240 --> 0:10:51.400 they had to make. They felt they had outgrown apages 0:10:51.480 --> 0:10:55.600 business model, which involved that shareware approach to get gamers interested, 0:10:55.679 --> 0:10:59.160 followed by sending a physical copy of the full game 0:10:59.240 --> 0:11:03.000 once an order came in. Appage only had a couple 0:11:03.000 --> 0:11:07.840 of employees handling incoming calls, and the folks over at 0:11:07.880 --> 0:11:11.440 it we're getting frustrated because orders were coming in faster 0:11:11.520 --> 0:11:15.560 than apag could respond to them. And they asked Scott 0:11:15.559 --> 0:11:19.439 Miller if he would invest in that department and grow it, 0:11:19.520 --> 0:11:23.320 and he seemed reluctant to do that. So it Software 0:11:23.360 --> 0:11:26.840 decided they could do this for themselves and just do 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:29.600 what Appage had been doing for them, using the Internet 0:11:29.640 --> 0:11:33.200 for distribution and keeping overhead costs low so that they 0:11:33.240 --> 0:11:36.280 don't have to worry about producing physical copies and all 0:11:36.360 --> 0:11:38.560 that kind of stuff. So they moved out to strike 0:11:38.600 --> 0:11:42.280 out on their own. Now I got more to say 0:11:42.320 --> 0:11:46.320 about this next phase and its software's evolution, but first 0:11:46.600 --> 0:11:56.880 let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. During 0:11:56.920 --> 0:12:02.160 alpha testing of the Doom game, ID Software sent unfinished 0:12:02.200 --> 0:12:04.840 copies to a few play testers to look for bugs 0:12:04.840 --> 0:12:07.640 and get feedback on how the gameplay was coming together. 0:12:08.600 --> 0:12:11.959 An early build of the game. That alpha build ended 0:12:12.040 --> 0:12:15.240 up leaking onto the Internet, which got a ton of attention, 0:12:15.320 --> 0:12:18.520 despite the fact that it wasn't a complete game and 0:12:18.880 --> 0:12:21.920 ID Software was genuinely worried that it could end up 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:25.240 tanking the game. If people played something that wasn't finished, 0:12:25.240 --> 0:12:29.520 they might have a a an incorrect assumption of how 0:12:29.559 --> 0:12:32.520 the game's going to turn out. But actually it helped 0:12:32.600 --> 0:12:35.280 drive excitement for the title. People were really eager to 0:12:35.320 --> 0:12:38.880 get hold of the finished copy. The retail price for 0:12:38.880 --> 0:12:42.240 the game, at least at one point was was suggested 0:12:42.720 --> 0:12:49.040 at nine dollars. That's insane, right. The game launched on 0:12:49.120 --> 0:12:54.560 a server on December tenth at the University of Wisconsin 0:12:55.400 --> 0:12:59.439 and almost immediately the server crashed because so many people 0:12:59.480 --> 0:13:02.520 were ailing in to try and get a copy of 0:13:02.559 --> 0:13:05.080 this game, and since it was about midnight when the 0:13:05.120 --> 0:13:08.440 game went live, it meant there was several hours before 0:13:08.440 --> 0:13:11.080 someone could get everything back online, but that really only 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:14.360 helped drive the demand for the game further and soon 0:13:14.640 --> 0:13:18.920 it became a best seller. Wolfenstein three D gave birth 0:13:19.080 --> 0:13:22.920 to the first person shooter genre, but Doom defined it, 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:26.680 and it's software built in a feature that would become 0:13:26.840 --> 0:13:31.600 standard in nearly every FPS to follow Doom, and that 0:13:31.760 --> 0:13:35.960 was the death match. That was Romero's term for a 0:13:35.960 --> 0:13:40.640 competitive match between two or more players using the game engine. 