#681: Doom Legend John Romero — The Path to Prolific Innovation and Making 130+ Games, How to Find the Soul of the Work, Audacious Ambition, and Building in Monk Mode

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5:30 No Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job to interview and deconstruct world class performers from all different fields. My guest today is John Romero. Who is John Romero? Computer and video game legend John Romero has designed and published more than 130 games since his first sale at the age of 16. A teenage programming prodigy, his major achievements include co-inventing a series of revolutionary computer games, Doom, Quake,

6:05 Wolfenstein 3D and Commander Keen that launched the industry's most popular genre, the first person shooter. The memoir Doom Guy Life in First Person is his first You can find him on Twitter at Romero. And on Instagram at the Romero. Without further ado, please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with

6:26 John. Romero. John, nice to see you and welcome to the show. Well thanks for having me. I'm excited.

6:36 So I thought I would give a few caveats for people listening. Number one I'm going to operate on the assumption that most people have very little context on your life story. So I will be asking a lot of very basic questions. I extend my apologies to you and the hardcore gamers out there, but I think that'll be helpful for folks and Some very, very long term listeners may recognize your name because it came up

7:01 In conversation with Alexis O'Hanian, who is a friend of mine co founder of Reddit, who credits your story with helping inspire the creation of that company. And of course Your story. And uh

7:15 The products of your imagination and hard work have also inspired many, many others. The creation of Oculus VR and the cultural sort of touchstones and the influence of pop culture over decades is really remarkable. So in the process of doing my homework and due diligence for this conversation, the expansive nature of the impact is pretty Mind boggling. But I want to start. in the beginning. And by beginning I mean childhood.

7:44 Because I'd like to provide some connective tissue that then leads into later questions. Could you please just describe where you grew up? And what your childhood looked like. So I grew up In Tucson, Arizona.

7:57 I was born in sixty seven. So I did a lot of my early years in the late sixties and the early seventies. Grew up Right next to the Yaki reservation. And

8:08 My family's of my dad's side. has Aztec and Yaki heritage. And we call ourselves Mexicans. And Mexic food was the food that we all ate. So yeah, we lived in a pretty poor place. I only lived

8:23 in that area until About fourth grade. But It was pretty culturally significant to me because I really learned a lot of my Mexicans side at that time.

8:34 And then we moved. My dad Went to the grocery store, never came back. And so my mom Got a divorce, met a a guy that was a military guy.

8:44 and got married and then we moved to Northern California, which was very, very different than the desert in Tucson, Arizona. I would uh Love to hear you expand a little bit on your time in Tucson. And your experience with your biological father because I think it paints perhaps a picture. I was reading a piece in the Washington Post that Certainly made it seem to be a

9:07 Very Challenging that chapter of your life. It was I don't know how many generations ago that is, but in human generations. It was a long time ago and people definitely acted differently back then and

9:20 I guess in the family and in just socially The circles that might add Ran around in Drinking alcohol was like drinking water. It was I didn't never saw him actually drink water. It was always beer. I mean it wasn't just him, it was basically just about everybody And you know, people that drink usually will surround themselves with other people that drink because

9:43 They like doing the Similar things together. So everybody that I saw always drank. And that always led to all kinds of crazy stuff happening because You know, when when you've been drinking

9:54 You're gonna be doing all kinds of random stuff. At this point, I think it might be helpful to provide a little bit of context. Related to the hardships that John endured and overcame in his childhood because I think it informs

10:14 Who he is and speaks to A toughness and resilience that is worth underscoring. So what I'm going to read is Is an excerpt from a very good piece in The Washington Post. Titled Why revered developers John and Brenda Romero started a game studio in Ireland.

10:32 And Here is that excerpt. John grew up in Tucson, Arizona. His biological father was an alcoholic. Quote, at that point in time, John would have had burn marks on his arms, would have seen his mother getting beaten up, end quote, Brenda said. Brenda is his wife. Money and food were tight. John's father robbed stores at gunpoint on multiple occasions to get diapers. One day when John and his younger brother Ralph made a mess in the kitchen, his mother, stressed, told John's father to quote, get rid of them. It wasn't meant to be literal.

11:00 He just put us in the truck and drove us out into the middle of the desert and told us to get out and then took off. John said. He was six, Ralph was four. John recognized where they were and decided to follow the truck, spending a half hour in the desert until his mother made his father bring them home. So this is one of quite a number of examples, but I think it is worth including here is simply because it is part of the context that makes John who he is. And with that, back.

11:26 to the interview. It seems like when your mom met this military man that it was a real significant

11:38 chapter shift and shift of environment, shift of experience. And I'm not sure how far ahead we'd be skipping, but could you Explain what aggressor squadron was? And how you became Involved with that?

11:54 The Aggressor Squadron was one of the divisions on the military base that he was stationed at in nineteen eighty three. That was A place where the pilots

12:07 This is a cold war. By the way. The pilots are learning Russian flight maneuvers, combat maneuvers, and the Russia squadron is where they all learned. all the the flight training, I guess, that they needed in case they got in contact with Russians. And the point was not to ever get in contact because this space was primarily a reconnaissance space where they were flying U twos and T R ones from

12:31 A new reconnaissance over Russia, that's so Try and find out what they're doing. But in case something happened. They would know what to do. So They flew a lot of other planes out of there.

12:41 I think F fives, a lot of F fives. Yeah, that was the place where you did that. When I started school the beginning of nineteen eighty three, but was half way through the school year of my sophomore year school, I could actually choose to Computers.

12:57 Programming. Which is pretty great in the eighties. Because it was halfway through the year the teacher had to kind of approve that it was okay for me to to join because I was half way through learning basic. But I already knew basic. I was finished with basic and I was learning assembly language and when I talked to the teacher and showed her that yeah, I knew assembly and that's what I'm coding. And I know everything about this machine and all that. She was really impressed the first day that I got into school

13:22 And the second day when I came to school She told everyone in the class what to work on and then she Told me to follow her and we went to her car. And she drove me to the aggressive squadron on base. And

13:36 Introduce me to Captain Spencer. He was like top gun dude. He was uh Total. Rocket jockey guy.

13:45 He ejected out over the Mediterranean. This guy's done so much stuff. He went to a phone and he said a bunch of different code words into the phone and then this giant Bank vault. Looking

13:55 Door opened. Big round one, you know. It opened and We went inside of this vault, a bank vault looking thing. It was in the middle of the aggressor squadron where they keep classified stuff. And they had already put away the stuff'cause they knew that he was bringing

14:09 Someone in that didn't have clearance. And he took me to the back and I saw this mini computer. It was a Chrome Mco. And he said Here's our mini computer. I'm just wondering if you knew how to program it.

14:22 And so I got on it and I noticed that they were it was using the the C PM operating system And uh You could program it in in basic. So I said, Yeah.

14:32 Yeah, I know CPM and I know basic. So it's like You got yourself a job, you know. Basically I got a job the second day I got to school just because of connections. You know, my teacher saw that I I knew how to code and then she ran into this guy.

14:48 Later that day. And told him about me and he's like, Bring him on over So it was just a Really, really random. How did you get your very first

14:58 Taste of Computers. When did you get Bitten by the bug. given the humble beginnings. Where one would assume, especially at that time, that it would be very hard perhaps to

15:11 come across or get access to computers. Getting access to computers in the seventies was basically not gonna ever happen in someone's house. Computers weren't even in the home yet. The personal computer revolution was just barely beginning. So only thousands of people in the United States may have had a computer.

