WEBVTT - The id Software Story Part One 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:14.840 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:14.840 --> 0:00:18.160 I'm your host Jonathan Strickland, senior writer for how stuff 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:20.560 Works dot com. And today on the show, I thought 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:23.240 we'd take a look at an influential company in the 0:00:23.360 --> 0:00:28.040 video game industry. But this wasn't my idea. This topic 0:00:28.120 --> 0:00:33.360 comes to us courtesy of a little listener mail, and 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:37.040 this one comes from David, who writes, Hello, really loved 0:00:37.080 --> 0:00:41.400 your flashback MP three episode. I'd start with Vangeli's themes songs, 0:00:41.400 --> 0:00:44.040 but please do a podcast on the creators of doom 0:00:44.400 --> 0:00:47.639 ID Software. Well, David, this one goes out to you. 0:00:47.800 --> 0:00:51.440 This is gonna be all about it. And because ID 0:00:51.520 --> 0:00:54.400 software story stretches back quite a ways and a lot 0:00:54.480 --> 0:00:56.680 has happened with it, it's gonna be a two parter. 0:00:56.920 --> 0:01:00.920 So here's part one of the ID Software story. And 0:01:01.000 --> 0:01:03.760 you guys know me, if I'm gonna tell you the history, 0:01:03.760 --> 0:01:07.240 I go back before the story begins. Right In this case, 0:01:07.319 --> 0:01:10.600 the story of ID Software really begins with another company 0:01:10.840 --> 0:01:15.880 called Soft Desk. Soft Disc started off in nineteen eighty 0:01:16.040 --> 0:01:21.200 one as a publisher in Louisiana, and it created magazines 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:24.160 on disk and you would get programs on disc. You 0:01:24.200 --> 0:01:27.200 would subscribe to a service. Every month you'd get a 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:30.520 new disc and that would have various articles on it 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:33.959 as well as programs that you could run on your computer. Uh. 0:01:34.000 --> 0:01:37.679 It was actually related originally to another company called soft Talk, 0:01:38.200 --> 0:01:43.400 and soft Talk was a print magazine company, but soft 0:01:43.400 --> 0:01:48.160 Talk eventually went out of business. Soft Desk continued. It 0:01:48.280 --> 0:01:52.400 managed to stay afloat. So besides publishing a magazine on 0:01:52.440 --> 0:01:56.600 a disc, they created this utility software that you would 0:01:56.640 --> 0:02:01.000 subscribe to, you know, boring useful stuff. Now, those programs 0:02:01.000 --> 0:02:04.000 were sold through that subscription on that monthly basis, so 0:02:04.040 --> 0:02:07.800 you didn't go to a store and by a box 0:02:07.920 --> 0:02:11.120 with Soft Discs name on it. Instead, you would subscribe 0:02:11.160 --> 0:02:13.160 to the service and they would send it to you. 0:02:13.560 --> 0:02:17.400 As the computer industry grew, soft disc did pretty well, 0:02:17.680 --> 0:02:20.920 but there was a major challenge. As computers were becoming 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:26.400 more sophisticated, that meant software also got more complicated or bloated, 0:02:26.639 --> 0:02:29.799 and that meant that your team of developers who had 0:02:29.840 --> 0:02:33.960 to create new software every single month had an increasingly 0:02:34.080 --> 0:02:37.480 difficult challenge ahead of them. Delivering a disc with programs 0:02:37.480 --> 0:02:40.360 on a on a monthly basis was really hard to 0:02:40.400 --> 0:02:43.679 do as time went on. So imagine that your job 0:02:43.720 --> 0:02:46.200 is to write a new program every month, only the 0:02:46.240 --> 0:02:49.120 programs are getting more complicated, which means there's also more 0:02:49.160 --> 0:02:53.120 potential for computer bugs in the code. It was by 0:02:53.200 --> 0:02:58.720 the early nineties least, it was getting to be pretty 0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:02.720 rough now. They were also looking to expand around that time, 0:03:03.120 --> 0:03:07.000 so in August of n Soft disc launched a new 0:03:07.240 --> 0:03:12.440 bi monthly gaming disc magazine called Gamer's Edge. By going 0:03:12.480 --> 0:03:17.359 bi monthly, you would have more time to develop games. 