0:13:41.280 --> 0:13:44.040 With Doom, up to four people could play against each 0:13:44.080 --> 0:13:48.120 other on physically networked computers, a local area network or land, 0:13:48.800 --> 0:13:53.079 or you could play against a single person over the internet. 0:13:53.440 --> 0:13:57.520 It was the birth of competitive multiplayer for first person shooters, 0:13:57.760 --> 0:14:00.480 and it's another reason why people site Dom as the 0:14:00.520 --> 0:14:05.800 real father of the FPS genre. So while Wolfenstein three 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:11.800 D did it first, Doom really got the form factor down, 0:14:13.360 --> 0:14:16.000 and before Doom, Wolfenstein was the biggest hit from it 0:14:16.320 --> 0:14:19.640 software with more than two hundred thousand copies sold, but 0:14:19.680 --> 0:14:23.120 within a couple of years of launched, Doom sales blew 0:14:23.160 --> 0:14:26.320 that number on the water by. It was estimated that 0:14:26.440 --> 0:14:30.560 ten million computers had a copy of Doom on them. 0:14:30.640 --> 0:14:33.840 Whether or not all those copies were full paid copies 0:14:33.920 --> 0:14:36.800 is another matter, because again the first few levels were 0:14:36.840 --> 0:14:41.880 offered as a shareware download. The game received positive reviews. 0:14:42.000 --> 0:14:46.560 Fans loved it. The multiplayer was huge, an enormous innovation 0:14:46.680 --> 0:14:50.480 and in software was the darling of the computer games industry. 0:14:51.440 --> 0:14:54.560 And it also had another big innovation built in with Doom. 0:14:54.560 --> 0:14:57.160 And this was a choice that John Carmack had made. 0:14:57.840 --> 0:15:01.520 It was incredibly accessible to the mob community. Now. A 0:15:01.600 --> 0:15:05.240 mody is someone who modifies games. They tweak code to 0:15:05.320 --> 0:15:10.880 create new types of enemies or environments, new levels, new items, 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:14.800 new weapons. A modern friendly game is one that can 0:15:14.840 --> 0:15:18.560 transform in all sorts of ways with a minimum minimum 0:15:18.600 --> 0:15:20.560 a fuss upon the part of the matters. They don't 0:15:20.560 --> 0:15:23.760 have to end up breaking code in order to make 0:15:23.760 --> 0:15:26.560 it happen. Now, there are a lot of titles out 0:15:26.560 --> 0:15:30.760 there today that have a reputation for supporting creative mods, 0:15:30.760 --> 0:15:33.440 such as sky Rim or A Grand Theft Auto five. 0:15:34.080 --> 0:15:37.680 Doom was an early example of this. John Karmack designed 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:39.640 the code so that it wouldn't be too difficult for 0:15:39.720 --> 0:15:42.360 the moderate community to tweak it, and in fact, this 0:15:42.400 --> 0:15:46.680 would remain one of his principles throughout his career. The 0:15:46.760 --> 0:15:49.240 result was that Doom was viewed as a must have 0:15:49.440 --> 0:15:53.560 game because even if you grew tired of the original gameplay, 0:15:53.760 --> 0:15:57.200 the moderate community was always adding new stuff, which meant 0:15:57.240 --> 0:16:01.720 that you had a continuously refreshed ame you could just 0:16:01.920 --> 0:16:06.560 download the mods and incorporated into your own copy. It 0:16:06.680 --> 0:16:10.680 was so big that during the presentation for Windows, Bill 0:16:10.760 --> 0:16:13.520 Gates had a segment in which he was keyed into 0:16:13.720 --> 0:16:17.520 the frame of a Doom game. And yes, it's just 0:16:17.680 --> 0:16:20.840 as embarrassing and awkward as you are imagining right now. 0:16:21.120 --> 0:16:27.200 Bill Gates standing there wearing a kind of a costume, 0:16:27.960 --> 0:16:32.320 holding a rifle in the middle of the rifle, his 0:16:32.360 --> 0:16:36.200 hand nowhere near the