15:30 And they most likely built it themselves. So Computers were very early. They weren't really in houses yet. But in nineteen seventy nine.

15:41 I was addicted to arcades. I played arcade games all the time or pinball or anything'cause it was so much fun and so different. But it costs money. And it's hard for a kid you know, who's eleven or ten or eleven day to actually have the money to to spend on arcades. But my friend.

15:59 I just found a way for us to play games that doesn't cost any money. And I'm like, Oh my God, I jumped on my bike and I followed him. And about a half an hour later. We pedal up to the

16:13 Sierra College Computer Lab. It's uh summertime in nineteen seventy nine, so I'm eleven years old. And I just follow him. We go into this computer lab that's really nice and cold. And we basically he shows me this computer. It's a mainframe and a room. There's a room that's just

16:31 Got a giant computer in it and there's these terminals, these black and white. T V screens with keyboards connected to them. And I mean there's like one unit. And so he starts showing me these really early text games.

16:44 And these text games are Hunt the Wumpus. And Star Trek. And poison cookie and these just really early, early games. And

16:54 I was just like really Impressed because I didn't need to pump in quarters and I could take my time with every move. I could just like think about it and then move. That was very, very different.

17:05 So I played for a little while and I noticed that there were only probably two students in the room. And I said, Well where are they Doing. on the computer'cause it doesn't look like they're playing. He goes, Oh no, they're programming.

17:17 And I'm like, what is that? He said, Well that's actually what you do to make These games. You have to learn how to tell the computer How to put stuff on the screen and and what to do, how to think. And I'm like, I wanna do that. So I just

17:30 Went over and asked us one of the students What does that mean? You know, and it's like print. print statement and some other stuff, but he tells me what it is. And I started asking some more questions. What is if do? What does that mean? And so he's kind of explaining it.

17:44 And eventually because I'm asking too many questions, he just gets me The book. For basic that's there. And I just take it over to the computer that I was on. And I basically start learning how to code.

17:55 With nobody kicking me off the computer. I'm sitting there with a book and I'm starting to teach myself how to program like a really basic adventure, like which goes from room to room. Just with a text description. On a high level, it's kinda crazy. Eleven year old goes to computer lab at the college and teaches himself how to code.

18:16 Yeah, it's incredible. And I didn't have a computer for three years after that. So in the meantime, I would go to any computer store In my town or the next town?

18:27 And if they had a computer they're like Radio Shack has a TRS eighty or something. I would sit down and I would find one of the books that has programming in it and I would just enter the code Into the computer and play around with it. And figure out like if it doesn't work usually. Why it doesn't work?

18:43 And try to fix it. and then change it and that's like really slow learning. That was how I learned how to code w in my first uh introduction to computers was at the college.'Cause I never saw them anywhere else. Paddling over and was the Main

18:58 Interest at that point. I would assume The creation of games. And I guess the follow on to that is was there something about

19:07 Programming. That's sort of tickled your brain in a particular way. Was there something else sort of intrinsic to programming that appealed to you? Beyond The output, which would be the games.

19:19 So gaming was the only reason why I wanted to start learning how to code. Because thinking about arcade games, it was like I have no idea how I would even make that. But looking at the games that I had played on the mainframe was like I could probably do that'cause that's just like really simple stuff on the screen. So when I could get things up on the screen quickly

19:40 And they kinda looked similar to what I was playing and I was like I am totally on the right track. This is gonna work. The interest was only To make games. But one of the really interesting things about programming, especially back then Was that

19:55 The programming experience was extremely immediate. On computers back then, you could turn the computer on and it was ready to code. Right then. There was no no programs to run to code a computer. It was ready. So the Iteration.

20:11 Speed. Of learning was As fast as it gets. I could type something in and run it. either is gonna bomb and tell me there's something wrong or it's gonna work and I'm like I just learned something new.

20:24 So that iterative that fast feedback iterative nature of programming was really, really conduci to keep my interest. In learning how to code and get better at it. It was just like building on stuff very, very fast.

20:39 learning all the keywords, figuring out how to put them all together to do certain things and then it's like I'm not just solving problems, but I'm starting to architect what I want to do. And so There's these phases of learning where you start to understand that like anything that you can think of, you can make it happen if you only you had the right words and the right description to like how do I put a thing on the screen while that's with print.

21:02 How do I put it over there on the screen? There's some commands for saying exactly how to get to that point on the screen. So when you start breaking down all of these little Problems. And you know how to solve every one of these little problems. you start to have a lot of confidence that you can do what you're hoping to do.

21:18 And that just makes you want to keep on going. If you're a person who likes to solve problems, programming is absolutely for you because Your whole life is solving problems when you are a beginning programmer. You're climbing these walls constantly to get over them and learn something and and go do the new thing. So I'm gonna Leap forward.

21:37 A bit. And then we're gonna go back and fill in some of the gaps. And I'm getting Very much in the deep end of my ignorance pool, so I'm gonna need you to lead me through what I'm about to read. But I was talking to my brother last night who codes is involved with

21:57 technology and he pointed me ultimately to A rabbit hole that led me to a paragraph This is going somewhere on game rant dot com. And I was hoping you could explain what this means. So John Romero ended up making the biggest advancement in gaming since the invention of the video game itself. He was the first person to make a navigable maze appear on a screen, giving gaming a third dimension. Of movement.

22:23 So we were just talking about problem solving and This may require some explanation on your part, but could you walk us through The significance of that and how it came to be. Games have been around. for long time computer games have been around since the seventies.

22:39 And three D games have also been around since the seventies. So there's some really primitive games. First person, if you're talking about first person, which is where people really start to get into three D. There was a really, really early games in the they'll say nineteen seventy four Is where three D games really start on mainframe computers.

23:00 Where it's rendering a hallway scene and uh maybe a character on the screen in front of you. And when you move, you don't move smoothly, you move by a chunk of the maze, right? So it's really primitive movement, but it's like it's rendered in three D. And not until we get to, say, battle zone in nineteen eighty. Does it become very smooth and battle zone is line drawn. pyramids and stuff in the scene.

23:23 And say another tank. You're in a tank and there's another tank and they're smoothly moving and coming towards you and You're having to use tank controls to aim and shoot at it and Everything's coming for you, but it was A smooth moving three D, but it was line drawn. So the advancements in three D

23:41 eventually get to the point where you have solid filled walls so it looks like a color, you know, walls like a certain color so when you turn it it's not like seen through An invisible wall. And then they start getting Textures. In the mid eighties. So if you play, say, Might and Magic.

23:59 You'll see it. I think some Wizardry games also had it. In even Ultima, you know, when you go into the dungeons. You'll see a render three D view that has texture on it, like someone drew a wall, like an actual bricks or whatever.

24:13 But it doesn't move smoothly. It's moving by chunks, you know, still on computers it was a lot slower. to get to that point of smooth movement. So when we started doing three D in nineteen ninety one We did do a filled wall you know, solid color walls, but we could move through that maze

24:31 perfectly smooth and turn any direction we wanted to and see that maze And fluid full high speed three D, which nobody had seen at that point. So our focus was on Trying to make that happen. The speed was the focus for us. Getting three D moving quickly

24:50 became At least at that point with that one early game, that was really important for us. It wasn't to do something really amazing with the three D, but it was just to get a three D scene Drawing.

