Why in the world did 3DO recruit Art Data to develop their Doom port?

If you're reading this, you probably already know at least some of the details of the absolute dumpster fire that is the 3DO port, which programmer Rebecca Heineman detailed in In this fascinating YouTube video. She was tasked with singlehandledy saving the game after Art Data CEO and profound fuck-up Randy Scott completely failed to deliver. What I can't figure out is, how did this guy get the gig in the first place?

I couldn't find any evidence whatsoever that he had developed any game before Doom, and considering he had no idea what game dev even entailed, how did he even manage to start a company? What could have possessed 3DO to go with a completely unknown, unproven studio that had zero products? It's baffling.

My only guess is that Randy sweettalked 3DO, which desperately needed a Doom port for their already dying console with a subpar library, with his spiel of "new graphics! new weapons! new everything yeee boiii!", and they just agreed.

Still, why would they be like, "This guy has literally nothing to show, sounds good!" I'm thinking of tweeting Heineman to see if she can shed any light on this. 

11 minutes ago, GoatLord said:

I'm thinking of tweeting Heineman to see if she can shed any light on this.  

Good idea, I'd like to know as well.

It was the 90s, and there was time for Klax. basically sounding like you were saying the right things was more important than being able to actually prove you could do it.

In his defense, he thought that it'd be easy-peasy, and that you could just drop new assets in and that it'd just work. Where he fucked up is that he didn't realize it wouldn't be that simple, and by the time he admitted as much, there was almost no time left before the deadline. Doesn't excuse his hubris, of course, but it does indicate he grossly underestimated the challenge.

Think about this: if they had created a successful port that didn't suck ass would anyone had really cared about the dying 3do? My bets say no, because by the time the 3do was dying out better consoles were available, Namely the PlayStation 1 completely killed all of the lesser consoles of that time, and with it came a better port of doom then any of the other ones on console of that era.

Randy's band made the excellent music though, so who can really say if he was good or bad? 

Only good thing to come out of this craphole of doom history is the soundtrack was kick ass:

Which is ironic af since the game was the polar opposite

24 minutes ago, SeanWJF said:

Randy's band made the excellent music though, so who can really say if he was good or bad? 

He went to trial for allegedly molesting 5- and 6-year-old girls. He's bad.

19 minutes ago, GoatLord said:

He went to trial for allegedly molesting 5- and 6-year-old girls. He's bad.

I had heard about this. I see his mugshot on that wiki page and I try not to judge but yeah he pretty much looks like a pedophile. There is no greater sub-human parasite as that which thinks it has the right to harm a child for any reason.

there was (is still?) a tendency for companies like this to be picked based on availability rather than expertise or the like, and I wouldn't be surprised if this is what happened here. After all, it's been mentioned that the project was originally going to be published by EA, but EA dropped all projects for the console and they probably just needed to get anyone to get it done.

4 hours ago, Morpheus666 said:

Only good thing to come out of this craphole of doom history is the soundtrack was kick ass:

Which is ironic af since the game was the polar opposite

SNES Doom would have words with you. 

Rebecca Heineman got back with me after I inquired about this.

"Randy Scott paid over $200,000 to Id software to snap up the rights to doom for the 3DO. So 3DO has to work with him to get it on the platform."

@GoatLord Obviously wasn't enough money to bail his ass out of jail lol, That's unfortunate that they had to put up with his insanity solely due to the fact that he bought the rights to use the game assets, i have no doubt that the team he worked with hated him too.

8 hours ago, GoatLord said:

$200,000

Jesus, and I thought a certain youtuber donating $50,000 for Hunt Down The Freeman was a blunder.

18 hours ago, GoatLord said:

Rebecca Heineman got back with me after I inquired about this.

 

"Randy Scott paid over $200,000 to Id software to snap up the rights to doom for the 3DO. So 3DO has to work with him to get it on the platform."

Well he got quite the solid return on his investment, didn't he?

Makes me remember one of the "Dev Mode" quit messages. "Don't quit now! We're still spending your money!"

