181–190 of 290 posts
> So if my theorem is correct, and Quake gutted id Software, was it worth it? Well I'd say yes absolutely. Games are more important than game companies, and Quake is an iconic titan of the gaming world. Sandy's quote here buried unfortunately by X.
I agree with one of the comments: "'Coulda been Doom++' hides how everyone wanted the leap back then." Doom++ was already well under way in the form of Ken Silverman's Build engine. Duke Nukem 3D beat Quake to market by ~6 months as I recall. A shorter timeline on the latter would have put them in direct competition with each other, damaging both. It was Carmack's job to assert technological dominance and give the in…
> It was Carmack's job to assert technological dominance and give the industry its next generation of game engines. Did they really? Did ID make more money with engine licensing than with game sales? They needed to ship. I think Quake Engine could wait, and have Doom++ would have given them some slack This is the opposite to the Boeing problem (shipping the rehashed product instead of the brand new thing)
iD's engines were famously known in the industry as tech demos first, first-party game platforms second. I'm not sure how the revenue picture ended up looking, though. They obviously made a lot of money from their 'tech demos.'
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doom 3 was pretty huge of a step forward in many ways and had no competition for being SOTA except for Far Cry (1). I remember that summer as it was when I had my first job and I saved up to buy a GPU. Not just graphics but character acting and animation, interactive world elements, deliberately dramatic scenarios in the levels (Half Life pioneered this, but Doom3 had a lot of really good ones). It was years ahead of…
I have attempted to play Doom 3 on three separate occasions in my life, and each time I gave up before ever having a chance to fire a weapon.
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> One of my favorite non-fiction books is Masters of Doom. Loved this book as well. Convinced me more than anything to stay out of game dev. It was also cool getting the inside story on why Ion Storm went belly up. I have huge respect for the games that the Austin office put out and IMO Warren Spector is one of the top game designers of our generation. But it seems like the Daikatana flop was one of those rare career…
I do find it amusing, since I really don't think Daikatana is that bad . It's not great, but at least with the PC version I think there's some fun to be had. It was just way over-budget and overhyped with an extremely questionable marketing campaign. Also, the GBC version is a legitimately pretty decent game. Deus Ex is of course much better, but to be fair most games fall short of Deus Ex.
Not that it needed any help, but I think that contributed to the glee around the spectacular crash-and-burn.
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Quake was better for multiplayer though. Personally I enjoyed Quake 2 the most. Quake arena was designed for multiplayer but you had to practice with the cheating bots so it was kinda boring.
Quake 2 multiplayer is such a blast. The cat-and-mouse chase fights in that game is what defines the genre of "arena shooter" for me, there's still nothing else really like it. The campaign has a place in my heart too, even if it's not perfect. A lot of DOOM's level design was predicated on claustrophobic interiors, and when you go "outside" in many levels it feels like a glorified courtyard. From the very first leve…
"Sorry, Sandy" Sandy Petersen's side of it comes out in a few interviews, like https://medium.com/@unkndoomer/back-to-the-past-e3c421fb2e70 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUeu96TKQwU (especially 14:17 onward)
The rest of the context leading up to "Sorry, Sandy" has me a little confused, can anybody who knows more explain this bit? > One real problem that I don’t accept the blame for is that we were insisting that level designers be not just game designers, but also have strong visual design esthetics. They needed to make things that not only played well, but looked awesome, and it got more challenging as the technology pr…
https://x.com/SandyofCthulhu/status/2069592209645785294
> How Quake ruined id Software.
> There has been a lot of praise of Quake of late, with its 30th anniversary, and it's deserved. Quake is an amazing feat of art, programming, and design. I worked on it, and everything came together almost perfectly from all of us. We ended up with a free-wheeling, frenetic action game with enough of a visible world to grip the imagination.
> ... [thread continues] ...
> I pushed everyone too hard. I didn’t appreciate how maturing companies need more slack, and that running people at startup intensity constantly will wear them out. Sounds like wisdom many companies might consider...
Wisdom is not appreciated in our industry. Everyone in tech with a modicum of status or power thinks they got there because they're smarter than everyone else and there is nothing of value to be learned from others. Thus, our leaders blunder in to the same mistakes everyone else is making over and over again. We never learn.
because they're smarter than everyone else and
there is nothing of value to be learned from others
Especially since everybody in the industry tends to be pretty smart.
When two people with intelligence within a single standard deviation of each other, each of them is going to have competencies and expertise the other does not. There are going to be specific skills where one truly is 10x or even 100x the other, but not too many efforts boil down to one specific narrow skill.
Young energy shouldn’t be apologized. Apparently Bill Gates had that psycho energy too, Jobs and many others too. On a civilizational scale it seems like a net benefit that young, eager and driven people give a bit more than they wanted to in retrospect. It do indeed change things for the rest of us. The patriotic call of armed forces has been driven by this for millennia. At least Carmack and Co. chose their own mis…
I’m not sure it’s necessarily a given that what Jobs, Gates, and Carmack created are net-positives when talking on a civilizational scale. Though Carmack certainly gets credit for keeping me entertained for a good portion of my youth. And gates probably gets some civilizational credit for what he’s done with his wealth after he made it.
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I do find it amusing, since I really don't think Daikatana is that bad . It's not great, but at least with the PC version I think there's some fun to be had. It was just way over-budget and overhyped with an extremely questionable marketing campaign. Also, the GBC version is a legitimately pretty decent game. Deus Ex is of course much better, but to be fair most games fall short of Deus Ex.
I think the "John Romero is about to make you his bitch" campaign in particular was an incredibly bad call, especially in the "gay panic" era, and made people want to see it fail. Not that it needed any help, but I think that contributed to the glee around the spectacular crash-and-burn.
The N64 version is irredeemably bad, but in 2026 I don't really see any reason to play the N64 version.
Agreed that the "John Romero is about to make you his bitch" was a pretty questionable marketing strategy. I guess it did get peoples' attention, but I don't think it was the attention that they wanted.
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he had a 41% stake which led to some legal conflict https://www.eurogamer.net/news280905carmacksues
Wow. Can anyone recommend a good write-up on that history? 41%... I suppose these were non-voting shares. Imagine owning nearly half the company and being denied access to company documents.
Eventually a bunch of people left and I think only two founders remained (Carmack and Carmack).
Since the stakes were reabsorbed, it makes sense why he ended up with 41%.