So in early 1995, Alex and his team developed a technology that made sure a game would run on Windows no matter how a computer’s hardware might change. The technology was called DirectX. With DirectX, developers could make games without having to worry about a Lion King–like fiasco and, in turn, pledge their support to Windows. But Alex knew that game developers were a highly skeptical bunch. There was no better way to convince them to use this new technology, he figured, than to show them a version of Doom running on Windows with DirectX.
Id, he quickly discovered, was less than interested in taking on the job of programming a Windows version of Doom. The company had already turned away Apple and IBM because Carmack didn’t want to spend time doing ports. And Doom was already running fine on DOS—and being played by plenty of people—so why bother? Furthermore, Carmack—long an advocate of giving away source code for the greater good of the technology—seemed almost disdainful of Microsoft’s proprietary stance. Alex assured him that id would not have to lift a finger; Microsoft would port the game itself. Carmack agreed.
WinDoom, as the version was called, was showcased at the Game Developers Conference in Silicon Valley in March 1995. Microsoft spared no expense, renting out the Great American Theme Park to unveil its goods. As the lights dimmed in the auditorium, the audience of gamers began chanting, “DOS! DOS! DOS!” in defense of Microsoft’s established platform for games. But as WinDoom began playing on the large screen, a hush of reverence fell over the crowd. The age of Windows and DirectX had begun.
The next and most formidable step was to come: selling Windows as a gaming platform to the public. Despite Doom’s success, most casual gamers still viewed computers as geeky things, full of weird bugs and cryptic command requirements that plagued DOS games. Now was the key moment, Alex knew, for Microsoft to put up or shut up. On the strength of the WinDoom demo, he had managed to enlist several companies to create games for Windows 95 using DirectX. They just needed to make a big splash in time for Christmas 1995. With a demonic game like Doom as its showcase, what better way to make a splash than a Halloween media event? It would be a bash like no other, filled with hundreds of reporters from gaming to mainstream publications. This would be their chance to see what Microsoft was all about in the multimedia age. The event would be called, appropriately, Judgment Day.
Alex couldn’t have called id about the party at a better time. The company had just brought on a new colleague who was the epitome of a party guy: Mike Wilson. A childhood friend of Adrian Carmack’s from Shreveport, the twenty-four-year-old had finished his stint working with DWANGO Bob. The rise of the Internet had put an end to DWANGO’s spree; gamers had no reason to pay to play when they could do it for free online. But for Mike, life was a party that never died. With long blond hair and a surfer’s ease, he was a free spirit who had done everything from manage a daiquiri bar to sell Jesus wallets in a local country and western store. Though he wasn’t a big gamer, he could see that games were the new rock ’n’ roll, and the guys at id, the new rock stars.
Mike loved the idea of Judgment Day. Alex was going to convert Microsoft’s cafeteria and garage into a sprawling haunted mansion. More than thirty of the biggest game developers, including Activision, LucasArts, and id, would be invited to create their own sections of the mansion. Mike’s eyes widened, imagining what demonic fun id could have with such an assignment. Why not invite the top Doom gamers from around the world for a giant deathmatch tournament—the first ever!—to be held right at the show? The plan was set. “It’s now official,” Mike declared in a press release. “We are leading Microsoft down the highway to Hell.”
Alex didn’t have much trouble connecting with Mike’s devilish attitude. Despite all his work on DirectX, he still felt like Microsoft was treating his project as “skunk work.” On one occasion, he received a call from an incredulous superior who simply said, “Tell me why I shouldn’t fire you.” Judgment Day would show them all the answer. But to succeed, he knew that he needed to unveil not only the games but the man himself: Bill Gates.
Alex’s requests to feature the CEO at the Halloween event, not surprisingly, were turned down. Gates had other things to do, he was told. But Alex persisted and managed to persuade Gates’s public relations lackeys at least to have him record a video address for the crowd. On the day of the shoot, Gates met Alex in the Microsoft video studio, flanked by anxious PR representatives, who began dictating how the shoot was going to proceed. Gates, noticing Alex’s clear dismay, cut them off.