0:03:17.400 --> 0:03:20.240 Programmers could take a little bit more time to design 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:23.680 and polish a game before shipping it. However, two months 0:03:23.760 --> 0:03:26.360 is still incredibly short. I mean to tell someone today 0:03:26.400 --> 0:03:28.919 like you've got two months to create a game, you've 0:03:28.960 --> 0:03:31.840 probably seen them flip out because a lot of modern 0:03:31.919 --> 0:03:35.680 games take months or even years to develop from the 0:03:35.800 --> 0:03:39.840 concept to shipping it. So a two month window is 0:03:39.880 --> 0:03:44.440 super tight. The gamers among your really probably hyper aware 0:03:44.440 --> 0:03:47.880 of that, based upon you know, shipping dates slipping from 0:03:48.000 --> 0:03:50.560 now and again. Like whenever you hear about a company 0:03:50.680 --> 0:03:54.680 having to miss a ship date, that's usually because the 0:03:54.720 --> 0:03:57.920 game ended up being more complicated than they had anticipated 0:03:57.960 --> 0:04:01.880 at some stage, of the development process. Now. The head 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:05.800 of the Gamer's Edge project was a guy named John 0:04:05.920 --> 0:04:10.440 Romero who was originally from Colorado Springs and had moved 0:04:10.480 --> 0:04:15.640 to Shreveport, Louisiana to work with Soft Disc. John Romero's 0:04:15.680 --> 0:04:19.560 a pretty famous name in gaming, so the gamers among you, 0:04:19.839 --> 0:04:22.320 I'm guessing I've heard of him, but everyone else might 0:04:22.400 --> 0:04:24.599 not know who he is. He's got a really long 0:04:24.800 --> 0:04:28.159 history in the computer game business and has been involved 0:04:28.200 --> 0:04:31.600 in some major successes and big names, as well as 0:04:31.680 --> 0:04:38.000 some pretty popularized flops. Romero already had a history and 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:41.240 computer game design before he took on a job over 0:04:41.279 --> 0:04:43.920 at Soft Disc and became the leader at Gamer's Edge. 0:04:44.279 --> 0:04:47.600 His very first publish game was for the Apple Too, 0:04:47.800 --> 0:04:52.240 and it was called Scout Search. That's from the early eighties. 0:04:52.680 --> 0:04:56.520 He's also the guy behind Cavern Crusader if you remember 0:04:56.560 --> 0:04:59.919 that game. For a while he worked at Origin Systems, 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:02.719 which was the company behind such games as the Wing 0:05:02.800 --> 0:05:06.279 Commander franchise and The Ultimate series, although he didn't work 0:05:06.320 --> 0:05:09.000 on those titles. He then went on to co found 0:05:09.040 --> 0:05:12.760 a couple of companies between then and working for Soft Disc, 0:05:13.080 --> 0:05:15.640 and he was still working in games, but you know, 0:05:15.720 --> 0:05:19.320 being a self starter is sometimes pretty hard, so eventually 0:05:19.360 --> 0:05:22.680 he decided to move to Shreveport, Louisiana in ninety nine 0:05:22.680 --> 0:05:24.840 and work for Soft Disc because it was a steady gig. 0:05:26.240 --> 0:05:30.960 Now Romero brought over a guy named Adrian Carmack from 0:05:31.040 --> 0:05:35.160 Soft Discs art department over to Gamer's Edge, and Adrian 0:05:35.200 --> 0:05:39.280 Carmack was originally from Shreveport, so he grew up there 0:05:39.279 --> 0:05:41.440 and he had taken on a job at Soft Disc 0:05:41.800 --> 0:05:44.039 to make money while he was searching for a way 0:05:44.080 --> 0:05:46.599 to make a living in the fine arts. He was 0:05:46.640 --> 0:05:49.640 twenty one when Romero asked him to join Gamer's Edge. 