Hello everyone And welcome to the switch statement podcast It's a podcast for investigations into miscellaneous tech topics
This is the sixth episode in our series on Masters of Doom by David Kushner.
Matt:Hey John, what's going on in your world?
jon_raw:Matt, my world is, is good. There's nothing going on, nothing special. What about your world?
Matt:You know what the shape of the earth is, technically speaking?
jon_raw:Oh man, I, I've heard about, it's not a perfect sphere, right? It's like a little bit compressed, like an egg. Uh, I'm, I'm sure it's some weird word, like ovoid, ovicular, something.
Matt:you're very close. It's called an oblate spheroid.
jon_raw:Ah, oblate. See, I knew there was like some bizarre word thrown in there somewhere.
Matt:Yeah, so my world is pretty, pretty oblate, I would say.
jon_raw:Nice. Yeah. You win the nerdiest response to that question for the day award.
Matt:Thank you, yes, um, but um, Byte, how is the world of John Carmack and John Romero in chapter 6 of this fine, fine, uh, book, Green and Pissed?
jon_raw:Green and pissed. Yeah.
Matt:But I guess that's not how they are, right? Uh, Yes,
jon_raw:had a bit of an attitude. Uh, but their world is kind of, you know, ratcheting up, things are exciting. Business is catching off, taking off, catching, catching fire. I combined catching fire, you know, the show halt and catch fire.
Matt:that is a great show.
jon_raw:so when I am reading this book, I think about that show constantly. Cause it's just kind of a similar vibe, uh, you know, tech team taking off in the nineties or whatever. Um, so anyway, I combined catch fire and take off.
Matt:Yeah, no, it has that, that same vibe. Um, but, um, one of the things that, that really strikes me as funny about this book is like, it's really playing up all the tensions, and I think it's the kind of thing where, you know, you go into a meeting, and like, I don't know, everyone's talking, it's actually like mostly a polite meeting, and then afterwards, you're like, and then afterwards, you're like, Yeah, like you're grumbling. You're like, I don't know, like that guy was, was a jerk. But you don't really, like, it's not like you care that much about it. I think, but like, if someone were to interview you, you might be like, yeah, like, I wish John didn't do that. I feel like what happened is they interviewed these people and you got these these kind of detailed recollections of the time, but It wasn't necessarily that they were at loggerheads about all of these things, like, it was just like picking up on these like subtle emotional responses, but it constantly feels like the whole team is ready to break apart.
jon_raw:Yeah, yeah, and I feel like it's part of David Kushner like mythologizing their story, where it does feel like tensions are always high, there's always something exciting happening, and you know, it definitely makes for good reading, but I think it's also just fun. Yeah. Probably not completely accurate, you know, it must have been pretty chill a lot of the time. And you know, if anything, they have like a, a slowly growing well, quickly growing thriving business. So they were probably just happy all the time.
Matt:right. I'm sure there was this like substrate of success that, you know, any of these tensions are kind of like, I guess, mitigated by, But, well, this is the thing, and, well, okay, I guess I'm, I'm, I'm jumping ahead. I was going to make a point about, you know, chapter seven, but, um, but it does, if I'm teasing, it seems like their success really allows them to, have a tremendous amount of sway over people.
jon_raw:yeah, yeah. No, it seems like the business is starting to realize that here's a team of. People who just know what they're doing and are highly, highly capable. And so people are starting to come to them with things and they're starting to have a lot more creative freedom with just basically doing whatever they want to do.
Matt:um, yeah.
jon_raw:they mentioned an interesting, so this was like a piece of my past and I'm wondering if there's a piece of yours, the dope fish. Have you heard of this dope fish thing?
Matt:I have not heard of the Dopefish, no.
jon_raw:Okay, I have no idea why I wrote this in my notes. Like I know they mention the dopefish in this chapter, but I can't remember exactly how they mention it. But the way I remember the dopefish is it would appear in all of these games. It was kind of like a, you know, mid nineties Easter egg where it would just like appear in a random video game. I even feel like I might be making this up, but I feel like it would appear in completely non id games.
