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The Rise And Fall of Ion Storm
fakeamerican writes: "Here's a lengthy article in Salon about Ion Storm's rise and fall, written by a former employee and lifelong friend of John Romero." Shows what goofing off in class can getcha.
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Here's a nice way to demonstrate the fall of Ion Storm.
"Anonymous Coward" is for whistleblowers, not unpopular opinions.
"Yeah, we were as badly run as all our critics said, and it really was a huge waste of money, time and energy, but Goddamn, it was fun. I miss it. Won't someone give me a job doing the same thing?"
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Well, it's almost that simple. The 'team' you're given in Daikatana is probably the reason the game does so badly. IIRC, you couldn't let any member of the team die... you couldn't shoot through them, ala 'No Friendly Fire' in most FPS arenas today... you had to make allowances for the idiot AI behind your team members... you frequently got stuck because your 'teammates' couldn't get out of your way.
More than anything else, reviews of the crappy team system killed Daikatana's sales, and with Daikatana, Ion Storm failed as well.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
The article states that Romero left id after Quake 2. If my memory serves me correctly, didn't he leave after the original Quake?
For those junkbuster users out there, like me, that get nothing but a blank page when clicking on that link, this link willget you past the ad:
s torm/index.html?x
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/01/02/ion_
Yeah, remember before they actually did anything.
The gaming mags jumped all over them and said they were the second coming... goes to show what they know about things.
Get your Unix fortune now!
The article took five pages without going into much relevant detail.
At the end, he tells us that Daikatana flopped and Deus Ex was awesome, but fails to say why.
Deus Ex was an awesome game. I think that the first person shooter has a tremendous amount of potential to surpass its origins, and Deus Ex is a glimpse into the beginnings of that future.
Attention! Any surviving idiot VCs out there : I have a revolutionary new plan to blow a hundred million dollars, ending up with no tangible return.
All qualified investors, please contact me
What's most ironic about the Daikatana fiasco, the millions spent, egos dissolved, and promises broken, is that the game's title is an *egregious* mistranslation of a Japanese word.
Basically, the designers erroneously believed that the characters for "big" (dai) and "sword" (katana), when slapped together, are pronounced "Daikatana." That's lunacy: this combination would be pronounced "Ogatana," (with an elongated "o.")
It gets worse. Daikatana, or Ogatana, don't exist as accepted descriptions of famous swords in Japanese. The best translation would be Tachi (using the characters for "fat' and 'sword,') but a preferred way of referring to a famous sword is just that: "Meiken," or famous sword.
If the Daikatana team had looked in the history books, or consulted a Japanese expert, they could have avoided this travesty, and dumped the tongue-twisting word "Daikatana" in the rubbish heap. A small investment for quality. But I suppose that hubris had already instilled itself in their minds.
Hubris. That's a Greek word, by the way. As in "classical Greek." Its roots are . . . (continue ad infinitum).
FYI, Warren Spector's (*humble bow*) Austin branch of Ion Storm is alive and well. So don't fear, Deus Ex 2 is still churning.
Deus Ex, of course, is the reason Ion Storm Austin is in business. I'm sure you know why the other branch is closed.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
The article says, in summary, "Ion Storm was a great place to work, and everything was good, until people started attacking them, and then it all went to crap."
Which is, well, debatable. I mean, Daikatana didn't get bad reviews because people wanted to slam Ion Storm; it got bad reviews because it bit. If it had been good, it would've gotten good reviews, regardless of people's like or dislike of Ion Storm. They overreached and failed, end of story.
Of course, my personal dislike of Ion Storm comes from the (admittedly irrational) belief that the money Eidos gave for Daikatana would've been much better spent on Looking Glass Studios.
I remember awhile back hearing about a game called Prey. One feature advertised about it (if I remember correctly...) was the "portal" technology, where you could be looking at a teleporter that would move you somewhere else on the map and actually see that location in real time, while if your character physically looked behind the actual transporter drevice, you'd still see the room. Has this game died yet or have died already. I'm sometimes curious about games that take forever to be developed and are talked about alot but haven't or never make it to the shelf (*cough* Duke Nukem Forever *cough*).
Anyone remember Prey?
ben
I have to agree with what he said about the way FPS need to evolve, but it seems to me the way to do that is not with killer new technology, but better usage of what is out there. I've recently finished thief-2. I think the concept of you go toe to toe, you die lead a lot to the interest I had playing the game. Let's face, a real human is pretty easy to kill. If some one starts shooting at you, chances are it is already too late. A single bullet, arrow, what ever, takes you out. Oh sure, I love quake and rune as much as the next guy, but some how thief really grabbed my interest.
As I post this the majority of replies are below my (1) threshold. Guess angry feelings over ION storm still exist.
Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
Of course I think I'm the only one who liked Anachronox (and probably the only person who actually paid money for it too). People complained about how it wasn't Quake. After all, everything these days is "where do they hide the railgun".
I was disturbed by the hate and bitterness on the message boards.
Doesn't read Slashdot, does he?
sulli
RTFJ.
One thing the article alludes to that I can definitely corroborate is that John Romero has always been tremendously approachable and friendly to fellow gamers. He has never failed to respond to an e-mail I've sent him and will cc: just about anyone in the game industry to answer a question if he doesn't have one. He's sent me copies of his old Apple games on request and provided all kinds of info on old games, history, trivia. When he says "I'll check my old diskettes and send you an e-mail when I get home from work" he does, no exceptions. I'm not even in the media -- I just like games!
In some ways the Ion Storm / John Romero situation reminds me a bit of the Microsoft / Bill Gates situation. While many people hate Microsoft and make Bill Gates the butt of every joke, very few people who know him ever call his character into question. While the very mention of Ion Storm and John Romero make some people hopping mad, very few people who have met John hold him in such disregard. Maybe people need to make a better distinction between a "company" and a "person." They aren't the same thing.
