One of the special events at this year’s QuakeCon, the 30th, was a reunion of four people very important to the company’s history: John Romero, John Carmack, Adrian Carmack and Tom Hall. The four men founded id Software back in 1991, in Shreveport, Louisiana; and 35 years later, after some complicated personal and professional history, they reunited on a stage in Dallas, Texas to talk about their work together.
The panel, hosted by author David L. Craddock, was a congenial walk down memory lane for the four men. Craddock directed the conversation along chronological lines, following the progression of the founders’ history with each other. From their days at Softdisk to the founding of the company; from Commander Keen to Wolfenstein 3D to DOOM to Quake. For three hours on Saturday, the founders shared silly pictures and stories from their time working together.
Some of the highlights of the event include a non-apology for the death of Daisy the rabbit (and the revelation that she was the inspiration for John Wick’s ill-fated pets), archival footage of team meetings showcasing some very poor posture, and the reveal of a Quake-themed celebratory cake that Hall and Romero ate with their arms twined together. For a reunion steeped in so much drama, the event focused primarily on the fours’ successes as id Software’s founders.
From Catacombs to Quake: id Software’s founders take a walk down memory lane
To begin the panel, all four founders gave their background in games leading up to the launch of id Software. Most of the story began at Softdisk, and their work on the company’s monthly subscription service, Gamer’s Edge. Working together, they recreated the opening level of Super Mario Bros. 3, which Hall said went “all the way up to the head table” before Nintendo snuffed any idea of expanding to the PC market.
According to Adrian Carmack, he joined the company as a paid intern shortly before the other three decided to leave to found id Software. As he said during the panel, “I was there for about three months, when the three of them gathered around and told me they were leaving to start their own company and just talked to the owner. John Carmack looked at me and said, ‘Oh, by the way, we told him you’re leaving with us. I hope that’s okay.'”
The rest of the panel featured archival footage of the id Software team during team meetings as well as behind-the-scenes pictures and notes. In the team meeting footage, Johns Romero and Carmack, as well as other employees such as Kevin Cloud and Jay Wilbur, all slouch around a table and discuss iterating on various enemy designs for Quake. I asked John Carmack about their lackadaisical demeanor after the event, and he said posture was apparently not a priority at the time.
One story that Craddock mentioned specifically was that Quake originated from an ongoing Dungeons and Dragons game that Hall, Romero and John Carmack were playing together. As John Carmack described it, Quake was the name of a character in the game who would have been the focal point of the title as it was originally developed. The idea was later scrapped in favor of the Quake we received.
How the four founders of id found their stride
One of the opening questions for all four founders was about their thoughts on The Washington Post’s recent article, which named Doom as one of the 25 most influential works of American culture — specifically, for the 1986-1995 era. All four were flattered, expressing amazement that Doom was honored over other pop culture highlights from the decade.
John Carmack said, “It’s a rare and wonderful thing to have something that has the legs to be extended and revisited and remastered and live on in people’s memories. Somebody else commented that it created a new genre, and that only happens maybe seven or eight times in all of gaming ever.” He also said during the discussion that DOOM was, “almost the perfect project… it did all of the necessary things to achieve the saturation impact that it did.”
Adrian Carmack noted the irony of being so honored when, at the time, DOOM was a very controversial product. “There was a hearing in Congress where they play DOOM and said, ‘Look at this awful, realistic game violence.’ It’s 256 colors!”
Shifting the discussion to Quake,
Burying the hatchet in person
The panel overall tactfully avoided discussion of the dramatic dissolve of the four’s partnership, including Hall’s departure in 1993 and the lawsuit Adrian Carmack filed against them after he was removed from the company in 2005. The discussion was overall congenial, and there seemed to be no hard feelings between the four men. No one mentioned, for example, that Hall left id before Quake was in development, going on to work on games like Deus Ex, Red Faction and Rise of the Triad. (Romero covered these events in detail in his own book).
The four founders were also not asked about any of id Software’s recent history, including the layoffs of a large percentage of the staff as part of Xbox’s overall reset. The founders have spoken on the record about this previously, but did not do so at this event. Only a handful of audience queries were addressed, and one was merely an apology to John Romero for annoying him in a Twitch chat.
At the close of the event, the staff gifted the four founders a special treat: A cake covered in blood, guts and the Quake logo, to symbolize the anniversary of the event. Someone failed to gift them forks and plates, however, resulting in the spectacle of all four men eating cake with their hands and John Carmack wielding a cake knife the size of a machete.