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Interview With John Romero
spensdawg writes "Here is an interesting interview with John Romero on Games.net. He gets into the original design philosophy for the first Doom games, what he would have done differently, and his plans for the future. Worth watching if you want to know a little more about the mad scientist behind Doom." A warning: this is a video interview
He designed some levels, he did a little game design, he was not by any stretch the main creative force behind Doom.
Asked questions about what he would have done about Doom differently (he would've hired a great level designer), what was wrong with Doom (nothing, talked about how the game was designed), how he would do if he would make another Doom (pitch black, something new like stuff from HL 2), when he knew he hit it big (after seeing the numbers), what he thought of sequels (would only do one), what other projects he did and what he learned (he likes creation, and not so much cleanup), what he is doing (his new company, that he's working on something new that so far hasn't been done).
Strange thing to me was that I saw mostly DOOM III video gameplay (no DOOM I or II gameplay video - difficult to find?), and there was HL 2 showed for a quick bit.
Because it's not text, it's video. And if that weren't bad enough, every 5 seconds or so it decides to pause the video to buffer some more. I don't know if it's my Internet connection tonight (which has been slow and flakey at times for no apparant reason), or if the site is being /.'ed, but either way the video player has some serious issues with its buffering time heuristic.
In the end, it just isn't worth it. Trust me, you're not missing a thing.
Yaz.
Interestingly enough if you directly go to the SWF file, you can listen to the interview without actually having Flash Player 8.
Perfect is the enemy of done.
I started to make a transcript of the video. I don't know the games, and I'm not a sectery either (plus hugely hungover), so I got bored quickly. Mananged to do half of it before I reached for the wrist-slitting knife - hopefully someone who can't view the flash will find it helpful:
games.net Presents Behind The Screens John Romero.
What would you change about Doom?
So the thing I would have changed about the original Doom, erm, is to have a better design for all the levels in eposide 2 and eposide 3, and to probably hire someone who was a really great level designer, erm, because, er, Sandy Peterson, hes a, hes a, hes definitely a great game designer [clip of some Doom game I guess], but having that, having somebody who's whole job is placing textures, making sure that levels are, are not just 'hey, I'm just gonna make a level today, see what it turns out to be'. That's kind of what we were doing anyway, so it turned out kind of haphazard, which is kinda Doom 2 [too?] also turned out, that way with the levels, was like 'hey, let's make a buncha cool levels, we'll have [them?] put in the game.'
What was missing from Doom?
Well, I don't think there was anything missing from the original Doom. I mean it was, was, we pulled stuff out of the original Doom because it kind of violated the purpose that we had started to change the game [another clip of presumably Doom], which was kinda what we did with Wolfenstein. With Wolfenstein , we'd added a bunch of cool stuff in there, and it slowed the gameplay down, the pace down, and we didn't want that. So we pulled that out, and what you got was just some crazy running at somebody brings [might have been 'for instance'] a second game [didn't hear this well enough]. And so, with Doom we wanted, erm, a game that was the same kind of Wolfenstein feeling, but looked cooler and [had?] cooler monsters, but still had that super speed.
What if you were to make another Doom?
If I was going to do another Doom today, I would [possibly wouldn't] do a game that's like Pitch Black for sure. Erm, I wouldn't have predictable situations happening constantly every few seconds, and er, you know, I'd, I'd have something that, er, was kind of pushing the limits, [clip of some game starts here] that would be, I'd definitely take some cues from Half life 2 but, erm, also add in some cool ideas that, that, no one else is doing.
When did you know you hit it big?
It was, it was insane with Doom. When we put out Doom and it just, it went all over the place. The internet really helped. Erm, people have tp net [might been 'had the internet'?] and the software creations Bolternborg [didn't get this word] was awsome. When we saw the numbers that were coming in off, off of, Doom it, it was crazy. Erm, that's when I just, just, brought the test release [might have got this bit wrong]. I was just, that's it [laugh]. I'm buying it now.
What do you think about sequels?
In Return of Wolfenstein and Comandeer Keen, and, you know [laugh] [some clip starts here of unknown game]. Erm, if I was there those games wouldn't have come out, because I don't do like.. I do a sequel, then it's time to move on.
Dude talks like a stoned hippy anyway.. I got time to waste on other things that don't include translating a zillion 'erms' to a text file.