The man who destroyed id software.

[Biodegradable]

54 minutes ago, MrFlibble said:

Sandy mentions that there was no real project management in place for Quake development (and JC turned down his proposal to fill in that role, for whatever reason), and a lack of a clear goal and established development process can have a rather detrimental effect on morale, even if it does not become immediately obvious.

 

It's kind of funny to look at it in retrospect. Turns out firing Tom Hall, the creative director for all their previous games who always designed the conceptual foundations that gave the team a sense of direction development-wise and not giving Sandy the position-despite being adequately qualified for the task-was a terrible idea. Probably also didn't help that Romero was shirking his duties as Project Lead at the time by conducting other forms of business like licensing out the Doom engine to Raven Software and helping them produce Heretic and Hexen, much to everyone else's annoyance.

[AnotherGrunt]

Quote

American McGee was no stranger to Tim Willits' alleged behavior. One morning a year or so earlier, McGee had stepped into the Town East Tower's elevator. Willits entered with him. Before long, Willits turned to him, grinning.

 

"He turns to me and he goes, 'Hey, did you ever have butt sex with your ex-girlfriend?' We all knew each other; he knew my ex-girlfriend," McGee recalled. "I remember saying something like, 'Tim, fuck off,' or 'I don't know what you're talking about.' And he looks at me and he goes, 'Well, I had it last night, and it was great.' And that was it, and he walked away."

 

McGee did his best to ignore Willits. Around the office, he'd become infamous for needling anyone he considered equal to or below his station. His goal, McGee speculated, was to get them so riled up they could not concentrate on their work. One morning McGee had found a series of Post-It notes stuck to his door. Each contained crude language. McGee assumed Willits was the perpetrator, but no one said anything, so he didn't speak up either.

 

"I think he was just trying to push everyone out of the way," McGee said. "Ultimately what he wanted was to be the main guy in control. He was incredibly ambitious and cared not for how he moved up, only that he moved up."

 

"He was definitely a politician," Adrian said. "As he liked to say, 'Never turn your back on a level designer.' Both he and American were politicians, but Tim could be brutal. If Tim had it out for you, it wasn't good for you."

 

There are two possibilities:

1. Sandy Petersen is "the Snake" and he's making the whole thing up (with intention to blemish someone else's name) or

2. Sandy Petersen is telling the truth and Tim Willits has been from the first to last day (in id Software) just so-called "Professional careerist".

If it is or isn't true is on "dear reader's" (informed) decision. I personally quite believe it, because I've had the honor to meet such a guy at my workplace (they really exist). It is a really interesting topic to discussion: Have you ever met a "Professional careerist" at your workplace? 

[cybdmn]

 

 

One of Sandys responses to a user comment to that video:

 

Quote

id Software was a band of brothers, until the serpent entered our garden of Eden.

 

Epic! Seems like he really have no love for Willits.

[cybdmn]

On 7/6/2021 at 3:26 AM, Mr. Freeze said:

Why would Carmack be consulted on level design when he's a programmer and isn't credited with any levels in the final release of Doom? 

 

Makes no sense, because Carmack was no designer. But McGee was fired by Carmack because he did not meet the expectations. There was a .plan by Carmack in which he used this term, or something similiar.

[Gez]

Carmack may not have been a level designer, but he certainly had a big input on how gameplay should be, what with being the one to implement gameplay features. He was the driving force behind Wolf 3D losing a lot of the original Wolfenstein titles' more "immersive sim" features such as hiding corpses or wearing looted uniforms as a disguise; or for tossing away a lot of elements from Tom Hall's Doom bible in favor of simpler and faster gameplay; or for turning Quake from the planned melee-focused action RPG into yet another fast-paced shooter.

 

So that he would have opinions in levels would play, and could nix some of them? Yeah, that seems perfectly plausible to me.

[Jayextee]

A lotta pRoGrAmMeRs CaN't HaVe OpInIoNs AbOuT lEvEl DeSiGn energy in this thread when, in actuality, such a small and (reportedly) close-knit team such as early id Software would've had a lot of feedback crossing-over from every area into each other; especially, as Petersen notes, there was no de facto project lead -- meaning that it likely fell to being something of a boiling-pot of ideas from all directions; even if some voices (and I'm thinking the two Johns, later the "snake") were louder than others.

[Rudolph]

3 hours ago, Gez said:

wearing looted uniforms as a disguise

The irony is that while Carmack got rid of stealth in Wolfenstein 3D, he was fine putting it back in Doom - where it proved to be utterly useless and even detrimental to the player's ability to dodge attacks - and in Quake.

