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Ion Storm Reorganizes
An Anonymous Coward writes: "GameSpyDaily is reporting that both John Romero and Tom Hall are leaving Ion Storm. Most of the Dallas office has been laid off as well. Warren Spector is now in charge. The remains of Ion Storm in Austin are still working on Deus Ex 2 and Thief 3."
Okay, let me get this straight. Not only did you flip the 'e' and the 'i', but you also used an 'r' instead of an 'f'. The word is five letters long. You screwed up more than half of them. That is pret-ty sad.
This wouldn't have happened if they had added more frogs.
Apparently Romero and Hall are keeping a few people on payroll while they try to build a new company. There was also a rumor that Romero was talking to Eidos about buying the rights to the Ion Storm name back from them. (presumably to use for his new company)
Ion Storm Austin has always been it's own autonomous unit so I dont think this will hurt them at all.
Darth -- Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
After the sheer number of horrors that came out of there - both PR and game - I'd expected Romero's time to be limited. Daikatana was, I think, just the final blow. Most of their games were either fatally flawed or just out of date.
The only think you can really say is:
Reality just made John Romero its Bitch.
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Brazil has decided you're cute.
> It had no multi-player support for about a year
Talk about deadly combinations!
Neither do The Sims, Roller Coaster Tycoon, and Simcity 3K. All sold REALLY well. So much for no multiplayer being a deadly "un-feature"
> If it has no multi-player capability, then it's gotta' have a longer, more difficult storyline that takes weeks of gameplay to finish (Thief at least did the latter).
Not true. Sim's typically don't have ANY storyline at all. Don't be so quick to lamblast a game just because it has no multiplayer. Sometimes it DOES NOT make much sense for the game - in this case the Sim genre.
Cheers
Amazing to see the continued vitriol.
/. young bucks are having the 20 year reunion in 2018. Picture it with me, won't you?
If only Ion Storm had released a 3d shooter called "Storming Ion Storm", in which you play an opinionated geek running around a virtual community armed with an obnoxiously deadly penchant for regurgitating old jokes about Daikatana, they might have had a grassroots hit on their hands.
Clearly, there are already legions of players here.
FWIW, I'd prefer not to play that game. It was fun two years ago maybe. And maybe it'll come back on a wave of retro-nostalgia when today's
It'll be at a 10x10 booth at PC Expo, the Linux "Woulda Coulda Shoulda" gathering. Two dozen middle-aged dorks sitting around bashing Microsoft and AOL/Time Warner (their booths occupying 95% of the entire tradefloor). Then the subject of crappy games will come up, because X-Box Ultra is the only gaming system around. Then invariably, with the sense of nostalgia for the halcyon days causing all sorts of synaptic activity, someone will say, "You know who used to really SUCK?" - "Jon Katz?" - "No, even more than Katz..." - "Who?" - "Ion Storm!"
A burst of chuckles. Then someone shouts "First Post!", causing everyone else to await his comment.
"Hah- turns out KillCreek made John Romero HER bitch!"
Laughter. One person comments, "Funny +1". Another repeats it. Another. Then someone else says, "Overrated -1". More laughter. Some high fives.
Life will go on, even for those who, while living, do not have a life.
IMHO, Eidos should have shitcanned Dallas two years ago. They would have saved themselves in the vicinity of $10m.
Here's a test for future Eidos executives...
When a title is years behind schedule, you're haemorrhaging staff, and company email indicates a subsidiary is screwing you, do you;
A) Cut the developers loose, or
B) Firehose more money on them in the hope that "Design is Law" and that you don't really need those whiny engineers to create a game. All you need is a "Gaming God" with a rockstar attitude.
To misquote Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back; Fuck Ion Storm Dallas, fuck them in their stupid asses.
Thursday, 7/19/2001
Romero, Hall gone
Warrior | 12:50 | GameSpy News 13 Comments
GameSpy has learned from Eidos that John Romero and Tom Hall have left Ion Storm Dallas.
In a statement released to GameSpy, Eidos said:
"John Romero and Tom Hall have decided to depart ION Storm to pursue other interests. We wish them luck in their future endeavors and thank them for their contribution to Ion Storm over the years, without which we would never have put together such talented teams in both our Austin and Dallas offices. Ion Storm will continue as a wholly owned subsidiary of Eidos and work on the sequels to the awarding winning Thief and Deus Ex titles as well as Deus Ex for the PS2."
Everyone at the Dallas office received a pink slip on Friday and that only a few administration and MIS personnel are left there to close down the office, said a former employee who was part of the layoff.
Eidos would not confirm that the Dallas staff was gone, but said they were waiting to on the sales figures for Anachronox.
Ion Storm Austin was not affected, but Warren Spector will now become head of the Ion Storm subsidiary. The Austin office is looking at changing its name from Ion Storm, but a new name has not yet been chosen.