Matt:Oh, so this was just like a, a, a Wilhelm scream of the video
jon_raw:yes, yeah, it just became this, it almost kind of a meme, uh, back when there were no memes in the caveman times. but yeah, it was just like, oh, you'd turn a corner or you'd get a, you know, you'd break a wall down and there's a dope fish. And it was interesting to hear kind of the origin story, which I think, I mean, if I recall correctly, Adrian Carmack designed this thing. It was part of Commander Keen. It was just this like bizarre enemy that would pop up or something.
Matt:Well, yeah, so I think he goes, like, I think this is one of Tom's, I think this is Tom's conception. Like, this is one of his, like, creative, uh, ideas that they, they list out. And I'm, I would assume, like, I think the relationship is Tom is having all these, like, Hairbrained ideas and then it's Adrian's responsibility to actually like turn them into art.
jon_raw:implement them.
Matt:Yeah
jon_raw:They also mention, uh, there's another game they mentioned called Catacomb 3D. And this is another one of those games that I, I feel like I remember and it's always, it's hard to say if like, I'm sort of remembering looking back on it or if I'm actually remembering it as it happened. Because, I mean, I don't know about you, but my childhood memory is, like, incredibly fuzzy. But I do remember this game because it just had Like, first of all, it was one of the first games that sort of, like, had your hand. You know, it's like you have the viewport of the game, but then you also have this viewport that's just like you're kind of looking at your hands. As though your hands are like in your line of sight. Um, and your hand was just kind of this huge thing. It was just like always there on the screen. And that's what I remember about Catacomb 3D. It like, it was innovative and that it was one of the first to do that real FPS trope of like having your hand there. But it was also kind of like. Insane, because if I recall correctly, your hand never moved, like it was just this like static image, and it, you know, when you cast fireball, it would like do, animate or whatever, but it was just, uh, it was interesting.
Matt:it is funny because it's like it strikes me in such kind of like a simple way to like to enhance the presence for the player, but it's like it's amazing how powerful That was because like, even today, even FPS is today. It's still like basically the same thing. Obviously, it's all modeled in 3d now, but like, you know, you just have this arm is disembodied arm, you know, you don't have the rest of the character there. Um, but it's like, you know, strictly speaking, it's not different. It's yeah, it's better animated, but at the core, it's still the same thing where you have, like, you're walking and you have just this, Disembodied hand. So it's amazing how even this, like, kind of, I don't know, quaint, you know, incarnation of it is still, like, essentially unchanged since then.
jon_raw:Oh, yeah. And also, man, like the, the double shotgun in Doom 2, I think to this day is still one of the most satisfying guns. Because you blast, you know, you shoot that thing and it just makes that amazing sound and there's that reload animation. And even though it's, you know, it's old graphics, it's pixel, you know, pixelized or whatever, but man, that was amazing. And it still, I think, is just slaps.
Matt:Oh yeah. Um, but it is, it is funny because there's another, there's another aspect to this where it's like, Cushionary is talking about all these things in like such grandiose terms. And then, like, you go and you look at a screenshot of Wolfenstein 3D. And I don't, like, I don't want to, like, take away from the programming prowess that, uh, that Carmack had. But, like, it just looks so lame, you know, by, by today's. I think, you know, it's funny because in a way, it looks lame in a way that Doom doesn't, actually. Like, the original Doom actually does retain this, like, Wolfenstein has not, has aged, like, very poorly where, whereas Doom was able to achieve some threshold where it ages, like, gracefully like a Super Mario, where it's like, Super Mario doesn't look antiquated, it just looks, I don't know, it just looks like itself, you know. Hmm,
jon_raw:it's such a clearly defined aesthetic
Matt:Um.
jon_raw:Like, that's what I see is the difference with Wolfenstein is there's all these depictions of like, they're trying to depict something real. They even had rotoscoping where they would take like a real image and kind of draw over it, whereas Doom is more of like stylized graphics that I think just work perfectly and, you know, Wolfenstein obviously stylized like the big heads and everything, but I think that they were, the game had less of its own unique style. And I completely agree that the Doom graphics still look amazing. Just completely amazing.
