Good Morning, Professor Romero

The Man With The Green Hair writes: "According to this story over at The Dallas Morning News, John Romero and Tom Hall both formally of ION Storm, will be teaching a class next semester at The University of Texas at Dallas where they will be instructing computer science majors on the finer points of game programming and design."

Comments

You know the old adage...

[Talisman]

Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.

Talisman

Correct Link (no deep linking)

[RebelTycoon]

Here is the correct link.

Deep linking is forbidden here.

Better still... Here is the article... Thus no deep linking issue at all.

Game programmers survive the Storm

Former ION studio executives to teach classes at UTD 07/06/2002
By VICTOR GODINEZ / The Dallas Morning News

The spectacular rise and fiery crash of Dallas-based computer game development studio ION Storm were landmark events in the game industry.

Now, the two men who piloted ION Storm, John Romero and Tom Hall, have resurfaced in the most unlikely of jobs: college professors.

Starting in the fall semester, Mr. Romero, 34, and Mr. Hall, 37, will be instructing computer science majors at the University of Texas at Dallas on the finer points of game programming and design.

"We're really excited to teach because we love to teach what we know, and this is the perfect place to do it," Mr. Romero said.

During ION's brief reign atop the gaming world, Mr. Romero almost single-handedly transformed the image of the nerdy game programmer, and he was known as much for his long hair, fast cars and reportedly standoffish attitude as he was for his programming flair.

On a recent afternoon on the UTD campus, Mr. Romero seemed jovial and comfortable as he and Mr. Hall talked about life after ION and their ventures into academia. Mr. Romero's rock star mane of hair was gone, replaced by a more conservative coiffure and slight stubble.

The UTD campus is a short drive from the Dallas penthouse suite in the Chase Tower where the two worked from 1996 to 2001.

But it's light-years away from the rarified air of the multibillion dollar computer game industry that Mr. Romero and Mr. Hall pioneered and rode to fame.

ION Storm was created in 1996, largely on the reputation of Mr. Romero, who helped found id Software in Mesquite, the computer game development firm responsible for mega-hits Doom and Quake.

At ION, Mr. Romero, Mr. Hall and more than 20 other programmers toiled on a game called Daikatana, which was supposed to revolutionize the world of computer games and compete with id's best offerings.

Instead, Daikatana was plagued by delays, internal disagreements documented in the industry press and disputes with publisher and financial backer Eidos, which poured millions of dollars into ION.

When Daikatana finally hit store shelves in April of 2000, it was panned by reviewers.

ION Storm did release one more game, Anachronox, that was well received critically, but the writing was already on the wall and the Dallas office shut down last year, imploding under the weight of its own publicity for Daikatana.

An ION Storm office in Austin did survive the Dallas closure, and released the blockbuster title Deus Ex, but neither Mr. Romero nor Mr. Hall were involved with the Austin location.

Scaling back
Mr. Romero and Mr. Hall did create a small game company shortly after leaving ION Storm called Monkeystone Games.

But Monkeystone's focus is on games for handheld computers, cellphones and portable consoles like Nintendo's GameBoy Advance.

"It's a very big attempt at not taking three to four years to make a game and to get something done really fast and actually get more back into
what we like to do," Mr. Romero said. "At ION we were mainly working in management, managing people, but not able to do what we really wanted to do, and we were kind of torn between it."

"ION was just too big, and now we're back to a nice, small company where we can actually do hands-on work on everything," he added.

Mr. Hall says that while Monkeystone isn't focusing on the big-budget computer game market, that doesn't mean he and Mr. Romero have thrown in the towel.

"Handheld devices are emerging and diverging and swirling around as the exciting new place to be," he said. "Everybody has cellphones and PDAs."

Mr. Romero and Mr. Hall say that working at Monkeystone is less time-consuming than ION Storm, giving them the time to embark on outside projects, such as their courses at UTD.

Learning curve
While Mr. Romero and Mr. Hall will each only be teaching one class next semester, they both say they're already drafting syllabi.

"The overall class for programming is going to be designing a game engine, and all the components that go into the game engine; the networking, the drawing subsystem, the input system, all the major components," Mr. Romero said.

Then students will learn to paste graphics on to the frame they've built and create a small game.

Mr. Hall said he's going to focus more on the design side.

"My class is more studying the whys and wherefores of game design, what you actually do, how you reward the players, the elements that make games fun," he said. "There are a lot of things that you learn, painfully, by experience that I guess these people will get a shortcut to."

"It's kind of fun to step back and analyze your craft and maybe learn some things as well," he added.

Mr. Romero said he hopes to eventually create an entire degree program at UTD in game development and design.

"If it turns out pretty good, we can maybe talk to some of our friends that are here in Dallas that are working at game companies to maybe help out with some new classes, maybe set up some kind of a degree," he said.

"There are a lot of game degrees that are popping up all over the place," Mr. Romero said. "I actually talked to a person at Collin County Community College back when we started ION Storm about doing a degree. But since we had just started ION, we had no time to do that."

Mr. Romero said he and Mr. Hall will probably sprinkle some of the business insights they learned over the years into their classes, but he said they'll mostly stay away from formal instruction on how to create and run a game development company.

"We're not doing a business class, because that's an entire class on its own," Mr. Romero said.

"A business class will knock all the illusions out of their head," Mr. Hall added with a wry grin.

E-mail vgodinez@dallasnews.com

And no I am not karma whoring... Make me a funny.

This reminds me of an apropos saying...

[CAIMLAS]

"Those who can, do; everyone else teaches."