Revolutionizing Gaming: The Legendary Creator of DOOM Speaks | John Romero

[00:00:06] For the past 30 years, the most popular video games of all time have been what's called first-person shooter games

[00:00:15] or have had some element of first-person shooter.

[00:00:18] Meaning you start the game and you're in this world on the computer that you see from a first-person point of view

[00:00:25] and other people could be other... your friends or anybody on the network or other people in the game

[00:00:31] are trying to shoot you and you're trying to shoot them.

[00:00:33] And then when you shoot them, you get their money and you can buy more powers or more weapons

[00:00:36] or you can find weapons.

[00:00:38] And there's an entire world, this 3D world universe that you're walking around in.

[00:00:44] Like, kind of like Grand Theft Auto or Fortnite, you know, these very popular games.

[00:00:50] The very first one, the grandfather of all these first-person shooter games is called DOOM.

[00:00:56] I remember playing DOOM in 1994.

[00:00:58] My friends and I would play every single day.

[00:01:00] It was so amazing. It blew my mind.

[00:01:02] It was the first game with real 3D graphics that you're walking around in and it's networked

[00:01:07] so you could shoot and kill your friends, which is something we all want to do occasionally.

[00:01:12] But DOOM was the game.

[00:01:14] The creator of DOOM, John Romero, is on the podcast today, talks about what makes a great game.

[00:01:21] What do you need to do if you want to get into the gaming business or industry

[00:01:25] or if you want to make a good game?

[00:01:27] He wrote a book called DOOM Guy, Life in First Person.

[00:01:31] And we talk about it right now.

[00:01:33] This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host.

[00:01:41] This is The James Altiger Show.

[00:01:53] John, I think I've been playing computer games made by you or worked on by you since I was a little kid.

[00:02:00] You worked on Ultima, right?

[00:02:01] First off, I'll say in the intro, you're the DOOM guy.

[00:02:05] That's your book is DOOM Guy.

[00:02:06] DOOM Guy and DOOM was, I played that nonstop in 1994 and 1990.

[00:02:13] All the incarnation, DOOM 1, DOOM 2, whatever it was out there, I played.

[00:02:18] And funny enough, that's probably the last hardcore computer game I played.

[00:02:24] Hardcore meaning like it's not like online chess or back-am or anything like that.

[00:02:29] It's a computer game, a role playing computer game.

[00:02:32] I never got into like Fortnite and I started having kids and I wasn't playing all those games as much.

[00:02:38] Well, thanks for playing back then.

[00:02:40] DOOM was the first, like three, I think it was, correct me if I'm wrong, DOOM was the first 3D multiplayer game.

[00:02:48] Yes.

[00:02:49] All the graphics, everything.

[00:02:51] Full 3D high speed multiplayer deathmatch.

[00:02:54] Nobody had done that.

[00:02:56] And I have to ask the usual stuff but how did you get into making computer games?

[00:03:02] So I loved arcades in the 1970s.

[00:03:06] You know, first I played a ton of pinball but then I started playing video games when they started appearing in the arcades.

[00:03:13] Probably around 76, something like that.

[00:03:16] And what were your favorites?

[00:03:18] Geez, well, I really, Targ was a real early cool one along with Space Invaders obviously was really great.

[00:03:27] Galaxian had color for the first time and that was super amazing but Pac-Man from 1980 changed everything for me.

[00:03:36] So that was a really important video game.

[00:03:39] I love all those games and I played all them.

[00:03:41] You made an interesting point in your book how Space Invaders was the first game where it kept track of the high player scores

[00:03:48] and you thought that was a good marketing thing.

[00:03:50] And then I always felt like Galaxian and then later on Galaga were just ripoffs of Space Invaders.

[00:03:56] Particularly Galaga on Galaxian.

[00:03:58] Like Galaxian disappeared and there was Galaga all of a sudden.

[00:04:01] Yeah, totally.

[00:04:02] Well the thing is I think Galaga was kind of a sequel to Galaxian.

[00:04:06] I see.

[00:04:07] Yeah, so it might have been the same company.

[00:04:10] But it was definitely more advanced, you know.

[00:04:12] I have Defender in my base right now.

[00:04:14] That was my all-time favorite, Defender and Stargate.

[00:04:16] That game was so good.

[00:04:18] So but these were all like arcade, like two dimensional, very flat which by the way,

[00:04:24] I still enjoy playing those games just as much but as technology got better,

[00:04:29] obviously games became much more sophisticated.

[00:04:32] Like what was then the evolution that led to Doom?

[00:04:34] Many years of playing games and programming,

[00:04:41] just internalizing design patterns and keeping up with technology and programming.

[00:04:47] You know it was a lot of just living in the 80s and understanding design and design's progress

[00:04:53] and hardware's progress during that time period until 1990 when PC 386s were starting to become popular

[00:05:01] and we basically discovered a really amazing scrolling trick on the PC

[00:05:08] that could make the screen scroll as smoothly as a Nintendo could, you know, in hardware.

[00:05:14] And no one had done that before on a PC.

[00:05:17] In the nine years that PC had been out and no one had done it.

[00:05:20] Can I ask, what do you mean so like when you're playing Doom, it's like these modern games.

[00:05:27] It was the first kind of modern game where you're walking around in this 3D space,

[00:05:31] you see someone, you could shoot them and so on.

[00:05:33] It was very much like the ancestor or the grandfather of VR games even, like it's the first one.

[00:05:41] So what do you mean scrolling trick?

[00:05:43] Like what was the leap in technology that allowed for this 3D stuff to happen?

[00:05:48] Well the scrolling I'm talking about is for a 2D platform game like Super Mario Brothers.

[00:05:53] That's what really got id Software started was with that and 17 games later we started making Doom.

[00:06:01] Okay.

[00:06:02] So yeah, we made 17 games but before Doom there was Wolfenstein 3D and that was our first actual shooter.

[00:06:12] First person shooter was Wolfenstein 3D and that was in 1992.

[00:06:17] So that was the one that like really kick started the first person shooter and then Doom was a refinement

[00:06:24] and a redefinition of what a shooter should be and that's the one that a lot of people copy it.

