Doom modders who work in the game industry

[DooM_RO]

Alex Mayberry, one of the creators of Eternal DooM is the Senior Producer of Diablo 3.Are there any other mappers who got hired by big companies besides id Software?

[Nomad]

I don't know about Doom modding, but I can count at least on two hands a number of Half-Life modders that ended up going big time--not counting the couple mods that got bought by Valve.

[Marnetmar]

Dario Casali works at Valve, doesn't he?

[The Green Herring]

Yes, he does, as does Iikka Keränen. Both of them worked on Half-Life 2. And let's not forget Tom Mustaine and his time at Ritual Entertainment before they got bought out, as well as his recent work on Doom Resurrection.

(Incidentally, Levelord also made a few Doom levels before he worked on Duke Nukem 3D.)

[DooMAD]

I think Hurdler works at Ubisoft. Dunno about any others.

[Quasar]

Don't forget Tim Willits, who went from modding Doom to owning part of id Software, and Dr. Sleep, who did some work for id as well.

Amongst current Doomers, Kaiser is a professional mapper/designer.

[TimeOfDeath]

I played a '95 wad that someone made, and they eventually got hired to work on Blood because of the wad, but I can't find the wad.

[The Green Herring]

Judging from its text file, that would be Return to Purgatory by James Wilson.

[Grazza]

Quite a number, I think, in addition to those mentioned already in this thread. Off the top of my head, there's T. Elliot Cannion (myscha), Steve Rescoe and Sverre Kvernmo. But probably a big chunk of level designers for FPS-type games of the late 1990s had made some Doom maps.

It's odd that this topic hasn't (AFAIK) come up before.

[purist]

I wonder if there's many examples of the reverse - established proffesionals in the industry who have made a Doom map for fun. The only one I can think of is the Arcadia Demake.

[DooM_RO]

The Green Herring said:

Judging from its text file, that would be Return to Purgatory by James Wilson.

I know Jay Wilson, the designer of Diablo 3 worked also on Blood.In fact the idea of health globes comes from Blood.

[Kristian Ronge]

Some who have not been mentioned:

Matthias "langsuyar" Worch (MM2, Requiem, Trooper's Playground)
Mackey "Avatar" McCandlish (MM, Doom Must Fall)
John "Gestalt666" Bye (Talosian)
Mark Klem (MM,MM2) -- credited before Doom mapping (but I was a die hard "Wacky Wheels" fan when I was a kid so I have to include him)

[kmxexii]

Both Jimmy and L.A. Sieben are working at Gearbox and Mackey "Hell to Pay" McCandlish recently helmed Modern Warfare 2.

[DeathevokatioN]

Matthias Worch who's Doom 2 creations were some of my biggest inspirations, also worked on the Unreal expansion, Unreal 2 as well as the FPS called Sin and is now the lead designer at Lucas Arts.

[printz]

CODE IMP is a good example. He worked on Overlord. He's not a modder per se, he's a programmer, but he's still maintaining a utility used for modding.

[TimeOfDeath]

Scott McNutt made a bunch of Doom levels and then was involved with Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force.

Thx for the link TGH. :)

[HenKonen]

How come I haven't thought of the possibility that DW mappers can jump into bigshot game industry and vice versa?

Maybe Romero himself dwells somewhere in the forums under a false identity.

[Olympus]

He was here.

[Windowpain]

I think what Grazza said is most certainly the case. I worked as an artist for Netdevil (now defunct) and even the president of the company had authored some WADs back in the day. I've met tons of Doom enthusiasts in the industry since.
I made several maps for my own use (too self conscious to release them to the public) in the late 90s/early 2000s and that experience is largely why I chose to pursue a career in the industry. It's probably not a stretch to assume that many others were similarly inspired.

[Phml]

It's odd that this topic hasn't (AFAIK) come up before.

I could swear it has, perhaps in EE or camouflaged within another topic. I'm almost sure that's how I heard Kaiser worked on the FEAR 1 expansion packs.

[Technician]

Phml said:

I could swear it has, perhaps in EE or camouflaged within another topic. I'm almost sure that's how I heard Kaiser worked on the FEAR 1 expansion packs.

Our Kaiser? No shit!

[Marnetmar]

The Green Herring said:

Judging from its text file, that would be Return to Purgatory by James Wilson.

Holy fuck this wad is fun.

[Foodles]

Didn't the guy who made Aliens TC go and work somewhere, what was his name? Justin Fisher or something?

[Ed]

I'm pretty sure he got offers but refused so he could attend college.

[Technician]

Marnetmar said:

Holy fuck this wad is fun.

It start at MAP11, right?

[Marnetmar]

Yessir

[DuckReconMajor]

Windowpain said:

I worked as an artist for Netdevil (now defunct)

Did you work on Lego Universe? That's a game I always was going to get around to playing but I just found out the servers were shut down this year. Damn :(

[Windowpain]

DuckReconMajor said:

Did you work on Lego Universe? That's a game I always was going to get around to playing but I just found out the servers were shut down this year. Damn :(

I did. Sorry you didn't get to play it. They pulled the plug just as it was becoming a decent game. We had built an entire expansion that was thrown away as well.

[NiuHaka]

Windowpain said:

I think what Grazza said is most certainly the case. I worked as an artist for Netdevil (now defunct) and even the president of the company had authored some WADs back in the day. I've met tons of Doom enthusiasts in the industry since.
I made several maps for my own use (too self conscious to release them to the public) in the late 90s/early 2000s and that experience is largely why I chose to pursue a career in the industry. It's probably not a stretch to assume that many others were similarly inspired.

I've got similar history. I used to make my own custom sprites, textures and maps in the 90's (stuff I never released) and then later moved on to work in the video game industry. I've worked for two video game companies. One of them went under before anything was finished and the other is an iphone developer who has put game development aside for now. We made some pretty cool stuff but nothing was ever released... at least not anything i'm willing to admit to. I now own a design company and will probably never be involved in a professional video game that I can be proud of. I suppose that is part of the reason I started the Doom Ascension project. Now I do it for the love of it, not the money$.

[40oz]

This thread makes me feel like I've got a lot of unused potential.