After all, the fact it did decent on almost every other platform definitely meant it wasn't the game's problem...

I thought we weren't allowed to talk about 3do. even typing it sends chills up my spine.

32 minutes ago, LiT_gam3r said:

I thought we weren't allowed to talk about 3do. even typing it sends chills up my spine.

Quote

Switch, iPhone, N64, Playstation, GBA—all these worlds are yours except 3DO, attempt no landing there

Nobody said we aren't allowed to talk about the 3DO. You can hover around the topic, but not outright make it your favorite.

Except the music. That one is fine.

The 3DO wasn't a bad system per se... just that it was overpriced and underperformed, and outgunned by hardware developers who had a more accurate beat on what would've worked (i.e; Nintendo/Sony).

Even the 3DO version wouldn't have been terrible, I think, had proper development time (and staff) been given to it. With the source code now out there, I'm quite sure that someone who was seriously interested could make an optimized version of Doom that'd run a lot better.

Just now, Dark Pulse said:

I'm quite sure that someone who was seriously interested could make an optimized version of Doom that'd run a lot better.

I mean, there's OptiDoom for that. Yeah, it's currently still in development, but it shows a promising step as well.

Just now, InDOOMnesia said:

I mean, there's OptiDoom for that. Yeah, it's currently still in development, but it shows a promising step as well.

There is, although it hasn't had an update in almost a year, but still, it's open-source, so anyone with the real desire can pick it up and run with it.

"Why in the world did 3DO?"

FTFY

2 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

 Even the 3DO version wouldn't have been terrible, I think, had proper development time (and staff) been given to it. With the source code now out there, I'm quite sure that someone who was seriously interested could make an optimized version of Doom that'd run a lot better.

True. Also, isn't the 3DO version of Wolfenstein 3D actually quite good? I mean, i know the engine is different than Doom but from what i remember seeing in the past the version of Wolf 3D that came out on the 3DO actually looked quite kick ass. 

For the longest time i wanted a 3DO. I only saw one used only once around my local area in a local game store and it was around $100 (it wasn't gamestop btw). It was the original Panasonic model too. Of course i didn't have the money at the time (that was expensive). I checked ebay recently and they are quite expensive now, depending on the model of course.

I remember a video game store guy telling me that the 3DO version was better than the Jag one, for the longest time i believed him... (it was back then)

6 hours ago, Deimos said:

I remember a video game store guy telling me that the 3DO version was better than the Jag one, for the longest time i believed him... (it was back then)

Well it's certainly got better music, since the Jag version only has it at the title and tally screens...

16 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

Well it's certainly got better music, since the Jag version only has it at the title and tally screens...

Well if you only care about music i guess the 3DO version is better.

Edit: Anyway are there any project to do justice to the 3DO?
Some guys over Atari age are resurrecting the jag version with in-game music and new content, lately they even changed the soundfont for the music but i won't flood these vids here so just an older one with spectres

51 minutes ago, Deimos said:

Well if you only care about music i guess the 3DO version is better.

Edit: Anyway are there any project to do justice to the 3DO?
Some guys over Atari age are resurrecting the jag version with in-game music and new content, lately they even changed the soundfont for the music but i won't flood these vids here so just an older one with spectres

 

I know there is OptiDoom (but that hasn't been worked on in almost a year), and @intacowetrust did Phoenix Doom, which is a backport of it to the PC. But other than that, zip, zero, zilch, nada.

And of those two, only OptiDoom was actually intended to be run on the 3DO and trying to improve the performance.

Its a shame really that the unique architecture of 3DO was never exploited properly. Didn't Heineman had a 640x480 renderer going on but had to scrap it due to time constrains? (I am actually too lazy to dig in my cave of memories for this one).

A monumental achievement given the time constraints, a terrible performer because of said time constrants, and an absolutely wacky CEO who felt it was o so clever to print as much copies of the game as there were 3DO's in existence at the time.

That was also the 90s.