“So what do I need to do for this video?” Gates asked.
Alex took a deep breath. Then he handed Gates a shotgun.
Halloween came one night early at Microsoft, on October 30, 1995. The party was in full swing. A Ferris wheel spun outside. A circus tent offered beer and barbecue. A three-story-tall makeshift volcano bubbled up red light. Over at the microphone, Jay Leno, master of ceremonies for the night, entertained the crowd. But the real action was happening underground, in the garage that had been converted into a haunted mansion. There, the deathmatch competition Mike Wilson had organized was under way.
Twenty elite gamers had been flown in and were competing under a giant screen that showed the game. The two top contenders—a stealth Asian American teenager nicknamed Thresh and a Floridian beach bum nicknamed Merlock—twitched over their PCs as they fought. The crowd gathered around them, cheering and taunting. Thresh won the match and was besieged by fans and reporters. “Oh my God,” Jay Wilbur said to himself, looking on in disbelief, “this is a sport.”
Alex St. John, dressed as Satan, was busy chasing Mike Wilson through the red lights and fog. He found him in a corner, sucking down beers with one gamer dressed as Jesus and another as the Pope; Mike and his wife came as the blood-soaked antiheroes of the movie Natural Born Killers. Alex told them that he had seen the id installation and he thought it was hilarious. But, he said, Microsoft’s PR people were less than pleased. How were the press—or, for that matter, the Microsoft execs—going to react?
As the media and execs started making their way through the mansion, the displays seemed innocent enough. Activision was promoting an adventure game called Pitfall Harry and had built a little jungle scene in which passersby could swing on a makeshift vine. In another room, a company called Zombie had a metal sphere that shot blue electric bolts through the air. But the id installation had a bit more in store: an eight-foot-tall vagina.
Gwar, the scatological rock band that id had hired to produce the display, had pushed their renowned prurient theatrics to the edge. The vagina was lined with dozens of dildos to look like teeth. A bust of O. J. Simpson’s decapitated head hung from the top. As the visitors walked through the vaginal mouth, two members of Gwar cloaked in fur and raw steak came leaping out of the shadows and pretended to attack them with rubber penises. The Microsoft executives were frozen. Then, to everyone’s relief, they burst out laughing.
Not everyone else, however, was getting the joke. Onstage, a band of Mike’s friends called Society of the Damned was screeching through a dissonant set of industrial rock. No sooner had they launched into an abrasive track called “Gods of Fear” than the Microsoft PR people decided they’d had enough. Two security guards stormed the stage and demanded that the band members conclude their set. Alex saw the commotion and lumbered over, his face as red as his Satan costume. “These guys are the guests of id Software!” he barked. “The id Software! The guys who made Doom! Any friends of id’s are friends of Microsoft.” But the guards weren’t having it and unplugged the sound system.
As the lights fell, a video screen lowered above the stage. It was time for the main event. The crowd cheered as footage of Doom’s familiar corridors began to roll. But it was not the Doom soldier chasing the demons, it was . . . Bill Gates. Microsoft’s fearless leader was superimposed running inside the game in a long black trench coat and brandishing a shotgun. Gates stopped running and addressed the crowd about the wonders of Windows 95 as a gaming platform, a platform
that could deliver cutting-edge multimedia experiences like Doom. But no sooner had he begun than an imp monster from the game jumped out and, through a voice-over, asked Gates for an autograph. Gates responded by raising his shotgun and blowing the beast into gory chunks. “Don’t interrupt me while I’m speaking,” he said, then finished his speech. At the end, the screen went black with blood, only to be replaced by the familiar Microsoft logo and the phrase “Who Do You Want to Execute Today?”
This is it, Alex thought, I’m going to be fired. He went to retrieve the video, but it was gone. He could keep his job, he learned; Microsoft was keeping the tape.