25:03 At high speed, so you can turn around. In one second you can just do a spin. That took a lot of Computer knowledge of the hardware. And also

25:14 How to draw a scene. not using all of the three D equations that you normally would use to compute a three D scene. restricting the way that you could move to reduce the amount of computation that you needed to do to turn the scene into a scene that is visually

25:33 complex in three D. Do that very quickly. By not having to worry about certain angles that you would see. Or turn your head or

25:42 roll forward or whatever. So we restricted you To only One Plane of turning. Where you're just rotating your head around. You can't look up and you can't look down and you can't tilt your head sideways.

25:54 So By reducing your motion that way, it reduced the kind of computations that we needed to do. So from hearing you correctly, and I may not just because of my limitations as a Luddite. Or maybe not a Luddite, but more of a muggle in this capacity. But it seems like you applied positive constraints, a number of constraints, so that you could use

26:17 Let's call it an elegant Code. to dramatically improve the speed of the player experience. And I'd love for you to explain Two things for people listening. Number one, when you're saying us

26:31 Who is us? And why do you think you guys were able to create this breakthrough instead of perhaps other teams, or were other people simply not looking at it the same way you were in terms of optimizing for speed and using that as like the primary driver behind the development. Okay, so us Is it software.

26:54 Which is a company that that I co founded in nineteen ninety one. We started nineteen ninety, but we officially Started the company in nineteen ninety one. And that's me and John Carmack, Tom Hall and Adrian Carmack. Adrian and John are not related.

27:09 Yeah. And uh it was just us four. That founded this company And in nineteen ninety one, which is the first year that we were officially

27:19 In our own. Office basically. To make games. full time all day long at our own company, which is a major achievement for us,'cause like everybody we have jobs, like we had day jobs and but we we had created a game in our off time And it did really well and allowed us to

27:39 Basically start the company formally. We were doing side scrolling games at that time using a technique that no one had ever used before on a PC. It hadn't been discovered for nine years since the introduction of the PC. Until John Carmack. figured out how to get pixel smooth scrolling. Horizontally.

27:58 on a PC. Can you give an example just for people listening who may not know the terminology? I know it seems self explanatory, but a side scrolling game. What would be a a well-known side scrolling game so people can visualize? Yeah, Super Mario Brothers is a side scrolling game, and there were thousands of them throughout the eighties. But on a computer, on a PC, the PC came out in August of nineteen eighty one. On the PC No side scrolling game could move

28:27 a dot at a time horizontally. It always move by eight pixels. It just chunked across the screen, so it was very chunky and blocky when it moved. And that's because Even moving the whole screen Itself.

28:41 Took a lot of time. But to move it by a pixel was kind of Unimaginable because there was no way to control that. At a high speed. So

28:50 When John made the breakthrough in nineteen ninety To figure out how to do that horizontal. movement like a Nintendo, like Super Mario Brothers on a Nintendo How to do that on the PC That was basically the moment that I software was born because it was like we are doing this in our own company. Oh my God, no one has ever seen this before. I'm just blown away. And when we finally started the company, I think it was like half a year

29:15 After that. When we started it. In nineteen ninety one. We made thirteen games that year. And we made them at high speed.

29:24 A game took us two months, but we would make two games at a time. We were so busy. The first three D game that we made was called Hover Tank One. And that was just to get our Feet wet in three D because we knew

29:39 Yeah. Where games are going. Eventually, because at at that point there were very few three D games and they were very, very slow. None of them. made a wall look like there were bricks on it or rocks or whatever. It was always some kind of solid color.

29:55 Or some little pattern of dots. Two different colored dots to make it look like another color that doesn't really exist. It's called dithering when you do that. It w wasn't really advanced. So our focus was to Make the screen

30:09 appear like other games. Except make it so we can move through the level smoothly. Not in chunks. And to be able to turn in any

30:21 Direction. And do that at a Very high frame rate. 'Cause no one had ever done that before. And that was the focus of Harbor Tank One. And that that game was made in two months.

30:33 That was John's big breakthrough was just creating the architecture of that engine and getting the rendering. For three D. Going at that speed. Thirteen games in one year. I know nothing about game development, but I imagine with a relatively small

30:48 Crew. That sounds like a lot of games. What do you think enabled you guys to do that? that maybe was not present for other people working on games who had much lower output. What were the ingredients or the approaches or the principles

31:05 Anything at all. Maybe just Tolerance for sleep deprivation. I don't know. What were the ingredients that allowed you allowed you guys to do that? So the way that we could achieve this game development at such high speed. Back then.

31:17 Возврат тепер. Is it software? We had already individually, other than Adrian who just learned how to put pixels on a computer screen, but he was a fine artist on paper already for his whole life. Each one of us four had ten years of game development experience.

31:39 Like All the time. And so we'd already made dozens of games each. Tom Hall. Who was our creative director.

31:47 He was a programmer, an assembly language programmer. He made tons of adventure games He did. action arcade games. in assembly language. So he was already a very fluent programmer. John Carmack, of course.

32:00 coded since he was a kid. I coded since I was eleven. So we've been making games for ten years and The amount of games that we had made was dozens each. And When you make that many games

32:13 That quickly. You learn how to scope and scoping is basically defining exactly what that game should be and not Adding to it. Subtracting from it, most likely, if you're gonna try and get it done. So scoping is like This is the amount of time that I have.

32:29 This is probably the kind of game that we can make and how big we can make it. Let's do that. And as you get closer and closer to that deadline, you start cutting things away. that you don't need to hit that deadline. When we did it before meeting. each other when we did it on our own time.

32:46 We set ourselves our own goals for finishing our own games. And we got really good at scoping, so when we got together. And we saw what we could do together. We also scoped together. How big those games should be.

32:59 And we had to deliver within two months. So we had to know How good every one of us is, how fast we can all work. And then scope a game to that Limitation. And because we had ten years of game dev experience, we could just slam games out super fast.

33:16 Come up with ideas, bam. Start doing the graphics, doing the animation. Programming the engine. Making the levels, making the level editors. Create levels, you name it, all the tools that are

33:27 Or in the background that no one sees. To build the game data. put it together in packages that the game can access. There's so much technology that goes on before you get to gameplay programming.

33:39 But we were used to doing that already for ten years. So It was not just the experience that we had, but it was also the focus. That we had Just so happy to be able to make games all day long. as a job, which is really

33:55 Just like the luckiest position ever. So we could focus on doing that. We could scope our games down. really, really well. We knew what to cut when it was time to start cutting stuff if we get we're getting closer to our deadline. And Because there was no internet

34:11 Back then. And no one had cell phones. There was complete and total focus because our phone never rang. There was a phone on the wall. And that thing never rang. So there's no interruptions.

34:22 Nobody's coming Interrupting our thoughts. So we could just focus for twelve hours a day at least. And just

34:32 Code, design, you name it. Constantly. To build on the emphasis you put on scoping, which I think is certainly applicable to so many different projects, maybe all projects. I mean that that certainly applies to book projects and so on that I've been involved with.

34:48 Podcasts, right? Thematically choosing where you'll go and w where you will not go. I was doing some research and if I'm taking us into a Dead end or a cool desac that doesn't make sense, you can tell me. But I read A discussion of Different I suppose principles.

35:08 At It's software and A comment came up which was no prototypes, which was attributed to you and talks about you guys being your own best testing team and so on. And I was wondering if can't believe everything you read on the internet, of course, but if this is true, if you could elaborate on what you mean by that. So to get

35:28 That many games done that fast. You can't be Playing around with making prototypes. Prototypes are like let's test this and see if it works. And Let's test that and see it. There's no testing. It's like

35:40 Here's the game that we're gonna make. Here are all the characters that go in the game. Here's how many levels we have. Here are all the pieces of the levels that need to be drawn. Here's all the animations that need to be created.

