Returning from vacation in January 1994, many things about our world changed, but one thing remained the same: We were ready to make another game, and there was no doubt what game it would be: DOOM II. Since the days of Keen, we alternated shareware games with full retail versions, and it was obviously working well.
But id was now more than just a game development company. We were growing—not just in terms of who worked at the company but also in terms of new ownership, partnerships, and licensing. Recognizing their significant contributions, we offered Jay and Kevin part ownership of the company, which would be finalized in March 1994. A fledgling community grew, too—and I say fledgling only because the DOOM community is easily one hundred times that size today—but even back then, it required and deserved attention, and this was in the days before the concept of community management or eSports even existed. Game developers and gamers lived in different bubbles mediated only by industry press and occasional fan mail. DOOM, the advent of LAN* parties, and our consistent presence on the internet blew that all open. I was wearing multiple hats, and it was exciting. I was not only the de facto communications officer/PR talking head and community/eSports guy, I was the quality control officer for all our licensing deals. And offers flooded in! People wanted to write DOOM novels and DOOM hint books. Companies wanted to license the DOOM logo to put on their shareware retail versions. Other companies hoped to partner with us to develop their IP and still others wanted to use our engine. Even though Jay negotiated these business deals, he couldn’t vet some of the opportunities or final products. He didn’t know everything about DOOM’s development, technical possibilities, or level design. Besides, he was now biz guy of a small developer that was rocketing upward at an incredible rate. He had a million things keeping him busy, too. For an entire year following DOOM’s release, I spent a nontrivial portion of my time vetting all these side projects, giving Jay my opinions, and then monitoring the deals we made. It’s not like we could take on all these opportunities—we were too few people—so we had to pick and choose. If I have one regret from this time, it is not jumping into the deep end of merch. A couple decades later, games like Minecraft and Angry Birds were all over merch in a big way, and their efforts not only gave their fans what they were asking for but provided additional revenue that allowed the company to grow.
On top of the licensing opportunities, I worked on a new business venture. As DOOM was locking down in November, I had an idea: commissioning Raven Software, the Madison-based company that licensed our tech for ShadowCaster, to use our engine and quickly develop a new title to publish ourselves. I envisioned it as a DOOM-like knockoff, but instead of basing the game in a futuristic world, I wanted to go back in time and make a medieval game with a different aesthetic. I saw it as id optimizing our engine, retaining control, and expanding our business and bottom line. We already knew that Raven was great at making medieval art.
Presenting the idea to the team, I noted that it was a significant investment for us and assured them I would manage it and take the role of executive producer. We’d have to buy Raven several NeXTSTEP workstations, so their crew could use our engine, and pay for the team to make the game, but I thought it was worth it. Everyone agreed. Raven signed on the dotted line, the NeXTSTEP computers were ordered, and I started to lay out the development plan for Heretic.
In January, I visited Raven to discuss the game, install the workstations, and show everyone how to use our tools. With the deal signed and the machines installed, I flew back to Dallas eager for Raven to get to work. As it turns out, they didn’t get too far. Raven delayed the start of development because of a new co-owner they brought on, their old ShadowCaster producer from EA, and he wanted to renegotiate our agreement. We had a fair 50/50 deal and would not budge. id was about to terminate the agreement, but instead we had them fly down to Dallas to negotiate with us and fix this issue. We ironed out the problems, and they finally got to work.
Even though Heretic was a new game, I needed Raven to keep the same amount of weapons and weapon balance as DOOM. It was a formula we knew worked. They could make the weapons look different, but messing with the formula was off the table. A change to game balance was a change to the core of the game. It was difficult enough learning the NeXTSTEP development process. We didn’t want them making risky gameplay changes, too. The Raven team and I worked out a great workflow—they sent builds of the game on regular milestones, I played them, and gave them feedback. It was most important to us that it felt like an id software game. It was a year of back and forth and took up a significant amount of my time, but we all felt Heretic was worth it in the end.
Outside of id, however, no one knew or cared about the licensing or external projects. Our fans and the press only cared about one thing: DOOM II. The calls, emails, and letters started in January, when DOOM was less than a month old. Since DOOM hadn’t received much attention prior to its launch, our phone rang off the hook with requests for interviews, and of those we granted, “What’s next?” was the obvious question on everyone’s lips. I certainly didn’t care much about the publicity; if anything, it ate away at my already limited time, but it was a necessary evil to get the word out there about our upcoming game. We wanted to keep the momentum going.
