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Sandy Petersen 🪔

@SandyofCthulhu

Jul 3

Often when I reminisce about my time at id Software, John Romero helpfully chimes in with corrections.

I appreciate his thoughts. I don’t want anyone to think that he and I are having a “feud”.

Memories from that era naturally vary depending on our roles and the passage of time—mine from the later Doom/Quake days, his from the foundational Wolf3D/early Doom period.

It’s great to see these stories still entertain new generations of designers and players.
1/3

You may wonder “how does Sandy get things wrong? Wasn’t he there?”

Well, yes I was there. But there are two factors here.

First, my “errors” aren’t usually that large. Doom WAS banned from university networks, as both John and I said. So any perceived dispute is perhaps a matter of perspective.

First, id Software was not great at in-house communication, as I’m sure John will agree. At least about non-game things.

I often got told things that were incomplete or incorrect. For instance I was absolutely told about the shyster programmer about the time we were doing our own network code, and I distinctly remember John Carmack complaining about doing it. John Romero is the guy who told me about the con-man so really I think it’s reasonable to blame him for my getting the timing of the events wrong. Ha ha.

To be fair, none of these “historical” miscommunications affected the game. We were really good at synching up for stuff that actually mattered.
2/3

I feel my errors, when I make them, are minor, and am glad when details get corrected. I have to admit it hurts when some commenters make accusations saying I’m a “pathological liar” or “Sandy’s so stupid” (actual quotes). I guess I should just ignore those guys. Because I think there is ample proof that I am neither.

I will always share the bond with John Romero that of everyone at id Software, we were the two guys who cared the most about actual gaming fun.

John Romero told me once that the reason he wanted to hire me is because he’d never met anyone else who knew as much about games as he did.
3/3

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Sandy Petersen 🪔

@SandyofCthulhu

Jul 2

The house doesn't always win. Four anecdotes in which "I was there" when game companies got fleeced. Thrice by individuals, once by their own publisher.

First, id Software and our non-network code. John Carmack told me that while our game worked great on a network, they had hired a guy to do the code over dial-up internet. He lived out-of-state (IIRC, California). I was told that he was a brilliant programmer, and that his current boss knew he was coding for id as a side gig. AND that when he finished his current project, he'd leave his company and come work for id Software.
1/8

Well. It wasn't true. At least not from the contractor's end. A few weeks before we were ready to launch, we called to see how the dial-up code was going.

I wasn't present on the call of course, but John Romero told me, smiling ruefully, that we'd contacted the contractor's boss, who laughed at us. The only thing true about the contractor was that he WAS a genius programmer. So genius that his boss kept him even though he was practically a pathological liar. He had done zero work on our dial-up code, and never planned to leave his current employment, since he was well aware anyone else would fire him in a flash.

John Carmack used DWANGO to instigate dial-up, but our network code had some issues that caused us to get banned at universities all over America until we fixed it, as I recall about a month after. Probably hurt us in that first month or so.

The contractor? He just pocketed the money and did nothing. We didn't go after him. I guess the Johns felt that him not getting hired by id Software after he saw Doom's success was punishment enough. I guess it was.
2/8

Now for MicroProse Software, with an even more lethal con-man. Our beloved company president was trying to spread MicroProse's wings into new realms of adventure. (Eventually he spread those wings so far the company broke and was destroyed, but that's a different story.)

Somewhere he'd found this guy to be a new VP. The man just oozed "grifter" from every pore of his being. Remember James Woods in Casino? He felt just like that, except Woods was acting, and this guy was for real.

Apparently one of this new VP's attractions is that he had friends in the mob, and since we were going into the stand-up arcade market, that "made sense." I remember our president boasting that when he was entertaining partners for our new stand-up arcade group, the new VP came out dressed only in a bathrobe to make his spiel. Boasting about it, as though this would make the VP look better in our eyes.
3/8

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Sandy Petersen 🪔

@SandyofCthulhu

Jun 29

Graphics sell games and keep players entertained. Gameplay keeps players coming back for decades. Which actually matters more?

In 1991, I attended a Game Developer Conference in 1991. A year or so earlier, Wing Commander by Chris Roberts had come out, as well as the expanded version of Balance of Power by Chris Crawford.

The two Chris' got in a shouting argument in a hallway over video game graphics. Chris Roberts’ argued that that graphics are core to the game experience. Chris Crawford took the rather extreme stance that graphics actually hurt gameplay. I think both of them, in their anger, overstated their position.
1/9

Clearly in early games, the graphics sucked so hard that we had to rely on pure gameplay. Think about Pong or Asteroids, early Atari games, or even text adventures. I mean, even Duck Hunt was seen as a huge step forward.

By the early 90s, 3-D appeared with polygons, then high-res textures. Graphics started become a selling point.
2/9

By the time I started at MicroProse in 1988, we actually had machines that could display real graphics. Sure it was only 640x380 pixels tops, and 16 colors but we were thrilled.

This is about the time that the "graphics vs. gameplay" arguments began. You see, a lot of the old games had been developed literally without a team artist. All the graphics had been created by the lead programmer, which is why so many games had robots as protagonists.