35:51 all the tools that need to be programmed, all that stuff. There's no way to do any prototyping if you're gonna get done in two months with four people. So we had no prototypes. We knew how to code already, so there was like Because we can just see it in our minds. We can just visualize it and we communicate with each other just going Okay, it's gonna look like this. On the screen, we're gonna see mountains in the background, on the foreground we're gonna have another plane, and we're gonna have trees there.

36:16 And we're gonna have up in the trees, we're gonna be have these characters and their AI is gonna be limited to blah blah blah blah. And so we just kinda describe what the game is. And we can do that within Let's say an hour. Yeah, at the very beginning of the new game. In one hour we can describe

36:31 That game. Extensively. For what we're going to create in the next two months. It wasn't like well then we have to figure out this. It was like there's no figuring it out. We're just making it.

36:42 Mm-hmm. So There weren't prototypes. It was just we're making the game. Later on with bigger games. That we could spend more time on.

36:52 We could do R and D, but we still knew what we were making. We just needed to figure out how to make that part of it. It wasn't like we build a piece of the game and then throw it away. We would build this functionality and Um, because that was the original design.

37:07 And if we found out that that functionality actually is a detriment to the the game itself, to the soul of the game. Then we would remove it. But it wasn't like we're prototyping it. We're making that piece of technology in the game. It was going to be part of the game. But We find out that that is not where the game is, really.

37:27 And then we pull it out. So let me ask uh I'm sure a naive question, but If You are going to ensure that

37:36 For instance, you can take an element like that and remove it later if it is not contributing to it and reinforcing the soul of the game. Do you need to think about that? design spec in advance so you don't end up with a piece you want to remove, but that is sort of interdependent with other elements in the game.

37:58 In other words, does like the architecture of how you approach it need to be decided in advance so that you have the capability of removing something. In that way. When we're coming up with the design of the game, let's say in this case it's Wolfenstein. Three D. The inspiration for Wolfenstein three D was a nineteen eighty one game called Castle Wolfenstein.

38:17 And they had a lot of really great Gameplay features in it. that we wanted to put in Wolfenstein three D, such as When you shoot a guard. You could drag them.

38:26 And hide them around a wall. You could search their bodies. You could go up to Storage chests. and try and open them and maybe shoot them open. But that makes noise, my call guards All these little pieces of design

38:40 that we wanted to replicate, but replicated in three D'cause Castle Wolfenstein was just a top down game from nineteen eighty one. It wasn't Three D. It didn't move, the screen didn't move around. It was just like every of characters are marching around on the screen. And that's it. Like they might leave the screen and disappear, but

38:58 Your screen was static like many games back in the eighties. So when we were making Wolfenstein three D, we start programming in the dead body dragging and the searching and That was the design. So we already designed that we're doing it. We already got the code in to do it. And we're now doing it. We're playing the game and we're going shooting somebody, going up and searching them.

39:20 And as we're playing the game, it feels like that doesn't match now. what this game feels like. Cause the original game it was perfect. It matched perfectly with the way that mu you moved around. And The feeling of the original game was more of a stealth game. So Castle Wolfenstein was really the first stealth game made.

39:40 It was an action arcade game, but it was really primarily about stealthing around and secretly getting out of this castle and escaping it. And we were doing that in our game as well. It was a recreation, but when we got to the point where we're doing some of the similar actions that were not just run and gun. We knew that that is not what this game's strength is. The strength of this game is doing this never before seen High speed rendering and high speed movement through

40:07 This maze. And no one had seen that before in slowing you down and making the player stop to do something else. Воз анти the focus of the game, right? So the focus became like this is the soul of the game. The soul of this game is high speed run and gun.

40:23 Anything that stops you Needs to come out. So even though we programmed in that stuff, we pulled it out because it wasn't true to the new spirit of the game, the one that we were making. It was like the original game's idea. was transferred to our game, but all of the details of that those two games are different. The way that you

40:43 shoot enemies in the original Castle Wolfenstein was not the way that you do it in our game. Our game is much more fluid and simple and easy to to control and Very, very fast. And so when we started focusing our design on that part of it, we started removing everything that took away from that speed. But there were some things that we had to leave in, like to open a door and wait for the door to open.

41:05 That's actually suspense that we need in the game. And if we didn't have any doorways, you're just running through a maze, just like blowing everything away constantly and nonstop, but you have no suspense really. So those doors provided the suspense. One of the original game's focuses was the suspense of wondering if you've made a noise and alerted the the guards to come after you

41:26 Or if they heard you trying to open a chest in the next room and you can see them in the next room. And you're just like trying to open a chest and if you shoot it then they're coming in the room and they're gonna try and arrest you. So We had a new

41:39 Focus of our design and that's Why we start removing and changing it. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs.

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42:37 That's LinkedIn.com slash Tim. To post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. So let me build on Wolfenstein three D and I have a question from a friend of mine'cause I mentioned to him that we were gonna be speaking. His name is Alan Lee. He's the co

42:55 Founder, co creator of exploding kittens, not just the single game, but the company that produces many, many tabletop games and card games. And he said, Holy crap, amazing. Ask him how the pressure of promising the world a game when he didn't have one somehow cajole the cells to do the impossible and will one into existence. And we went back and forth a little bit. And he said, Let me know if you need any any links to early Romero development stories. That guy literally did the impossible. So could you expand on uh what he means by promising the world a game when he didn't have one and how that cajole the cells in your body? I mean, that may not be the right way to put it, but To do the impossible. Just for people who don't have Any of that background.

43:39 We made Wolfenstein three D. For me, personally, that was my eighty seventh game. That I'd made. Right after Wolf Sign three D we made Spear of Destiny. That took us two months. That was number eighty eight.

43:52 There was a game called Shadowcaster that Views our technology. That we had made. So all the tools that I wrote then the gameplay code, menu code, all the stuff. We license our technology and give it to another company and then they make a game. That's game number eighty nine.

44:07 Called Shadow Caster. And then game number ninety. Not that I even was counting back then. It was just like Next game. You know, we're gonna make the next game. At the time, at the very end of nineteen ninety two, after making all of these games, and really when Wolfenstein came out

44:23 Everything changed because Now we have high speed three D. No one had ever seen this. Before. Ultima Underworld was out. And it was a really great

44:35 role playing game set in three D But the three D let you turn your head and look up and down and all that stuff, which really slowed the game down. So it wasn't a high speed game. You had step slowly through a dungeon, but it was three D. It was like the Three D is now happening at this point. Like If it's not ours, it's

44:54 Probably slow. But it is three D because the world is now going to become three D. But it's hard to get to that point. Our focus was speed. That was where we wanted to live. So with the next game We had had Such

45:07 massive success with Wolfenstein And sphere of destiny. That We jumped basically to the front of the industry. With those games. Like immediately

45:19 Bam. We are now in the lead. 'Cause nobody was making this and this was the new thing. High speed three D is the future. were their first

45:29 And we need to keep our lead. planning for the our next game after that And then our planning was happening at the end of nineteen ninety two. Was The creation of the engine that was a Wolfenstein plus engine.

45:43 After Spear of Destiny. It led to Shadowcaster, but that engine's architecture was too limiting for what we had in mind for our next game. So that's why we licensed that technology out and decided we're not using That three D engine architecture anymore.