Even with DOOM’s success, the work on DOOM II was going to be a challenge. We had everything going in our favor, but one beast of a question kept raising its head: How do you follow up and even top something like DOOM? We were determined to try. During an early design meeting, we agreed that the formula for DOOM was perfect, and that the new game should just build on what we started without breaking the underlying game feel players loved. We analyzed the experience, system by system and bit by bit. New levels were a given. Because we’d sell DOOM II in stores, we didn’t have to worry about making multiple shareware episodes, with one to give away and two others to sell. But the player experience in those levels? That needed to set DOOM II apart from its predecessor. We got to work considering our options.
As our early design meetings got underway in January 1994, Ron Chaimowitz came to visit us at the Black Cube. Ron was an aggressive, super-smart, multimillionaire hustler. He discovered and managed Gloria Estefan. He turned Spanish pop idol Julio Iglesias into a household name in the US. His company, GoodTimes Home Video, orchestrated Jane Fonda’s mega-selling workout videotapes. Most importantly for us, he became Walmart’s go-to provider and gatekeeper for any software sold in their stores. He wanted to sign us to their new game division, GT Interactive, to sell retail versions of our games in Walmart. For game developers in the 1990s, getting into Walmart was a huge windfall. They placed orders for tens of thousands of units instead of the tens or hundreds of units like other big box stores. Because they had such a massive footprint, whatever they purchased always sold through. Few people had dial-up in 1994, and it would be another nine years before Steam and regular digital distribution of games was the norm. At the time, though, we didn’t fully understand the selling power of Walmart.
We listened to his pitch.
“How can I prove myself?” he asked us.
Jay replied, “Sell 30,000 copies of Commander Keen.” We expected him to roll his eyes.
“Done,” said Ron.
Sure enough, he cut a purchase order. The 30,000 copies of Commander Keen were gone in the space of a month. We were all blown away. Our attitude was, “Whoa! These guys can do anything. Let’s sign a deal.” Negotiations with Ron were easy. We got creative control, kept our copyrights, and GT Interactive committed to a $2 million marketing budget for DOOM II—an almost inconceivable amount of money for a company that previously promoted its games by posting them on the internet for free. Behind the scenes, and unbeknownst to us, GT Interactive was quietly trying to acquire the rights to and subsequently publish every single game that we’d made for Gamer’s Edge, and I’d go so far as to wager that they made far more money from those games than we ever did. They were the biggest distributors of DOOM shareware. They also contacted Softdisk, got the rights to publish Catacomb 3D, and named it Catacomb 3. They published Keen Dreams in a retail box. Through us, at least, they got the rights to publish Wolfenstein 3-D in a retail box.
Meanwhile, and buoyed by our new GT Interactive deal, our design plans for DOOM II continued. As before, I took on the role of game director, level designer, and handled game audio while Carmack handled engine improvements and code for the new enemies. Adrian and Kevin created the look and feel of the world and its enemies. Among our biggest challenges was the weapon balance, the same balance I insisted Raven stick with for Heretic. It was the soul of the player experience. We needed to make sure that we didn’t ruin anything that made the original DOOM great. Every implement of destruction was useful in the game.
Could we add anything?
That was a problem. In DOOM, each weapon was assigned a number key, one through seven, in order of its lethal power. We didn’t want to tie a new weapon to eight, because the seven key already controlled our most brutal weapon, the BFG, which of course was short for “Big Fucking Gun,” and we knew players would rebel at remapping their brains to a new number order.
“What about a double-barrel shotgun?” I asked.
After all, we loved the shotgun. It did great damage, even at a distance. It was straight out of Evil Dead.
“A double-barrel shotgun would be fucking amazing,” I continued. “We’re already switching between your fists and the chainsaw on 1, so we could switch between the shotgun and the double-barrel shotgun on 3.”
We hadn’t even put it into the game, and I was already figuring out the audio for it in my head. I heard a bassy, bigger sound. The reload ended up being a little crisper. Damage wise, it was double the shotgun but had a widespread shot. All these years later, it remains my favorite weapon.
