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The Rise And Fall of Ion Storm 377

Posted by timothy from the problem-with-great-expectation dept.
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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The Rise And Fall of Ion Storm More

The Rise And Fall of Ion Storm

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  • To summarize (Score:4, Funny)

    by Lothar+0 ( 444996 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @01:28PM (#2774243) Homepage
    Here's a nice way [megatokyo.com] to demonstrate the fall of Ion Storm.

  • Let me summarize the story for you... (Score:5, Funny)

    by jjohnson ( 62583 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @01:29PM (#2774245) Homepage
    "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?"
    • Dead on. The story is laughable, and sad. Supposedly he's defending Ion Storm against the critics, but all his defenses amount to are saying "oh, yes, it was like that, but it was cool!" The wastefulness of that kind of culture came from having a bunch of young fanboys who were so impervious to criticism, so sure that they couldn't do anything wrong, that they squandered every break they got and won few friends along the way. The fact that a childhood friend of Romero's had to right this content-free apologia is an indication of how hopeless they really were.
      • Dead on. The story is laughable, and sad. Supposedly he's defending Ion Storm against the critics, but all his defenses amount to are saying "oh, yes, it was like that, but it was cool!"

        He's not saying they were right; he freely admits to the mistaks they made. However, that's not the point. He's saying they were a bunch of people who genuinely had their hearts in the right place who were trying to create something special, a really great game that pushed the boundaries.

        They failed of course, and he readily admits that too, but the point is that the public beating they took was way out of line with what they are. I mean, the public tore into them with a wrath usually reserved for child molesters and genocidal dictators. He makes some interesting points about how the public and media like to build people up only to destroy them, and notes the ways in which Ion Storm fueled the media frenzy (the "make you his bitch" ads, marketing outpacing development, etc).

        Think about it, lots of companies make shitty games, outlandish advertising promises ("this game will kick your ass", etc) and have lots of petty infighting. The question is: why was this such a big deal with Ion Storm? The difference lies mostly in the public's opinions, expectations and attitudes, rather than any actual fault of Romero or Ion Storm's own.

        I met John Romero at E3 '98. He was very friendly and was eager to show us the cool new robot-infested levels they'd made for Daikatana... and they did look pretty cool, I admit (for the time). He was a nice guy and although Daikatana wound up sucking (although it probably would have been cool if it wasn't late), he didn't really deserve the public beating he took.

        Also, note that during all the public sniping, John never took the oppurtunity to trash anyone or fire back (to my knowledge). You have to give him credit for that. Most people, probably myself included, would have been hard-pressed to take the high road in that situation like he did.

        • but the point is that the public beating they took was way out of line with what they are. I mean, the public tore into them with a wrath usually reserved for child molesters and genocidal dictators


          Dude, have you played Daikatana?

        • I mean, the public tore into them with a wrath usually reserved for child molesters and genocidal dictators.

          IMHO, they deserved everything they got for their part in the demise of Looking Glass Studios. Thief was genuinely innovative, and Dire-Katana was always a disaster waiting to happen... only question was when, and how much it would cost. Looking Glass' only fault was that they thought that actually creating stuff was more important than buying ego-psycho advertising (the "Romero's Bitch" stuff).
          • IMHO, they deserved everything they got for their part in the demise of Looking Glass Studios.

            Here's the way I understood the situation, correct me if I'm wrong. Eidos was the publisher of both Looking Glass and Ion Storm. Due to the fact that LGS games were critically-acclaimed but were never huge sellers, and the fact that Eidos thought Ion Storm was going to make a bunch of big sellers, they decided to give their money to Ion Storm instead.

            I wish LGS was still around instead of Ion, but it's kind of silly to blame Ion. Blame Eidos instead-- for throwing money at Ion Storm instead of Looking Glass. Or blame the public for not buying enough LGS games. I don't think it makes sense to blame Ion Storm. What were they supposed to do, fund LGS themselves? It's not their job to look out for other developers.

    • Re:Let me summarize the story for you... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @02:40PM (#2774559) Homepage
      • Won't someone give me a job doing the same thing?

      And by the way, I'm not even a level designer, I'm a "writer", so none of the shit that came out of there is my fault, it was all those other bitches, because while they were obviously slacking by playing other people's games, I was slacking more subtly by working on my Great American Novel, or bidding on Call of Cthulhu rulebooks on eBay.