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:54.080 Then he also asked another Carmack, this time John Carmack, 0:05:54.320 --> 0:05:58.919 no relation to Adrian Carmack. Now. John Carmack was a 0:05:58.960 --> 0:06:02.480 programmer for Saw Desk who specialized in the company's monthly 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:06.640 Apple two gs publication. Those among you who remember the 0:06:06.680 --> 0:06:09.200 Apple two gs, make sure you can be a shout out. 0:06:09.240 --> 0:06:11.680 I'm curious to hear from you. I never owned an 0:06:11.720 --> 0:06:14.719 Apple to gs. I I couldn't. I had an Apple 0:06:14.760 --> 0:06:17.760 to E and that just had to suffice well. John 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:21.200 Carmack came originally from Kansas City and he had a 0:06:21.200 --> 0:06:24.839 bit of a past which he has talked about publicly, 0:06:24.960 --> 0:06:27.960 so I'm not really spreading dirty laundry here. But John 0:06:28.040 --> 0:06:30.479 Carmack said that when he was a kid, he was 0:06:30.520 --> 0:06:34.120 really interested in how stuff works, which I can easily 0:06:34.200 --> 0:06:38.000 relate to. But Carmack would push and prod around the 0:06:38.120 --> 0:06:42.479 edges of what is consideredly legal. You know, maybe maybe 0:06:42.520 --> 0:06:44.680 he wanted to see how stuff worked a little bit 0:06:44.720 --> 0:06:49.160 beyond what is legally allowed. Sometimes he leapt right over 0:06:49.240 --> 0:06:53.560 those limitations. He was really interested in things like computer 0:06:53.680 --> 0:06:57.880 hacking and freaking, uh phone freaking. That's where you're hacking 0:06:57.920 --> 0:07:00.279 the telephone system. I did a whole episod sort of 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:02.719 tech stuff about phone freaking. You can find that in 0:07:02.839 --> 0:07:10.920 my archives. He experimented with stuff like thermite and explosives. Now, 0:07:10.920 --> 0:07:13.240 while a teenager, he took part in what was supposed 0:07:13.240 --> 0:07:16.560 to be an Apple to heist, and I am not 0:07:16.720 --> 0:07:20.440 making this up. John Karnak was part of an elite 0:07:20.480 --> 0:07:24.360 group of teenagers who had determined that they wanted to 0:07:25.080 --> 0:07:28.800 take possession of some Apple To computers that were residing 0:07:28.880 --> 0:07:34.640 in their local school. So his part was mixing up 0:07:34.880 --> 0:07:39.640 a miasma of stuff that included thermite in order to 0:07:39.760 --> 0:07:43.120 melt through the windows of the school without setting off 0:07:43.160 --> 0:07:48.160 the alarm system. However, during their robbery attempt, they triggered 0:07:48.200 --> 0:07:52.240 the alarms somehow anyway, and the police showed up and 0:07:52.320 --> 0:07:56.440 Karmack was arrested and after a psychological evaluation, he was 0:07:56.520 --> 0:08:00.520 sentenced to a year in a juvenile home. A lot 0:08:00.600 --> 0:08:03.880 of kids were there for drugs. John Carmack was there 0:08:03.880 --> 0:08:08.000 for the apple too. He described his younger self as 0:08:08.040 --> 0:08:11.200 being an a moral little jerk, and that is a 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:16.080 direct quote by John Carmack himself. He attended a couple 0:08:16.120 --> 0:08:19.480 of semesters of college once he got out of juvenile 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:23.200 uh the juvenile home. He finished high school went on 0:08:23.280 --> 0:08:26.280 to college at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, 0:08:26.320 --> 0:08:29.040 but he didn't complete his studies there. He dropped out 0:08:29.080 --> 0:08:32.760 when he found the classes to be boring. He later 0:08:32.800 --> 0:08:35.280 said that he probably would have found the classes to 0:08:35.320 --> 0:08:38.239 be helpful if he had stuck around, but his attitude 0:08:38.400 --> 0:08:41.720 was what made it challenging. So he fully admits that 0:08:42.480 --> 0:08:45.440 as an individual, he had not yet matured enough to 0:08:45.600 --> 0:08:49.160 benefit from a college education, that it wasn't necessarily the 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:53.240 fault of the college. However, he credits his employment at 0:08:53.280 --> 0:08:56.600 soft Disk for really opening up his realization and helping 0:08:56.679 --> 0:08:59.120 him mature as a person because he was doing what 0:08:59.240 --> 0:09:02.240 he loved, which was programming, and he was making enough 0:09:02.240 --> 0:09:05.240 money to do it to to afford a place to 0:09:05.280 --> 0:09:07.080 live and food to eat, and that was all that 0:09:07.160 --> 0:09:09.680 was important to him. So once he started doing that, 