id Software's name

I had never thought about it before, until today in English class. Our class had to debate which of the three Freudian characteristics prevailed at the end of the Lord of the Flies. One group argued the super-ego, or goodness part of the human mind prevailed, one group argued the ego, or balancer of the human mind prevailed, and one group had to argue that the id or evil, cruel, and violent part of the human mind prevailed. Is this where the "id" of "id Software" comes from? BTW, I, ironically was in the id group.

yes it is.. the id is the primal area interested in immediate gratifications

oh yeah and this is in almost every activision press release:

About id Software
id - Freud's primal part of the human psyche and one of the hottest game shops on Earth - has been rocking the gaming world from Mesquite, Texas since 1991.

press release here

Yep, check out their site idsoftware.com, the images are from medical books and on the main page, the "id" logo is right in front of someone's head. I also read this explanation in an interview with Carmack a long time ago.

No, actualy, Id is from the Id, the Ego, and the Superego of Sigmund Freud. Lord Of The Flies took it from him. You are the Ego. The Superego is everything you can't live up to. Superego is perfection, you will never be as good as it is, and it is the side of the mind that tells you "Don't do that!" The Id, on the other hand, is the evil side, it's everything you want to be. The Id is the side of the mind that says "Do it, fucker! I fucking dare you!"
Basicly, the angel (Superego) and devil (Id) on your shoulder :P

Bahaha...the Superego hardly prevailed at all in Lord of the Flies. Err, yeah, thats where they got the name. I remember a REALLY old FAQ about Id and they had one question which was "What does Id mean?" And it said something to the effect of "Id, ego, superego. Id is the underlying dark part of our minds according to Freud."

The "id" in id Software originally stood for "In Demand."

id Software was always in relation to the Freudian id, any other theory is simply wrong.

"When the guys christened their company, they shortened the Ideas from the Deep initialism and simply called themselves id, for 'in demand.' They also didn't mind that, as Tom [Hall] pointed out, id had another meaning: 'the part of the brain that behaves by the pleasure principle.'"

Ideas from the Deep was originally based on John Romero and Lane Roathe's merger of their one-man companies while in New Hampsire in 1989.

mewse said:

oh yeah and this is in almost every activision press release:

About id Software
id - Freud's primal part of the human psyche and one of the hottest game shops on Earth - has been rocking the gaming world from Mesquite, Texas since 1991.

Doesn't sound like a terribly reliable source of information. According to The Book of id (in the id Anthology), they moved from Shreveport, Louisiana to Madison, Wisconsin in September 1991, and then moved to Dallas, Texas in April 1992 (relocating to the suburb of Mesquite in November 1992).

Correct. They moved to Dallas very shortly after Kevin Cloud joined the four-man team of Romero, the Carmacks, and Hall.

Ahh yes, Wolfenstein Lore:

1. The primary reason for our name is to represent that part of the psyche which we hope our games will appeal to. Look in Webster's under "id" and "pleasure principle".

2. Also, Id is an acronym for "In Demand", a slogan of sorts in one of Id's first games.

3. Next, it was similar to the name of a previous incarnation of our company.

4. Finally, the Gang of Keen One, our first shareware game, was sort of the Id incarnate.

I still call them Identification Software