Sorry - The company that got the funding that could have gone to Looking Glass - Which made the *BEST* ever first person shooter, 'Thief', deserves none.
But that's a nice long torrid soap opera in itself. And yes, they got the money because one team had a 'superstar', and the other dev team didn't.
I perfer the one that actually shipped some incredible games which pushed the FPS genre to its limits, thanks.
"meiken" sounds like a shitty name for a videogame. "Daikatana" at least implies to the casual listener that a sword is involved.
I don't know what is more funny? But yes I will reply.
IT WAS A JOKE! I in fact am very white. But 1/4 is not.
It's like a pun, you know.
"Come to Cincinnati - You'll have a riot!"
Joke
Joke
Joke
Joke
Get your Unix fortune now!
I think it is disappointing that the majority of people will jump on the bandwagon and knock Ion and/or Romero. As the old adage goes, you are never as good as they say but never as bad as they proclaim.
Yes, Daikatana was crap, and it was a great waste of money and a temple of excess. So? You could probably argue that the only money wasted was the money of those industry luminaries who have made their millions on the back of underappreciated tech workers and overpriced games. Personally I also think Ion would have been a great place to work at the start - pool tables, hard-core office etc. It was just the politics that fucked up what was probably a flair call on the part of the founders.
Knock the company for making a crap game yes, but when it comes to personal stuff and how companies operate I say to each his own.
my name is all to similar to the title "Daikatana" :)
That REALLY pisses me off when people ask me if that is my name!
I hope John Romero rots for that
BTW: My nick is my old nick backwards (heh, it was once a "trolling" nick for IRC, now i'm always a bastard...)
Peace, Love, Games
WOW!!! that article should be expanded and turned into a made for TV movie....Like "Pirates of Silicon Valley"
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
No wonder it was so hard to find a job..
And here I thought it was just goofy Doom'ers on IRC that thought I was related..
Rick Romero
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Romero rubbed elbows with the technical and creative mastery at iD software. He thought he learned all the tricks.
So he breaks off after 'creative differences' and wrenches the rudder of Ion Storm into a freefall, shitting out Daikatana on the way down.
Oh but he had SOO much fun and got to shtup Stevie Case. Whee.
m00.
From the looks of Stevie "KillCreek" Case, she's been working in *cough* silicon valley quite a bit since hooking up with Romero...
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
TV Commercial style - interruption advertisements are LAME. Salon.com has just lost a reader, of you ask me.
da w00t. mtfnpy?
Ah, once more with the same tune: "everybody who was talking trash about Ion Storm just wishes they could have worked there!!!"
No.
I suggest that anybody who is actually interested in the reasons why Ion Storm became an industry synonym for mismanagement and failure dig up the original articles by BitchX and Flamethrower that started off the whole public meltdown. Ion Storm did not fail because people were jealous of how well John Romero treated his friends. Ion Storm failed because Romero, Porter and Hall were incompetant managers who treated their talented employees like dirt, and focussed on creating a cult of personality rather than actually completing a game.
Unfortunatly, as revisionist screeds like Divine's article prove, that cult of personality is Ion Storm Dallas' most lasting legacy, long out-living their forgettable games.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Well I suppose this may be true, the same way you'd never call into question the character of a shark. "He just came up and chomped my leg off. I guess he was hungry."
m00.
Reading that self-serving tripe was not anyfun; it was neither fun, not funny.
Let me summarize all 5 useless pages.
I knew Romero. He gave me a job. Everything you read was true but it was fun. Despite our best websurfing Ion Storm went under. I love John. I need a job.
I want my ten minuutes back.
This
I believe it was Carmack that made the observation that, "I can write software on a computer set on a cheap desk just as well as one set on an expensive desk." (I'm sure its not an exact quote, but the this is the gist of what he said.) As I have been going through negotiations to spin off a product from my current employer into another company run by a few of us employees, this type of wisdom was really needed. All the engineers are for renting a hole-in-the-wall and putting banquet tables in the cubicles, and the marketing person wants to rent a posh execuive office suite. Nevermind that our clients would never come to visit us or that we can't afford to employee anyone at a market wage. I'm sure she didn't read the story, even though I sent the URL.
I think the bottom line is that software's largest cost is labor, and it should remain the largest cost. Making the company support the lifestyle of the employees or the partners is a mistake.
Misleading at best! Daikatana 'made money' in the sense that some copies were, in fact, sold, but you also need to consider how much was SPENT in the making...
I envisioned the apocalyptic San Francisco as a psychedelic wasteland. But I learned how valuable my ideas were when I excitedly approached a designer about making a psychedelic level in Haight/Ashbury. "Yeah, man, sure, that's gay," was his arctic response.
So, is the designer just the typical moronic FPS-playing homophobe, or is he positively affirming San Francisco demographics? The mind reels...
How can he babble on about distractions and such inside the company and fail to mention KillCreek's new breasts and their subsequent display (along with the rest of her body) in Playboy!?
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
the conditions of va linux systems before the great fall....
Hate to tell you, but that game was canned a few years ago.
I think Daikatana and Anachronox were massively ambitious games of the sort you can expect when designers are given free rein to be truly bold (see also Black and White). But as the first game the team had worked on together, for many the first they had worked on at all, it would have been difficult even without the political shenanigans. I think we've all heard about the Third Law incident, and let me remind you that there were a total of five lead programmers, the last of which (Shawn Green) being the only programmer to span the length of the project. For another thing, as you seem to have noticed, the programmer who was working on sidekick AI left six months before the game went gold...
It's sad, really. I always hate to see bad things happen to pretty girls like John Romero.
Have you ever been to Japan?
:) Plus, most people can figure out what the heck they mean when they use those to Kanji together...