0:09:09.760 --> 0:09:13.040 he started to realize, you know, kind of how his 0:09:13.080 --> 0:09:15.360 attitude had gotten in his own way. And so he 0:09:15.440 --> 0:09:18.440 really matured quite a bit while working at Soft Disc, 0:09:18.480 --> 0:09:20.959 and that ended up benefiting him more than a college 0:09:21.040 --> 0:09:25.319 education in the long run. Now, along with those two CarMax, 0:09:25.520 --> 0:09:28.800 Romero enlisted the help of a guy named Lane Roth. 0:09:29.640 --> 0:09:32.840 Roth had been a programmer throughout the nineteen eighties and 0:09:32.920 --> 0:09:35.600 he had joined Soft Disc in nineteen eighty nine. He 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:40.199 had known Romero before they worked at Soft Disc. Romero 0:09:40.280 --> 0:09:44.280 had co founded a company called Capital Ideas, and Roth 0:09:44.400 --> 0:09:48.280 had founded a company called Blue Mountain Micro. Eventually, they 0:09:48.320 --> 0:09:50.840 decided they wanted to work together and they wanted to 0:09:50.840 --> 0:09:53.360 create a new company, and merged the names of their 0:09:53.400 --> 0:09:57.600 old organizations together to create a company called Ideas from 0:09:57.720 --> 0:10:01.240 the Deep. This would later serve as the inspiration for 0:10:01.360 --> 0:10:05.880 ID Software's name i D. Because Ideas from the Deep 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:09.079 is just too long to say, but by the time 0:10:09.320 --> 0:10:12.280 id Software became an official thing, Roth was no longer 0:10:12.400 --> 0:10:14.560 part of the equation. He did not go on to 0:10:14.720 --> 0:10:19.480 join the others when they founded in Software Now. The 0:10:19.600 --> 0:10:23.080 last piece of the Gamer's Edge puzzle was a guy 0:10:23.160 --> 0:10:26.800 named Tom Hall. Hall had a degree in computer science 0:10:26.800 --> 0:10:30.360 from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Hall was 0:10:30.400 --> 0:10:33.559 another programmer and editor over at soft Disc. He wasn't 0:10:33.559 --> 0:10:37.800 officially part of the Gamer's Edge project, so his work 0:10:37.880 --> 0:10:40.679 was mainly done after hours because he has an interest 0:10:40.720 --> 0:10:44.520 in games, but he wasn't officially on the project list 0:10:44.559 --> 0:10:46.560 for Gamer's Edge, so any work he did had to 0:10:46.559 --> 0:10:51.040 be off the books. No Gamer's Edge gave the developers 0:10:51.080 --> 0:10:53.280 a chance to try new things, and one of the 0:10:53.320 --> 0:10:56.800 things that John Carmack was really interested in was designing 0:10:57.080 --> 0:11:00.240 game engines. He really wanted to create something that would 0:11:00.240 --> 0:11:04.680 allow PCs to create a smooth scrolling method similar to 0:11:04.720 --> 0:11:08.600 what you would find in video game console games. Now, 0:11:08.640 --> 0:11:13.160 this was huge because video game consoles are dedicated machines. 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:18.359 That means every element inside of video game console, everything 0:11:18.400 --> 0:11:21.760 that you put in there, is meant to make the 0:11:21.840 --> 0:11:25.680 game's work. At least in the earlier video game consoles. 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:29.480 You could argue that today they're more media centers than 0:11:29.520 --> 0:11:32.840 they were before, But at that time, video game consoles 0:11:32.920 --> 0:11:35.800 that's all they did. They just made games work. That's 0:11:35.800 --> 0:11:39.040 what all the horsepower in the machine was focused on. 0:11:39.600 --> 0:11:43.200 Whereas PCs are general purpose devices and they have to 0:11:43.200 --> 0:11:46.640 be able to do lots of stuff, not just play games. 