[00:06:30] And why do you think like with Doom there was just this unreal excitement for that game to be released

[00:06:38] and was it the multiplayer game where you could play on different computers and shoot each other

[00:06:46] or what was the trick with Doom that got it so exciting? Everybody was frantic to have it.

[00:06:53] Well no, Doom wasn't the first computer that could be played across computers.

[00:06:59] That actually had happened I'd say probably in those late 70s.

[00:07:07] I didn't know that.

[00:07:08] Between using modems, yeah it's like using modems, Atari's and Apple II computers.

[00:07:13] They're turn based games they weren't high speed or anything because the computers were really slow back then

[00:07:18] but there weren't too many multiplayer games because local area networks where you have a cable

[00:07:26] that plugs into the back of your computer that was not even a thing until basically around the year when Doom came out

[00:07:34] where people were able to go and buy cards to put into the computer and start plugging in networks.

[00:07:40] So luckily Doom arrived to take advantage of that but it was the very first high speed death match shooter

[00:07:47] but it was our fifth first person shooter in 3D.

[00:07:50] This is kind of a technical question but in order for two people to play peer to peer

[00:07:55] so I'm on your computer, you're on your computer.

[00:07:58] The computers have to send information about what's happening graphically with these 3D graphics.

[00:08:03] It affects me as the complicated part.

[00:08:05] Like was there just like how many, how much data described a scene where I am?

[00:08:12] Because that's what's going back and forth between the computers.

[00:08:15] So what's going back and forth between the computers back with Doom was only the key presses that you made

[00:08:23] because the person has the same game running so why would it need to send any data like graphics?

[00:08:29] It doesn't because they have the same graphics.

[00:08:31] So all they're doing is sending the keystrokes that say what their character should be doing on your computer.

[00:08:38] I see. So you know each person knows where the other person is looking and where they're moving

[00:08:45] and then it orients itself according to, you know, it's first person so whatever you're looking at

[00:08:50] that's what you see and you just keep track of if the person moves, if the person is shooting and so on.

[00:08:56] Yep, because what they're doing like say they press the fire button, it goes across the network to your computer

[00:09:02] and your computer goes oh this is the fire button pressed for that character in the world make them fire.

[00:09:07] And so you would see them shoot their gun because it's taking that packet of data going oh that character pressed the fire button

[00:09:14] and it makes them press the fire button in your game so they look like they're shooting.

[00:09:18] So when Doom came out how long before you realized oh my god this is going to change my life?

[00:09:27] We actually didn't think about changing our life.

[00:09:31] We thought we thought this is going to be a really good game when it comes out.

[00:09:35] This will be the best game that we've ever played and

[00:09:37] You bought a Ferrari Testerosa.

[00:09:40] Yeah we did.

[00:09:42] That was a little bit life changing.

[00:09:44] It was but we actually were making a lot of money from Wolfenstein before that.

[00:09:49] Wolfenstein did really well but Doom did go like nuclear.

[00:09:54] It was really huge but it was a life changing game but we weren't really interested in money,

[00:10:01] we're interested in making the best games at the time.

[00:10:04] And so what were your biggest challenges when making Doom?

[00:10:09] Well the challenges were really just discovering the game as we were developing it.

[00:10:15] It's like we're making this 3D thing, what does it look like?

[00:10:18] Well what can the engine do and what's the definition,

[00:10:22] the data definition that the engine is giving us and then figure out how to make a level look good with that.

[00:10:29] But yeah it was a lot of basically climbing over a wall.

[00:10:35] Like we hit a technical wall or a creative wall, we have to climb it and get over it because there's a problem.

[00:10:41] But overall we did hit several walls during development like oh geez it's actually drawing the screen kind of slow

[00:10:49] so John Carmack has to create this thing called the binary space partition which is a data structure that lets the whole screen

[00:10:56] like what you decide to draw on the screen is what determines how fast your computer is going to draw it

[00:11:02] and he figured out the perfect amount of data that needed to be drawn on the screen every single frame

[00:11:07] and nothing more than that. And that is what the BSP was important to do.

[00:11:12] And then it was like how do we make a level that looks like no other game developing an abstract level design style

[00:11:18] was critical to making a game that no one had ever seen before.

[00:11:21] So yeah it was crazy and even at the beginning before we started working on the game

[00:11:26] we made a list of all the things that we would put in the game

[00:11:29] and then in the beginning of January before we started writing code we put out a press release

[00:11:34] telling everybody this is going to be the best game in the world that we're going to make.

[00:11:40] What factor does storytelling play? Like if I'm just playing a first person shooter game

[00:11:46] and just monsters are coming out of the place and blah blah blah it doesn't feel like how did you add kind of an aspect of storytelling

[00:11:54] so I feel like oh I'm interested in getting to the next level I'm interested in like exploring this new universe that I'm in.

[00:12:00] Well back then if you remember it was just we just got past the 80s and there was no story in the 80s

[00:12:06] you just did whatever the game was you just did it and figured it out right?

[00:12:10] Ultima where by the way I didn't know until I read the book that you worked at Origin Software

[00:12:15] Ultima was my all time favorite game in the 80s that had a lot of storytelling.

[00:12:20] Yeah because that was an RPG but we were making RPGs. We were making a whole new thing

[00:12:26] and so that whole new thing was a game where there isn't a big story.

[00:12:32] In fact I think in Wolfenstein we actually put a lot of story in the menu system

[00:12:36] but yeah we got rid of that when we made Doom we decided environmental storytelling

[00:12:44] was what was going to be interesting to players because they don't want to stop and read things

[00:12:49] they want to explore and experience things so as you start Doom you're in the beginning

[00:12:56] in the very first level you're looking at things you've never seen on a computer before

[00:13:00] move smoothly in a way you've never seen before so your brain is not worrying about story

[00:13:05] your brain is going oh my god look at what this is what's out the window there's a sky out there

[00:13:10] what's that fireball coming over here you know you're like seeing this stuff for the first time

[00:13:14] and we put it I put a dead character in there a dead space marine so you see like somebody was here

[00:13:22] and got wiped out by something and so you're starting to see the marks that were made in the world

[00:13:29] as you explore and so our environmental storytelling was the only story that we wanted to tell

[00:13:34] while the player was going through the game and they're making the story happen as they're playing it