The news was spreading fast.
Subject: ROMERO is DEAD
> I heard on the Newsgroup that John Romero was in a car accident?
> Is he OK?
Could it be? John Romero—twenty-eight-year-old Ace Programmer, Rich Person, the Surgeon—dead? According to the gossip online, his fly yellow Ferrari had gone careening off some Dallas highway in one final joyride. It wouldn’t have been the first ill fate of an id sports car. Just weeks earlier, a $500,000 custom Doom Porsche race car—complete with the game’s logo emblazoned on the fire-red hood—being financed by Carmack and built by Bob Norwood had been mysteriously stolen from his lot. Maybe Romero was suffering some curse.
In reality, Romero was very much alive. He had just returned from inspecting the house he was having custom built: a $1.3 million nine-thousand-square-foot Tudor mansion with a six-car garage, video game arcade, and two limestone gargoyles guarding the door. Now he was sitting at his desk in Suite 666 overlooking his pristine car in the lot. The rumors were a fitting coronation, the game-god equivalent of the Beatles’ ”Paul is dead” legend. But Romero took exception to the implication that he would perish by his own ineptitude. “Uh, no. I’m not dead,” he wrote online in response. “I don’t wreck cars or myself.”
Not everyone in the office would agree. By November 1995, Quake was nowhere near completion, and factions were more vocally blaming Romero. With Carmack still immersed in making his engine, the rest of the company felt like they had nothing tangible to pursue. The artists, Kevin and Adrian, were tired of churning out all the fantasy textures without a clear plan. The level designers, American and Sandy, were bored twiddling around with rudimentary game sections. Beyond the basic concept of a fantasy game and a big hammer weapon, there wasn’t much to go on. Whenever they asked Romero for direction, he would just spew out his generalizations and leave them to fend for themselves. What kind of project director was that?
In Romero’s mind Quake was coming along just fine. Carmack was busy working on what he knew would be the next killer game program. There was no reason to rush Engine John. The rest of the company had to just be patient and get ready to throw on the great game design. The best thing they could do was find ways to be productive. Romero chose to spend this time by immersing himself in side projects that he felt would have direct benefit to the company.
But he could sense that they wanted to blame him for not getting the game done, that he wasn’t doing enough work. They viewed his detachment, his flipped bit, as a sign that their resident rock star was spinning, if not crashing, his wheels. Their attitude was starting to piss him off. So what if he was going home at 7:00 p.m.? He had a wife. He was building a home. He was making a life. And he deserved it. Now that id finally had some more employees to take up the slack, he should be able to take it easier. If the company were hurting, he could understand the complaints. But the company was doing well, in no small part thanks to his multiple projects. And if he wasn’t going to oversee these projects, who was?
Yet Romero was neither seeking nor finding empathy. One night Sandy Petersen decided he had had enough. He stormed into Carmack’s office and shut the door. “I think John’s a really good designer,” he said, “and I think that he’s currently not properly organizing Quake. I’ve been at a big company where games get organized, and I know how it’s done and he’s not doing it. He’s not a project manager, he doesn’t know how to do it, and the game’s not gonna come together unless he changes some things.”
Carmack hit the reply button in his head and spewed out what was now his rote response to this complaint: “Romero works like a demon at the right time,” he said, “and it’ll all come together.” Then he spun around in his chair and went back to work, no good-byes, no conversation ender, no nothing. Typical, Sandy thought. Carmack had long behaved this way, unconcerned with the conventional etiquette of how to begin, continue, and conclude a dialogue with another human being. But these days it was growing worse. One afternoon Michael Abrash told Carmack about how his daughter had finally gotten into a good school after considerable effort. It had meant a lot to Michael, but all Carmack had to say in response was “mmm”; then he spun around to his desk.