Even in Japan, it's not like they follow grammatical rules to the RULE. Especially in movie titles and the such. They also like to do plays on words using characters.
Anyway, the point is that while word such as 'daikatana' doesn't exist, but THIS IS A BLOODY GAME. You can make up anything you want for a game title.
I kept reading, waiting for anything insightful in the five pages worth of descriptive melodrama, and came up empty.
As a programmer in the game industry, I've had many friends work at Ion Austin over the years and all of them think very, very highly of Warren Spector. I'm really glad they have proven to be capable under his leadership.
What I really disliked about Ion Dallas and John Romero's public image was the inherent cheapness. I liken it to a trailer trash lottery winner, embarassing everyone else in the industry with his grand standing. Sadly, Mr. Romero may be a fantastic designer, but all Ion Storm proved was his inability to run a company. There are some people who can do both, and he's not one of them.
Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
As this story illustrates, Romero thought he could hire anyone who might remotely fit into the company. He wasn't interested in building a successful business: he was interested in building a company that was fun go to every day. But despite his puerile, myopic goals, he was given an outrageous amount of resources.
In short, the existence of Ion Storm exemplifies the core philosophical flaws that led to the bursting of the "internet bubble." Companies like Eidos appropriated funds on the basis of hype rather than sound business ideas. By any objective standards, Eidos, John Romero and Ion Storm deserved to fail at every level.
Give it a rest already!
goddammit, how dare you slight our enourmous contingent of AC trolls! Every single nomination was for some troll with a UID!!! Those people are in it for the glory! The poeple who are in it for the love of art and who freely give back to the troll community routinely post as AC! Time to recognize the raucous majority!
Killcreek, Before and After. Or: how a woman can succeed in the gaming industry -- a story in pictures.
From the article:
>But with great success came great antipathy, not just for John, but also for many of his
>employees.
The employees did sort of get a raw deal by association, but to ascribe all of the antipathy towards Romero to jealousy is really missing the point.
>Daikatana and Deus Ex were finally released in 2000. Predictably, Daikatana was slammed while
>Deus Ex received many awards. Both made money for Eidos
Deus Ex made money. Daikatana lost an immense amount of money. We followed the PC-Data sales numbers for a little while, and it was really, really grim. It might have made a comback when it went to the bargain bin, but even if it had turned into the best selling game of the year, it wouldn't have covered the sunk costs at Ion.
My view:
Ion storm failued due to lack of focus, which came from the top. They had some great employees (we hired some of them!), but games don't get done without someone in a position of authority forcing everything together. Romero's primary mistake was believing that abstract creative design was a primary, or even significant, part of a successful game. The "strategic creativity" in a game is less than 1% of the effort, and if you put that on a pedestal, you will deephasise where all the real work needs to be done.
I think Romero has a chance at a comeback with his current foray into handheld games. I don't think he ever lost the enthusiasm for games, but if he can recapture the personal work ethic that he had early on, he can probably still do some pretty cool things.
John Carmack
...didn't you hear? Design is law!
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
John Romero Releases Details on Next Project: "John Romero Presents John Romero's 'John Romero'"
"He was a wise man who invented beer." -- Plato
and a great monitor. nothing kills productivity like tired eyes and a sore behind.
I worked in the same building for a time. The law office I worked for was on the 49th floor, at the top of the keyhole. Here's a picture of the Chase Tower (formerly known as the Texas Commerce Tower). Arguably, space at the top of the keyhole was more prestigious than the floors above, including 54, where you couldn't even see the keyhole space. Maybe that was part of their problem. Their office space wasn't cool enough.
Another point of view regarding the Ion Storm office space was written up in 1998 here.
Coincidentally, the lawyer I worked for had a thing for style and appearance. He spent too much time worrying about that and not enough about his cases. As a result he ended up losing a HUGE case, filed for bankruptcy, lost his house and his wife and Mercedes, and had to move to a low-rent district in Dallas. Lawyers seem to always land on their feet, much like cats, however, so now, 3 years later, he's doing quite well again. I wish the Ion guys the same good fortune.
What's most ironic about the Daikatana fiasco, the millions spent, egos dissolved, and promises broken, is that the game's title is an *egregious* mistranslation of a Japanese word.
Never mind the booring gameplay, sub-standard graphics, pointless AI, the fact that it was such a resource hog that it could bring a top-notch PC to it's knees, and it was 2+ years late coming to market, it was the title that was the most obnoxious error!
If the Daikatana team had looked in the history books, or consulted a Japanese expert, they could have avoided this travesty, and dumped the tongue-twisting word "Daikatana" in the rubbish heap. A small investment for quality.
Naturally, a better title would have made all the difference in the world.
Not!
The Daikatana team could have avoided this travesty and dumped the whole project in the rubbish heap! It would have been a small investment for quality!
I don't think that Daikatana has any positive lessons for the software or gaming industry. Just lots of bad ones...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
> Daikatana lost an immense amount of money.
As both a player and programmer of games, I can suggest four words that caused this: electric powered gas hands.
That's it.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
One of the best (IMHO) stories about the mess that was Ion Storm was by the Dallas Observer. It was covered in this old (1999!) /. article Ion Storm has Financial and Personnel difficulties. The story link is out of date as the Observer changed their website structure. The story is located here.
The "strategic creativity" in a game is less than 1% of the effort
Goes a long way toward explaining why so many games are loser copies of old shit, doesn't it? Coding is easy; coming up with a worthwhile, original idea -- that's harder.
I suppose some might find this interesting, and it does demonstrate some of what John is saying. First a bit of background: Day of Defeat is a Half-Life mod, I was part of the original team with Lil Squirel and Das Juden. Today, the mod has been released and is mildly popular. Lil Squirel and Das Juden came up with the concept somewhere around October 99. Lil knew I was a programmer, so asked me to join, I gave him some ideas, but refrained from joining until December because I was busy with school. I left the team in late April 2000.