[00:13:38] so we weren't concerned with text and you know dialogue and all that kind of stuff it was just like

[00:13:45] just play and experience it we'll give you bread trumps to show you what's going on and what happened here

[00:13:50] in this environment that you were you know that you were now in something happened before you got here

[00:13:55] and your experience you can discovering it as you go through

[00:13:59] I love that I totally forgot that you had that dead guy and that does seem like an important component

[00:14:05] that leaves this element of mystery plus there was like you know things to uncover on each level

[00:14:11] like more equipment and guns and like there were secrets on each level

[00:14:15] and then you know you described your experience when you first experienced multiplayer Doom

[00:14:22] where you know you logged on and played I guess John Carmack your partner at the time

[00:14:27] and you were blown away and I think for me I had that experience that the first time I sat down

[00:14:32] and played Doom people were shooting at me my friends from across the room on our computers

[00:14:39] Yep and that must have been really like I've never had this happen to me before in a game

[00:14:45] Yeah and it's and I I guess games have never stopped having that since

[00:14:51] Yeah basically

[00:14:53] Like the first player shooter has essentially become the default format for all gaming ever since

[00:15:00] and but now it's what's what's the difference now like the worlds are so much bigger and so much more complicated

[00:15:06] I can't even like it took you I guess about a year right to make all the levels and graphics of Doom

[00:15:13] how it must take a million years now to make a modern game

[00:15:17] It does take a long time because the fidelity of the of what you see on the screen is unbelievably higher than it was in Doom

[00:15:27] Like you know a texture a layered texture in today's game is so many times the entire size of what Doom was

[00:15:37] The whole game with all the levels and everything one texture is bigger than that many times

[00:15:43] So the data definition of games today a model with all the polygons and the super detailed skin that's on them

[00:15:51] It's it's so much data there's lighting with colors and shadows and it all has to happen at a high frame rate

[00:16:00] There's it's it's so complex nowadays

[00:16:03] And you have to create this entire world like you can't there's not just like eight levels there's a million cities and people

[00:16:11] and rooms and houses and everything like like for someone just starting out in gaming or making games now

[00:16:20] Is it even possible to reinvent the wheel and create a new game?

[00:16:26] Well what you're what you're talking about are these really massive games that do take you know fifteen hundred people to make

[00:16:32] and you know a hundred million plus dollars to create

[00:16:36] But that's not the only kind of game that's out there you know there's a lot of games made by just a few people

[00:16:43] You know or a small team of twelve or something and those are indie games and those are made by very small teams of creative risks

[00:16:50] And they create new things that no one has seen before and if they really catch on there's a lot of copies of that type of idea

[00:16:57] Until some thought somehow it turns that that some of that idea hits into some really massive game

[00:17:04] So yeah so you know say Arma 3 had a really cool mod that was a battle royale type mod that turned into eventually Fortnite

[00:17:18] And it's because it came from a modder it came from an indie who decided to do something cool try something creative

[00:17:25] and eventually found its way into a giant you know triple A game

[00:17:29] And what did he do that was creative? What was what made that interesting for that time?

[00:17:34] Well one of the things about deathmatch when you're playing a game with other players is there's a format that gets to be kind of repetitive

[00:17:43] A lot of people are playing a game where you get in there's maybe thirty people or less and they're all shooting at each other

[00:17:51] Maybe they're on teams you know but they're all just trying to shoot each other

[00:17:55] And a lot of times they're really close proximity to each other because they spawn into a level that's not really massive

[00:18:02] And for people who are just starting to play shooters getting killed over and over again is not fun

[00:18:09] It makes them not like plain shooters right?

[00:18:11] And if you play Counter Strike that's probably the highest kill rate to spawn

[00:18:18] You know the shortest time to death is in probably Counter Strike where you spawn and you're dead

[00:18:23] And you spawn and you're dead because these people are such experts

[00:18:26] So what was Brandon Green had invented this battle royale mode where you make a level that is so huge

[00:18:36] That putting a hundred people in it is still hard to find them

[00:18:41] And what that does is it makes it kind of a more casual deathmatch experience

[00:18:46] Where people have enough time to parachute down into the world where they kind of decide where they want to land

[00:18:52] And they go searching through houses and they're finding stuff

[00:18:55] People are killing each other in the world but they don't even know because they're still far away from them

[00:19:00] That they get some game time, they get to play, they get to experience the world

[00:19:04] Maybe take some shots at somebody, eventually they'll get killed and they'll learn something from the experience

[00:19:10] But then they'll respawn in another server and figure out how to do it even better

[00:19:14] But at least they feel like they're in the game and having fun and doing stuff and getting better

[00:19:19] And that's more of a casual approach to deathmatch versus throwing everybody into a room

[00:19:24] And everyone gets spawn killed constantly

[00:19:27] Now with the advent of chat GPT and these language models

[00:19:33] Do you think other AI based characters in the games will start to get more sophisticated and more conversational

[00:19:39] So you'll have a harder time, you'll have a more interesting time interacting with them

[00:19:43] And a harder time identifying who's human or not

[00:19:46] Well yeah, right now there's even videos on YouTube that you can watch where somebody is using Unity

[00:19:54] And they show you in real time how they hook up a plugin and it's a speech to text plugin

[00:20:03] That then can get sent out to chat GPT which then will process that

[00:20:09] Come back with a response and turn that text back into speech

[00:20:12] So you can be talking to a site pick and just say whatever you want for them

[00:20:16] And they'll say something back based off of a chat GPT response

[00:20:21] And that means that we're going to have talking characters in games where the dialogue is not programmed and burned into the game

[00:20:28] And you've exhausted everything they can say, it's going to be real time and it's going to be infinite

[00:20:33] And so you can actually get into conversations with characters in games before long

[00:20:38] And it's going to be a whole new world

[00:20:40] Doom spawned this entire generation like almost 30 years of these first player shooting games

[00:21:03] They got more and more sophisticated graphically as computers got faster

[00:21:08] And now we're going to see this next level, do you think...

[00:21:11] Are you working on any games like that right now?

[00:21:15] I know you and your wife have Romero games, are you making your plans?

[00:21:19] We're working on a first person shooter and we use it on real five

[00:21:24] And we have a major publisher that we're working with

[00:21:28] And that's all I can actually say about my game because it's a secret

[00:21:32] Right, are you going to use AI?

