/vr/ - Retro Games

This is a must read for any Wolf3D, DOOM, or Quake fan. It covers the history of Romero and Carmack from childhood into early 2000. The book goes in detail on the start of id at Softdisk all the way through the release of Quake 3. Most of the deep details cut off after Quake 2, but the book doesn't pull punches and portrays Romero and Carmark honestly. Carmack is pretty much a genius programmer and 100% full on autistic. How he can function around Trent Reznor or his wife is beyond me. Romero, I find a bit more interesting because he started out as a game programmer then moved to tools and levels with id. Romero does in fact have programming skills but nothing on the level of Carmack.

I agree with Romero that id should have pushed more for licensing of the engine DOOM. Just look at Strife and Heretic. There could have been more games rather than shitty DOOM ports.

Id is a good example of how not run a company. Carmack would just threaten to quit whenever he didn't get his way. He basically ran the direction of the company Quake onward and caused the team to split after Quake 1.

Romero is not blameless either. He definitely when full rockstar and didn't develop enough on Quake. Then he a total idiot with Ion Storm. He blew threw over $10 million and failed to produce anything meaningful. After the downfall of Ion Storm and leaving id he never returned to anything close to the glory of DOOM.

It is a great story but I wish the ending was better.