DoD's initial design was killer. It had character classes, realistic damage, radar (yes, DoD had radar before CS), vehicles (jeeps, tanks), flame-thowers, grenades that you could dive on or throw back at your enemies, deployable tripod mounted machine-guns, and maps reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan, just to list a few; and this was just for version 1. We had all these incredibly cool concepts for effects and so forth but the team was so disorganised that nobody knew who was doing what; as John put it, there was no "someone in a position of authority forcing everything together". I was told to code the Thompson, I did and a short time later found out that it's code had already been written. I eventually got fed up with the whole thing and left the team. Apparently some time afterward the team underwent an overhaul and, to my surprize, eventually released Day of Defeat, I believe, over a year after its conception and with a different design altogether.
I'd like to know exactly how J.C. defines "abstract creative design" and "strategic creativity". I'm a game designer, and most projects I've seen suffered from a *lack* of a clear, comprehensive design up front. I don't know if that's what he means or not.
Withess Hyperspace Delivery Boy. That took what, a week?
Schnapple
"i know, let's throw some mechanical frogs here, a stereotyped sidekick here.. yeah. that works! we're rich and stuff!" I agree with Carmack that it was partly Romero's loose-fisted approach to management. But it seems like the team didn't make any attempt at managing themselves. Daikatana, the game, makes no goddamned sense, and failed. There didn't seem to be any organization. But it's obvious that it's not entirely the fault of only Romero or Hall, since Anachronox is a great game. But then, it's their fault that it was released. That they let the entire project degrade so much. But in the end, Ion Storm begat Ion Storm Austin. Warren Spector got a chance to really show how much he's worth. And for that, I'm thankful.
Link down after you bastards abused the hell out of my piddly 128k upstream.
Bob
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
Shouldn't that be "Fall and Sink?"
The main problem I have with the article is that in the nine months I spent employed/indentured at Ion Storm Dallas, I never once saw or heard of the author coming into the building, much less working on actually developing the so-called "plot" of Daikatana. (I realize that may not be a huge deal... after all, if anything in game development can be done remotely, it's hacking together a story for the action to take place in light of, but it's still rather interesting to me to note that...)
As far as Daikatana making money, there's no way it could have without being by FAR the best selling of all PC titles to date. I remember tossing numbers around with a few other colleagues, and based on a very generous $8 per-unit-sold profit, to break even Daikatana would have had to have sold somewhere near 4.5 million units (at full launch price mind you) to have broken even, based on the amount of money fronted to IS by Eidos for startup costs and such. Those are insane numbers in the PC market as I'm sure you all know, even with the best-selling flagship titles.
As for Romero being without ego and a level-headed individual, that had a lot to do with how far you were willing to debase yourself in order to be allowed into his little inner-circle. Many of us simply weren't willing to do that I suppose.
I can say that my time there was well-spent, if only as a way of teaching myself that not all is wine and roses in the industry, and to allow myself the knowledge to look for red flags before getting into a similar situation later down the road. I'm glad to see that Ion-austin survived and flourished on its own, and didn't get mired down by the crap that happened in its brother to the north. They did it the right way -- knuckling down, being quiet, and focusing on the job at hand, rather than the celebrity that those in Dallas seemed to want. I really think if the 'Storm in Dallas had paid more attention to the way Warren Spector and Co. did things, Ion Storm would have been much different, and this article wouldn't need to exist.
GameSpot had a really long and good recap of what happened at Ion Storm and with Romero. It is a couple years old but was written after the game shipped.
http://www.gamespot.com/features/btg-daikatana/
After Wolf3d made a big splash Id were quite famous . When you get famous, if you talk people will listen. People were eager to hear about what would be in future games. Romero was eager to tell them, unfortunately there wasn't a great deal of correlation between what Romero announced and what turned up in the end. A similar thing happened with Quake. Romero's comments seemed to be rooted in a "wouldn't it be cool if..." style of thought rather than having a clear plan of the implementation of those ideas.
Admittedly, it can be a bit of a tightrope. I am a game developer myself and there is a tendancy to only put things into a game that you already know how to do. When someone makes a suggestion saying "wouldn't it be cool if..." I know I can be very resistent if it would require going back and redoing a heap of stuff. Many times though, If you do go back the results are very rewarding. You have to balance things though. If you stay in the "Wouldn't it be cool if..." mode of thought you could end up with an absolutely amazing game that never gets released (or possibly even worse, an absoluletly amazing game considering the core technology used but that technology is several years behind everyone elses)
John Carmack is in a better position than most. He is _extremely_ talented. I remember a few years back having a conversation with a mix of some of my programmer and gamer friends. The average (serious) gamer has heard of Carmack these days and thinks he makes really cool rendering engines. That wan't the bit that impressed us programmers. It was the structure of the _rest_ of the game that impressed us. Almost everything is done the _right_ way. This meant that not only could the game show pretty pictures but it was flexible. John Carmacks strong technological focus has allowed far more "wouldn't it be cool if..." things to be added than if he had done things the far more common expedient way.
John Carmack has also gone on record in saying that the gameplay is the most important part.
I think Romero was mistaken when he thought that Carmacks focus was in the wrong place. It may just be that he didn't want the game to be going in the same direction.
That is the key thing about Carmack though. I consinder myself to be a programmer of similar capablilities to John Carmack, I know several others at a similar level. That's not the thing that makes Carmack great. It's that he has a much clearer idea of his vision and the focus to keep to that. He seems to know where hes going so much more than me anyway. Of all the programmers I know I only know one other that I consider equally talented in that respect.
Romero seems an ok Programmer and a talented level designer, but I'm not sure if he has what it takes to be a game design or programming great.