[00:21:35] I can't say what we're going to use

[00:21:38] Okay well back to the Doom days, like here you and a bunch of guys, you made Doom

[00:21:44] It's a huge hit, it's very exciting and it's doing something you love

[00:21:48] This must have been a dream come true because it's very rare to A. do what you love for a living

[00:21:54] But B. have it also be your company, so you're actually making a lot of money from it

[00:21:58] What was life like then?

[00:22:00] It was super, super great

[00:22:02] I mean I've traditionally run my own company and idsoftware was my fourth company at that time

[00:22:11] So it was what I like to do which is come up with a design and make that design

[00:22:17] And it was even better because I could work with a really great team of people

[00:22:23] And that's so much better than working on your own

[00:22:26] Like when you work with a team of people who are just excellent

[00:22:29] And you all work really well together and that's why our games are so good is because our team worked perfectly well together

[00:22:35] Design wise, tech wise, art wise, just perfect

[00:22:40] And we could push each other and get better and better and go farther

[00:22:46] And we just kept on trying to push ourselves to make a better game and then a better game

[00:22:51] So the idea was like alright we're gonna make Wolfenstein and it's gonna come out

[00:22:57] And then we'll make the next game and it'll just wipe out Wolfenstein

[00:23:00] We're just like we're gonna make the next game and it'll just beat everything we made before

[00:23:04] Next, so we're always in that mindset trying to make the very best thing based off of what we had done before

[00:23:10] Do it even better

[00:23:12] And then at the time gaming was bigger than this new burgeoning technology, the web

[00:23:21] And yet web companies were being valued at ridiculous valuations

[00:23:25] Even back in like 1996 or 1997 it was always ridiculous from the beginning

[00:23:31] And I feel like gaming companies weren't valued as ridiculously even though you had more users

[00:23:38] In some ways better technology, it still is a fast growing space

[00:23:44] Were you thinking of going public like in software never went public

[00:23:51] Were you thinking of going public or doing innovative business stuff?

[00:23:54] Nope, not at all. I mean our focus was on everything being very small and focused

[00:24:00] And we never would have gone public

[00:24:03] That would have been like the antithesis of what our company was about

[00:24:07] Like we didn't want to have to do anything for anybody else

[00:24:11] We wanted to do what we wanted and if somebody owns you, you do what they want

[00:24:15] And that's not why we started a company

[00:24:17] You know, we started a company to come up with ideas and make those ideas happen

[00:24:21] So that was the whole point. Selling our company would have been the

[00:24:26] Okay, we're kind of done. And we were offered a buyout in 1996

[00:24:32] A company wanted to buy us for 100 million bucks and we turned it down

[00:24:37] Wow, so you had 25% of the company, you would have made 25 million

[00:24:41] And not a lot of people turn away that kind of money

[00:24:45] Were you confident that you were going to make that anyway if you kept going

[00:24:50] Or what was your back and forth at the time?

[00:24:54] Well, we basically were in such a certain space where we were all focused on trying to finish our current game

[00:25:03] And we'd had such a rough time developing the game from the very beginning

[00:25:07] And now we're like in the last seven months of creating and releasing it

[00:25:13] That we didn't want anything to take away from our focus on the game

[00:25:17] So we just told them, we can't even think about this offer right now

[00:25:20] We're too focused on finishing this game

[00:25:23] So we can't even talk about it. So we just kept on developing

[00:25:27] And this was Quake, the game you were working on was Quake?

[00:25:30] Yeah, yeah

[00:25:31] Which was like a 10 times more sophisticated Doom

[00:25:36] Yeah, definitely

[00:25:38] And basically the rise of games has sort of had a Moore's Law

[00:25:43] Like essentially every 18 months games looked so much more sophisticated

[00:25:48] And the games made 18 months earlier

[00:25:50] And like Quake was to Doom how kind of Gordon Moore was describing the evolution of computers basically

[00:25:56] And then it was at that point that there was, I guess you guys were all working so hard

[00:26:02] So together and you're in your 20s things are bound to be problems

[00:26:07] What was going on that eventually led to you leaving, Id?

[00:26:11] Well we made a decision in November of 1995 when the Quake engine was finally done

[00:26:19] We made a decision to just not do any more R&D on the game

[00:26:25] Which was required for us to create a 3D experience that would support the design idea

[00:26:31] The game design idea that we've had for a year at that time

[00:26:35] And because it was such an arduous development process to get that engine made

[00:26:41] When we made the decision to how to go forward with the design of the game

[00:26:46] It was basically we need to just kind of make a thing that we already know how to make

[00:26:52] And not try to invent a new type of design

[00:26:55] And for me like that's what the exciting part was

[00:26:58] Someone else already had fun making the tech part

[00:27:01] For me the exciting design part was yet to come

[00:27:04] And it was like no we can't do that because we're just kind of, we've had such a hard time

[00:27:09] So for me it was just like well I'm not here to just keep pumping out the same kind of thing

[00:27:13] So I'm going to leave after the game is over

[00:27:17] And now you had seen like a year or so earlier your company being valued at 100 million

[00:27:22] Your stake being valued at 25 million

[00:27:24] Were you happy with the settlement terms that you and your partners reached when you left the company?

[00:27:30] Well the settlement terms were already written in an agreement from years earlier

[00:27:36] So they were we just basically abided by the agreement that we had which was a buy-sell agreement

[00:27:41] So if somebody leaves the company has to buy their shares

[00:27:45] And the valuation of the shares is based off the previous year's profits

[00:27:49] Basically or the income of the company

[00:27:51] So that's how that worked

[00:27:53] It's funny though because I bet the company trying to buy your company

[00:27:56] Was multiplying the last year's profits and coming up with a valuation

[00:28:00] So was there ever regret that you didn't kind of once you left

[00:28:05] Was there regret that you maybe should have taken that offer?

[00:28:08] Nope, no not at all

[00:28:10] Again like when we were making games it wasn't about the money

[00:28:14] It was about what we were making

[00:28:16] And that's what we were doing was fun and exciting and interesting

[00:28:21] So that's I've never gone back to that going like I shouldn't have gotten more money

[00:28:25] Not at all you know I was happy to be there

[00:28:28] I was lucky to be part of the company and to work with those people

[00:28:32] And I don't ever go back

[00:28:35] You've evolved into like you've had several game companies like since since Doom

[00:28:40] What are your favorite what are the favorite projects that you've worked on?