      It's been said before and I'll say it again. Shit never, ever sticks to the "creative" guys. By the way, when a games person says they worked on a title "briefly" (Deus Ex in this case), it means they walked past a room when the producers were being lied to about it a couple of times. Believe me, I know.

      Let me recall an anecdote about Daikatana. A games magazine was invited to view it a couple of months before release (I don't know which "release" that referred to). The mag flack played for a bit then asked "Where's the sniper rifle?"

      "Sniper rifle?" asked the Ion Storm "creatives".

      The mag flack explained it, pointing out that every FPS had one. It was a genre convention. The answer from the Ion Storm guys:

      "Wow, that sounds cool. We'd better put one in."

      Jesus H Breakdancing Christ. Ill informed, incompetent, and unprincipled. They could at least have stuck to their guns (literally) rather than throwing yet another new challenge at the programming team with a deadline looming. It really is astonishing that it turned out as good (ahem) as it did.

  • Crappy Bot AI killed Ion Storm... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Bonker ( 243350 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @01:30PM (#2774250)
    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.

    • No I'd say the game failed to be worthwhile far before that point. I remember running to grab the demo only to be awestruck at how uber crappy the graphics were compared to the competitors at the time, and was then being attacked by the killer fly and I believe a frog. The game just yelled "Cheap $4.99 bargain bin piece of crap".

    • I think it was the robotic frogs that killed Diakatana. Those were bitched about way more than the crappy team AI. Oh, and coupled with the poor level design, poor weapons, poor AI, poor graphics, poor storyline, etc.

      There was not one thing that killed it - it did just as badly with the whole product without having to specify one thing that led to its demise.
    • 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...
      • I think we've all heard about the Third Law incident

        No, we haven't. Care to elaborate?

        Personally, I think what killed Ion Storm was that Valve was able to pull off Half-Life on the Quake II engine while Ion Storm was unable to pull off Daikatana. They both tried to do similar things (plot-driven first-person shooter), but Half-Life pulled it off without annoying AI bugs.

        • Valve was able to pull off Half-Life on the Quake II engine

          Let's make that statement both more impressive and true, all at the same time. How about "Valve was able to pull off Half-Life by starting with the original Quake I engine"? Half-Life was not based on Quake 2. There's no way it could've been (the two were released too close together for Valve to have had time to modify the Q2 engine). Valve did have a license to some of the Q2 code, and thus brought some of that into their engine, but the majority of the code began life as Quake 1. Just to prove my point, here is a quote from id's Technology Licensing Program [idsoftware.com]:

          For teams that don't want to operate under the GPL, we're now offering a "non-GPL" QUAKE engine license for a flat fee of $10,000 per title ... Remember this engine is the foundation for what Valve did with Half-Life ...

        • There are so many reasons why ION died, you can't attribute it to one thing. For one, Daikatana was terrible. Utterly dire, and I'm not just following common opinion, I had to review the thing and complete it. The game was abysmal and would have been far better, maybe even *gasp* playable, if they had done the following:

          - Stopped doors killing your sidekicks
          - Stopped sidekicks shooting you
          - Removed the stupid tiny robo-bugs at the start
          - Removed the overkill "top slot" weapons (which 90% of the time killed you too) or make you invulnerable to your own shots
          - Muted the stupid friggin' sidekicks, or at least re-record them with decent voice actors.
          - Removed the stupid and out of place save gem system

          That would only have gone half way to making the side kicks useful though - every reviewer I know, including me, just told them to stay put at the start of the level, completed the level, then dragged them to the exit. They were just such a stupidly ill-conceived idea from the start. If you're doing sidekicks, make them invulnerable or expendable, not a liability.

          The hugely ambitious and overstretched development cycle didn't help either, people were sick of hearing about it by the time it finally came out, but the core of the problem was the above fundamental flaws in the game. I'm just stunned that they failed to spot and fix these hair tearingly annoying features. Romero was just given free rein to throw in a stupid amount of content (pointlessly - it would have been no better or worse with half the number of guns, levels or monsters). I'm sure in his pride he wilfully ignored the criticisms of the game too (as outlined above). It was a disaster waiting to happen. Even the excellent Deus Ex and Anachronox couldn't save ION Dallas (though Warren Spector and ION Austin still exist, thank goodness - eagerly anticipating Deus Ex 2 and Thief 3). Still, at least the games industry got this wake up call early, we shouldn't be seeing such blindly big spends again any time soon.