Quake 3 and From the looks of it Doom 3 are good examples of games with a good clear direction. Between these two games ID has actually made a concious effort to focus distintly differant game styles for the benefits of each style. It's things like that that make me anticipate a game so much more than anything I heard about Diakatana. They focus on what they want to have rather than what they want to put into it. There is a diffrance, and I believe it is an important one.
[The article is also a bit misleading by starting the Id story with Wolf3d rather than the people emerging from Softdisk]
-- That which does not kill us has made its last mistake.
"Cult of Personality". That has a ring. Just imagine the game scenarios you could build around that game...
This is actually sort of half-way serious. I can't really imagine the play, but it's certainly a popular theme in history and politics.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Please mod me up five points.
:)
People think Microsoft is the answer. Microsoft is just the question, "No" is the answer.
ps: this post is ment as a general statement. Pleaaase, pleease. Everytime when John Carmack makes a post, there are always posts about he is a god, a genius, blahblah. fact: he is a genius. so please shut up about it. And do not agree with him because you think he is your god, but also try to give your own opinion once in a while.
I asked him if he ever got emails mistaking him for the Quake guy, and he said occasionally, and he forwarded them to the correct John Romero, who kindly thanked him, so I don't doubt your tale one bit.
"It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
Before ION Storm crashed and burned (20 million down the drain which caused Looking Glass to close, the bastages) I thought John (Romero) was kind of arrogrant. His "Design is Law" quote did it for me.
No, Design is NOT law -- Design *along with* Technology should dictate the game. Too much of either one, and you get a bad game.
It's interesting to see it told "from the inside." I guess John is a nice guy after all, but it's hard to know that, when the media loved to put him on a pedestal, and then tear him down again.
Unfortunately the damage has been done, and John has lost credability in the public. It will be interesting to see what he does next.
Stop looking at p0rn. ;-) (Just kidding.)
Serisously, I agree that a good chair and monitor are a godsend.
I just picked up this AOC LM-700 LCD. It's bright, clear, easy on the eyes, lightweight, and takes up little deskspace. It's a perfect monitor for coding & LAN parties!
The guys over at Netslaves bashed him a new one with some great firebacks to all his whining check it out
o ar d=005&action=display&num=1010008190
http://www.netslaves.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?b
"But the Romero-Carmack collaboration didn't last -- after the release of Quake 2, John Romero left id."
Romero was let go from id, it wasn't voluntary.
"Todd Porter also came onboard with his strategy game Dominion"
Ion bought dominion from another company, got it semi working and sold it to burn up one of their game commitments they had to Eidos, even they knew it was shit. This is all very clear in the leaked emails.
"Daikatana and Deus Ex were finally released in 2000. Both made money for Eidos"
JohnC already mentioned this but Daikatana brought in far less then what was spent on making it.
Further proof that any game based on the designers old role-playing games inevitably suck©
"Freedom in cyberspace'd be fine and dandy if we happened to live there."
I don't think I'm replying to anything/anyone in particular so welcome to my own personal rant.
For a start I think the whole "Stevie as Romero's whore" thing has been done to death. The fact that she's continuously held up as some kind of template for those of us without external genitals wanting to get into the industry is fecked enough, without her being dropped into discussions like this. She is one of a group of people who formed a team at Ion Storm. There are a lot of people who worked there and they have lost out badly because of the company's demise. She was not a cause of the collapse, and she has no bearing on the outcome as it pertains to Romero or anyone else involved.
Let her alone, and don't propagate the myth that women spread their legs to get into the industry. I myself am deadly serious about turning my art into a career in gaming and I don't want to be perceived as a 'cult of body', whether potentially, because I'm a woman with ambitions on that direction, or in fact, because I don't intent to screw my way into gaming. I game, I skin, I model, and I want to be paid to do the latter two. Those of you who see chicks in gaming as some kind of PR exercise or pet can get knotted. The whole Engrish/metaJapanese thing isn't really contructive either...
As to the relevant stuff, I think Carmack's read on this is strong. Aside from the fact that he knows the particulars and the parties involved, teams are the foundations for all development projects. It doesn't matter how talented a crew is if they aren't coherent as a group, and that coherence takes solid leadership, and robust lines of communication. Once you lose those no amount of talent will make things work.
And that's just leadership within each team. Ion Storm had more than one team, and the DE team obviously did something very right, but that means nothing if the blanket management of all the teams isn't working well. A company doesn't succeed because they have one team working smoothly, and a game house isn't just development in a box. Sound administrative management, good financial direction, and realistic business models play in as well.
I'm no expert but it seems to me that Ion Storm was a house of cards, built with some quality cards, but by a shakey hand in a high wind.
After all, without him we couldn't have great jokes like these at his expense!
***
I totally agree that "Stevie bashing" has been overdone, BUT, wheather she deserves it or not, she has become an easy target.
Why? Well, from the way I look at it - it's hard to believe that shes worked her way up the proverbial ladder on talent alone. I mean, she won a Quake tournament against Romero, and thats how they met each other. Ok, fine. After that, she's a QA tester at Ion - thats cool too. QA testing could be considered entry-level by some standards. (I don't believe she had any industry experience at this point.) But after that, shes designing levels for Daikatana?!?! As far as I know, she had no experience mapping whatsoever at that point. (A sign, perhaps?) Ironically, at this point she's dating one of the owners. (Romero!) So, the game finally ships, reviews are negative (especially some scathing reviews about level design) and Daikatana bombs. Somewhere in middle of it all she decides to get breast implants and start a modeling career. As far as I can tell, she makes her website out to be some sort of semi-personal diary/soapbox and she makes mention of her career in the video game industry (how much she loves it, etc.) but she has nothing to show for it. All of the downloads there are softporn pics and winamp skins. (IMHO, it's more of a resume for her modeling career) Now shes vice president at Romeros new company.