[00:28:44] Well since Doom I really loved working on Hexen

[00:28:48] You know heretic and Hexen were really fun

[00:28:50] You know shooters they had a medieval design for them

[00:28:55] Those were really cool I actually worked on an MMO for about four years

[00:29:00] That it was never it wasn't released it was very quiet

[00:29:04] And it was it was really interesting to work on it was really it looked really really great

[00:29:08] Really liked learning about mobile development mobile games building mobile games

[00:29:13] Let me let me ask you about mobile games so when mobile started it felt like computers were back in the 80s all of a sudden

[00:29:20] And it reminded me of arcade like Angry Birds is essentially an arcade game style game

[00:29:25] And that sold or that distributed around 100 million copies

[00:29:29] So what was it about Angry Birds you think they got people so excited even though it's like 10 steps behind in terms of you know computer gaming

[00:29:38] Well that's easy it's like why is Candy Crush so massive you know

[00:29:45] It's because there are so many people playing games that are not hardcore game

[00:29:49] Well actually saying that they're not hardcore is wrong because if somebody plays Candy Crush all day long for day upon day

[00:29:56] They're a hardcore player right so players people who play casual games which are not games made

[00:30:04] You know in the traditional style of a shooter or an RPG or things that require intense amounts of

[00:30:11] You know information in your head and sophisticated problem solving and all this stuff

[00:30:16] People that just want to have fun playing something that's funny or simple or whatever you know Angry Birds is like a master class

[00:30:24] And how to take a design that's been around since the 70s and turn it or turn it into an amazing mobile game

[00:30:33] With with innovative input and great characters great sound and really you know perfectly programmed animation and motion

[00:30:42] And and in design and turn it into something that everybody wants to play

[00:30:47] It was great when it came out it was huge and you know it's based off of a design called artillery from the 70s

[00:30:55] What was artillery used in any arcade games I don't I don't really know

[00:30:59] Like what does Angry Birds remind you of from the 70s or 80s?

[00:31:02] Well it's definitely like go just a little bit before or maybe a little bit maybe 10 years earlier if you remember worms

[00:31:09] The game worms worms are we getting so it's a bunch of worms that are shooting each other over a landscape

[00:31:16] You know and back in the 70s it's artillery where you have to say what what degree your cannon is aimed at

[00:31:22] And it tells you what the wind speed is and you say what your velocity is of shooting it

[00:31:27] It shoots this this ball across to hit another character if you can create the correct values

[00:31:35] You know so yeah there's there were there were several uses of the design artillery but not until Angry Birds

[00:31:42] It was like the perfect packaging of that idea and that's why it did so well

[00:31:47] Do you think they were just lucky to kind of package it right or like what do you think was there in some way

[00:31:51] What do you think was their insight that led them to you know use this artillery model to make Angry Birds

[00:31:56] Well they they took a design that's been around for decades so that means that lots of people still like that idea

[00:32:02] But they made it so easy to to play you don't have to type in the velocity and you have to type in an angle

[00:32:09] You were just using your finger like playing a golf game you know to pull back and just like let go

[00:32:14] And it's funny and it sounds it sounds great and it's got this funny you know pigs versus birds kind of idea

[00:32:23] And they really did a great job marketing it and just making sure that there was some some kind of character behind it

[00:32:30] So it was it was you know a really smart company putting a lot into the design and the presentation the marketing

[00:32:37] Of a game that was very very simple, but they had got people hooked because it's so easy to play and so much fun

[00:32:44] Going all the way to the other end of the spectrum. What do you think of VR or augmented reality games like what's the future of those right now

[00:32:53] Well geez there's so much happening in that space you know say AR where you can combine the world around you with you know with graphics on top of that

[00:33:04] It's basically changing the way that games can be played and for me looking at VR and looking at AR because the designs of these games are so different than all other games

[00:33:17] I really treat AR and VR as separate platforms if you look at a PlayStation 5 what can it do what kind of game would you play on a PC or a Switch

[00:33:26] You know what kind of game was you play in VR well it's a totally different kind of game than anything else because it takes advantage of that platform to do something you could not do on all the other platforms

[00:33:38] So I always look at it as a different platform if I decide I'm going to make a VR game that means I'm making a game for the VR platform and probably is not going to translate well to other platforms

[00:33:48] But there's a lot of you know there's a lot of innovation going into that like especially with Apple's Vision Pro glasses that can go between VR and AR with just a dial

[00:33:59] It really does open up different possibilities for games you know it's people have played around with those ideas before but I think it's going to get more intense

[00:34:09] It seems like it'd be fun to make an AR first for like imagine an AR Doom where you're walking around the real world but if somebody is in the game you notice them and you could start shooting at them

[00:34:24] I can't just imagine how everybody on the city street will be horrified that somebody has a fake gun but again that fake gun is used to shoot people in AR

[00:34:36] I can just imagine the new stories around that people don't like seeing other people moving around in the real world with anything fake like that but someone will do it

[00:34:47] Yeah and like if you were to make an AR game what do you think what sort of design is like how would you combine the fictional world of the game with the real world in the sense that it's augmented reality

[00:35:00] Like you personally if you were to make an AR game

[00:35:03] Well I wouldn't use anything you know I would try to come up with an idea that really took advantage of AR I don't know if you saw Apple's AR kit demo years ago where they had a table on stage and they were showing what the iPad was looking at

[00:35:25] And they had an iPad looking at the same empty table except on the iPad they showed a whole Lego world that was built there and so you could move around in there

[00:35:34] You could put your you could basically touch characters inside of the Lego world and it's like a whole scene that's just playing out all kinds of animation and things are happening

[00:35:44] You can just make some you know make a fire engine go over and try to put out a fire and it's like there's nothing in the real world but on the iPad you're actually affecting this fake virtual world that looks like it's there

[00:35:58] And the thing is if other people have the same another iPad they're seeing the same thing so you're multiplayer gaming like that