46:00 And so at that point we've made four games in full three D, high speed, all that. For our fifth game. We needed new architecture. And to come up with a list of

46:12 all of the things that this new game would do. And we were thinking like We need to go beyond Anything we've ever seen. This next game and this was the only time we ever did this. The next game needs to be the best.

46:25 game we could imagine playing. That there can't be a better game in the world. Than this game. What would that game have? So we made a list, a bullet point list of all the things that this new game should have. Obviously.

46:40 It needs to have light and dark. Spook. It needs to have bright areas. Which we had no lighting. In Wolfenstein. It was just full bright.

46:50 You know, like the lights were always on. So it's like we need lighting control. We need height control. We need to be able to go up down up and down stairs. We need to have giant tall rooms. Really cramped rooms. We need walls to be drawn. At any angle.

47:05 Which no game in history had ever done at that point. Where you can have a wall that's at an angle and like a wall that's jagged and all that. Every game before this next game was basically a maze game.

47:21 And when you look at a maze from above, it's just Ninety degree wall turns. It's like those classic maze's labyrinths, you know, where you're just like drawing a line through the maze. That's what every single game from the seventies until that point looked like. Wolfenstein three D was a high speed maze game. It was the same thing. Ninety degree corners all over the place.

47:42 So this next game would break that barrier. So we're gonna have what we call non orthogonal walls. Yeah. Could create a space that no one had seen before. We were going to

47:55 Make this game multiplayer. So people could play with each other. And against each other. For the first time Because

48:04 Right then Local area networks. were just barely like they were just barely starting to sell network cards. And the cables and all that stuff in all the computer retail stores. So we would make a game that would take advantage of a network if you ever had it?

48:18 And it would take advantage of the modem to play against or with your friends. And then We would also make the game open so people could change the game to do whatever they wanted. And make it their own, basically. They could make levels They could make new sounds, new graphics. They could change the whole game, basically.

48:38 And modd it. It's called mods, modification. So we would open it up to modders. Who wanted to create a new experience using the tech that we created. And we'd also give away the

48:49 First piece of this game for free into the world. And you don't have to pay for it. You just get it and if you like it, you had fun. If you want more Then you buy it from us. That's called shareware. We had this whole list of everything we're gonna do.

49:01 And we We're very confident that we could do it. Because we already of John was already planning the architecture of the engine. He already was very confident in how he was gonna be able to do that. And at that point we were just on top of the world. Like we had just conquered everything with Wolfenstein, three D and with the spirit of destiny. And so we're just like

49:21 Invincible feeling. So what we did was We took Our two week vacation at the end of nineteen ninety two. And we came back in January.

49:32 of ninety three, right at the beginning of the year. And we're gonna start working on this new game that we call Doom. And We Decided

49:42 For some reason that we're going to put out a press release. And Tell everybody. What's gonna be in this game and it will be the greatest game that Earth is same.

49:53 And we did we put a press release out before we even start writing the game. We put a press release out saying This will be the best game anyone has ever played on a PC. And this is what's gonna be in it. And it's a breakthrough.

50:08 in game technology and all this crazy Stuff. So we needed to fulfill that and so we started working on it. Okay. Crazy. Yeah. It's yeah, it's nuts. There are, for instance, as thought exercises, some companies that will write press releases. In advance of developing a product.

50:29 technology product to help sort of hone Their focus on various elements, right? But that is for internal use only. You guys actually put out the press release. What was the conversation around? The press release because it's a smart team. There was some thought, I'm sure that that went into that decision. What was the logic, if there was one, behind putting out the press release?

50:53 I don't know why. We would've got a fresh one. It doesn't make any sense, but I think that what happened is Wolfenstein three D came out, remember at this point, we were so used to making games extremely fast. With Wolfenstein That was the very first game that we could make in any

51:13 Amount of time that we wanted. There was no deadline on Wolfenstein. We made the shareware version of Wolfenstein in four months and uploaded it. So there was four of us. Making Wolfenstein.

51:26 We had Kevin Cloud in there for the very last month. to add graphics and do a bunch of other cool stuff. But we we were very fast. And we didn't have a deadline on that game. And it released in May.

51:40 the shareware. So we had the rest of nineteen ninety two Just building up this world domination of Wolfenstein. There was an Internet Top One Hundred list. of games every week. And Wolf of Sun was at the top for the entire year after it came out. It was hüge.

51:56 We were just On top of the world, but we r after we release Spear of Destiny It came out, I believe, in September of nineteen ninety two. And no one had heard anything from us. And

52:10 Three months. Which back then with these accelerated schedules and people wanting to know what we're doing, like we're finally now doing interviews with places. We're doing radio interviews. We have the local TV station in our office. interviewing us and recording our screens We have them interviewing our publishers. Like people wanted all kinds of information about what we were doing. So I think at that time

52:33 It was like let's put out a press release telling people what we're gonna start working on. Because everyone is asking us constantly what we're doing next. So let's just do a press release and just like It's equal information for everyone. It's not like There's an exclusive with this one computer magazine, you know, computer gaming world or something. There's no exclusive. It was

52:53 Here everybody, this is what we're working on. And now we have to dive back. down in the ocean and start making it. Like don't bug us, you know. So I think the press releases probably To let everyone know what we're going to do next. It's incredible.

53:06 All right. So I want to take a pause here just for a second. to ask you about Tell me if I'm pronouncing this correctly. Hyperthymecia. Am I getting that right? Yeah.

53:18 Okay. So could you just define this for folks? And my question is also To what extent this has been an asset and to what extent this is had maybe a shadow side or been detrimental in any way.

53:33 So if you could just explain what it is. And then hop into that. Yeah, hyperthymesia is like a memory disorder where the person with hyperthymesia has a superior autobiographical recall. And it ranges from Really good recall of

53:49 significant events. And things that happened in your life that most people would forget over time. With hyper thymesia, you never forget those things. They just don't go away. you wouldn't know it if you're young, but as you get older and you start to lose

54:04 decades of memories because you don't use them and they're not significant anymore. Hyper media, you don't lose them. They're always there. And the extreme end of hyperthymesia is Is where you remember every second of your life. since you got hyper thymisium. That could be

54:22 born with, but sometimes it is an induced Memory disorder. So People have been hit in the head with a baseball and Boom. They have hyperthymesia and I and they have like

54:34 They record Every second of their life. Which gets to be kind of insane because everything that you've ever done is always present in your brain. And having all of these thoughts, like all of these memories constantly

54:48 It's a big hindrance, I guess, in just normal operation, like just living. My hypothymeia is I remember basically everything that has happened to me, mostly all the signific you know, all the significant stuff. In things that are connected to it.

55:05 So like music and movies and programming and games and that kinda stuff. I would remember basically all of that stuff through all the years. And I would you know things that I cared about, I would remember those things. I would remember The names of people who wrote games when those games were published.

55:25 The year that they were published. All of that stuff. So I would remember everything. So It makes it a lot easier to to just like

55:33 Hey, what happened in nineteen eighty three when you were doing blah blah blah. It's like well I was actually programming this stuff, but I didn't have my computer yet, so I had to do it on paper in the kitchen and you know, in so was a soybe or I could Tell people what I did whenever Have you had that to the best of your knowledge since birth, or was that induced? At some point.

55:53 It mostly since birth, but it got stronger. when I started to learn how to code at really high speed after getting the computer in the house. I was learning So much so fast I actually had to take breaks from learning. Because my head was just packed full of stuff and it needed to settle.