Level-wise, we decided on thirty levels plus two secret levels, with a few intermission breaks. It was a lot of work, and with everything else I had going on between evaluating external licensing partners and dealing with a never-ending barrage of incoming DOOM-related stuff, I knew that Sandy and I needed some help. I considered where we might get a level designer—the specialization was still relatively new at the time—and recalled a conversation I had with a new recruit to our tech support department, American McGee. Months before, Carmack met and hired American, then a cool, young auto mechanic and computer geek, to work in tech support with Shawn Green. A few months into DOOM II development, American said he wanted to become a level designer, so we promoted him from tech support to level design. He knew my levels and design patterns well and needed little mentoring. Among the three of us, I knew we could create a cohesive feel across the game’s level design. I put American to work, and we hired a tech support replacement.
I knew that what players encountered in these levels needed to be different, new, and a step up from DOOM. To surprise and challenge players, we focused on lots of new interactive level effects like super-fast doors, super-fast stairs, and other gameplay additions. I also wanted more outdoor maps and more verticality. New textures were important to make the new levels look like they belonged on Earth rather than in hell, too. The real differentiators, however, were new monsters with new abilities. Adrian and Kevin outdid themselves when it came to horrific bad guys from the underworld, like the grotesque humanoid Arch-vile or the Mancubus, a horrific ogre with flamethrowers instead of hands. Gregor Punchatz brought them to life with another round of modeling, and our audio designer, Bobby Prince, outfitted them with macabre monster sounds.
During its design, I remember talking with Kevin about one of DOOM II’s new enemies, the Revenant. He was a tall, menacing skeleton who had one rocket launcher on each shoulder with heat-seeking capabilities. The design problem was this: What happened if the player got too close to it?
“It would be dumb if he shot rockets and suffered collateral damage,” I said, and then it hit me. “I want him to punch you straight down on the head. That would make a hilarious sound.” I was laughing even as I considered the possibilities.
All these changes—the new level effects, new enemies, and new items—also required new code and data for DoomEd, which I added as we went along.
Sandy and American got busy on the first ten levels, and their design and play styles kept the player experience fresh as they moved from level to level. As it turned out, American was an exceptional and natural level designer. From playing my levels in DOOM, he totally understood the abstract level design style. He picked up how the player should flow through a level, how the designer gates the player and makes it easy for them to find the key to the next door. He also had a command of throwing in special events like crushing ceilings and surprise reveals of enemies. As the game director, I felt his levels, even from the first iteration, were always really fun to play and fit the id aesthetic. It was apparent that American developed his own style, too. MAP14 is an excellent example of a sprawling level with a lot of surprises that also works well in deathmatch, while MAP04 is the ideal for a small, tightly designed map that is both challenging and aesthetically pleasing. It has its own feel with the dark hallway in which the player flips a switch and sees shadows and lights. Interestingly, American decided to teach the player how to “jump” right away in MAP02—the player has to run from a walkway into a building over a gap. If they couldn’t do that, they were stuck.
My first hands-on level as a designer was MAP11. I felt like a kid in a candy shop. It’s amazing how the possibility space of a game expands with just a few new tools, effects, and enemies, not to mention the double-barrel shotgun. In addition to the new toys, the year of making DOOM and establishing the abstract level design style taught me many things. My understanding of what one could do within an abstract space to guide and surprise a player had grown exponentially. When I established the style, I was learning as I was creating, and I’m fortunate in that it came to me naturally. In brief, I don’t see a level as a path or a process, but as an entity in itself—the biggest character in the game. The level has a beginning and an end, sure, but many ways through, and it’s not so much a linear experience as a continuous one, where players come to know the space as they might know a person and decide to explore and challenge it as it reveals itself to them. Sometimes, my levels surprise me with possibilities I hadn’t considered. Players can always go forward or back, and so what is a beginning and an end becomes murky when the end might just be a new way to approach a beginning. This understanding of space built DOOM, and I was building on that to create DOOM II. In particular, MAP11 was so different from my DOOM levels, and it became one of my favorite maps to play deathmatch on.