Matt:Well, one, one major thing they, uh, they do in this, or like one major scene in this chapter is they go to the people at Sierra, um, and they just roll up as this, like, motley band of, of, I don't know, misfits, basically, in this, like, shining ivory tower of game creation, um, and it's, it There's a scene where Carmack just like, dresses down one of the programmers.
jon_raw:That scene gave me anxiety.
Matt:yeah, I know, I was like, I would just imagine, like, what would an interaction with Carmack, like, be like for me? Would he just be like, like, I would tell him something I was working on, and he'd be like, why didn't you just I don't know, implement it all from scratch using, like, render the pixels yourself by hand.
jon_raw:There was like a fairly long period of my career where that was like a fear that I had. Um, and I guess this is like a form of imposter syndrome or just part of my imposter syndrome, but I was like worried random co workers were gonna call me out on my bullshit in like meetings and stuff. And man, Carmack just completely doing that to that guy. It made me sad. Like, poor guy.
Matt:I think what's weird about it is, like, Like, I feel like you want to strike a balance where you don't want to let niceness get in the way of, stopping someone from doing something that you pretty strongly believe is dumb. But you also you don't want to be just like rude unnecessarily and like, when you have a programmer who you're not going to work with, you're not working on the same team, like there's no point, like, why would you, why would you nitpick? First off, you don't know the context of their system, um, but I, you know, I've, I've worked with a pretty small set of people who feel confident enough to just like waltz in and be like, why not just do this X, Y, Z. And like, it's just hard to explain why, Why you're in the state that you're in, um, but I don't know, I feel like my approach would generally to be like, ask them questions if there was something that I had heard of that I thought they might not have heard of, I would have been like, have you heard about this? Um, as opposed to using the like, why didn't you just do? Um, cause like that is never useful.
jon_raw:Totally. Totally. Yeah. Um, it's, it's yet another character flaw that I think Carmack has where he's, uh, I, I don't know if it's a form of competition or what, but he just wants to be the best in the room and he will, he'll dress you down in order to establish his place in the pecking order.
Matt:I don't think it's about pecking order. I think it's just like an absolutely, like, robotic, thirst for knowledge.
jon_raw:Yeah. Where if he sees something inaccurate, he will just call it out no matter what.
Matt:Well, he sees something and he's like, okay, does this person know something I don't or are they just incompetent? And then he goes over to them, he talks to them, he's like, did you consider X? Did you consider Y? Did you consider Z? Okay, no, you're just an idiot. Okay, bye.
jon_raw:Right. So he just doesn't have, he doesn't, uh, have empathy and human interaction. He doesn't have EQ.
Matt:Yeah, he definitely doesn't have any EQ, but he's, he's also, by the same token, at least as far as I've been able to just, as far as I've been able to discern, he's also not doing it, as a power move, you know, to try to make this other person feel small. Um, at least, like, from the sense that I get. It's just this raw, like, thirst for knowledge.
jon_raw:Yeah. Now I think you're probably right. I don't think he's, I don't think he's like malevolent. I think it's more, you know, he's kind of on the spectrum and lacks, lacks awareness.
Matt:Oh yeah, or it lacks any concern for the other person's emotional response to the, the grilling they're getting.
jon_raw:Yeah. Uh, one really interesting little tidbit in this chapter. they start, I feel like this is the chapter where they start to talk about Doom and potentially exploring a demonic game. And they're playing with different titles. And they talk about Devil Dagger? Do you remember this part?