[00:36:06] So as an example who wouldn't want to play Dungeons and Dragons around the table where everybody has a big iPad and they're looking at a dungeon and all their characters and they're moving them around in AR right

[00:36:18] Like they're playing D&D and the DM is over here with their iPad and they're basically they've already set up the whole maze ahead of time and they're actually spawning monsters and doing all kinds of stuff

[00:36:29] And just like keeping the rules going for the players who are just like in real time trying to make make their way through a dungeon that would be pretty cool

[00:36:37] It seems like you could do that in VR though even more immersively like you know then you immerse yourself into the dungeon and into the world

[00:36:46] Yeah if you want to play Dimeo DEMEO that game already exists it's a four player Dungeons and Dragons game where everybody is in VR and you could be playing with people around the world

[00:36:58] You have no idea but you're all sitting there taking turns moving your characters in the dungeon

[00:37:03] I'm wondering if like augmented in AR game will even be one step further in the sense that you're in this world

[00:37:11] But some of the people you encounter or some of the locations you encounter are not in this world

[00:37:16] Yeah totally

[00:37:18] The relationship between this world and the fictional world would become part of the game itself it would be an important aspect of the game

[00:37:26] Yeah you could meet people who are in other countries in AR you know so I think that there's a lot of thinking around what to do there already

[00:37:36] What do you think is the role of community and player engagement like how has that evolved and what is the future of that in games

[00:37:44] It's going to be more people will be more connected I think you know instead of social media being something that's kind of separate from the game

[00:37:52] Maybe people will start to integrate that into the game so I think that there's going to be there's more work on you know getting communities more engaged inside of games

[00:38:02] And having to go externally outside of games to engage with each other because the games are trying to connect players together

[00:38:08] So you know I think that that's people trying to figure out how to do that

[00:38:12] Do you think Facebook with their metaverse ideas went in a wrong direction it seemed like they were sort of trying to start from the ground up

[00:38:37] Despite all the technology that was already out there and it didn't really work out for them so far

[00:38:43] Everybody's you know everybody's had an idea of what the metaverse is and a lot of it comes down to snow crash and what that specific metaverse looked like

[00:38:53] But I feel that everybody's metaverse is probably going to be different because if you love a game let's say you love World of Warcraft

[00:39:04] And like why can't I play wow and VR me that's my metaverse I'd rather live in there than some dystopian so you know futuristic world that the actual the original

[00:39:16] Metaverse was designed after you'd rather work live in a totally different world or like they would your threes world

[00:39:24] I have a feeling that like the metaverse is really going to be based off of specific designs and that people will choose the metaverse that they really really like

[00:39:32] And those communities will just get bigger and bigger inside those games

[00:39:36] I wonder if Microsoft has been quietly kind of we're not even not so quietly building up their idea of how a metaverse will look

[00:39:43] By because they're buying all these game companies like Activision and so on I wonder if that's their way to sort of essentially skip the line and get right into a metaverse by having all these

[00:39:54] You know 3d in VR games already to go

[00:39:57] Well

[00:39:59] There's definitely a lot of acquisitions happening which is typical for the industry where you you just you know buy buy up companies at some point those companies will start splitting up

[00:40:09] You know it's like consolidation and then fragmentation and just happen to cycle that happens all the time and a lot of times those big companies like when Activision and Blizzard kind of merged they were still pretty autonomous

[00:40:22] And usually when things get bigger they they kind of so much management that they kind of like well the reason why we bought you is because you do really great making your decision so you keep on doing that

[00:40:33] Because if you acquire somebody and you change everything that they do you've you've kind of ruined the reason why you got them you know so a lot of times they still just want to be part of the same group but keep on doing the cool thing that you're doing

[00:40:46] Yeah I mean it's like what you were saying before how you know you didn't go public because you didn't want to essentially work for anybody and you wanted to create your games rather than being told what games to create

[00:40:57] It's sort of like when I guess James Cameron studio approached you about doing a game for aliens when you were still working on Doom and Quake and so on and you guys decided not to do that because you didn't

[00:41:10] You know because we want to make our own game we don't why make that person's intellectual property more famous or more valuable instead of doing our own

[00:41:18] It's so interesting like I I learned a lot from what you're saying because I think if I were making the decision and James Cameron approached me about aliens and say can you make a game I just would have said yes reflexively because I would have just I would have

[00:41:36] Just changed Doom to have the alien monsters in there instead of the preacher she had in there and it would have been easy and he would have probably been fine with that and you would have made a lot of money but but you weren't thinking that way and I'm

[00:41:48] I'm really interested in why

[00:41:50] Well we would have been paying him a lot of money but the other the other thing is at that time I've had already been involved with making something from someone else's property so in my company

[00:42:05] Two companies before it on my second game dev company we made an alien game so we had a we had a relationship with 20th century fox and and a company called in info com and it was just like wow all the

[00:42:23] Loops that we have to run through to get a decision made like when we're just trying to put something in this game and it's like can we put this in the game and it's like that's not canon you know and it's like you

[00:42:33] Can't invent new canon you are only license these characters in this name and like it's just why why go through all that when you actually have a team that can invent brand new stuff

[00:42:44] Why do you want to go back and just make someone else's intellectual property more valuable by inventing new things for it you know and some people would like to do that I mean people like the Star Wars universe has expanded greatly in recent years because of all the amazing

[00:43:00] Creatives that come in and expanded the storylines and the different ways they could go I love that I'm so glad that people have done that so I'm not saying it's a bad thing but if you own a company yourself

[00:43:11] You know if you could make a lot of money doing that sure but if you if you have the ability to create something brand new like that from scratch I would as a creative person I would be more inclined to create my own brand new thing than to you know enhance somebody else's already created world

[00:43:31] Ultimately right now and you're obviously you're still involved in game development you have secretive game you're working on right now.

[00:43:39] What would you say are the like when you're first mapping out the game what would you say are the key elements of making a game successful is there is there an element of chance or other things specifically you know okay design has to be like this storytelling has to be like this and so on.

[00:43:55] Yes to all that there is definitely an element of chance and you need to know how to make a game so.

[00:44:02] You have to know how to make it as best as you can you need to know what people will hopefully like in X years down the few down the road when it actually launches.