56:13 Yeah um and I I had to like stop myself from learning for a day or two before I could jump back in and fill my head full of stuff again. And Due to the nature of what I was learning in the early eighties, which is learning every byte of memory in an entire computer.

56:31 The knowledge of language wasn't as important as the knowledge of hardware. that time. So I needed to learn all of the hardware of the computer that I was programming and then the languages on top of that and then start creating off of the top of that information. So that was also a forcing function to

56:48 induce memory of everything basically that was happening. I have a one family member who has almost certainly I never had heard this term before, but hyperthymesia. He can recall Just about every fact, every experience. significant or trivial from his past. So he's much older.

57:12 than I am, but can recall the seating arrangement in every class that he was ever in. You know, the every word of every foreign language he's ever studied, et cetera. And what I've seen is that that is a superpower on so many levels, but it also As An example has been challenging for him because

57:31 negative experiences, arguments. Let's just say slights kinda moral injuries, all of these things are also as ever present for him. And it's very challenging. And I'm wondering if you have seen any I don't want to say trade offs, but challenges related to having such an enhanced memory.

57:51 Besides what you've mentioned. I'd say. That's totally true for a lot of people that have that. For me The say.

57:58 Negative. slash hindrance would be that I think a lot of things are similar. in importance, even if they aren't. So I would think that this

58:08 possibly insignificant detail. is more important than anyone else would think. And and the reason why I think it is because of the way it's connected to other things. It's like if that didn't happen, then these other things wouldn't have happened as well, you know? Yep. So yeah, so it's like Not knowing like, well, say for this book, what's w what's important, what isn't important.

58:28 But it was really important that I went to the heavy metal concert with this person who you know. Has that been challenging in group environments, like team environments, where you're sort of trying to weigh the relative significance, but because in your mind, some of these elements that might not be deemed important by other people are sort of importance adjacent, so you weigh them more heavily, has that been challenging in team environments at all? Not really, because I think the most helpful part of that is just knowing What has been made before. Like what games and game design techniques

59:08 Programming techniques. approaches to certain control issues like that stuff. Luckily just having played so many games over so Long a time. That has been really helpful to be able to recall solutions or other approaches people have taken.

59:24 that we don't need to research and figure it out again, like reinvent the wheel. It's like This game in nineteen eighty four to this. on an Atari eight hundred and we might be able to do that on the PC or something like that. So it's it was more helpful to solving issues or being able to make sure that we're not replicating failed designs of the past, you know?

59:44 And that we were always creating new things I hadn't seen before, which is really helpful. How important or how much of a contributor do you think to the the ongoing success of the team was having Two games and therefore two options for things to work on at any given point in time.

1:00:01 I would say that Having two games at a time. It did not impact really. anything because we knew what we were doing on both those games. One of those games came out.

1:00:14 a month before the other game, right? So that was like the priority. But What we did was kind of we divided our time into to roughly eight hour days or seven hour days. So we would go from ten to six.

1:00:28 On one game. And then six to two on the next game. So we would just all shift because it was really important to be in sync with each other. When we needed to like Ask questions or whatever, we're all on a project.

1:00:42 And it wasn't like oh you're just making a level for the other game, well, I guess I can't ask you You know, it was like we were always in sync. So we would shift to the next game. And start working on that. And then the next day we start back on the other game. And the reason why we're doing eight hours and eight hours or seven and seven

1:00:59 was because we love making games. Like we wanted to get these games done. We're learning a ton. It was super fun being together and making these games. We we'd be laughing. It would be new things that we're inventing. It was just like a kind it was like being in a lab where things are going right all the time. So It was super fun, and we could do those hours without a problem. And we did it for a whole year.

1:01:26 All of nineteen ninety one was spent with all the hours that we were awake. working on games, two games at a time at least. Because we were in sync at the same time when we shifted projects, we didn't get creative block with something. It's like ah I can't even figure out what I'm gonna do with this level. I'm gonna just make a level for the other game. We would help each other if anyone got stuck. It's like, uh, you know, I don't know what I'm gonna do for this one section and I'd like Well put a meat grinder in there or something and it's like Oh yeah, good idea.

1:01:54 You know, we would help each other, but most of the time we already knew what we were doing. I mean, we kind of pre thought everything out before we started working on these games and we could do it at really high speed. So We just executed'cause that was the really important part. We got the ideas and we have lots of experience. It was all about the execution of Or ideas. and in sync. And luckily because we had such a small team of four people

1:02:18 That could happen very fast. The bigger the team gets, the harder and longer it takes to make one vision. Come out. The right way. But with four people They have very distinct jobs to do.

1:02:31 It works really, really well. Doom? We paused at the press release. You go on to Create doom.

1:02:40 When did you after its release, or maybe in the course of developing it, Realize Holy shit. This is a monster, or it's gonna be a monster. This is gonna be bigger than

1:02:52 Even our grandest Press releases could have predicted. Was there a moment or an event? A day, anything that comes to mind. Several things happened during the development that were Interesting in that respect.

1:03:07 We knew at the very beginning of making the game That it was gonna be the greatest game that we've ever played because that was our focus of you know, like why we're making the game. So we already like knew it was gonna be awesome. And the best game that we had ever played, that was already like a given.

1:03:24 But while we're making the game. We got to a point where Tom Hall left the team. Yeah. August of nineteen ninety three, and we brought in

1:03:34 Sandy Peterson to replace him. doing level design work. I basically took over As the game designer. of the game. And uh that's how we we started stripping a lot of stuff out.

1:03:46 of the game like lives and score and getting rid of you know items that didn't matter. Really streamlining the design. Sandy was making levels. And at this point the design language for the level creation was Figure it out.

1:04:02 'Cause I needed to solve that problem with what are our levels gonna look like Yeah. Maximizes the use of our technology that no one has seen. And create spaces no one has ever experienced before. in a way that is

1:04:17 kind of drastic and not a little bit better than Wolfenstein 3D. It needed to be drastically better than Wolfenstein 3D. So that took some work to kind of come up with this abstract level design style. When that happened and we started to, you know, make stuff, it's like okay this is looking really great. Sandy Peterson immediately started picking up that style.

1:04:39 'Cause I like would sit and talk to him at the very beginning about like here's what's is important about using this technology that makes us stand out. And so he started putting those elements in his levels. And When I got to run Sandy's levels, not mine, because I when I make my own levels, I know everything that's in it. So I'm just like testing. To make sure it looks good, it's working well, the enemies are doing what I want them to do, the pacing is correct.

1:05:03 when combat happens is when I want it to happen. When exploration happens, I m have the the area cleared for the player to do that. All of these things. But when I play Sandy's levels for the first time, I know nothing about it. And I remember the first time when I started playing his levels I knew what people were gonna feel like.

1:05:22 Finally. Right. Right. And it was like wow, this is scary. You know I'm like going through this level and I'm hearing these monsters moving around. I don't know where they're at, but I don't like that they're coming for me somehow. And it was great'cause I finally got to Kind of feeling.

1:05:40 in a game experience way. What people would feel When they're playing it. Now At that point, I'm so used to the technology. That it's like whatever. Even though it changed everything, like no one had seen a screen that looked this way.

1:05:54 For us it was just like an another day at work, whatever. So I was just Focused on the experience. Part of it. So that to me was really fun to play a level I didn't make and experience in a little way what people were going to feel like.

1:06:08 And then We got to a point where It's like early October. And I for some reason look at that press release again and look at the bullet points'cause I'm like As a producer type.