MicroProse was quite forward-thinking in that we put an artist on every team. We felt graphics helped improve the gameplay. I suspect Chris Crawford saw his former way of doing games fading away and was horrified. Chris Roberts fully embraced great graphics. But the truth was, Roberts didn't dismiss gameplay. Wing Commander had perfectly fine gameplay.

Chris Crawford, in his newsletter, lambasted Doom. He loved the game but he hated it. He complained bitterly that Doom was great for targeting and running around. "But why do games have to be about targeting and running". Well he was right. They don't. But they CAN be. And in the case of Doom, the graphics directly boosted the gameplay, which he couldn't or wouldn't recognize.
3/9

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Sandy Petersen 🪔

@SandyofCthulhu

Jun 25

How MicroSoft murdered Ensemble.

In a side note, Elon Musk himself dropped in on my Quake thread from a night ago. Sir - with respect, what are you doing commenting on my puny thread? Go take humanity to Mars!

Anyway, Microsoft's purchase of Ensemble (as described yesterday) was great for us. Our worthless Ensemble stock became valuable MicroSoft stock. I paid off my house. And MicroSoft's ownership didn't change much because they were already our publisher and we already had spent time working with their idiot marketers.

MicroSoft had learned lessons. When they bought FASA, they moved the company to Redmond, broken it up in different teams (different buildings even) and then FASA basically never did much again. When they bought Bungie, they moved them to Redmond, but kept them all in the same building working together. It took Bungie 6 months before they were able to produce. So when they bought us, they just left us in situe, in Dallas, figuring we'd become an awesome cash cow. Which we did.
1/6

We created Age of Mythology (our worst seller - still sold over a million copies in its first four months). We created Age of Empires 3, which sold more than 4 million copies. I created the War Chief expansion which sold a colossal amount (sorry don't have a hard number). And then we went two directions.

One team began to build a science fiction RTS game for the X-Box (MicroSoft was desperate for us to make an X-Box game). This eventually morphed into Halo Wars. The other, much larger, team was creating a science fiction MMO code-named Titan. It was set in the age of the Forerunners, many millenia before Halo. You actually got to play the Forerunners or, of course, the ancestors of the Covenant. My job was to create the lore and backstory for the entire universe which was pretty sweet for a roleplaying old-timer like me.
2/6

Two things happened to doom Ensemble, though it was far from obvious at the time. First, as a result of various events, Halo Wars took about an extra year to create. Now, Ensemble Studios was an extremely expensive company to support, so that was a non-trivial year of funding. Of course, Halo Wars would easily and quickly make up the difference (sold over a million copies in the first month). But in the meantime, the bean counters were sad at the excel spreadsheets.

Second, Microsoft hired Don Mattrick in an attempt to turn around MS Game Studios. At the time, pretty much only Ensemble and Bungie were successes. Now I was not privy to Don's employment contract but what I was told by folks who would have known is that his assignment was to make MS Game Studios profitable in exactly 3 years for giant stock options.

(Image: Don Mattrick's greatest humiliation. Ahh. Feels good.)
3/6

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Sandy Petersen 🪔

@SandyofCthulhu

Jun 24

How Ensemble Studios got bought by MicroSoft.

Ensemble Studios was amazingly successful. We produced only one game that sold less than 2 million copies, and THAT one sold a million so was no failure. Even the expansions (which I led) sold a million copies or more.

In 2000, MicroSoft needed to sign a new contract with us for our upcoming games. The contract sucked. It was literally equal to or worse than the contracts offered to their other partners. We balked. The problem was that MicroSoft is so huge, that it is divided into different satrapies that don't answer to each other. The contract-signing division get rewarded, basically, for handing out sucky contracts that benefit only MicroSoft. But the game publishing division was rewarded for selling great games, and Ensemble Studios was a rock star.
1/5

The contract-signers didn't care. Ensemble Studios earning a million billion dollars for the game publishers wouldn't affect THEM - their bosses only gave them bonuses for screwing us over. And since our games were earning tens of millions for MicroSoft, every extra percentage point they could shortchange us was gravy for them. They did not understand the principle that keeping Ensemble Studios happy would mean MicroSoft would make VASTLY more money in the long term, Or even the short term.

But because the contract guys were monsters of selfishness, they couldn't see this.
2/5

We argued our point till blue in the face. Ensemble Studios was BY FAR the biggest seller of all MicroSoft's game properties. We literally outsold every other game they produced put together. Put together.

So the MicroSoft legal eagles said we were greedy because we wanted more money. Holy sh*t was that the pot calling the kettle black!

So we went on strike. Literally. Our bosses came to us and said, "We're in contract negotiations and it's come to a standstill. So no one is officially allowed to do ANY work on a MicroSoft related product until we say otherwise." That said, we could still do such work if we wanted to, but it was unauthorized. We were not given another project instead.
3/5

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Sandy Petersen 🪔

@SandyofCthulhu

Jun 19

This is a really good rule.

Try it out on Loki, Draco Malfoy, Hannibal Lecter, and Killmonger. You'll see how totally correct the DeVito rule is.

For women, we can call it the Roseann Barr rule. Would guys still crush on Harley Quinn or Queen Akasha or Maleficent if they were played by Barr? (The answer is no.)

Dang it now I want to see Wallace Shawn as Voldemort and Joe Pesci as Thoth Amon taking on Conan.

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