Replay: The History of Video Games (43 page)

Then Id dropped a bombshell. It was willing to let other game developers buy a licence to use John Carmack’s revolutionary 3D technology. Until then game developers had treated their in-house technology like their most valued possession; secret weapons that could give their games the edge over the competition. Even saying you should let your rivals use your technology was viewed as heresy. The idea to let others use the
Wolfenstein 3D
engine came direct from Carmack and won support from most of Id’s creative team. “Carmack, Romero and the bulk of the creative team wanted to do that,” said Wilbur, Id’s chief executive. “They were like ‘Oh, this is great – it’s going to be a lot of fun, it’s going to open up the market’. To be honest I was the blood-sucking business and financial guy and I was a little apprehensive, thinking we were going to open up a whole can of worms.”

Despite Wilbur’s doubts, Id pushed ahead with the plan and began selling licences to other game studios such as Raven Software, who used it to make 1993’s
Shadowcaster
. It was a revolutionary business move that would reshape the way games were made. Before
Wolfenstein 3D
game developers would build the systems and tools they needed to make their games themselves. After
Wolfenstein 3D
they had a choice. Instead of creating their own game engine they could buy Id’s technology, and focus on being creative. By 2005 the idea of buying in technology would be so commonplace in game development that dozens of companies, specialising in making software that did everything from 3D graphics to generating the leaves on virtual trees, had emerged. Even the developers of top-selling, big-budget games such as
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
would use the software written by these ‘middleware’ providers to help make their games.

One licensee of Id’s technology was Christian game publisher Wisdom Tree, who used it to make
Super 3D Noah’s Ark
for the Super NES. Wisdom Tree was formed by Color Dreams, a game publisher that started out by making games for the NES console without Nintendo’s approval before deciding to start making games for the Christian market. The first Wisdom Tree release, 1991’s
Bible Adventures
, sold more than 350,000 copies. “Our main goal was to provide scripturally correct games that offered families an alternative to the violent and sexually oriented games in the secular market,” said Brenda Huff, the company’s sales supervisor who would buy out the company in 1997. “Wisdom Tree’s games were sold in Christian bookstores, ministry premiums and other Christian venues.”

Wisdom Tree also got its games promoted in the magazines produced by Focus on the Family, one of the organisations at the heart of the US’s conservative Christian movement, which rose to prominence in the 1980s. “Focus on the Family offers premium items for sale in its magazines and the approval process for inclusion in these publications is a very structured and involved process,” said Huff. “Founder James Dobson had talked about the dangers of video games a few months before we presented
Bible Adventures
to them. In April 1991 our game was featured in the
Focus
magazine. It was the equivalent of the
Good Housekeeping
Seal of Approval.”

It is doubtful that Focus on the Family would have approved of Id’s next game – 1993’s
Doom
, where Id took the violent intensity of
Wolfenstein 3D
to a whole new level.
Doom
would prove to be a landmark release that would shake up the entire video game industry. From the outset Id aimed to create a game that would make
Wolfenstein 3D
look like yesterday’s news. John Carmack rewrote his 3D engine, determined to once again demolish the competition. His revised code allowed Id to build rooms of any height, create curved walls and use new lighting effects such as flickering ceiling lights. Adrian Carmack also upped the shock value of the artwork, creating a nightmarish carousel of twisted monsters and twitching bodies impaled on spikes. They sampled animal noises to provide the game’s demonic opponents with intimidating growls and roars and added a pulsing, clanging musical soundtrack inspired by the work of industrial metal acts such as Ministry and Nine Inch Nails. And, in a total rejection of the approach of the movie-inspired CD full-motion video epics flooding onto the market at the time, Id abandoned the idea of story almost entirely. “The full-motion video games were trying to look as good as possible without the hard programming necessary to do a true 3D game like we were making,” said Romero. “I saw those games as the remnants of a dying niche. The future belonged to the 3D programmers.”

Carmack summed up Id’s thinking on game narrative by comparing video game stories to those of porn movies – expected but unnecessary.
Doom
’s scenario consisted of no more than telling the player they were on Mars and that demons from hell were attacking. Your job was t
o kill them. All of them. To help players carry out their bloody task, Id supplied players with a selection of vicious weapons ranging from shotguns and rocket launchers to mini-guns and chainsaws.
[7]
Doom
was about one thing and one thing only: survival. It was terrifying, exhilarating, primal and angry. “With
Wolfenstein 3D
we wanted to shock people with the speed of the engine and the violence,” said Romero. “With
Doom
we wanted to shock people with everything. It was the best game ever.”

Doom
’s action and 3D visuals alone would have been enough to send shockwaves through the games business, but the Texan studio’s game also ripped up the rules of the industry. Having already explored the idea of letting outsiders use its technology by licensing the use of its
Wolfenstein 3D
engine, Id decided it was time the players also had access. The team drew inspiration from the
Wolfenstein 3D
fans who had hacked into the game and created new versions featuring different new graphics and levels. This practice was called modding, as in modification, and most video game companies were fiercely opposed to it, regarding it as a breach of copyright. But rather than frowning on its mod-making fans, Id embraced them.
Doom
came with the tools fans needed to redesign
Doom
as they wished and share their work.

The idea of letting players create their own levels dated back to early 1980s games such as
Pinball ConstructionSet
, but players’ level of access was usually tightly controlled. Id’s pro-modding stance went a step further, giving fans unprecedented access to the code that made
Doom
tick. “It gave users the opportunity to literally touch the tools that we used for the games we make, allowing them to turn themselves from an amateur developer into a professional developer,” said Wilbur. It also brought business advantages, he added: “It gives the game legs, so a game that might exhaust its time in the marketplace in six to 12 months might get an additional 12 or 18 months or more depending on how popular it is because users are creating more content.”

Doom
also let players fight each other by connecting their computers together. Romero named these player-versus-player battles ‘death matches’. The idea had been tried before.
Maze
, the original first-person shooter, let up to eight players battle each other and games such as the 1987 Atari ST game
MIDI Maze
let up to 16 people play together by connecting up their computers with cables. But the need to have each player’s computer in the same room meant these features were rarely used.
Doom
’s arrival, however, coincided with the opening up of the internet, which meant computers could be connected via phone lines rather than direct cables. Soon after
Doom
’s release fans modified the game so it could be played over the internet as well as on PCs connected by cables. Soon thousands of people were spending their nights and days playing
Doom
death matches online.

Id’s marketing for
Doom
was just as revolutionary. Having decided to publish
Doom
itself as shareware rather than go through Apogee, Id started using viral marketing years before the term had even been invented. “It was more how do we make the most impact based on what we had, which was zero dollars,” said Wilbur. “We’d had some impact on the consumer with
Wolfenstein 3D
, we were talking about what we were going to do next and everybody was listening, so we just used that.”