 

Heck, Quake II had a Silencer item, which somehow managed to be even more useless than Doom's Blursphere! :P

Edited July 11, 2021 by Rudolph

[Devalaous]

On 7/10/2021 at 10:28 PM, AnotherGrunt said:

 

There are two possibilities:

1. Sandy Petersen is "the Snake" and he's making the whole thing up (with intention to blemish someone else's name) or

2. Sandy Petersen is telling the truth and Tim Willits has been from the first to last day (in id Software) just so-called "Professional careerist".

If it is or isn't true is on "dear reader's" (informed) decision. I personally quite believe it, because I've had the honor to meet such a guy at my workplace (they really exist). It is a really interesting topic to discussion: Have you ever met a "Professional careerist" at your workplace? 

 

The thing you quoted basically confirms all the things I spotted myself that caused me to dislike him. I noticed pretty quickly that almost all his commercial Doom works were co-authored with his sister, with no credit given, a very cold corporate text file (that had the gall to claim his master levels were made on DoomEd) with the contents copy-pasted like some business sales pitch. His Raven episode also was pretty terrible compared to the works of all the other Master Levels contributors, with almost no use of lighting at all till the final level, and it makes me wonder how he was selected over someone like, say, Bob Evans.

Given the fact that he hid his sister's contributions to his works that got him his id job, created huge strife in the company, lied about all sorts things before and after his hiring, and eventually got himself to a co-owner spot in the company while being extremely anti-consumer, its pretty clear he was a career climber that threw anyone and everyone under the bus, while brown nosing with Carmack, the 'guy in charge' (who would go on to kick out every other co-founder) to get himself ahead along the way.

[LadyMistDragon]

59 minutes ago, Devalaous said:

 

The thing you quoted basically confirms all the things I spotted myself that caused me to dislike him. I noticed pretty quickly that almost all his commercial Doom works were co-authored with his sister, with no credit given, a very cold corporate text file (that had the gall to claim his master levels were made on DoomEd) with the contents copy-pasted like some business sales pitch. His Raven episode also was pretty terrible compared to the works of all the other Master Levels contributors, with almost no use of lighting at all till the final level, and it makes me wonder how he was selected over someone like, say, Bob Evans.

Given the fact that he hid his sister's contributions to his works that got him his id job, created huge strife in the company, lied about all sorts things before and after his hiring, and eventually got himself to a co-owner spot in the company while being extremely anti-consumer, its pretty clear he was a career climber that threw anyone and everyone under the bus, while brown nosing with Carmack, the 'guy in charge' (who would go on to kick out every other co-founder) to get himself ahead along the way.

idk, most of Chris Klie's maps were probably worst if we're going to be completely objective. The worst thing about willits' Master levels is that they're on the boring side (or Attack was anyway, Canyon wasn't either visually coherent or visually attractive, but it definitely has some great ideras

[Devalaous]

The main problem with those two levels though, is that they were co-developed with his sister; we don't know exactly how much of each is who's work. They were definitely the most standard levels in the set though. Klie's work I used to dislike due to how it was all short and easy, but after going through his full Doom and Heretic body of work, I came to appreciate the way he innovated with puzzles and traps and various ideas. Unfortunately Klie moved on from Doom right after Master Levels for other video games, just like almost all the other ML contributors, would have liked to see what kind of stuff he could have put out post-ML.

[LadyMistDragon]

3 minutes ago, Devalaous said:

The main problem with those two levels though, is that they were co-developed with his sister; we don't know exactly how much of each is who's work. They were definitely the most standard levels in the set though. Klie's work I used to dislike due to how it was all short and easy, but after going through his full Doom and Heretic body of work, I came to appreciate the way he innovated with puzzles and traps and various ideas. Unfortunately Klie moved on from Doom right after Master Levels for other video games, just like almost all the other ML contributors, would have liked to see what kind of stuff he could have put out post-ML.

lol, they were meant to be challenging as a way of compensating for their small size supposedly. The problem with that is that Chris didn't quite realize what made combat fun.

[cybdmn]

 

 

At around 5:30 he say, he made the changes to the jaguar Doom maps. i was for a long time under the impression, American McGee was the one, simplifying those maps.

[Devalaous]

 

 

My brother's friend had this to say after playing Rage 2. I couldn't stop laughing due both my brother and I reading this thread beforehand.