1:06:19 person I'm I need to make sure we're putting everything in the game. We didn't promise stuff that we didn't deliver on and We need to mostly get that bullet point list done. And I saw that we were missing multiplayer. Like we didn't even think about it. We thought about it in January. But we get to the point of the game where like the game is mostly done now and it's in it's early October and I'm like Whoa Yeah, there's no uh

1:06:44 Woo, there's no multiplayer. So I go when I tell John, I'm like You will not believe this. There's no multiplayer, remember? We're gonna do that. And he's like, Oh yeah. So John's a genius.

1:06:58 And so John figured out Kind of immediately in his brain was like, Oh, I'll just solve it with a peer to peer networking model. So he figured out How he's going to bolt. Multiplayer onto the game.

1:07:11 And make it feel like it's been there the whole time. And so It just took him a few hours, you know, he just needed to learn how to get network packets going between computers over our network. And then how to get the game, like what data does he send between computers. He's trying to minimize the amount of data so it's fast. And he learned within just hours the techniques that he needed to do, and it took a couple of days to

1:07:36 hammer out some of the the speed issues. But It was pretty fast before I'd seen him shoot a character, get two computers going. And he's moving a character on one screen, the other one, you see the guy running around inside the level, it's like, Oh my God

1:07:51 Like we've never seen this before. In any game. And then you shoot'em and the guy dies, and it's like, Oh my God, this is gonna be the most fun thing In the world. And I go back into my office.

1:08:04 And I get that code running on my machine and we just start shooting each other. It's like this is not Oh my god. And then I'm imagining the level I'm currently working on In scene two people fighting. In another room from my viewpoint, and I'm just like There's nothing like this on earth. Oh my God.

1:08:23 This is changing everything, you know? So I got so excited at that point. So that was Another Holy shit, this is gonna be so different. And blow everybody away. It's a change everything. So multiplayer was when I saw that, I mean, and this is October.

1:08:39 And so that was really amazing. And then the lead up to when we're about to release the game Минала кінча анібарі. But somehow the people knew were getting close. We were starting to get random phone calls at the office. We have people online

1:08:57 Coming up with There's like these weird subcultures going on in Usenet. Around Doom. And people creating games Based on

1:09:07 Doom being the best game that could ever be made. And then them like creating a really crude version of that and calling it smashing pumpkins into small piles of future debris because that was such a funny thing. We put it as a cheat code in Doom. Just there was a lot of Internet activity around the fact that we're about to the release the game and we never said anything.

1:09:29 So it was really weird that the world was starting to go nuts. Before we launch the game. And that was the third like Okay. But

1:09:39 Up until that point, every game that we made, we would put it out And then our plan is to just wipe that game out with the next one. Like the next game's gonna just destroy that thing. So it's like Boom, games out next. You know? So we never thought that Doom was going to be living Actively for thirty years. Which is this year, it'll be thirty years old.

1:10:00 Stuff is being made for the game on a daily basis, all the time. In one of the greatest mods that has been created was released not that long ago. This year. Incredible.

1:10:12 It's called my house, not wad. People are still making insane stuff for the game. But we never thought that was going to happen. We just thought we're gonna make a really great game and the next game's gonna wipe it out. You know, like that was it. That was a goal. Let's hop back to something that you mentioned in passing that you left in nineteen ninety six.

1:10:29 Could you Tell the story. of how that came to be, how you ended up. Leaving the company. We started making the the last game that I had worked on and did software's name, Quake.

1:10:40 And we started working on Quake in nineteen ninety five. As a team. John had already kind of started planning the technology at the end of ninety four when we were Finishing Doom Two. He was exploring the technology for the next game, which was gonna be a massive, massive jump in technology.

1:10:58 And so when we started as a team in nineteen ninety five to make Quake It was like Micken Doom, right? It was like Here's this giant mountain we gotta climb again. There's a lot of tools, there's a lot of foundational work that has to get done, and let's do it. So we just started working on it.

1:11:14 And the design of the game also was like we started making Quake And we couldn't because the tech wasn't gonna be there. But this now was going to be the tech that we could use to make Quake. Which is why we named it Quake. So it's like

1:11:28 We're going to do that game. That game was a medieval 3D adventure with combat. It wasn't a first person shooter. 'Cause that never existed at that time. It was going to be A three D

1:11:41 Action Medieval We're going to recreate our D adventures that we had. and put it in full three D in a real full three D game.

1:11:52 So that was the design. as I'm making the level editor and kind of experimenting with three D There's a lot of other stuff going on at the company because Doom changed the planet. And then Doom Two again.

1:12:05 was even better than the original Doom. It was crazy because we only had at the time. When we shipped Doom, we're only six of us that shipped Doom. And on top of that we had three other people in the company to handle business. Um

1:12:21 All of the managerial type stuff and all of the technical support type stuff that was gonna happen. That's incredible. It was a very small company And working on Quake, we've gotten our team up to ten eventually to make Quake. And still with the other Three people, I think. On top of that. The company was thirteen people.

1:12:42 When Quake launched. So we had like a very small team, and we had the world coming at us. And There was so much to deal with Doom's impact. And

1:12:55 The articles, the Hint guides, the strategy guides. The other projects that we had going. that it took up a lot of time, which wasn't bad because At that time.

1:13:07 There's a lot of technology creation for Quake going on. And I was creating the level editor for the level design team to start experimenting with. And it was really just two other people. on the team doing level design. in full three D for the first time and that was uh that was Sandy Peterson and American McGee.

1:13:26 So it was still Pretty small. We still had more people eventually to hire onto the team to get us to ten. By the time Quake was shipped, but at this time it was probably seven of us. Was pretty small. During that time

1:13:40 the design of that medieval game just kept getting stronger and stronger. It was getting Reinforced with more things that could be done. To reinforce the feeling of that medieval world and do new things that we hadn't seen a game do.

1:13:55 At that time. In in lots of different ways. So it was Becoming a really strong design. Really strong, really cool.

1:14:04 And The problem was that we were spending all of that year Kind of spinning our wheels. doing three D levels, little pieces of levels and stuff, but we didn't have the gameplay programmer that could actually do anything

1:14:19 in the game because the the engine wasn't ready. Like we're waiting for that engine to actually happen so we can start using it. John, can I pause you for one second? Just for people who hear this word but may not understand how it applies within game development. Could you just define an engine? In simple terms, what is an engine? So at this point in our game development, we had created this term called engine. And the engine is what drives the game.

1:14:45 And that is the thing. That puts the images up on the screen. It's the thing that load files and saves files. It's a thing that takes input in. And makes gameplay happen.

1:14:57 It's what makes sound. Come out and music come out of the game. And so the core functionality That is needed. For a game to run.

1:15:07 without any of the graphics and any of the actual sound effects themselves, the core technology is called an engine, because you can put the data in and it will Come out. It will play. You put Sound effects in and then use game in gameplay code. You to find when those will play.

1:15:24 And they come out. And so it's an entire Set of Code. That any game can be made from.

1:15:31 So it's called an engine. And we pioneered the idea of an engine. in nineteen ninety with our original Commander Keene game. We sort of calling it an engine. even before we launched Keene. So we started that idea in nineteen ninety

1:15:45 Now we're talking about nineteen ninety five, which we'd made a lot of games since then. Since nineteen ninety. twenty something games. So with Quake we're creating a new engine. One that can do full three D. When that

1:15:59 has a completely different look to it. has more advanced gameplay. Oh. Everything about it was different. When we got to November of that year

1:16:09 The engine was finally ready. But the team Was burnt out. Because Of the massive effort.