Carmack could feel that he was drifting off into space, further and further away from things that he could talk about with normal people. He couldn’t connect with anything that was stirring around him: the office politics, happy hours, MTV. His world was Quake. His days were Quake. His nights, his life. He was working eighty-hour weeks easily, fully immersed in his nocturnal schedule. People would see him walk in, grab a Diet Coke from the fridge, then make a beeline to his office. The only action they’d see would be the occasional pizza delivery person knocking on his door.
And yet, despite his best efforts, Carmack for the first time in his life felt like nothing was falling into place. Quake was requiring him essentially to reinvent everything. Little from Doom could be extended into Quake’s 3-D world. Doom supported four players in deathmatch in somewhat tricky network mode, but Quake would support sixteen people easily over the Internet. Doom had a limited three-dimensional perspective, but Quake would deliver full-blown immersion, allowing players to look in any direction and see a convincing virtual world. The most frustrating consequence was his engine’s inability to draw a complete visible world or, in technical terms, a potentially visible set. As a result, the world of Quake was filled with holes. Carmack would be running down a hallway of the game only to find it abruptly end in a hideous blue void. There were blue voids in the floor, in the walls, in the ceilings. His virtual world was Swiss cheese.
Consumed by this dilemma, Carmack’s thoughts began getting all the more abstract. His mind filled with geometric forms, floating and spinning at his command as he tried to separate them, assemble them, organize them. He didn’t dream about girls in bikinis at spring break like many guys his age; he dreamed about the relationship of two polygons in space. He would stumble home at 4:00 a.m., and the visions wouldn’t leave him. One night, he sat on the edge of his bed watching coded messages travel down to his arm, instructing it how to move, grip, release. This isn’t the way it works in real life, he thought. I must be having a weird dream. He awoke in a cold sweat. There was no escape, not even in sleep.
Though Carmack rarely felt—let alone cracked from—pressure, Quake was beginning to break him. He started lashing out at his employees. One day, Jay suggested they talk about getting software patents for their game technology. “If you guys ever apply for software patents,” Carmack barked, “I quit, that’s it, end of discussion.” Everything grated on him: the distractions of business, the politics of emotion, the laziness—at least in his mind—of others. “You always leave early,” Carmack said one evening as Sandy was walking out the door. Sandy was stunned; he was putting in eleven-hour days at least, but his days started at 9:00 a.m., whereas Carmack didn’t even get in the office until 4:00 in the afternoon. “I don’t leave early,” he said. “You’re just not here when I’m here.”
Carmack didn’t relent. He began firing off disciplinary e-mails. First, he banned deathmatching in the office. Then he sent out grades. Everyone in the company was given a letter grade based on his performance: Sandy got a D, Romero a C. Carmack wasn’t through. One night he dragged his desk outside his office and planted himself to work in the hallway—the better to keep an eye on ev
eryone around him. Employees began living in fear of their jobs and staying later and later, trying to keep up with Carmack’s relentless pace.
The fun, they felt, was being sucked out of the company. The tension was so thick that people started to complain about Carmack too. Romero wasn’t the only one with the ego; Carmack was off in his own world, refusing to come down. Soon nothing, not even the most tempting distraction, could lighten the situation. One afternoon Carmack was sitting in his office when he heard a woman’s voice down the hall asking if someone had ordered a pizza. Romero replied, “No, I didn’t order a pizza.” She asked again, “Did you order a pizza?” Someone else said, “Uh, no.” Carmack heard his door open. “Did you order a pizza?” the woman asked. He spun around to see an attractive young woman, topless, carrying a pizza box. The stripper was a practical joke arranged by Mike Wilson in an attempt to lighten the mood. “No,” Carmack told her flatly, “I didn’t order a pizza”; then he too went back to work. “Boy,” the stripper said, “you guys are boring as hell!” Then she walked out the door.
All Carmack wanted was to be left alone to work or, even better, just be cast adrift, left as a hermit. The only person who had any empathy for him, it seemed, was Romero. One night Romero pulled him aside. “Dude, I know you’re being hard on yourself,” he said, “but you can’t be superhuman.”
Masters of Doom Page 23