MAP11, the Circle of Death (with the alternate name: ‘O’ of Destruction), was built around a central circle that connected to four main areas. In single-player mode you travel from one area to the next in order until you finish the level. But in deathmatch mode, all areas are open, and each contains a significant powerup or weapon that all players want to get, so much so that it becomes a hectic battle royale, and the player with the best knowledge of the level has the advantage.
While the tools and tricks have evolved, my actual process for designing levels has changed little from DOOM’s E1M1. It begins with a conceptual exercise. First I determine a unique play style for the level. Outdoors, indoors—where does the player start, where does the level end? What are the different ways one might move through the space? What is the character of this level? Lots of questions to answer, and I find that if you ask questions of a space, the space answers. What’s the unique thing I’m trying to do on this level? How can I lock access to the next area and unlock it in a fun way? I start by making a room that looks interesting. The more choices, the better. The path forward is clear before long, and then I start to plan each room and what happens there. I figure out where to put locked doors, where the keys should go, and then determine the secrets. When I have a level built, I consider how it might play as players come back through the spaces, so that it’s never a purely linear experience.
Using DoomEd, I place enemies quickly, then weapons, ammo, and health. If I have to add new elements, I need to edit DoomEd’s code and the game’s code before using DoomEd again. With every change, no matter how small, I play through the level again. I balance play for ultraviolent (UV) first so that while I’m playing, I feel pressure.* I keep designing room after room, connecting them, changing the shape of the level, releasing enemies to surprise the player, and trying to make every new section unique. As I go, the character of the level changes, and this sometimes causes me to revisit earlier areas. Every level has to have a unique feel and identity. I go over the level constantly, searching for a way to reveal its character and make it more interesting. By the time a level is finished, I’ve played it a thousand times. What the player sees in a completed level of mine isn’t so much a perfectly planned design as an artifact of my play experience. To this day, I design levels the same way.
I play the level as a player as opposed to its designer, trying to break the rules. As a designer, I use rules in ways the player isn’t expecting. As an example, when I got to MAP20, I trapped the player in a massive room with the Cyberdemon and Spider Mastermind, and both were alerted the second the player was in their sights. The only way out was a door switch right next to the Cyberdemon. The trick is to make the Cyberdemon shoot rockets into the Spider Mastermind so they start killing each other and ignore the player. Then the player can run up to the switch, but they are terrified because they are right next to the Cyberdemon, a place no one wants to be. If they get that far, they flip the switch and run out before either the Spider Mastermind or the Cyberdemon dies. I personally called the map Clash of the Titans, but its official name is GOTCHA!
Of all my levels in DOOM II, it’s difficult for me to choose my favorite. I feel like it’s a tie between MAP29, The Living End, and MAP26, The Abandoned Mines. MAP29 feels like an epically long adventure with the end in plain sight the entire time, if only you could figure out how to get there. MAP26 is where I really played around with the concept of verticality in DOOM II maps—there’s quite a bit of switch-flipping to move elevator floors up and down a long way. It’s a smaller map, and so perfect for two players. More players turn it into a MAP01-style bloodfest.
While working on my own maps, I played and reviewed Sandy’s and American’s maps, too. Our collective designs felt like they fit into a cohesive whole, and working with Bobby on the audio direction, I believed the audio design of DOOM II supported the spaces and creatures we were building. When something didn’t fit, each of us felt comfortable addressing it.
“Have you played map seven?” American asked me.
MAP07, Dead Simple, was Sandy’s map, a level he had just finished. It was the first mini-boss level, and it needed to show that, telegraphing that something dreaded was ahead while giving the mini-boss and the player time and space to confront one another. The Mancubus, the mini-boss, was a flesh tank with flamethrowers for arms. He dealt a shocking amount of damage and with his high hit points, he was able to withstand many attacks.
I got the map from the server and started to play.
“I don’t think it fits,” American said. “It’s not up to the quality of the other levels, particularly for the Mancubus.”
I finished playing the level and agreed with him.
“You want to make a new one?” I asked him. “It can’t be huge, though, otherwise we’ll get off track.”