1:16:18 That it took to create the technology. And the fact that they'd been making a lot of data that couldn't be used because the engine changed so much. That what they made Was Too primitive.

1:16:30 The engine could do more than what they had created. Because every time we were making stuff for the game the engine would be at a certain point of speed, then we're modifying our levels to make it, you know, run well at that speed, but that means it's a little too primitive because the engine got faster and faster and faster. And by the time we reach November, We could render much more interesting, you know, views. in the world, but we didn't build those worlds yet.

1:16:54 And we were slowly inching towards them. So it was a lot of like, wow, all the stuff I worked on, can't really use it. So people were burned out from that. And the team did not feel like they were up to the task. Of doing

1:17:10 Research on a new style of game, which is what Quake was going to be. It was not gonna be a first person shooter. They basically suggested that we should just make a shooter because we know how to do it. We can nail it. This is brand new tech that's awesome already. If we just do a shooter, we can all just like ship a game and take a rust kind of thing, you know? And I was just like, No, we need to do this. The whole world knows what this game is. It's in magazines. Like everybody knows what Quake is, and this is like what I'm all about is

1:17:41 We're pushing our technology to the limit. Let's push design to the limit too. Let's go beyond what we've done before and make something new people haven't seen. I wanted to make this three D game experience, something no one had seen before, that goes beyond our first person shooter And so they just really

1:17:58 didn't want to do another unknowable mountain to climb. Like when is it gonna be defined? You know, like we don't have a scope that that has an end on it now. Like we didn't either with the engine. And we didn't change course. while we're doing it either, which is what really harmed the team.

1:18:17 So I basically just kinda gave in and said, I will Design a first person shooter. That will use all of the stuff and what we've done To date. To the best that we can.

1:18:29 And then release it as fast as we possibly can. So we started doing that in from the middle of November. We basically went into crunch mode at that time. Even though everyone's burnt out. They're mostly burnt out'cause they weren't making something that they could see.

1:18:44 What it was gonna be used for. Because we wanted to get it done as fast as possible, we went into what's called crunch mode. Which at that time was seven days a week. All the hours that you can. Which is at least ten.

1:18:56 A date. And we did that for seven months. Seven days a week. Oh my God. Yeah. And It was really hard.

1:19:04 And after the game was released It was uh you know, like a month and a half before I quit because there was still some work for me to do to get the game. mastered and created to go into stores and be shipped to customers, that kind of thing. I took a vacation, I came back, I mastered all this stuff, and I was already planning for half a year To leave because If we're not gonna commit ourselves to furthering design, it's just gonna become a technology company.

1:19:29 then I wanna leave and go create a design company. And so I've already planned after that big meeting About a month late two two months later. Already plan to leave. Can start another company with Tom Hall.

1:19:42 And he agreed. that he uh he would love to do that. So I said after shipping Quake Then we'll start doing that. So that's what happened. After shipping I

1:19:51 Started getting in touch with publishers and They also John Carmack mainly didn't want to work with me anymore, so Yes, for my resignation, I was like, Well I'm going anyway, so

1:20:02 Let's sign it. It was a very tough game to get through. What was that experience of Separating from the company. Like for you? Was it

1:20:11 Challenging? Was it strange to be on your own and to sort of leave behind Maybe the identity that you had. Built. With that team. What was that?

1:20:23 experience like just emotionally, psychologically for you. Leaving and starting another company I was very excited about it. I was excited because I was going to be doing this with Tom. who's a really great friend.

1:20:36 Amazing creative force. Someone super fun to work with. And we both had tons and tons of experience. So I was really excited about that. But I really liked working with the other people at it as well. So it was really like it sucked.

1:20:51 But it was also exciting. Like at the same time it was like uh that was a lot of really great Work there. But I'm also excited about what I can possibly do without limitations on what say design could do. It was negatives and positives, but I think that it was mostly positive because we're starting to do something new. And it was really, really fun to do with Tom and we spent about half a year

1:21:13 Building. relationships with different publishers to start Ion Storm. And finally, you know, after six months Figure out. Who we're gonna side with and

1:21:23 Signed up with IDAS. What led you to want to Write your memoir. Doom guy. Life of first person.

1:21:32 What were the reasons for wanting to Write this book. Publish this book. So several years ago I went To do

1:21:42 Speaking engagement in Canada. And They basically had heard the story of Doom's development and kind of already knew some of the stuff I talked about. So they said Can you do something different? Can you Tell us.

1:21:58 About your early life and what made you the person that would make Doom. Instead of talking about Doom, talk about how you became the person to make deal. So it was like oh kinda like my life in games, you know, early g early games. So it's like all right. I'll write that talk. So I wrote a talk that had

1:22:16 A lot of the stuff that happened in my early childhood with the All of the exciting things that had to do with Drugs and Murders and Just the the low income stuff.

1:22:27 Which kinda shocked people. They had never heard any of that before. And you know, hearing the audience and and the questions later was just like People saying you should put that in a book. Like nobody knows about that information. I was like, Yeah, I didn't really ever talk about it before. And yeah, that would be a good idea. In fact because I haven't seen anything out there that really documents

1:22:50 The id software's Yeah, ludography. What game started on what date? When did it That game ship. What's the authoritative

1:22:59 book on the development of all of its software stuff. I can actually put that in this history as well. So it was kind of a twofold reason for writing the book was to get the whole story out there from when I was born until today. And to also be a really good chronicle for Everything that happened during those years and when those things happened.

1:23:20 And a bunch of the cool stories that people had heard before. And just put a lot of really good stuff in in there as well. Like There was a game that I was Working on called Black Room. And every once in a while I get people asking

1:23:33 So what's up with Blackroom? And I always tell them I can't talk about Blackroom. Well, Black Room's in this book. So it's really really people are gonna get to hear everything about Blackroom. Is it true that Doom the name comes from the color of money, or is the origin story a different origin story for the name? Yeah, the name for Doom. It came from John Carmack. He was

1:23:54 Watching Tom Cruise's The colour of money movie. And when he was watching it and he saw the guy walk up So Tom Cruises. He's got his

1:24:04 Q stick inside of a case. On his lap. And the guy's like, What's in there? And Tom Cruise like looks down at it and looks up at the guy and goes It's doom.

1:24:13 It was like wow, that's a really great name, you know, like We haven't heard of a game called Doom before, so he he said How about Doom? And it was like that is awesome. Yeah. And that was it.

1:24:26 Rest is history. So John People can find you on Twitter at Romero, on Instagram at the Romero. Thank you for taking the time. And is there anything else you'd like to mention any other asks or requests of the audience, anything at all that you'd like to

1:24:43 Mention before we Bring this to a close. Well, I mean, I'm really grateful to have had a really fun career. Making games. It's been a blast.

1:24:53 From the early days of learning. how to program a computer all the way to today Using really advanced technology to make shooters with bigger teams. I've seen everything that's happened during that huge span of time. And it's been just a really, really, really great

1:25:10 a really great time overall. So I'm just really Just happy to have had that kind of a life and that's all that is basically in this book. Excellent. John, thank you so much for taking the time. And I am looking forward to getting a copy of Doom Guy. People will be able to find it where books are sold. And we'll link to everything in the show notes, as per usual, to all my fine listeners at Tim.blog slash podcast. And until next time, be just a little bit kinder to yourself.

1:25:38 And to others. And as always, thanks for tuning in. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading. albums perhaps gadgets gizmas all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends including a lot of podcast guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun again it's very short

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