stock or the trigger, talking about 0:16:36.240 --> 0:16:40.880 how he's going to enter the next Doom tournament, and 0:16:40.920 --> 0:16:44.520 then a Doom sprite appears to his left. He turns, 0:16:44.920 --> 0:16:47.400 holds the rifle out still by the middle, by the 0:16:47.400 --> 0:16:52.280 way finger nowhere near the trigger, and blasts the bad guy. 0:16:52.760 --> 0:16:56.520 It's awful and you should watch it anyway. The fact 0:16:56.600 --> 0:16:59.640 that even Microsoft was acknowledging this showed what a big 0:16:59.640 --> 0:17:01.800 deal it was, and the fact that this was a 0:17:01.880 --> 0:17:07.520 game that was going mainstream. Like the Wolfenstein engine before it, 0:17:07.640 --> 0:17:10.320 A lot of other computer game companies wanted to license 0:17:10.359 --> 0:17:13.240 the technology powering Doom. It was light years ahead of 0:17:13.240 --> 0:17:16.879 anyone else, so In Software was happy to oblige for 0:17:16.920 --> 0:17:19.880 a fee. Companies could use the underlying engine for their 0:17:19.880 --> 0:17:22.560 own games, and that brought in another steady stream of 0:17:22.560 --> 0:17:26.080 revenue into the company, boosting the already impressive cash flow 0:17:26.160 --> 0:17:30.680 from game sales. The ID crew found themselves flush with moolah, 0:17:31.400 --> 0:17:35.520 and not everyone handled success the same way, So here's 0:17:35.560 --> 0:17:39.240 a way to contrast. People. Both John Carmack and Romero 0:17:39.720 --> 0:17:45.240 bought expensive sports cars like Ferraris, but John Carmack limited 0:17:45.280 --> 0:17:48.160 his lavish spending and much of his life didn't really 0:17:48.240 --> 0:17:51.359 change that significantly compared to what it was before. Meanwhile, 0:17:51.800 --> 0:17:55.320 John Romero jumped a little further into the deep end 0:17:55.440 --> 0:17:58.480 of luxury. He bought a big house, he bought more 0:17:58.560 --> 0:18:03.119 luxury cars, He started growing big elaborate parties, and people 0:18:03.160 --> 0:18:05.520 began to get a little worried that perhaps he was 0:18:05.520 --> 0:18:09.760 getting caught up in the lifestyle. After Doom went gold, 0:18:10.000 --> 0:18:12.719 John Carmack went back to the drawing board to create 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:19.040 guess what, yep, the next generation game engine. Essentially, every 0:18:19.080 --> 0:18:21.760 time they release a game, Carmack wanted to build a 0:18:21.800 --> 0:18:24.399 better game engine for the next game. He never wanted 0:18:24.440 --> 0:18:26.680 to just rest on what he had built and then 0:18:26.960 --> 0:18:30.240 churn out sequels. He didn't find that satisfying. He wanted 0:18:30.280 --> 0:18:33.959 to make something better than what he made before, and 0:18:34.040 --> 0:18:38.520 he really wanted to crack the nut that was true 0:18:38.680 --> 0:18:41.960 three dimensional figures within a game, not three D that 0:18:42.000 --> 0:18:45.200 projects out, but figures within the game that have three 0:18:45.200 --> 0:18:49.480 dimensions within that virtual environment. Doom was a big jump 0:18:49.720 --> 0:18:53.600 from Wolfenstein. But you couldn't look up or down in Doom. 0:18:53.800 --> 0:18:56.760 You always look straight ahead no matter where you were facing, 0:18:57.280 --> 0:18:59.679 and the critters you ran into were represented by two 0:18:59.720 --> 0:19:03.680 domandational sprites. They weren't three dimensional virtual figures. They were 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:08.080 kind of like flat cardboard cutout characters. Uh what version 0:19:08.119 --> 0:19:10.520 of him you saw was dependent upon how you were 0:19:10.520 --> 0:19:14.000 facing them, but it was always flat. Carmak wanted something 0:19:14.000 --> 0:19:18.240 more sophisticated than that, and when he wanted something, essentially 0:19:18.240 --> 0:19:22.520 would go out and build it. Meanwhile, its software received 0:19:22.520 --> 0:19:25.040 a request from a game publisher to create a version 0:19:25.400 --> 0:19:30.320 of Doom for store shelves, which became Doomed two. So 0:19:30.600 --> 0:19:32.720 Doom two was the one that you could find in 0:19:32.760 --> 0:19:36.760 a box in computer game stores in the mid nineties. 