Interesting to say the least!
After looking at all the "facts" it's easy to see why she gets ripped apart so much.
As an aside: As for the collapse of Ion and her relation to it - well, I'm sure she wasn't "the cause" per se. But the fact she was dating the head-honcho at the time couldn't have helped!
Tell that to Bungie who had to rape the original idea of what Halo was intended to be to fit Microsoft's plans and have it be yet another FPS game.
For some reason this idea that Microsoft imposed by fiat radical gameplay changes on Halo keeps coming up here. At the risk of repeating myself... there's really just not a lot of evidence for the theory. Rumors of a change from 3rd-person to 1st-person perspective in Halo predated the Microsoft buyout by at least three months, and the basic storyline and gameplay mechanics of Halo appear to be largely unchanged since the E3 2000 demos. (Inasmuch as we knew what they were even then -- Bungie was smart enough to play it very close to the hip to give themselves room to work out playability issues as development progressed.)
Obviously, internet multiplayer went out the window when Halo moved to the XBox, but Bungie apparently felt that was a reasonable sacrifice to make in return for being given several metric tons of cash and a guaranteed audience of millions for their flagship game. Can't say I blame em for that choice.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Oh yeah, she's an easy target. Any woman so blatantly sexual in gaming is always going to be either trashtalked by horney little gamer boys (inevitable), or despised for seeming to climb ladders while remaining horizontal (apparently incontrovertable truth - pffft!). The truth is though that she was mapping before she got into QA (at least I understood she was at the time), and I doubt she or any other individual Ion Storm team member outside of management played any role in the death of the company. How much do most of her antagonists know about her? They see sex, and assume whoring. If I happened to be cute and succeeded in my ambitions would you assume I'm a slut? As to her development of a Killcreek cult of body, that's not really relevant either. She did it for God knows what reasons, and it's earned her some very unpleasant attention, but it's nothing to do with the demise of Ion Storm. The reason I criticised the inclusion of her in this discussion was more because I resent that her perceived ethic (no matter how inaccurate it may be) seems to carry over to other women in the eyes of the gaming public. I've had to work really hard to earn respect and avoid the sexual posturing of the testosterone-soaked gaming mass, despite the fact that I game, talk about gaming, and don't flirt with my opponents. It's bullshit, and this trotting out of the "Killcreek slept her way into the industry" line is not helping at all. Whether you think it's true or not it's counterproductive to regurgitate the KC legends. They've all been heard before, and have never been anything but an outpouring of malice. I just want that whole image of womenin gaming as unprofessional to go away.
I thought what he had to say had heart, something that is in severe lacking on the internet. Too many people have become used to being synical while hiding behind their screens.
All these lamars who sya i am a stonar and haev crayz ideas aer just lamars - hwo mayn games haev you maed lamars? I haev teh imaginashun adn storylien it taeks to maek it in tihs indsutry.
Grate ideas can not be limmited to a lamar codar or mappar's gay limmitashuns. All taht mattars is what i see in my dreems when i am stodned. Taht is why i haev learned to code progroms myself adn teh art to, so my grate vishons can be reel and make me mroe money for fast cares that teh chickes liek.
So fi you want ot see i am nto a lamar anymor PLEASE DOWNLODE MY NEW FREE PLAM PALOT APPES AT HTTP://WWW.MONKEYSTONE.COM. Remembar ZELDA on teh GAY NES (Nentindo Extra Suck) systum? Well if u are a PLAM PALOT or jsut want to be a PLAM PILOT get ARE NEW GAME THAT IS NTO GAY "HYPERSPACE DELIVERY BOY". Be teh boy!
Do not downlode are gaem if you aer gay, we like chickors and have fast cares. When i go to town, poeple know who i am, becuase i haev a fast care. Be teh boy!
TEH RAMIRO
ps i am nto gay i haev a fast care and killcreke
ps u need ur credat card to play aer free games lamar. Don't wory, i am not teh hackor.
ps u need ur credat card for killcreke to
ps brign teh weed adn u can haev a ride in my fast care.
ps no my gaem is not gaye! hyperspace delivary boy gets all teh chixors. downlode teh APPES and see!
ps remembar that gaem Quaek from IT softwaer? i rote that for tohse LAMARS. i sued to be rich befoer teh lamars i hired rewened my good ideas and stroylien
ps brign a pizza for killcreke
ps bring teh weed
yeah i aem getting angery abuot teh trashtlak abuot killcreke, she is a niec layd and we highard her on her own merrits. Beleive me, on hre merrits. if yuo had money and was nto a gay lamar yuo would be abel to highar teh sexiest fat chickes to.
All teh lamars jsut need to stop beign gay adn get a chickor liek me. But yuo will need a fsat car and a lot of money liek me!
TEH RAMIRO
ps i aem not a stonar and am definatly nto gay!
ps were is teh weed u aer brigning lamar?we nede it fore are ideas to maek more millions and gte teh hottest fat chickes
I was lucky enough to go to the Eidos party at E3 in 1999.
These were heady days. Daikatana was about to be finally released. The PSX was at its peak. PC gaming was growing, growing, growing.
And I was standing next to Warren Specter in the queue.
He told me who he was, and I asked why he was standing with the plebs, rather than going through the VIP route he was no doubt entitled to.
Warren laughed and said he was with his team, and no way was he leaving them.
It is a rare thing to see someone with such a reputation prefer his team to his convenience, and whatever happened to ION Storm I wish him well.
--- My dad's political betting
Anyone know what Todd Porter is up to these days? Dead? In hiding?
I don't think she was ever mapping before ION. However, she did have experience doing QA on a quake mod of some sort prior to ION. (Produced by a company called WizardWorks, I don't believe it ever shipped though...)