Matt:Well, yeah, I mean, they're, they're, they are talking about titles for, um, for Wolfenstein and, and they're going to do it in, they're going to do it in German and, uh,
jon_raw:Oh yeah, yeah,
Matt:They were going to call it Devil Daggering.
jon_raw:Yeah yeah, what was the, what was the uh, German word for that? It was like Teufel or something? I can't
Matt:Let me see. Toyful. That sounds kind of nice. I
jon_raw:I just totally made that word up. It probably means something like completely bad and our podcast is going to get canceled.
Matt:mean, it probably isn't as bad as whatever they were actually trying to say.
jon_raw:Um, but anyway, the reason I wanted to mention devil dagger is because a game came out called devil daggers and, uh, it's an awesome game and it's, it came out like in the last 10 years, I want to say like, it's a fairly modern game, but I wonder if they. got inspiration from, from it. Cause the game is definitely very id like it has a lot of like aesthetic similarities.
Matt:It might be. It might just be a callback. Like it might be like a deep cut.
jon_raw:Yeah. I just, I wonder it feels homage ish. I mean, obviously that's a title that you could come up with independently, but, uh, just knowing the game, it feels homage, homage
Matt:Dolch Teufel, or Dolch? I don't know, would you say the C A, it's D O L C H T E U F E L.
jon_raw:Dolch Teutel.
Matt:Dolch Teufel. Um, so yeah. And then there's also, uh, Bad Smell, uh, which is Geruch, Geruch Schlech.
jon_raw:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Matt:Um, I do kind of wish they went with Castle Hasselhoff, because that's just like, delightful to say.
jon_raw:That just rolls right off the tongue.
Matt:but yeah, um, so, so yeah, so they, they're at this, they're at this meeting, um, with Sierra and I think, I think it's, it sounds like the, I guess, is it a husband and wife team at the top of Sierra?
jon_raw:I don't know. Yeah. I don't
Matt:Roberta Williams and Ken Williams?
jon_raw:Oh yeah. I guess maybe I just didn't make that connection that they had the same last name.
Matt:but so it says that they, they are not, not too impressed with these like a naive, um, guys who are just like self, self important, but, um, but they hear how much they're making from their shareware, Commander Keen, and they're like, Hmm, maybe we should offer these guys 2. 5 million to, because they said that they were making like 50, 000 a month, From Commander Keen's shareware sales, which is like, unbelievable,
jon_raw:insane in the nineties, like early nineties. Like that's
Matt:Yeah. it's funny because I guess they were going to give them 2. 5 million dollars in stock in the company or something. But they were like, no, we want 100, 000 dollars up front. Which, it just, it's kind of clear to me why they even wanted that.
jon_raw:I don't get it. If they're making 50 grand a month, like what are they doing? Are they buying a bunch of cocaine or something? How come they can't,
Matt:Yeah, like, I, I, I kind of don't understand what, either side of the deal. Like, why did you request that? And why did the other people refuse? It's like, I, I, like, I'm not sure. Like, what are you, how are you offering them 2. 5 million dollars? They said stock, but it's like, I don't know, like sell some of your stock and then like you get, if you're willing to give these people, like, I'm just confused. There's probably a lot of nuance in the deal or like tax implications or what have you, but like,
jon_raw:I got the exact same feeling and my, my read of it was, or what I was wondering about was if it was almost like a statement, like a principle of the thing. Type deal where, and I'm, I am probably reading into this incorrectly, but it felt like Sierra was offering them sort of like a, you know, potential investment. Like, Oh yeah, you guys might know what you're doing. We'll give you these, this equity that will vest over time and we'll see how it goes versus this kind of like, okay, we're going to give you upfront a bunch of money, like you guys are awesome. Like, it felt sort of like Id wanted Sierra to make more of a statement to them that, they really believed in what they were doing.