0:11:47.240 --> 0:11:50.080 That means they're not nearly as good at performing video 0:11:50.080 --> 0:11:53.600 game console functions the way a console could back in 0:11:53.679 --> 0:11:57.760 these days. Anyway, today it's a different story. PCs are 0:11:57.800 --> 0:12:02.800 so powerful and video game consoles are entually proprietary PCs 0:12:02.840 --> 0:12:06.560 that the differences are much less apparent than they were 0:12:06.640 --> 0:12:10.400 back in the day. At that time, video game consoles 0:12:10.440 --> 0:12:15.600 had the edge over PCs, and so what KRMAK wanted 0:12:15.679 --> 0:12:19.520 to do was find a way to let PCs play 0:12:19.559 --> 0:12:23.840 games that were similar in uh, in scale, and in 0:12:23.960 --> 0:12:27.600 play to video game console games. So how do you 0:12:27.640 --> 0:12:30.560 do that? How do you make a game engine that 0:12:30.720 --> 0:12:34.120 can allow this to happen? You see, the real problem 0:12:34.240 --> 0:12:37.920 was that a side scrolling game, or really any game 0:12:38.000 --> 0:12:42.320 where the images the backgrounds scrolling across, whether it's up 0:12:42.360 --> 0:12:45.040 and down or left and right or whatever, that means 0:12:45.080 --> 0:12:48.800 the computer has to constantly redraw the screen as you 0:12:48.880 --> 0:12:52.960 move around, so elements that are changing have to be redrawn. 0:12:53.040 --> 0:12:57.240 You can't just have a static image there. Older computer 0:12:57.280 --> 0:13:00.800 games usually did have those static environments. You can move 0:13:00.800 --> 0:13:03.760 a character around within an environment and the character might 0:13:03.800 --> 0:13:06.640 be animated a little bit, but the environment itself would 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:11.199 stay pretty much exactly the way it is. Think of 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:14.000 like an old school game like pac Man, where you've 0:13:14.000 --> 0:13:17.000 got the full maze on the screen at one time. 0:13:17.320 --> 0:13:21.280 The characters move around, but the screen remains static throughout 0:13:21.320 --> 0:13:24.040 that level. It might change from level to level, but 0:13:24.240 --> 0:13:27.480 during a level it stays the same. So what could 0:13:27.520 --> 0:13:31.200 Karmack do to simplify this Well, he realized that if 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:34.160 he developed a game engine where only the parts of 0:13:34.200 --> 0:13:39.000 the screen that change are animated are redrawn, he could 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:42.240 cut down on the amount of processing power required for 0:13:42.360 --> 0:13:45.520 a side scroller. So if you have a side scroller 0:13:45.559 --> 0:13:49.880 type game like Double Dragon that's a classic, and your 0:13:49.920 --> 0:13:53.360 characters are walking across a background that isn't changing, like 0:13:53.400 --> 0:13:56.080 there's a blue sky in the background, you don't have 0:13:56.160 --> 0:13:59.200 to redraw the blue sky every time the character moves. 0:13:59.240 --> 0:14:02.000 You just have to read draw the stuff that actually 0:14:02.040 --> 0:14:05.760 does change. So maybe it's buildings or trees or bushes 0:14:05.840 --> 0:14:09.280 or something like that that saves processing time and made 0:14:09.320 --> 0:14:14.360 side scrolling on PCs possible. This sounds incredibly basic, and 0:14:14.400 --> 0:14:17.000 by today's standards, it is, but at the time it 0:14:17.080 --> 0:14:22.600 was a monumental innovation. It really got the wheels turning, 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:27.000 and he showed it to his coworker Tom Hall, and 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:30.080 Hall was really excited by this. He said, this is 0:14:30.120 --> 0:14:35.640 incredible and he began immediately to start working on a 0:14:35.680 --> 0:14:39.360 game that could show off this side scrolling capability on 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:42.320 the PC, and they together decided that what they would 0:14:42.320 --> 0:14:45.640 do is build a replica of the first level for 0:14:45.800 --> 0:14:50.240 Super Mario Brothers three, and they used assets from an 0:14:50.240 --> 0:14:53.600 existing game that John Romero had created before he joined 0:14:53.640 --> 0:14:56.960 Soft Disc. It was a game called Dangerous Dave. So 0:14:57.400 --> 0:15:01.520 their original rough version of this was the first level 0:15:01.520 --> 0:15:05.120 of Super Mario Brothers three, but using the Dangerous Dave character, 0:15:06.080 --> 0:15:08.360 and it was all done without the authorization of Soft 0:15:08.400 --> 0:15:11.280 Disc or even John Romero. He didn't know about it either, 0:15:12.080 --> 