American nodded and walked back to his desk, eager to take on the task. As a testament to his ability, he did the level in a day, and that’s what you see in the final game. It was a mini-boss map, and so it needed to be compact to force a quick encounter with the Mancubus. The player started in a small room with a double-barreled shotgun, flipped a switch, and caused the walls to come down. Four Mancubi were revealed on top of four pedestals, all firing at the player from within an inner square area. Around that, there is an outer square path. Although it wasn’t made specifically for deathmatch, MAP07 has ended up as one of the most popular deathmatch levels.
Sandy had no problem with American redoing his level. As a team, we all wanted the game to be as good as possible. In the end, I created six levels, Shawn made one level, American made eight levels, and Sandy made seventeen levels. Every one of those early maps ended up playing well in deathmatch, as we found out over and over during development.
At work, things were going great. In my personal life, things were challenging. It’s fair to say that I was consumed by my job; we all were. I didn’t feel stuck or pressured to work. Quite the contrary, it’s what I wanted to do more than I wanted to do anything else. I think it’s why Carmack and I were so perfectly paired. If given an infinite choice of possibilities, he wanted to solve complex problems with code, and I wanted to code and create something with that code. So, when I left work, I went home to code, create, or research games. It never occurred to me that this was abnormal, because it was normal for me. Games are my work, my hobby, and my passion. Beth didn’t seem to mind too much. Though we met at Softdisk, she had no interest in computers or games, and what started out as a love affair turned into a pseudo-roommate situation. She did her thing, and I did mine. My aunt Fay, having lost her home, moved in with us, and she and Beth became fast friends. During this time, my father was struggling, too. He had moved from alcohol to hard drugs, and his behavior and demeanor were unpredictable.
By now, we were midway through development and started to consider the cover art for DOOM II. Kevin wanted to see if Boris Vallejo, an incredible artist whose work was well known in the fantasy and sci-fi community, might be interested. As it turns out, Boris was out of our price range. Sure, we were making a lot of money, but we tried to set reasonable budgets. Julie Bell, likewise a well-regarded artist, offered to do the job for less. She got to work and created a box cover with the Cyberdemon attacking the player. When we got the finished painting, it was great. Julie’s artwork was moody and well rendered, but the Cyberdemon looked more like a massive bull, particularly its horns, instead of a demon with enmeshed machine parts. We paid her but decided to try again with someone else.
This time, Kevin contacted Gerald Brom, a fantasy illustrator whose work we knew from Dungeons & Dragons. He created the iconic cover art you see on the shipped box. Brom did such an incredible job we immediately commissioned him to create the box cover for Heretic, which we planned on releasing in a few months.
Keeping Don Punchatz’s original DOOM logo was a given. We couldn’t imagine changing it. However, we needed to add a “II” underneath. Kevin had an idea to make a nicely lit, high-resolution piece of art using a tool that was starting to make some waves in the game industry. Over at Cygnus Studios, Steve Maines was learning this program, 3D Studio R4, the predecessor of 3D Studio Max. After talking with Kevin, Steve used it to create the “II” with detailed texturing and lighting. It looked great, so Kevin incorporated it into the box art.
DOOM II was getting close to being finished and coming together like a tornado, all the bits and pieces flying in. The end-of-a-game velocity is an incredible thing to experience. Remaining tech issues are solved, gameplay feels good level to level, art and audio assets are all in place, and, if everything is going as planned, it’s just polish from there on out. We did a lot of single-player and deathmatch testing, and altered the levels as necessary. Shawn and his helper learned every level to answer any customer questions. Adrian and Kevin created the remaining screens we needed. Jay gathered all the files that were needed on the disk for legal reasons. We played the hell out of the game to make sure it was bulletproof. It had to be a worthy follow-up to DOOM, and we knew it.
One of my last remaining tasks for DOOM II was to program the sound effects for the final boss, the Icon of Sin, a massive, frightening, Baphomet-style horned head that launched demon-spawning cubes out of its partially visible brain. What the player shot at, however, was actually a blue ball sprite floating in the air behind its head, and that’s where I needed to place the sound effect. So I opened the final level of the game and no-clipped* behind the wall that the Icon was attached to and saw something strange: For a brief second, I thought I glimpsed my own face flash on the screen.
What the hell?
I did a double take.
There was always a hall-of-mirrors effect when a player no-clips outside of a level, causing them to see a bunch of images overlapping one another on the screen. Instead of seeing the blue ball like I expected, however, I saw my head repeating again and again.