          In response to your question about Third Law, they are a games company formed largely from Ex-ION people who walked. Their first game was KISS: Psycho Circus (yes, as in the band, not as corny as it sounds though) which was a competent, decent enough shooter with some nice ideas, certainly a lot better than Daikatana. I think one of the guys who left said to Romero "you can't polish a turd" in response to a comment from Romero. Love that quote. :)

          -icemind
        • I don't think John was trying to make Daikatana a story-driven FPS. It was more like making a game that integrated RPG elements into a first-person shooter. That was really the source of the epic scope, sidekicks, leveling-up character and Daikatana attributes, save gems, time-traveling, multiple themed worlds, etc.

          And here's [gamespot.com] more about the Third Law drama (Third Law Interactive was the company they went off to start).

  • The article states that Romero left id after Quake 2. If my memory serves me correctly, didn't he leave after the original Quake?

    • Re:Romero left after Quake2? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Judas96' ( 151194 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @02:05PM (#2774389)
      Yes he did leave after the original Quake. The lead designer for Quake II was Kevin Cloud I believe. He is an artist along with Adrian Carmack. The two of them made founded id software with John Romero and John Carmack.
      • Yes he did leave after the original Quake. The lead designer for Quake II was Kevin Cloud I believe. He is an artist along with Adrian Carmack. The two of them made founded id software with John Romero and John Carmack.

        Nope...from id's own page:

        id unofficially started in September of 1990 when John Carmack, Adrian Carmack, John Romero, and Tom Hall created the first game in the Commander Keen series, Invasion of the Vorticons. One month after Commander Keen was released into shareware, John Carmack, Adrian Carmack, and John Romero left their jobs at Softdisk Publishing and officially began id Software, on February 1, 1991.

  • stupid ads.. (Score:3, Informative)

    by juju2112 ( 215107 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @01:33PM (#2774266)
    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:

    http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/01/02/ion_s torm/index.html?x [salon.com]

    • Re:stupid ads.. (Score:2, Informative)

      by snubber1 ( 56537 )
      How about all of it on one page? http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/01/02/ion_s torm/print.html [salon.com]

    • Re:stupid ads.. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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:

      Yeah! If it weren't for those damned ads, we could be absolutely positive that they make no money off of their efforts! How dare they try and stop us from viewing their work without making the slight effort of reading their ads! They are infringing on my rights as a consumer to not only receive completely free news, but to take active measures to make sure that the publisher gets paid precisely dick for their efforts! Those bastards!

  • I read through the article. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Henry V .009 ( 518000 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @01:42PM (#2774297) Journal

    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.

    • One thing that I really question from the article is this statement: Daikatana and Deus Ex were finally released in 2000. Predictably, Daikatana was slammed while Deus Ex received many awards. Both made money for Eidos, but the walk-outs, firings, lawsuits and general bad blood doomed Ion Storm..

      To say that I highly doubt that Diakatana "made money" is an understatement (note that "made money" means returned more money than it cost to produce. Eidos isn't sitting pretty if they dumped millions in and "made money" selling 20 copies).

  • They should have called it "meiken." (Score:4, Informative)

    by Rank Amateur ( 38275 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @01:44PM (#2774306)
    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).
    • They could have called it "Quake 2 1/2" and it would have still sucked sweaty donkey balls.
    • Ach, the horrors perpetrated upon the Japanese by the ignorant pig-American game developers!

      Clearly you've never seen Zero Wing. THAT was "*egregious* mistranslation".

      "Daikatana" was simply taking a word most Americans were familiar with ("katana") and putting a cool-sounding modifier on it. Do you really think Americans CARE if it's a poor translation??
    • As the story goes, Romero was introduced to the term "Daikatana" being used to describe a large, powerful sword during a game of D&D being DM'ed by John Carmack.

      "meiken" sounds like a shitty name for a videogame. "Daikatana" at least implies to the casual listener that a sword is involved.

    • 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...

    • 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.")


      I looked the kanji up. The reading edict gives is "taitou", meaning just a longsword. The name "Daikatana" comes from an RPG session the id guys had one time: Romero's character had a sword called "Daikatana" equipped. It is pretty silly and asinine, but it stuck.

    • Re:They should have called it "meiken." (Score:4, Informative)

      by MrResistor ( 120588 ) <.peterahoff. .at. .gmail.com.> on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @06:02PM (#2775749) Homepage
      Whether it's a real japanese word or not, it's been floating around in gaming circles for a long time, from D&D to Daggerfall to the game in question, and undoubtably many stops in between. In every case it has meant, simply, "big sword", sort of a Claymore Katana, rather than some specific sword of legend as you seem to suggest it should.