0:15:15.160 and so it took them one night to recreate that 0:15:15.240 --> 0:15:18.160 first level. They then saved it to a debt a 0:15:18.240 --> 0:15:24.320 Disc and uh they titled it Dangerous Dave in copyright infringement, 0:15:25.120 --> 0:15:27.600 very tongue in cheek, and they put the disc on 0:15:27.720 --> 0:15:31.560 John Romero's desk. So John Romero gets to work. He 0:15:31.640 --> 0:15:34.200 has this disc sitting there and he puts it in 0:15:34.280 --> 0:15:38.040 this computer and he sees this title screen of Dangerous 0:15:38.120 --> 0:15:41.040 Dave and copyrighting infringement. He's thinking, what the heck because 0:15:41.080 --> 0:15:45.040 he he made Dangerous Dave. And he starts the program 0:15:45.080 --> 0:15:48.680 and he suddenly sees the side scrolling game on PC 0:15:50.040 --> 0:15:54.320 and he goes bonkers. He loves it because it's something 0:15:54.360 --> 0:15:57.240 that had not been achievable in PC games up to 0:15:57.280 --> 0:16:02.440 this point. He unofficially authorizes work on a full replica 0:16:02.600 --> 0:16:07.720 of Super Mario Brothers three. They recreate the game. They 0:16:07.840 --> 0:16:10.600 do every level exactly the way it is in the 0:16:10.720 --> 0:16:14.840 Super Nintendo system, but on PC they had to do 0:16:14.920 --> 0:16:17.600 all of this work off hours. They couldn't officially do 0:16:17.680 --> 0:16:22.120 it as Gamer's Edge employees or Soft Disc in the 0:16:22.200 --> 0:16:27.720 case of Tom Hall. They did, however, use Soft Disc computers. 0:16:28.720 --> 0:16:31.080 At the end of the week, they would take their 0:16:31.120 --> 0:16:35.280 computers home. I'm talking desktops here. These aren't like laptops 0:16:35.320 --> 0:16:37.960 or anything. They would pack them up, they would take 0:16:38.000 --> 0:16:40.320 them home and over the weekend they would work on 0:16:40.440 --> 0:16:43.160 this game, and then on Monday morning they would bring 0:16:43.160 --> 0:16:45.760 the computer back, hook it back up, and hope nobody noticed. 0:16:47.760 --> 0:16:50.840 After a few weeks, they had built a full PC 0:16:51.080 --> 0:16:53.680 version of the game, and the three of them brought 0:16:53.840 --> 0:16:57.680 this replica of the game to Nintendo, and they wanted 0:16:57.680 --> 0:17:01.440 to tell Nintendo, Hey, you can reach a much larger 0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:04.720 audience by releasing your game for PC, and we can 0:17:04.720 --> 0:17:08.199 do it. See, we know the secret to making a 0:17:08.320 --> 0:17:12.280 side scrolling game on the personal computer. If you partner 0:17:12.320 --> 0:17:16.560 with us, we can be the solution and we can 0:17:16.720 --> 0:17:19.960 end up opening up your game to an entirely new audience. 0:17:21.000 --> 0:17:25.439 And Nintendo said, no, thanks, not a big surprise. If 0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:28.840 you know how Nintendo works, everyone would imagine that they 0:17:28.880 --> 0:17:32.360 would turn down such an offer. For one thing, Nintendo 0:17:32.480 --> 0:17:37.520 relies on titles like Mario to sell Nintendo consoles. If 0:17:37.560 --> 0:17:41.000 they were to offer those games on other platforms, there'd 0:17:41.000 --> 0:17:44.720 be very little incentive to buy a Nintendo entertainment system 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:48.800 and they'd be undercutting themselves. So they decided they did 0:17:48.920 --> 0:17:52.320 not want to go in that direction. But other people 0:17:52.359 --> 0:17:55.359 began to take notice of Romero's work and have some 0:17:55.520 --> 0:17:58.080 interest in perhaps talking with them. And one of those 0:17:58.119 --> 0:18:02.080 people was a guy named Scott Miller who had founded 0:18:02.119 --> 0:18:06.880 a software developer and publishing company called APAG Software. I'll 0:18:06.880 --> 0:18:09.439 talk more about what Scott Miller got up to with 0:18:09.520 --> 0:18:12.760 John Romero in just a second, but first let's take 0:18:12.760 --> 0:18:23.679 a quick break to thank our sponsor. All Right, I 0:18:23.720 --> 0:18:26.879 mentioned APOG just before the break. They got their start 0:18:26.960 --> 0:18:30.919 in Texas back in now. The company relied on a 0:18:30.920 --> 0:18:34.800 