Was that a bug? Have I been staring at the screen too long? Am I losing my shit?
I decided the answer was no.
What the fuck is going on?
I kept no-clipping, heading to the blue circle sprite that stood in for the Icon of Sin. When I arrived, I saw it: In a hidden room behind the wall, my head was speared on a stick, oozing blood!
“Holy shit!” I said, laughing out loud as reality set in.
The artists, Adrian and Kevin, had planted a hilarious Easter egg. They didn’t think I’d discover it while programming the audio.
I was the Icon of Sin!
This was too cool. I shot my head. My shotgun blast smashed into my head on a stick and sent me to my final, agonizing death.
I couldn’t let Kevin and Adrian have the last word. I needed to add an Easter egg of my own.
It was 11 p.m. and Bobby was still in the office making music. I ran into the conference room where he set up his studio.
“Dude, you won’t believe what I just found!” I told him.
“What’s that?”
“You know the Icon of Sin, the final boss? Well, either Adrian or Kevin changed that blue sprite into my head on a stake! They thought the game was going to ship, and I wouldn’t find out in time. I need to make an Easter egg that shows them I found out what they did.”
“What are you going to do?” Bobby asked.
“Well, I figured you could record me saying ‘To win the game you must kill me, John Romero.’ You can pitch-shift it down low and reverse it so it sounds demonic. I’ll make the Icon of Sin play it when it sees you for the first time.”
Bobby nodded and smiled. We were in business.
After about fifteen minutes of recording and adjusting the sound, it was perfect. I programmed it into the game and made a new build available.
The next morning, American noticed the new build of the level and grabbed it to test the Icon of Sin. As soon as he picked up all the weapons and went through the teleporter, the Icon of Sin saw him and played the eerie audio Bobby and I put in just hours before. He was stunned, but also realized it was awesome and was a manipulated sound effect.
“Ooo, scary backward message!” American called out, laughing.
American reversed the sound and played it, then promptly told everyone in the office. The Easter egg had stayed a secret for five minutes! We all got a big laugh out of it, and there was no question the two Easter eggs were staying in the game.
DOOM II launched and was available for sale on September 30, 1994. GT Interactive’s initial shipment of DOOM II was a staggering 600,000 copies. It was such a fast-selling item, the biggest game retailers like CompUSA and Walmart didn’t bother putting the game on their shelves because it was a waste of their time. When a giant pallet of games was delivered by truck, they just brought it into the front of the store, took the wrapping off, and let customers take a copy as they entered.
Our new partners were elated. They had planned a “Doomsday” press event following the launch on October 10 at the Limelight, a converted church that was one of New York City’s trendiest nightclubs. They flew us from Dallas for the event, and I walked around like a complete nerd wearing a DOOM T-shirt that said “Wrote It” on the back. GT pulled out all the stops, hiring a big PR firm to generate mainstream buzz. A machine projected holographic images of DOOM II monsters, and the game’s soundtrack sounded awesome pumping through the club’s first-class sound system. At the back of the club, a bunch of computers were networked together and connected to the giant video screen, so viewers could watch top players deathmatch.
It was spectacular and more than a little surreal—making games is such a solitary activity, and so being in a nightclub, in a party atmosphere with loads of people to celebrate the release of our game, was a massive change of pace for us. Game launch parties are common now, especially for big-name games. Back in 1994, though, they were largely unheard of.
The press event was a wild circus of activity. Access to any of us was both limited and quite controlled. There were dozens of reporters in attendance, and they had lots of questions about DOOM II and DOOM.
“Did it turn out like you hoped it would?”
Yes, otherwise, we would not have released it.
“What are you most proud of?”
The overall direction of the game—it feels like a worthy successor to DOOM.
“What were the sales of DOOM?”
A lot.
In the middle of the group of reporters, one man began ranting over our answers, condemning DOOM and DOOM II for their violence. It’s true that the games were violent—comically violent—with pretend digital guns shooting pretend digital rockets at pretend digital demons. The games were not intended for kids, of course, and we felt that games had the same ability and right to create an experience for adults as other forms of media. We heard what he had to say, but not content with being heard, the man continued to interrupt and was escorted out.
