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Amidst the development troubles that continued to plague Ion Storm, publisher Eidos constantly backed the troubled company. In a show of support, in April of 1999, Eidos executive John Kavanagh moved from London to Dallas to help put the company back on track. "When you take the press side out of it and some fairly unfortunate marketing techniques," explains Kavanagh, "we felt the only thing Ion Storm was lacking was publisher-focused direction."
- Eidos US President Rob Dyer
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Although Ion Storm was founded with an independent spirit, the realities of business and development soon caused Romero to reconsider his initial vision of a developer-driven company. "Everyone had their own agendas," he recollects, "and I realized that it would be very hard for me to find a businessperson who I could trust to run this company without me looking over his shoulder." Romero's comments today are in stark contrast to what he told GQ magazine in 1996 about working at id: "[At id]," he said, "We already have the money we need. We don't need investors coming in telling us what to do." Unfortunately for Ion Storm, the money wasn't there, and Eidos had already spent upward of $25 million dollars on the company. "We had a large stake there," says Eidos US president Rob Dyer. "We were spending a lot of money, and we wanted to make sure our interests were protected."
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Jerry O'Flaherty's former office at Ion Storm is now just used for storage. |
Just after E3 in 1999, Eidos would enter serious negotiations with Ion Storm to buy a majority stake in the company. With Kavanagh relocated to Dallas to oversee development, he wanted to make sure that when the Ion Storm games did come out they were something special. "There's late and there's crap," Kavanagh says plainly in his dapper British accent, "and we didn't want to be both."
- John Kavanagh on the owner strife at Ion Storm
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In June of 1999 Eidos and Ion Storm reached an agreement for the ownership swap, which included the exit of company cofounders Todd Porter and Jerry O'Flaherty. "I realized I wasn't having fun anymore," says Porter in his first public comments since his exit from Ion. "When Eidos approached us with the plan to buy a large portion of the company and wanted an 'overseer' on site to help manage things, I decided this was my opportunity to leave." To many inside and outside of Ion, Porter and O'Flaherty's exit signaled the turning of the tide for Daikatana. Now the team would have a clear leader, John Romero, overseen by Eidos' Kavanagh.
Kavanagh, who came to Ion Storm a few months before the deal was finalized, believes the conflict within the company was the unfortunate result of a lack of communication - ironically enough, "communication" was one of the words Hall used to help form the name Ion. Says the philosopher in Kavanagh, "I can see blame on all sides, and I can see good things on all sides too. In this case you have a
bunch of guys with the same ideas in the beginning, and they didn't communicate enough about how they wanted to run the business. These guys didn't know each other for long enough, and down the line that leads to a realization that things aren't going to work out."
Ultimately, the changing of the guard at Ion Storm was a win-win situation for the company morale as well as for Daikatana. "Since [Todd and Jerry] left, everything here has been completely positive because there's no more friction between the owners," claims Romero. More importantly, the change in management allowed the team to shift its focus from internal strife to the colossal task of realizing the true vision behind Daikatana and the other game in development in Dallas, Tom Hall's Ananchronox.
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