Anyway, her reputation is all but trashed. If you want female rolemodels in the videogame industry look elsewhere:
GirlGirl Games - CEO Laura Groppe
http://www.girlgames.com/girlgames/
HER Interactive - CEO Sheri Graner Ray
http://www.herinteractive.com/
And as far as female quake players go, hasn't Kornelia been a developer for a bit now? These are a few what I percieve to be successful role models. Not as famous maybe, but still...
In your post, you said:
If I happened to be cute and succeeded in my ambitions would you assume I'm a slut?
Normally, no I wouldn't. But if you were bed-bouncing with my boss with a brand new set of implants (and we were working on the same project), I might!
Why is this still at 1?
When she did that photoshoot with Playboy, wasn't Daikatana development still in crunch mode? Weren't coders putting in 12+ hour days? So while a bunch of people are working their asses off, she's posing nude when she's should've been testing/mapping/whatever. Yeah, great role model.
(Please note: it's not the flauting of her sexuality that bothers me, it's the timing with witch she chose to advertise those, um, particular talents.)
Shit, I wish there were MORE female gamers. I'm fortunate to have a handful as friends. But I can live without people that ride on the coattails of others.
I don't look on Ms Case as a role model. I think I was coding BASIC and painting in oils when she was in kindergarten fingerpainting and unable to tie her own shoelaces. I don't need a role model. I just get sick of the way she's perceived reflecting on me and other female game artists/coders/designers.
The trouble is she's very high-profile, but not because she's proven herself extraordinary in her field. She may be a complete sweetheart, and could be a whizz level designer - I have no way of knowing since I don't know her myself and didn't like the Q2 feel of the Daikatana demo enough to look further - but that means dick to my users.
I'm a gamer and a game artist, and I specialise in skinning/modelling T&A, but my own inbuild T&A shouldn't be the concern of my users. The trouble is that because the T&A of one level designer are under such scrutiny it's become a factor, and I don't like that.
Sorry to Stevie if she's reading this, because nobody likes to be attacked whether personally or professionally, but the truth is she's set a precedent that is a barrier. I hope she either turns out some damned good work soon, or ramps back the cult of body so she can be taken seriously or cease to be the most well-known female developer out there.
It's not that she's a bad role model for women. It's that she's a bad example for gamers to see as the norm where female developers are concerned.
re. "Normally, no I wouldn't. But if you were bed-bouncing with my boss with a brand new set of implants (and we were working on the same project), I might!", glad to hear it.
In any case, whether she's a role model or not she has no place in the discussion of Ion Storm's closure, hence my first post. I'm sorry I posted now, because I seem to have started a whole new thread that's going in the opposite direction to what I'd like.
Roberta Williams, Sierra-Online. Practically created the PC gaming industry. Worked with her husband too, if I remember correctly. Well-respected by everyone. Every 80s gamer knows and remembers Roberta Williams - one of the single most influental people in computer gaming, if not the most. John Carmack, Roberta Williams - I would place them as peers in slightly different realms of the industry. Nobody equates Roberta Williams with Killcreek.
You're probably the sort of dildo who thinks that Excite@home got a bad rap.
Plus lte me show yuo why i am nto gay. Poeple say i am gay becuase i make a game called "hyperspace delivary boysth" but i am nto gay becuase i have teh riceburner and teh hottee. Whta do you have huh? Did yuo write Quaek? I did.
Click -Steevee is hot
Taht's why I rule. To apprecaite how much i rule yuo haev to see teh before pictures to. This is what moeny will do for yuo if yuo have teh skills nad storyline.
This si teh before: teh proto-hottee
If yuo haev teh money and teh fast cares like me yuo can maek any scragg into a hottee in picteurs. Probably most of these poeople who takl the trash abuot me wuold haev to find a real hottee to taek pictures of and maek a killer webseit that showes how cool yuo aer like Stevee's. But i haev teh cares and teh money and teh chicks and teh PALM PILATE APPES. So kepe taklin yuor trash.
Hwo cna trashtlakers sya steevee is not teh super game developer? Look at thoes pictuers! That si what I maed. See why i am eliet and yuo aer lamers? Wehn i go to town, poeple know me. They say look it si that guy with teh bleachie with teh groteskly (what deos that maen) large brests who always wants to show yuo teh game he has ni his pocket.
Have soem respect fro steevee, she si a roll model for female develapers everywere.
TEH ROMERO
Be teh boy
I was a programmer on Anachronox for its first year (7/97-8/98) and its last year (9/00-07/01), and experienced both the early high-flying days of Ion and the final days of packing up our cubes. The article is pretty accurate about the early days. At around six, all work would stop, and people would whip out the Quake/Doom action. I learned a few new words for certain parts of the human anatomy and had a blast screaming them at my coworkers as we gibbed each other. Perhaps the ultimate moment was personally inciting Romero into busting his mouse and kicking up computer cases lying around, screaming in frustration and defeat :)
What the article fails to mention is some of the crap we had to put up with, especially as the years progressed and there was no game visible from either team (Dominion does not count). But everybody has heard these things, although usually before the employees of Ion would, so there's no need to mention them again.
What really bugs me is the way the article brushes the Anachronox team off the way you would brush half a stinkbug out of your Chipotle burrito -- Anachronox being the only well-received product to ship from Ion Dallas.
This self-entitled "hardcore elegy" for Ion Storm is a disservice to the hardcore workers that managed to push Anox out the door despite the extreme lack of manpower, subsequent Loss of Any Life Outside of Work, legacy code from ex-employees that would make baby Jesus cry, and plagues of other internal problems that disheartened us every day.
In the end though, we realized that Dark Pathing -- cube-talk consisting of how much the situation sucks, talk which escalates in desperation and bitterness as more people chime in -- is ultimately less productive (but more fun) than just Sucking It Down and finishing the damn project.