We were answering questions from many people and being pulled in multiple directions with sit-down interviews on camera, quick quotes for an article with someone else, or photos to use alongside the articles. In this swirling mass of people was Bob Huntley, a businessman from Houston who had flown all the way to New York just to meet us and try to sell us on his new product.
Jay introduced us. Looking toward Bob, he said, “You have two minutes.”
Bob and Kee Kimbrell, his lead engineer, gave me a quick spiel about DWANGO, which stood for Dial-up Wide-Area Network Games Operation.
“It’s early,” Bob told me, “but it lets you use our program to connect to our server and launch DOOM deathmatches with other people that are on our server.”
I nodded.
Bob kept talking, cramming everything he could say into those two minutes. Finally, he gave me a disk and said, “Please, just run this. You won’t be sorry!”
I was pulled away to a meeting.
When I got back home, I ran the DWANGO.EXE program on the disk. The UI was rough—sandpaper rough—but it connected to their Houston server, as promised. Once online, I saw all the activity just stream by. Kee, Bob’s partner, was in the server lobby, so I messaged him.
“How do I start a game?”
In its early state, I had to type out each of the commands manually as opposed to selecting them in a menu, but it worked. I was surprised that the gameplay felt good, almost as if we were connected to a LAN. The best part, of course, was that I no longer had to wait for a friend or a coworker to play deathmatch. I logged on, chatted with a stranger, and started playing.
This is the future, I thought. There was always someone who wanted to play. Mind you, this was before everyone had the internet and games were connected by default. I thought about my time in Utah, living in my dad’s basement, not knowing a soul. I wouldn’t have been able to deathmatch. There were thousands of computer and gamer geeks out there, eager to connect and play.
The next day when I got to work, I went to Jay’s office.
“So, did you check out that DWANGO program?”
He looked at me in a knowing way.
“Yeah, I checked it out,” he said, smiling. “What did you think?”
“It was awesome. I loved it! I mean, it’s really early, but I want this thing to happen. It means that people always have someone to deathmatch with, no matter where they are or who they know.”
Jay nodded. He got it.
“I’m going to contact Bob and get the ball rolling,” I told him. “I’ll need to rewrite their client, and Kee will need to do a lot of work on the server, but I think we can get this working well by the launch of Heretic.”
I thought about when this work might slot into my schedule. Even though DOOM II was launched, there wasn’t time to work on DWANGO. Post-launch is always a busy time, and I was still getting Heretic out the door. “I’ll do it at home after work. You can figure out the biz details with Bob,” I said. I believed DWANGO would be nothing but a win-win for DOOM and DOOM II, and by extension, id Software.
Jay cut a deal for 20 percent of DWANGO’s profits. They charged $8.95 for monthly dial-up service, and it was an instant hit. Bob and Kee started offering franchises for $35,000. Even providing the equipment, a computer, modems, and cables, they must have cleared $30,000 on every deal. Better than that, gamers were connected and playing with people all over the world. From my perspective, meeting Bob and Kee was the best thing about Doomsday. I’ve always wondered why they didn’t just drive the four hours from Houston to Mesquite instead of flying all the way to New York City, but I’m glad he and Kee did.
Within a month, the initial 600,000 copy run of DOOM II sold out. It was the top-selling computer game of 1994, moving well over a million copies and generating more than $30 million in retail sales. The critical reception was overwhelmingly positive, with a consensus that we had refined a great game.
By this time, the remaining id founders were fortunate to be millionaires, but success hadn’t really changed any of us at the core. I still woke up every day and thought about games and the possibilities before us. I wanted to keep up our momentum, capitalize on our success, and expand on our technological and gameplay lead. With both DOOM II out the door and Heretic soon to follow, it was time to talk about what was next.
* LANs, or local area networks, allowed players to connect up to four of computers together to play co-op or deathmatch.
* To “balance play” refers to game balance, meaning to provide an experience for the player that feels challenging but not too difficult. The better the player, the more challenge required. Because I have been playing DOOM since day 1, the game is not challenging for me unless I am playing it on UV. So, I balance toward that, giving myself a challenging game, and then make it progressively easier for lower difficulty levels.
* To no-clip is to use a cheat code that lets you walk through all the walls in a game. This allows the player to travel anywhere in a level.