      The meanings of characters when slapped together, is largely dependent on context, though, so I'd say you've got a bit of hubris yourself declaring the word invalid, at least by the somewhat fractured arguements you present. I won't argue pronunciation since I don't speak Japanese, but my wife's boss is Japanese and she's frequently approached by people who want Kanji Tattoos. She says it's tricky business weighing all the possible alternate meanings against the intended one and picking the combination that is best overall.

  • Ion Storm IS alive... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FortKnox ( 169099 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @01:44PM (#2774309) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • To summarise (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Violet Null ( 452694 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @01:45PM (#2774311)
    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.
    • 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.

      Preach it brother, preach it! It's kind of interesting that Salon has published articles lamenting Looking Glass's demise at Ion Storm's hands despite great games, and then publishes a lament about the demise of Ion Storm despite a really, really bad game. I guess someone has to give everyone their voice...

      But you really have to be amazed by John Romero's hubris, when you see

      In any event, Romero adds, Ion Storm's fortunes are now fully golden: "With Daikatana riding high in the charts and Deus Ex about to hit the streets," says Romero, "Ion will have successfully transitioned into a profitable venture and has long ago ceased to be a financial burden on its publisher."
      in Salon's eulogy to Looking Glass. `Daikatana riding high'?

      Oh well. LG Studios, and Ion Storm as it was first envisioned, are both gone. More of the older gaming scene is gone, and it is a new year. Maybe there will be a really new game, or even a really creative and skilled studio, this year.

  • 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
    • Anyone remember Prey?

      Yeah, I remember waiting for it along with Unreal. (same timeframe I think).

      Now, here's a challenge - how about:

      LifeBane

      Anyone remember that? It wasn't even a game, I don't think - a guy just started posting screenshots and messages about how the game was coming along or something - it had a number of the "waiting for Quake" crowd interested :-)

      Or how about:

      Into The Shadows

      Had that impressive skeleton demo footage. Also came to nothing (they were writing it in assembler - is that the best choice for a game??)

  • State of the Art (Score:2, Interesting)

    by adamy ( 78406 )
    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.
    • 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.


      Try telling that to Max Payne. By the end of that game, even if he hadn't been shot several hundred times, he shouldn't have even been able to stand up due to all of the painkillers that he had taken.

  • Hmmm. (Score:3, Funny)

    by sulli ( 195030 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @01:55PM (#2774349) Journal
    The immediacy of online raving and ranting encouraged a perpetual, streaming critique of Ion Storm. Flame Thrower and Bitch-X were the most nasty and vociferous gossips, running daily doses of rumor, innuendo and even fact. It's a typical media paradigm: put somebody on a pedestal and then kick it away. Their venom made the news irrelevant; the point was to bring down Ion. Everybody at work read these critics, argued or agreed (or perversely sent them the inside scoop), and the attacks didn't contribute to an optimistic environment.

    I was disturbed by the hate and bitterness on the message boards.

    Doesn't read Slashdot, does he?

  • A Word of Support for John (Score:5, Insightful)

    by coupland ( 160334 ) <dchaseNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @01:55PM (#2774350) Journal

    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.

    • Re:A Word of Support for John (Score:5, Funny)

      by tswinzig ( 210999 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @02:07PM (#2774405) Journal
      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.

      Uhhh yeah dude, maybe because they are scared of his power? Why burn a bridge with BG if you want to do well in the industry?

      As for Romero, I agree. When they were working on Quake, and all the hype going with it, I decided one night to try a 'talk jromero@idsoftware.com' (or whatever his address was at the time). A few seconds later I was chatting with him at work. I think the conversation went something like this:

      JR: Hello
      Me: Whoa! Are you the real John Romero?
      JR: Yes
      Me: What are you doing at the office this late?
      JR: Dude, I just got in to work.
      Me: Cool.

      Ahh yes, those were the days.
    • 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.

      I think you're right. This reminds me of the whole Wil Wheaton thing -- where people bash on him for years only to find out here that he's actually pretty cool. Personal attacks suck, and they're especially ignorant when you don't know anything about the person.

      In addition, it seems like most people are attacking the Daikatana hype, and trying to say that the programers have 'hubris' -- when really, all the hype was just a function of the marketing department.
    • Speaking of which, Brian Goble and Jason Hall of Monolith were equally as nice. I e-mailed them to ask how they first got involved with Microsoft and they told me it was by sending them a demo CD of their work. Then they asked for my address and mailed a copy of the CD directly to my home. WOW...