More importantly, at least on Anachronox, we made the sacrifices and stuck it through, not because of the magnetic personality of John Romero, but because the main contributors shared a pride for their work, and mutual love and respect for each other. We actually enjoyed working with people who were our friends, and wanted to see the project to the bitter end.
I certainly hope that all game employers make sure to read the article so they understand that we were all pot-smoking Lost Boys who thought it was "good to have women around." Certainly this Elegy to the Hardcore is no Speaker for the Dead.
i spent from 97-99 at ion dallas, from the quadrangle (ion's first digs) to my cube atop the 54th floor. i don't recall seeing you either, tho i don't know who you are. i never claimed to write the plot for daikatana -- the article is quite clear there. i did write the widely used synopsis, dialogue, and the cinematic cut scenes. development hell removed a lot of my work, but it happens. i'm glad you didn't "debase yourself to get into romero's little circle", you just happily took a phat paycheck to work for a company you didn't care for. that happens too. peace.
I visited Ion Storm once or twice. The office suite was a triumph of hubris over practicality. The whole thing was essentially a giant skylight -- we all know how good those are when computers are around, right? It was also totally impractical to go in and out of (I think it actually required an elevator switch to get to the 54th floor).
Anyone who's been around in tech or especially games knows that there's generally an inverse relationship between the swankness of the office space and the quality of the work done there/longevity of the place.
That goes double for Ion storm. The rent on that place must have just been totally untenable, and yet it contributed to a feeling, among the employees, of "damn, we've arrived!" and not, what I think it should have been, which is "damn, we have a lot of work to do!"
All your salaries and benefits and stock shares don't mean shit if you don't design your company to take in more money than it pays out, and wasting money on ostentatious office space may get you a page or two in TIME, but it doesn't, long term, pay the rent, so to speak.
(And yes, my desk is a door over two saw horses in an office with 6 other people... but we make shitloads of money, and fairly good games)
-AC
I don't seem to have the problem when I use Opera
Not that anyone cares, but I took over a project five weeks ago; the project already cost four times the original estimate (yes, it is a governemental project).
I'm willing to cut down the feature list just to get it through.
The visions have been great but the reality check nil.
Any idea how much more cubicles cost than building simple small offices? Hint: wood and drywall is cheap.
Why they continue to buy cubicles, especially when productivity is lower in them, is beyond me.
--
Marc A. Lepage
Software Developer
Seriously, even one of my books on game design has a chapter on Roberta Williams. Go research and learn.
--
Marc A. Lepage
Software Developer
I still have only this one thought, reckoning back before Daikatana:
Daikatana is everything people were predicting Half-Life would be.
This is why I trust Valve when they say they're still working on Team Fortress 2 and it'll be good.
LookingGlass Studios did everything Ion Storm tried to be. Check out the Thief series as well as System Shock 2. If only they hadn't gone under as well...
"the good dev team could make a good, fun product out of a bad design."
This sounds like a definition of ID's post-romero games. [though it's debatable whether Q3 ever became "fun"]
ion storm dallas failed because people kept insulting that company. Daikatana is a good game. i beat the shareware version i had on a PC Gamer CD and enjoyed it. good music, good graphics, the 2 sidekicks were an enjoyable addition.
EnVisiCrypt: 'Pardon, but I have to ask why you feel that "strategic creativity is less than 1% of the effort"? '
Considering the amount of work that goes into a game, 1% is still a lot. And most types of creativity result in yet more work to get done -- and it sounds like a lot of Daikatana's ideas were this type. But I certainly agree that the creative aspect is all-important -- in fact, I think we're getting to the point that we should start seeing more games where cutting-edge tech is downplayed relative to the creative. It will take the true visionary to combine both again.
The place in the article where the writer took the idea to the environment guy and was rebuffed also was telling about the real quality of the creative environment at Ion. Too chaotic, yep a lot got cancelled out.
Someone's comment about Half-Life basically being a start-over was illuminating. The creative-first environment could have worked for Ion if it had really been effective, and someone would have put their foot down at a certain point not too late and sorted it out and made it so. Valve faced up to their problems, Ion didn't, or it was just too late.
I hope I added something here, certainly an important subject as games go -- Bill Spencer
No, no, you have it all wrong. One ought to shoot the programmers and leave the designers to flop around like fish with no water, and eventually wander away like, um, designers without programmers....
I think we're getting to the point that we should start seeing more games where cutting-edge tech is downplayed relative to the creative
If you pay attention to the PC game sales charts for the past few years, you'll notice a few things:
- Most games there are either GREAT games or perfectly executed GREAT licenses (mostly sequels).
- Most games there actually "downplay" technology in favor of gameplay. I mean, most of them are in fact 2D games (AoE, The Sims, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Commandos, Diablo 2...).
The time you root for arrived a few years ago, but almost nobody has taken notice. I wonder why...
Actually, that is exactly the opposite of what Carmack said. Coming up with an original, creative idea is easy... carrying that idea through with team building, product milestones, good advertising, careful budgeting, time management, quality assurance... THAT is hard.
The Raven
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
Leave creativity up to the Japanese? I don't think it's a good idea. They're the ones who bring us Punchy and Kicky, Dance Dance Everybody, Drive Quickly Around Town and Evil Residential House w/Zombies every year. Christ, Pikmin? Gee, the computer players seem to like real-time strategy. Maybe the console players won't recognize that they're missing PC game complexity if we dazzle 'em with smooth, rubbery animations on big, colorful characters, the way we always do. Hey, let's play some Final Fantasy Who Gives A Shit Anymore, it's the BEST EVER--this time with even more unskippable animations. SIGN ME UP. Maybe you were being sarcastic about leaving creativity to the Japanese designers.
John Romero... yet another paultry twit.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.