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id's follow-up to Doom was Quake. |
The battle between design (Romero) and technology (Carmack) at id had been a healthy tension up until Quake, but by the time the game was midway into production in 1995, it was becoming clear that Romero felt his creativity and design were second fiddle to getting the game done. "Before Quake," explains Romero, "everyone at id knew exactly the game we were going to make. But once you start getting too many people, they cloud the vision, and it caused a lot of confusion. The project was taking too long and people just wanted to fall back on the formula and not try the cool new thing."
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Romero worked with Raven Software on Heretic and Hexen. |
During Quake's development Romero did find a way to push design in new ways, especially by working with outside developer Raven on Heretic and Hexen. "That was basically in response to not being able to build the games I wanted to within id," he says. However, Romero's yearning for bigger, grander design would eventually butt heads with the rest of id during the final stretch of development on Quake.
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In late 1995 it became clear Romero was frustrated within id. |
In late 1995 Romero came up with an idea to solve the problems: splitting the company into two divisions - one for design, the other for technology. Romero was so frustrated he confronted id co-owners Kevin Cloud and Adrian Carmack in November of 1995: "I told Kevin and Adrian, point blank, 'Guys, if this doesn't work out with us splitting up the company, I'm starting my own f**king company.'" Kevin Cloud says that while he doesn't remember any kind of ultimatum, it was clear Romero and id were moving in two different directions. "Romero was unhappy with the way things were going," reveals Cloud, who at the time was unhappy with the turmoil within the company. "[Romero] isn't always easy to work with," he says, "but he more than makes up for it in talent and energy."
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Tom Hall and John Romero stand next to Romero's Hummer in October 1996. |
Romero's frustration grew to a point where he began to explore other ways of expressing his talent and energy. In early 1996 he contacted an old friend, Tom Hall, who was an original founder of id and who had since gone on to work at 3D Realms, creators of Duke Nukem. "In January [1996] I spoke to Tom and we decided to go off and start our own company as soon as possible," says Romero. Hall and Romero agreed that the new company would be a place where design would rule, never to be fettered by technology. The first pass at the company moniker was simple but poignant: Dream Design.
- Kevin Cloud, id Software
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Romero was set on finishing Quake before starting Dream Design, and therefore he worked at id through the first half of 1996. But once Quake was mastered in June, Romero proceeded to contact then-id-publisher GT Interactive about funding his new company. "As soon as I told Ron Chaimowitz [GT Interactive's CEO] that I was going to start a new company, word must have gotten back to id, because the next day they said I was fired." (Jay Wilbur, id CEO at the time, says the supposed conversation between Chaimowitz and id never took place.) "We fired him because he stopped working," states Kevin Cloud. "At the time, I didn't know he was starting his own company." For the record, Romero says that he worked incredibly hard during the final seven months of Quake's development.
Looking back, id cofounder John Carmack still thinks that a "properly focused Romero would be a credit to any company." However, Carmack still feels it was the right decision to let Romero go in August of 1996. "If we had given Romero free rein inside of id," says Carmack, "he would have made many of the same mistakes he made with Ion, and we would have suffered from them."
Mistakes seemingly weren't an option for Romero in 1996. Flush with the success of Doom and Quake, he was in a position to build what would later be called the Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory for gaming geeks. It would in many ways become the antithesis of id, a place where the design of a game would never be limited by technology.
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