pretty interesting business model. They would publish the beginning of 0:18:34.840 --> 0:18:38.439 a game for free that allowed players to download the 0:18:38.440 --> 0:18:41.080 game and try it out, and if they wanted to 0:18:41.119 --> 0:18:44.959 continue the game, they'd have to purchase the subsequent episodes 0:18:45.119 --> 0:18:48.439 over the phone, and then the company would ship the 0:18:48.480 --> 0:18:50.879 rest of the game a physical copy of the game 0:18:51.440 --> 0:18:54.720 to the player. This model became known as share, where 0:18:55.000 --> 0:18:56.919 you could share the first part of the game freely 0:18:57.000 --> 0:18:59.960 with anyone you liked. After that you had to pay. Now, 0:19:00.160 --> 0:19:03.120 keep in mind, this is before the World Wide Web 0:19:03.240 --> 0:19:06.200 was a thing that that really got started back in 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:12.760 This was so in those days, you had to call 0:19:12.960 --> 0:19:15.960 up a server using a dial up modem. It might 0:19:16.000 --> 0:19:18.840 be a bulletin board system or something along those lines. 0:19:18.840 --> 0:19:22.040 It might be something more like a uh an online 0:19:22.080 --> 0:19:26.200 service provider, but that's how you would first get connected 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:29.320 to the internet, and then you could download a file 0:19:29.600 --> 0:19:32.359 like the shareware version of the game, and then you 0:19:32.359 --> 0:19:36.119 would have to call up the company, give them your information, 0:19:36.440 --> 0:19:38.840 order it, and then they would ship you the rest 0:19:38.840 --> 0:19:43.280 of the game via snail mail. It was pretty primitive 0:19:43.280 --> 0:19:48.560 back in those days. I don't miss it. Appog was 0:19:49.240 --> 0:19:53.760 pretty successful with this approach it. The reason was that 0:19:54.640 --> 0:19:59.680 they were able to take advantage of not having a 0:19:59.760 --> 0:20:03.639 mar getting department or a real sales department or having 0:20:03.640 --> 0:20:08.200 to worry about securing shelf space on brick and mortar stores. 0:20:08.480 --> 0:20:11.840 It cut down a lot of costs, so it ended 0:20:11.920 --> 0:20:14.199 up bringing the overhead down and they were able to 0:20:14.240 --> 0:20:17.960 take advantage of that. They also originally intended to create 0:20:18.040 --> 0:20:21.360 sub brands for each of the genres of games that 0:20:21.480 --> 0:20:24.800 the company produced, so they would have maybe one for 0:20:24.880 --> 0:20:28.760 adventure games, one for you know, fighting games, one for 0:20:29.000 --> 0:20:31.320 flight simulators, that kind of thing. That was the idea. 0:20:31.720 --> 0:20:35.080 It never really worked out that way. Only one sub 0:20:35.119 --> 0:20:38.040 brand really stood out, but it was a doozy because 0:20:38.080 --> 0:20:41.359 that one was three D Realms. Now three D Realms 0:20:41.359 --> 0:20:45.080 created games like the Max Pain Franchise and Pray, and 0:20:45.200 --> 0:20:50.160 probably most famously was Duke Newcombe three D. I did 0:20:50.160 --> 0:20:52.480 a whole episode about Duke Newcomb, or at least I 0:20:52.520 --> 0:20:55.320 talked about a lot in our episode on vaporware, so 0:20:55.359 --> 0:20:57.280 I won't really go into it here. Plus it doesn't 0:20:57.320 --> 0:21:01.320 really tie into its software d be enough to warrant it, 0:21:01.359 --> 0:21:05.679 but that's a heck of a story anyway. Scott Miller 0:21:05.720 --> 0:21:08.520 over at Appogi had noticed Romero's work on a game 0:21:08.640 --> 0:21:13.439 called Pyramids of Egypt, and Miller thought Pyramids of Egypt 0:21:13.480 --> 0:21:15.679 was the perfect style of game to sell in this 0:21:16.000 --> 0:21:20.040 shareware business. He thought, this is a way to really 0:21:20.320 --> 0:21:24.240 get a game that is a fun and and interesting. 0:21:24.840 --> 0:21:28.040 If if Romero can make more games like that, I 0:21:28.080 --> 0:21:30.760 can sell them this way was what he was thinking. 