"Though we went through some turbulent times, our relationship with ION was *super* beneficial at times," said Harvey Smith, who is heading up the Deus Ex 2 team at Ion Storm Austin. "ION gave Warren a place to start building up the earliest version of this studio. (Which is now working on Deus Ex 2 and Thief 3.) Without the initial support of ION Storm, who knows whether we would have been able to create Deus Ex. There were some great people there at the Dallas studio, with lots of passion, and I wish them all the best. The game industry ebbs and flows - heroes today are villains tomorrow, and vice versa."
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
Okay, what actually happened is back in spring of 1997 Looking Glass wasn't doing too hot financially. In May of 1997 I moved from Cambridge, MA (where Looking Glass was located) to Austin to work on a game called Junction Point. Well, imagine my surprise when Looking Glass shut our office down on July 1st. Okay, it wasn't really too surprising. :) They didn't want to do it, but it was either shut down our office and continue to make payroll up in Cambridge, or shut the whole thing down.
A core group of six people stayed together, receiving no salary, and worked on various project ideas and shopped them around (well, Warren shopped them around.) Eventually a deal was struck with Ion Storm to create an Ion Storm Austin office, as none of us wanted to move to Dallas (can you blame us?) We became Ion Storm Austin on September 1, 1997.
The six people who started the office were Albert Yarusso (myself - programmer), Chris Norden (programmer), Steve Powers (designer), Dave Beyer (designer), Kraig Count (artist), and of course Warren Spector. Of those, Steve and Warren are the only full-time employees still with ISA. Chris and I are working as contractors on Deus Ex for the Playstation 2.
Yeah, I like the more simple, more FUN to play games. Who needs 15 buttons on a joy stick or a WHOLE keyboard (mech warrior 4) to play a damn game!
Oh well. I'll just pull out my Apple ][ I guess.
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I can't stop laughing every time I hear that...
...and then I start crying after I remember what happened to Looking Glass Studios.
For those of you who don't know, after releasing the successful (and brilliant) Thief: The Dark Project and Thief II, Looking Glass Studios was denied funding by the publisher so that Ion Storm could continue working on Daikatana.
Looking Glass Studios closed its doors, and Ion Storm kept on keepin' on.
I totally agree with you that it's about time Romero got what was coming to him, but before that happened, a lot of innocent bystanders were hurt.
"The remains" of Ion Storm are now working on Deus Ex 2 and Thief 3. I don't know if that was a poor choice of words or if you were expressing subjective opinion.
Deus Ex is one of the most involved first-person I've ever experienced. To me, it set a new standard for what a first-person game should be. It didn't assume that the player was mentally retarded in terms of storyline, nor did it need to be sprinkled here and there with toilet humour/strippers to remain interesting.
If "Warren Spector," creator of Deus Ex, System Shock, Ultima Underworld, Thief -- a consistently GOOD game designer is considered a remnant of a company, then I'd love to see the state of a full-fledged gaming company.
Amen. Thank for you saying this.
I wonder how Spector feels about this...remember that Ion Storm's parent company is Eidos. And it was Eidos who wasn't able to give Looking Glass Studios the short-term cash to keep them from going belly-up because they were throwing it down the throat of Romero and Ion Storm. And now Spector is heading Ion. The mind boggles...
This is so ironic.
I think that this is a great move on the part of Romero and Hall because assuming that they want to keep working in the gaming industry, they need to start fresh. They tarnished the Ion Storm name because of Daikatana and are going in the right direction if they want to be taken seriously again. Also, they are showing some wisdom by giving a genius like Spector the helm of a development house that already is blooded and has some momentum. Perhaps they are doing this to 'apologise' to Spector for being indirectly responsible for the demise of LGS, which was, IMHO, the most innovative game production house ever. Period.
And about Warren Spector... I'm literally grinning ear to ear about having him at the helm of a production house again! It should be interesting to see if he can turn Ion Storm into another Looking Glass Studios.
Programmer 1: So I'm envisioning a completely non-restrictive mode of play... Pass the bottle will you?
Programmer 2: Like Unreal? It has it's advantages, but -- Damn, this cardboard box isn't very warm, is it?
Programmer 1: You can usually get coats from the Catholic mission. At any rate, I think we can overcome the problems that an unlimited map will create by using this special algorithm.
Programmer 2: It'd be easier to see if it wasn't written on the sidewalk.
Programmer 1: Yeah, I know. It's been a while since I managed to scrounge up any paper.
Programmer 3: Buggrit! I tol' em! Millenium-hand and shrimp....
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John Romero cant leave without his buddy Superfly!
Actually Ion Storm-Austin (Deus Ex) and Ion Storm-Dallas (Daikatana) are becoming two independent companies. Warren Specter's company will be called Manifesto Studios and is currently working on Deus Ex II and Thief III. John Romero and Tom Hall have registered Mentallion.com (Mentallion Industries) and MonkeyStone.com (Monkey Stone Games) however it's undecided which name they will be using. John Romero claimed a while back that he wouldn't be releasing information on his next project after Daikatana was insulted by the gaming community. We're still trying to figure out if that's a good thing or a bad thing...