Matt:Right, right, right. Um, but so they balk and the deal falls through, which it's so funny because like, man, talk about, talk about missed opportunities.
jon_raw:Oh, yeah. Yeah, and I definitely remember Sierra. I think, like, they were the publishers of all the Police Quest and King's Quest and a bunch of amazing, amazing games. But they I do think they were kind of stuck in a certain You know, era of game, or type of game, genre, and id was doing something very new and innovative, and maybe they couldn't see it. Yeah.
Matt:No, that's, that's definitely true. Like I think, cause it's still, it's still a big bet. Right. It's a bet. It's easy to say in retrospect, like that bet paid off, but like they might not have been willing to put a hundred thousand on black or whatever.
jon_raw:One other, you know, just tiny thing, and I'm kind of changing the subject again, but this chapter was also the first mention of jibs. They talk about Romero eating up jibs. And jibs became a big thing in the id series, uh, where, like in the Quake game, when you kill guys with a rocket launcher, they explode into all these body parts. And those body parts are called jibs. And it was, it was just nice to hear the origin of, of jibs.
Matt:jibs, man, I have no, I had no idea that that's what that was. Those were called. Are you saying those are, those can be used as health? Uh,
jon_raw:they're just like, they're just decorative. It's kind of weird to call them decorative, but you know, they just add to the overall flavor of the game.
Matt:okay. Jibs. And those are like the human trunks,
jon_raw:yeah, human chunks or beast chunks, uh, just whatever chunks,
Matt:just viscera.
jon_raw:viscera. Yeah, good name for it.
Matt:but did they, was it this in this chapter where they talked about how, like, they were talking about health collectibles. And like, you needed to, they said like, if you were really low on health, you could like, just like, eat some of the like, remains of, of one of the fallen
jon_raw:I, I, oh, right, right. Yeah, that's, that was the jibs part. Yeah, you're, you're absolutely right. So this, this was a case where it would give you health, like you're eating there, which is awesome. Um, but
Matt:Some of this is, is a little bit too, like, you know, it gets to the point where, like, I don't know, I, I, I played through, Uh, What the hell was it? Um, I played through
jon_raw:Half life.
Matt:Bioshock. Bioshock Infinite. And that was a game that actually had like a decent amount, like you could have these incredibly gruesome like killings. And like I was able to like onboard that. But once Romero was like Oh, then you can piss on the The dead bodies. It crossed a threshold that I was like, yeah, I don't know that I can get on, like I can get on board with like an infinite amount of, well maybe not infinite, but like a lot of gore. But like as soon as you start to get into this like, I guess like what you could consider that scatological humor, like, it's like,
jon_raw:Yeah. Now, Romero is definitely in the tea bagging camp, where he just wants all sorts of, like, shameful and horrible things to be in his games.
Matt:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but so, uh. So then at the end of the chapter, it feels like we just moved to, we just got out of Shreveport, but at the end of this chapter, they're moving out of, uh, they're moving out of Wisconsin,
jon_raw:Yeah, Madison.
Matt:Moving out of Madison. Too cold. Uh, have you ever, have you ever spent a winter in Madison? Yeah.
jon_raw:up in Troy, Michigan, which I'm assuming is a similar climate. And I've also never spent any appreciable time in Shreveport, but my guess is the Michigan climate is much more annoying.
Matt:Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, but yep, too cold. They're, uh, slipping, sliding in the winters. And they can't, you know, as Romero puts it, they would die if they didn't have, like, if they just went outside without anything, they would just die. and so he, that's not what he's about. So they, uh, they ship down to Dallas, right? That's their, uh,
jon_raw:Yeah. Mm hmm. Kind of like Elon.
Matt:I guess so, yeah, everybody, if you want to build a business, go to, go to Dallas. alright, well, I think that's kind of all I had for this, this chapter.
jon_raw:Yep. That's all I had.
Matt:Alright. Cool, cool. Well, I will, uh, see you for chapter seven.
jon_raw:See you for chapter 7.
Matt:Peace.
jon_raw:Peace.