0:21:31.600 --> 0:21:35.600 But he was also sneaky. Scott Miller was. He knew 0:21:35.600 --> 0:21:39.400 that if he sent correspondence directly to John Romero over 0:21:39.440 --> 0:21:44.160 at soft Disc, they might intercept the message. Because software 0:21:44.160 --> 0:21:46.679 companies had to fight tooth and nail for their talent, 0:21:46.760 --> 0:21:49.600 it was always possible that some other company would offer 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:53.800 employees more money and more benefits to jump ship. So 0:21:54.240 --> 0:21:57.719 in order to get his message to Romero without being detected. 0:21:57.960 --> 0:22:01.359 He sent Romero a series of fan letters, each with 0:22:01.400 --> 0:22:03.919 a different name attached, but all of them having the 0:22:04.000 --> 0:22:08.000 same contact information the same address enclosed in the letter. 0:22:09.480 --> 0:22:12.320 Romero didn't catch on right away. It wasn't until he 0:22:12.359 --> 0:22:14.919 was reading an article about Scott Miller's company that he 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:17.760 noticed the address in the article was really familiar. And 0:22:17.800 --> 0:22:19.560 then he looked at his fan mail and saw that 0:22:19.600 --> 0:22:22.240 the same address was on three different letters from three 0:22:22.440 --> 0:22:27.159 supposedly different people. And then Romero got angry. He was 0:22:27.240 --> 0:22:30.760 angry because he thought that the letters were genuine fan mail, 0:22:30.840 --> 0:22:34.760 so he felt betrayed that this fan mail wasn't really 0:22:34.760 --> 0:22:37.840 fan mail, it was someone who wanted something from him. 0:22:37.880 --> 0:22:40.840 So he sent an angry letter to Scott Miller, but 0:22:40.920 --> 0:22:44.399 he did leave a callback number in that letter, and 0:22:44.440 --> 0:22:49.879 Scott Miller called Romero and immediately apologized for the whole 0:22:50.600 --> 0:22:54.320 misunderstanding in his mind, and then made Romero an offer 0:22:54.359 --> 0:22:58.720 he couldn't refuse. So Miller sent a letter that was 0:22:58.840 --> 0:23:03.360 dated on US twenty, which was not long after Gamer's 0:23:03.440 --> 0:23:07.520 Edge had launched, and said, I really did like Pyramids 0:23:07.560 --> 0:23:09.880 of Egypt. That wasn't a lie. I enjoyed that game 0:23:10.000 --> 0:23:13.159 very much. He also described his company. He described the 0:23:13.200 --> 0:23:16.040 shareware model, and he pointed out that his most popular 0:23:16.080 --> 0:23:19.040 title could pull in anywhere between fifteen hundred and two 0:23:19.080 --> 0:23:24.120 thousand dollars in sales every week. So he proposed to Romero, 0:23:24.560 --> 0:23:27.800 why don't you make games. We'll publish the games, and 0:23:27.800 --> 0:23:31.160 in return, you'll get a substantial percentage of the profits. 0:23:31.880 --> 0:23:35.000 And because we don't have these overhead costs, we can 0:23:35.080 --> 0:23:38.760 maximize those profits. It's not like you're taking a tiny 0:23:38.880 --> 0:23:42.520 percentage of the net. I mean, gross is pretty much 0:23:42.560 --> 0:23:46.000 the same as net in our business. And Romero thought 0:23:46.080 --> 0:23:48.200 this sounded like a really good idea, and he had 0:23:48.240 --> 0:23:51.760 an ace in the whole as well, that new side 0:23:51.760 --> 0:23:56.960 scrolling technique would give apogee a crazy advantage over other 0:23:57.040 --> 0:24:00.639 publishers in the PC gaming space. No one else had 0:24:00.720 --> 0:24:04.440 developed a game engine that could do this. So Appog 0:24:05.080 --> 0:24:09.240 ended up commissioning a game essentially, and the group ended 0:24:09.320 --> 0:24:13.720 up developing it, and they called it Commander Keen, a 0:24:14.160 --> 0:24:19.840 very cute side scrolling game, a little cartoonish, very lighthearted, 0:24:20.240 --> 0:24:22.800 and the shareware portion of the game launched in December 0:24:22.880 --> 0:24:27.520 ninete and it caught on like Gangbusters. Scott Miller had 0:24:27.560 --> 0:24:30.600 been making about seven thousand dollars a month with his 0:24:30.760 --> 0:24:35.320 old library of games. Within ten days of it launching, 0:24:35.359 --> 0:24:39.359 Commander Keene had already earned thirty thousand dollars, so it 0:24:39.440 --> 0:24:45.680 was leaving everything else behind. In February nine, John Romero, 0:24:46.080 --> 0:24:50.280 Adrian Carmack and John Carmack all resigned from Soft Disc 0:24:50.600 --> 0:24:52.399