    • 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!



      Well, first of all, I think it's great that he does stuff like this, but think about it this way. A lot of people are talking about how approachable he is...maybe this is in a way, a bad thing. I mean, if you're trying to get some work done, and you have to go through 500 e-mails a day or people are sending you chat requests non-stop, it'll affect your productivity. I guess the lesson is to be able to try to balance these things (well, not the only lesson...).

    • There seem to be quite a few people like this in the game industry. While working on a Half-Life mod a couple years ago I emailed the several people over at Valve Software a number of times, they always responded, sometimes within an hour and where applicable even sending me the code they used to achieve an effect I was looking to recreate (which was probably proprietary). John Carmack has also been known to post to slashdot from time to time especially on game and 3d rendering related issues. I have to wonder if there aren't quite a few people prowling slashdot who we've all heard of.

      • Well, on this topic I see Carmack as the "Anti-Romero". While johnc is always polite in e-mail, he won't respond unless you ask a really well-thought-out question. Johnc's love is for programming and I really admire the fact that he will amputate any part of his life that takes time away from his true passion.

        Romero's love is for gaming and that's why he responds to e-mails, runs his web site, and is a walking encyclopedia of dates, releases, and trivia. But to compare him to Carmack is probably to do justice to neither. Slagging Romero because he doesn't have the single-mindedness of Carmack is counter-productive, as is complaining that Carmack has poor social skills. Take those qualities away and you'd have... well... an ordinary schmuck like me. :)

    • Nope, John is probably just getting what is coming to him for selling his soul to the devil for that wife [stevana.com] of his.

  • No Sympathy (Score:3, Interesting)

    by .milfox ( 75510 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @01:58PM (#2774359)
    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.
  • 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

  • Hmmm... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Raymond Luxury Yacht ( 112037 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @02:09PM (#2774417) Homepage
    From the looks of Stevie "KillCreek" Case [stevana.com], she's been working in *cough* silicon [webplastics.com] valley quite a bit since hooking up with Romero...
    • Aha! I was wondering what this comment from the article meant:

      There were ... only 2.5 women at any given moment; it was good to have them around.

  • Yet more self-serving revisionism (Score:3, Funny)

    by Doktor Memory ( 237313 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @02:13PM (#2774433) Journal
    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 [gaminginsider.com] and Flamethrower [evilavatar.com] 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.
    • "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 want my 10 minutes back (Score:5, Funny)

    by ellem ( 147712 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {25melle}> on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @02:16PM (#2774444) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • Some good lessons learned (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ooblek ( 544753 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @02:18PM (#2774454)
    I believe Gamespot had an article come out right after Daikatana was released that chronicled what was going on at id and Ion Storm up to the release. I believe the lessons learned at Ion Storm are actually quite valuable, especially when someone is thinking about starting up *ANY* type of software company.

    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.

  • My favorite quotes (Score:2, Insightful)

    by jslag ( 21657 )
    Daikatana and Deus Ex were finally released in 2000. Predictably, Daikatana was slammed while Deus Ex received many awards. Both made money for Eidos


    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...

  • Killcreek? (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by tommck ( 69750 )
    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's sad, really. I always hate to see bad things happen to pretty girls like John Romero.

  • Snoooze (Score:4, Interesting)

    by The Panther! ( 448321 ) <panther&austin,rr,com> on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @02:53PM (#2774642) Homepage
    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.

  • Romero deserves what he's received. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Multiple Sanchez ( 16336 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @03:05PM (#2774736)
    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.
    • There's nothing wrong with that. I agree entirely with the philosophy and I do the same, just not as 'big'. I enjoy my work. I like going to work. Had I the money, and the projects, I would hire my friends.

      But in making the workplace fun, you CAN'T lose your perspective. I think that's what happened. And from my personal experience, while I'm a good tech, I'm passive, and generally non-confrontational. Maybe John is similar..

      (Why is MY brother Romero a druggie, while other Romero's are doing cool things? *sigh* )

  • Comments (Score:5, Informative)

    by John Carmack ( 101025 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @03:18PM (#2774808)
    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!

    • Re:Comments (Score:3, Interesting)

      by JWhitlock ( 201845 )
      Whoa - it seems a little unfair to have John Carmack reply. Still, I'd love to see Romero's response, if he feels up to it.