0:19:36.800 --> 0:19:40.639 It was actually really similar to the first game, just 0:19:40.760 --> 0:19:43.920 with some new levels and a couple of new designs, 0:19:43.960 --> 0:19:48.160 but mainly it was Doom, just with slightly different layouts. 0:19:48.160 --> 0:19:50.520 But it was another big commercial success because it was 0:19:50.560 --> 0:19:54.040 more of what people loved. Now on the company side, 0:19:54.880 --> 0:19:56.760 It's software had grown to the point that it could 0:19:56.840 --> 0:19:59.399 hire a few new people, and Romero cut back his 0:19:59.440 --> 0:20:03.720 workout wars. He had been working fourteen or sixteen hour days, 0:20:03.760 --> 0:20:05.920 and so now he moved to a more normal eight 0:20:05.920 --> 0:20:10.520 hour day, much of it spent playing Doom against in 0:20:10.720 --> 0:20:13.880 Software fans. Uh. He also spent a lot more time 0:20:14.040 --> 0:20:17.120 in engagement with fans in general, and again people at 0:20:17.280 --> 0:20:20.080 in Software began to worry that perhaps Romero wasn't as 0:20:20.119 --> 0:20:23.840 involved as he needed to be. When it came time 0:20:23.880 --> 0:20:26.680 to look at what came next, the group agreed upon 0:20:26.760 --> 0:20:30.520 another idea, inspired by their Dungeons and Dragon sessions. So 0:20:30.600 --> 0:20:33.840 in their games they had a mighty warrior named Quake, 0:20:34.560 --> 0:20:37.960 and he was a fierce melee fighter. He used melee 0:20:38.040 --> 0:20:42.200 weapons like hammers to whack bad guys, and Carmack and 0:20:42.320 --> 0:20:45.159 Romero both thought this would be really interesting to create 0:20:45.200 --> 0:20:49.280 a three D game first person shooter, but instead of 0:20:49.320 --> 0:20:52.480 being a shooter, it's a first person melee game. You 0:20:52.520 --> 0:20:56.000 have to use a hand to hand weapon and attack enemies. 0:20:56.200 --> 0:20:59.480 It would require a new approach to game design, new 0:20:59.560 --> 0:21:02.320 enemy to design in order to make it fair but challenging. 0:21:02.960 --> 0:21:05.520 It was something the team was really eager to take 0:21:05.560 --> 0:21:07.879 on because it was different enough from what they had 0:21:07.920 --> 0:21:12.440 done before to really be engaging. So they set out 0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:15.320 to make a fantasy based hand to hand first person 0:21:15.440 --> 0:21:19.439 combat game. There's only one little problem. They did not 0:21:19.680 --> 0:21:22.919 have a game engine yet. They had nothing to build 0:21:23.000 --> 0:21:26.960 upon because John Carmack was falling behind on delivery dates 0:21:26.960 --> 0:21:30.960 for a working game engine as he encountered unanticipated problems 0:21:30.960 --> 0:21:34.520 while building a three D engine. Meanwhile, other teams were 0:21:34.560 --> 0:21:37.560 creating concept art and level designs, but they couldn't do 0:21:37.600 --> 0:21:40.720 anything with them because there was no engine to build upon. 0:21:41.600 --> 0:21:44.760 So they company had already announced that was working on 0:21:44.800 --> 0:21:48.240 a game called Quake, and it was already starting to 0:21:48.480 --> 0:21:52.439 miss some promised release dates and Without a working game engine, 0:21:53.200 --> 0:21:55.199 it didn't make any sense to put anything out, and 0:21:55.200 --> 0:21:57.679 they