[00:44:11] They have to have a lot of experience with what's happening where things might go and come up with a design that kind of wraps all this stuff up together.

[00:44:19] And you know things change constantly in game development the idea that you have at the very beginning is usually not the thing that you ship it's always.

[00:44:27] The better thing you know it's better than what you thought of because you're reacting to technology to changes in design in the world or different ways that people play.

[00:44:38] And keep on changing your game to be the best thing that it can so when it comes out it was like wow we never would have been able to do this if this big thing didn't happen in the world or.

[00:44:47] This idea had not launched or something so yeah it's all about being reactive.

[00:44:53] Okay so there's reactivity but there's also there's got to be I imagine.

[00:44:58] You know something that keeps the interest of the gamers more than other games do like how can you when you're analyzing games or when you're looking at game ideas or you see new games on the marketplace.

[00:45:09] Do you have a sense like oh this is missing that mysterious component that makes people excited like I'm just curious what what is that mysterious component that that would make a gamer excited on some games versus other games.

[00:45:23] Well I think you know when it comes down to design it comes down to the core loop of the game are the systems that you're putting in the game.

[00:45:32] Beating directly into the core loop and is every decision you make enhancing the core loop so what the players doing as an example of a core loop let's say you're talking we're talking about World Warcraft.

[00:45:45] The core loop of World Warcraft is move towards an enemy engage with the enemy fight the enemy hopefully kill the enemy get loot get money go buy better stuff kill bigger enemies get better loot bigger loot bigger money go big buy something even better and you just keep

[00:46:03] progressing through the game getting bigger bigger bigger higher levels and higher levels and so everything that you do like can I go talk to somebody to buy armor yes that's that's part of the core loop because that armor is what I need to survive the next wave of enemies that are tougher.

[00:46:20] Can I buy a better weapon yes that's core to the loop right if you buy cheese what is that for.

[00:46:27] Oh well maybe it's food and you need health okay so the cheese actually gives you health of the cheese didn't give you any health what does it do.

[00:46:35] And if it feeds into being a an ingredient to make it a potion that gives you super power than yes it's correct right it's valid but if it's trash.

[00:46:45] What reason is it doesn't exist again does it keep the core doesn't make the core of stronger if it doesn't you should get rid of it.

[00:46:53] Right so you always have to make sure everything you put in a game is feeding into what that core loop is all about what the game is supposed to be doing.

[00:47:01] So now there's a bunch of games out there with exactly that core loop how do you then go about enhancing it to make a new game like what do you think about when you want to enhance the game experience using that same core loop.

[00:47:14] It's a lot of a lot of times it comes down to like how is the player progressing through the game is the progression interesting enough are you giving the player enough choices to make that makes the game interesting like.

[00:47:27] You know like when when you lose say when loot drops how are you dropping loot for the player maybe you decided that in this next game.

[00:47:37] We're gonna we're gonna come up with a different way of doing it because in our last game when a piece of loot dropped it was just like that's what it is there's your there's your.

[00:47:46] Bracelet or whatever you know a trinket that will give you some kind of power in this game we're gonna make it so when it drops you get to choose which thing you want.

[00:47:56] It's like do you want these bracer or this glove and i'm just a hard decision but it makes you think.

[00:48:03] You know it's like that is gonna make this game a little bit more interesting by giving players a tough choice.

[00:48:09] And so that could be just one of the many ways that you can enhance a game from something that was more simple to something has a little bit more interesting choice.

[00:48:18] And what's another example of a corlop.

[00:48:20] Um well look at angry birds right as an example you had mentioned the corlop of angry birds is shoot bird into pigs not or shoot shoot bird into something that will get rid of all the pigs you have to get rid of all those things to finish a level.

[00:48:37] So you only have so many birds that you can send out and you only have so many pigs you have to take out and if you can't do it then right you've lost but if you can you go the next level.

[00:48:48] And like that's the core loop so it's like can I get birds that are bigger that can go faster or farther or take more damage.

[00:48:58] Um so yeah there's there's a bunch of things you can do to just kind of add to what that corlop is about you have.

[00:49:04] Do the pigs have a type of architecture that will bounce the bird off of it and repel them doing no damage to it like that's a pretty that would be a pretty strong piece of enemy.

[00:49:16] Um you know defense and so like okay so how do we defend the enemy even better like explosive barrels so your bird blows up when it's a barrel and the pigs around themselves with barrels and so.

[00:49:29] You can come up with all kinds of ideas that are different in more advance of the previous game and decide whether they make sense.

[00:49:37] You know to the game's aesthetic or the games feel you know like if blowing up the birds is actually not a good idea for the intellectual property of the game that he would never put the explosive barrels in it.

[00:49:49] The game is all about blowing them up then it's a totally different world right so.

[00:49:54] There's a lot of decisions you have to make yeah I never I never really thought about it's sort of like what Kurt Vonnegut says about fiction every word has to move your main character forward in some way otherwise you take the word out or sentence out.

[00:50:10] Exactly that's exactly the same thing as the core loop you gotta make sure you're enhancing it.

[00:50:16] That's interesting and you can enhance you can enhance the core loop not only in a sequel to a game but even in levels like.

[00:50:22] You know the first level of angry birds might not have exploding barrels but then the second level has them and so on.

[00:50:29] Like it's a classic.

[00:50:32] Yeah they're the ghost don't turn back around the ghost take a long time before they turn back to normal and then I'm not levels they turned it is just a few seconds and then they're back.

[00:50:42] Or even one second you know like the higher higher levels and that's that's called ramping that's where you basically make things simple and it gets progressively more difficult over a wrap.

[00:50:52] Yeah I think that's what makes I'm still fascinated by how like asteroids which I always think of as one of the first like.

[00:51:01] It was probably the first arcade game I played after Pong.

[00:51:04] Asteroids is still a fun game I recently was in a computer museum and I there was an asteroids machine there and I played it for the first time in decades and it's still like a great game.

[00:51:15] Yeah that's why it's a classic it was as perfectly designed for what it was and it was executed extremely well it was smooth fast and it had progression harder and harder to go up levels you know like when the little little spaceship at the top is starting to shoot at you and.

[00:51:32] You know here the done done done done yeah I go faster and faster that there's more asteroids which means more little pieces flying all over the place when you blow them up and.