      I have to admit, lack of top-down leadership seems plausible. How else can you explain Half-Life being so good, and Daikatana being so bad? Same basic engine, but one lacked the ability to pull off the added extras.

      Still, there's a great book to be written on game design theory, from concept to box. I'd love to see some insight into id, which seems to have done well from shareware like Commander Keen all the way into the present, vs. the other teams that didn't quite make it. I'd love to hear what happened at Origin after Ultima 7. Anyone else have favorite untold game design stories?

      In my line of work, the boss has a saying - There's a time to shoot the engineer and ship the thing. Maybe in game design, there's a time to shoot the designers and let the programmers get it right.

      • I have to admit, lack of top-down leadership seems plausible. How else can you explain Half-Life being so good, and Daikatana being so bad? Same basic engine, but one lacked the ability to pull off the added extras.

        I think your analysis may be a little simplistic. Half-Life originally started out as a Quake total conversion project. The designers began to get the sense that the end product wasn't going to be all that good.

        Ordinary business sense would say to simply focus the team, get the game out the door ASAP, and try to recover sunk costs. But that's not what they did. Instead, they admitted to themselves that the game they had so far wasn't that good, and either needed serious re-design, or to be abandoned completely.

        As part of this soul-searching, someone in the company made a new map that incorporated all the really cool elements they'd developed for all the other maps they'd made so far. It played exceptionally well, and everyone loved it. Someone said, "Great! Now all we need to do is make thirty or forty more of these." Half-Life was the result.

        The point I'm trying to make is that the team recognized that the direction in which they were headed wasn't leading anywhere. So they took stock of what they had, kept the best pieces, threw out the rest, and started over. Not an easy thing for anyone to do.

        Schwab

        • I think your analysis may be a little simplistic. Half-Life originally started out as a Quake total conversion project. The designers began to get the sense that the end product wasn't going to be all that good.

          &lt Interesting stuff removed &gt

          The point I'm trying to make is that the team recognized that the direction in which they were headed wasn't leading anywhere. So they took stock of what they had, kept the best pieces, threw out the rest, and started over. Not an easy thing for anyone to do.

          Thanks for that insight - again, we could learn a lot if a good journalist asked the folks on successful projects what went right, what went worng, and what lessons were learned.

          I also wonder how many times Daikatana "started over" - wasn't it originally on the Quake engine, then they decided to start over on the Quake II engine? That would have been an excellent moment to do what the Half-Life team did...

          • I also wonder how many times Daikatana "started over"

            Well, an excellent account of the history of Daikatana is on the "news" site The Smoking Gun.

            Hey, it's on the internet, it must be true, huh?

            The Article [planetquake.com]

      • Day of Defeat (Score:2, Interesting)

        by sheetsda ( 230887 )
        Anyone else have favorite untold game design stories?

        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.

        • Wow that would explain my confusion waiting for all the various and sundry exciting WWII vintage weapons and gameplay to appear. Even without all these cool features, it's a decent mod though.
    • 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.

    • Re:Comments (Score:4, Interesting)

      by NelnoTheAmoeba ( 184600 ) on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @09:08PM (#2776626)
      >Ion storm failued due to lack of focus, which came from the top.

      As someone who knows firsthand, I just have to say that John couldn't be more correct on that point.

      After devoting nearly every waking hour of my life to Daikatana for a year and a half I found that in the end it's goes nowhere if the effort was not applied toward a consistent goal.

      Imagine a single point with hundreds of random vectors originating from it. Add them together and they essentially cancel one another out.

      That point is Daikatana and those vectors represent the effort myself and others put into it over several years.

      Direction is important.

      And to maintain direction, you need focus. And that, truly, is what Ion lacked.

      Jonathan E. Wright
  • 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 [att.net] (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 [fastcompany.com].

    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.
  • 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 [slashdot.org]. The story link is out of date as the Observer changed their website structure. The story is located here [dallasobserver.com].
  • This article seemed to be missing the most critical element in its analysis of the fall of Ion Storm. We all know that Daikatana would have been praised as a smash success had it included nude pictures of John Romero's girlfiend [stevana.com].

    Bob

  • Rise and fall? (Score:3, Funny)

    by SCHecklerX ( 229973 ) <greg@gksnetworks.com> on Wednesday January 02, 2002 @06:09PM (#2775799) Homepage
    Shouldn't that be "Fall and Sink?"
  • 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.
  • 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.

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