couldn't really predict when something would be done because 0:21:58.040 --> 0:22:00.800 it could take ages after the game engine is done 0:22:00.840 --> 0:22:05.080 to build a brand new type of game. Remember, they'd 0:22:05.080 --> 0:22:08.520 have to design a first person melee game and then 0:22:08.560 --> 0:22:10.640 test it to make sure it was working, and then 0:22:10.760 --> 0:22:14.720 fix anything that wasn't working. This process could take another 0:22:14.840 --> 0:22:18.440 year or longer, and that's in addition to however long 0:22:18.480 --> 0:22:20.640 it was going to take Carmack to finish the three 0:22:20.760 --> 0:22:24.359 D engine. This is where things first came to a 0:22:24.440 --> 0:22:28.800 head in IT Software. Romero and Kevin Cloud both felt 0:22:28.920 --> 0:22:31.359 that it was really important to be innovative and push 0:22:31.440 --> 0:22:35.080 for new features with every new franchise, so they really 0:22:35.160 --> 0:22:38.800 wanted to incorporate this melee approach in this new game. 0:22:39.040 --> 0:22:41.439 It would mean that Romero's designs would be part of 0:22:41.440 --> 0:22:44.200 the game. It would mean that they would have something 0:22:44.200 --> 0:22:47.119 totally new to talk about. They didn't want to just 0:22:47.240 --> 0:22:50.960 keep making games and older franchises, but the rest of 0:22:51.000 --> 0:22:54.879 the team, including John Carmack himself, said that it was 0:22:54.920 --> 0:22:58.280 more important that they release another game in a timely fashion, 0:22:58.960 --> 0:23:02.440 using the Doom and chise or using the Doom engine, 0:23:02.520 --> 0:23:05.360 even because it would get the game out much more quickly. 0:23:05.960 --> 0:23:08.800 So it came down to Romero and Kevin Cloud versus 0:23:08.800 --> 0:23:15.240 pretty much everybody else, and everybody else won that argument. Ultimately, 0:23:15.280 --> 0:23:19.399 they decided to drop the melee combat aspect for Quake. Instead, 0:23:19.840 --> 0:23:23.240 it would become another first person shooter, similar to Doom 0:23:23.240 --> 0:23:27.960 and Wolfenstein. However, they were going to wait for Carmack's 0:23:28.040 --> 0:23:31.040 new game engine to be finished. The big advantage here 0:23:31.119 --> 0:23:34.320 was that they had already built first person shooters. They 0:23:34.400 --> 0:23:36.680 knew how to build first person shooters, so they didn't 0:23:36.720 --> 0:23:41.200 have as much uncertainty about game mechanics. That part was easier. 0:23:41.280 --> 0:23:43.080 It meant that there was going to be less on 0:23:43.119 --> 0:23:47.159 the development time once the game engine was finished. If 0:23:47.200 --> 0:23:49.560 they had gone with that melee approach, they have a 0:23:49.600 --> 0:23:53.840 lot more testing on their hands. So they went with 0:23:53.880 --> 0:23:56.320 the first person shooter model, and they cut out a 0:23:56.359 --> 0:23:59.199 lot of uncertainty, even though that meant refining something they 0:23:59.200 --> 0:24:03.879 had already done earlier. They had also, by that time 0:24:04.200 --> 0:24:08.480 gained a pretty substantial fan club, including some famous fans. 0:24:09.160 --> 0:24:13.240 One of those fans was Trent Resiner from nine Inch Nails. 0:24:13.680 --> 0:24:16.560 He was a big fan of Doom, and so once 0:24:16.560 --> 0:24:18.320 they found out about this, they reached out to him 0:24:18.320 --> 0:24:21.119 and asked if he might be interested to become the 0:24:21.200 --> 0:24:25.160 music and audio director for Quake, and he said yes. 0:24:25.920 --> 0:24:28.399 So he ended up doing the sound design and music 0:24:28.640 --> 0:24:31.840 for a Quake and turning it into an immersive audio 0:24:31.920 --> 0:24:34.919 experience on top of its visual impact. So if you 0:24:35.200 --> 0:24:37.439