[00:51:43] It had great progression yeah I'd like to do a great job there it was that look at that.

[00:51:48] Yeah so like now if you were 1718 years old right now and you loved games and you're a good programmer and you wanted to get in the gaming industry.

[00:52:00] What advice would you give someone like the 17 year old you now.

[00:52:04] I would say the game industry has so many jobs in it right now from writers to sound effects designers to programmers of 15 different types I mean or even more.

[00:52:18] That you could do anything in the game in the game industry so find something you think that you're going to like and start learning about it because all the information you need is free and online right now.

[00:52:29] And if it turns out that you don't like it that much switch to something that you think is even better and as soon as you can team up with somebody who's also trying to make a little indie game.

[00:52:39] Try and learn from each other and try to make something really small at the very beginning and just get your feet wet and just start doing something and you will get yourself in the game industry pretty quickly.

[00:52:51] You know alongside this what's what's the role of a game engine for an indie designer like can you describe what a game engine is.

[00:52:59] Yeah game engine basically is a big complex piece of code that will do everything you need to see 3D graphics on the screen to see stuff on the screen quickly.

[00:53:12] Even sometimes we're just dragging and dropping 3D models that you can get online.

[00:53:16] You drag and drop them into a scene and run it and see your scene run around it immediately in an engine let's say like unreal engine.

[00:53:25] And it takes care what an engine does is it takes care of all the difficult programming necessary to even allow those 3D graphics.

[00:53:34] In the computer and to put them up on the screen and to make them look the way that you want them to look and to allow you to even program.

[00:53:42] A game it just handles all of it you're not doing it from scratch because if you're programming a game from scratch you have nothing.

[00:53:50] That you can put up on the screen you have to figure out how to even turn the screen on.

[00:53:55] To make a graphics mode turn on and then figure out how do you even do 3D stuff which is.

[00:54:00] You know it's months worth of work to figure out how to even put something up on the screen 3D that's you know they use an engine it happens within seconds.

[00:54:09] Now when you're developing a game do you ever get like the equivalent of writer's block like gamers block.

[00:54:15] It depends on what it is but usually not.

[00:54:20] I work with a lot of really great people on my team and everybody has an idea for anything you say anything to somebody they already have something that could spit out at you which then makes you think of something else.

[00:54:30] Which then you have a design conversation in a vault something really cool pretty quickly so yeah a lot of times I'm not stuck doing something on my own that I can't figure out it's it's there's there's just there's too many.

[00:54:44] Examples of cool stuff out there that you can take ideas from to modify your idea and change into something new.

[00:54:51] Like like what like what excites you most right now about the future of gaming is it you know we've talked a lot about VR AR AI what what.

[00:55:01] Where do you see games five to ten years from now.

[00:55:04] I can't even I can't even say.

[00:55:07] They're gonna be very different right and the reason why is because every some some some within some ten years span a massive surprise happens to everybody right.

[00:55:19] No one's prepared for it but somebody's thinking about something amazing right now that they're gonna release and it will change things.

[00:55:27] And you can never predict what that thing is and the rise of of minecraft rise of Facebook gaming that no one would have seen.

[00:55:37] The math investment VR to create the best VR headsets the world has ever seen.

[00:55:43] Which spurs on lots of new innovation and design.

[00:55:47] You know I like where's that going who knows the iPhone change everything with handheld gaming.

[00:55:53] The internet change all gaming right yeah you can't you can't within a ten ten years span more than one usually more than one massive surprise is gonna happen that nobody had seen.

[00:56:06] I can't tell you what it's gonna be like other than it'll be cooler than it is right now.

[00:56:11] Like is there an example where you're working on a game and one of these massive surprises happened and you said to everybody we got to use this new tech in the game and then it completely.

[00:56:22] Read read the game no never done that always like when you work on a game it's usually you you are fixed on a schedule for years to get something done and you can't just go like forget it all something else came out because.

[00:56:36] That's almost certain doom to some companies.

[00:56:39] But sometimes you know you're at the right time in the right place and you can be responsive like that the way that fortnight was responsive to the emergence of player unknown battlegrounds and they put the battle royale design into fortnight and basically did an amazing job.

[00:57:00] And when you relax do you play computer games.

[00:57:04] Yeah yeah all kinds of games.

[00:57:08] Like what are your favorite computer games to play.

[00:57:11] I like shooters definitely like taking the plane shooters actually like learning how to code to like learning new languages and find new things out.

[00:57:21] That's something that's super fun it's a totally different kind of fun than playing games but it's almost like that much fun playing a game.

[00:57:30] Coding and learning new things.

[00:57:32] So it's kind of unlimited.

[00:57:33] Do you still you're about the same age as me.

[00:57:36] Do you still code.

[00:57:38] Yeah.

[00:57:38] Oh definitely.

[00:57:40] Yeah I've I've had a hard time maybe because I've taken breaks from it.

[00:57:43] I was a I was heavily into coding when I was younger and I went to undergrad grad school for it.

[00:57:50] And my first bunch of jobs were all coding jobs but now I can't code at all.

[00:57:55] It's like my brain is missing something.

[00:57:58] I think it's because I've always coded you know since I was 11.

[00:58:03] And I mean the first 10 years of over over 10 years 15 years was intense nonstop coding and it's it's the stuff you'll never forget because it was so intense like I can program an Apple to right now in assembly language without it without even needing to look stuff up because I lived in it you know for so long so many years.

[00:58:27] It's burned in it's not going away so yeah it's just I'm just keep on top of it and it won't go away.

[00:58:36] Well John Romero creator of really the first person shooter genre which has lasted forever.

[00:58:44] I mean how many games are in that genre would you think.

[00:58:47] Oh thousands and thousands tons.

[00:58:51] And and doom or you know maybe Wolfenstein 3D but doom was the first one I played which you created.

[00:58:58] You know and author of the book Doom Guy life in first person.

[00:59:02] Thank you so much for sharing your experiences.

[00:59:05] Thank you for creating doom and forcing me to waste hundreds or thousands of hours of time in my life.

[00:59:12] I really enjoyed it and appreciated it and thanks for coming on the podcast.

[00:59:18] Well thanks for having me it's been really fun talking about this.

[00:59:21] Thank you.