Hello everyone And welcome to the switch statement podcast It's a podcast for investigations into miscellaneous tech topics
This is our 10th episode on Masters of Doom by David Kushner.
matt_mod_10:Hey, John, how's it going?
jon_raw:Hey, Matt, it's going really good. How are you doing?
matt_mod_10:Doing all right. I, uh, I don't know. I, am I part of the doom generation? I, I'm, I feel like I, uh, I missed that boat a little bit.
jon_raw:yeah, I mean, you probably missed the boat. You're, you're pretty young. I feel like even I missed the boat. That was actually something this chapter made me think of is like, Doom. I am much more aware of Doom 2 for reasons that we will actually explain in this chapter. And yeah, Doom 1 I think was just a little bit before my time, but Doom 2, I'm part of the Doom 2 generation.
matt_mod_10:Right? Ron, Ronnie, uh, hook you up.
jon_raw:Hell yeah, Ronnie.
matt_mod_10:to him. yeah. So, um, it's funny cause they, they talk about how just all encompassing doom was at this time. And I, I almost got like a second hand taste of this because I had this uncle. Who I think he was he was kind of like tapped in at this point in time who was like all about doom He's like come over here. I gotta show you this. It's the best game It's the most amazing game in the world and it's like at this point I had already seen the ps2 or what have you and I was like, I don't know It looks like a pretty standard video game like um, but I think he had this holdover of like The amazement of doom and how amazing it was. I mean, not just not, you know, I'm sure even if I played doom now, it would
jon_raw:when, when was this? Because the PS When was the PS2?
matt_mod_10:PS2 came out in 2000
jon_raw:Okay, okay. Cause yeah, Doom was like, what, 92 or 91 or something?
matt_mod_10:well, they're in, they're in 1993. So I guess the original doom launch came, came out around the time, 93 timeframe. Right.
jon_raw:Okay, I see. So this, you were visiting with your uncle like Your uncle was showing you a game from his past
matt_mod_10:Well, right. Exactly. I, he was showing me in like the 2000 timeframe and he was apparently still, he was still enamored by this amazing game from his past. And he wanted to like, share that with me.
jon_raw:I can see
matt_mod_10:lost on me.
jon_raw:Because ps2 had like, you know Metal Gear Solid 2 or whatever that had amazing graphics for its time and I can see being completely unimpressed with doom
matt_mod_10:Yeah, well, we're just maybe not understanding, because I guess if you, if you grow up in a world where you're aware of what a computer can do, and then like, it's all completely upended by doom.
jon_raw:Exactly. Yeah. And like, I experienced this firsthand. I remember it very vividly, actually. And I, this is coming from a person who has like zero recollection of his childhood. I remember my dad getting a Gateway Pentium 90. Which Gateway was like this, I don't even know if Gateway still exists. It was like this company, their mascot was a cow. You would purchase pre made computers from them and it would come in a big box that looked like a cow. Like it
matt_mod_10:Oh, I remember the cow box. Yeah.
jon_raw:Okay, nice. Uh, anyway, I remember my dad setting up this Pentium 90. Uh, in the, like, in the, like, dining room. Like, which was a really weird place for him to set up his computer, but I think he was just sort of playing with it. And one of the first things he installed was Doom 2. And I was a kid, I mean, I was born in 1984, so I was like 10, and I was seeing this, I mean, this was some great parenting, uh, for my dad, but like, I was literally playing this game where I'm like blowing people away with a shotgun. Uh, and this is why Joe Lieberman was so upset. Yeah,
matt_mod_10:a little bit of a moral panic, uh, uh, Who's, who's Joel, uh, Joe Lieberman?
jon_raw:yeah. So Joe Lieberman was. Uh, actually a very liberal senator. I can't remember what state he was from. Maybe Connecticut. Okay. I knew it was one of those like Northeast kind of hyper liberal places. But he actually ran for president at one point. I think this was around the like Gore era. But anyway, back in this day, he was a super ambitious young senator and the cause that he wanted to latch himself onto. Was violence in media. And so obviously doom became the subject of, you know, a lot of his vitriolic rhetoric, which this whole section, I mean, the, this chapter basically starts with this, like all of the historical context that surrounded doom, which for me, it was ultra fascinating. Cause I was living through this, like I played mortal combat too. I remember preferring the Sega version.
matt_mod_10:Yeah.
jon_raw:Like, I remember, you know, my friend got it on Super Nintendo and I was like, dude, you're a loser. Like, my other friend has Sega, and so I, I moved away from that friend. He's not my friend anymore. Um, but
matt_mod_10:they kind of like, they defanged the version that went onto Nintendo because they didn't have any of the cool, uh, death, kind of murder moves, right?
jon_raw:Exactly, and, and, you know, in Mortal Kombat 2, like, as you punch someone, all this blood would fly out, and in the Super Nintendo version, they could, they turned it into something that I think was supposed to look like sweat, but it was more like just this kind of gray sludge, like, it just looked dumb. I mean, they just completely, like, ruined the game, basically. and anyway, what I was gonna say is, this section actually It, it sort of reminded me that the world has sort of always been insane. Like there's always been this like hyper polarizing rhetoric. And I know sometimes in the modern world it can just feel so sad and like, you know, we're all headed towards some, some sort of apocalypse because the world is so polarized and everyone hates each other. But it's kind of always been that way.
matt_mod_10:Yeah, they talk, yeah, they talk about this, how, there's been these, these issues going back 100 years or since like the 20s where they're worried about stories that people are reading, you know, that the kids are reading or movies that the kids are watching or Dungeons and Dragons in the 80s. So, and there's actually this really funny term called, have you heard this? Juvenoia.
jon_raw:yeah, yeah, yeah.
matt_mod_10:Where there's just always, there's always something new for people to kind of remember a time when that didn't exist and become concerned that that is corrupting their children. Yeah.
jon_raw:Inclination or, or whatever to sort of latch on these like micro events, like one of the part of this context that actually the author didn't mention, which I thought was interesting was, um, the satanic panic, which was this, like, I mean, I don't know, I'm not like a satanic panic historian, but it was like a multi decade period where like all old people thought that young people were like in. Yeah. Basically being satanic, you
matt_mod_10:Well, right at risk of
jon_raw:Yeah,
matt_mod_10:you know.
jon_raw:exactly. Which, and it was the type of thing that came out of these tiny isolated events that were just completely blown out of proportion by the media. And then all of these super worried parents, you know, sort of latched onto it and. Anyway, I, it was, for me, it was like a little relieving. Cause it just reminded me that this is just how humans operate. Like we're just, we're just dumb. Uh,
matt_mod_10:it's funny because I think, I think sometimes there's like an overcorrection where it's like, these parents had nothing to worry about. And like, I think it's like, and, and I'm, I don't know, maybe that maybe, I'm not sure that, uh, what is his name? Jared, uh, not Jared Kushner. Uh,
jon_raw:David Kushner. Jared, dude. I do that every time I say his name.
matt_mod_10:Um, I'm, I'm not saying that, uh, David Kushner is, is making that claim per se, but sometimes if you don't, like, like he also isn't necessarily saying that they did have anything to worry about. I do think, like, and I'm not sure, maybe they, they get to this and maybe we can kind of just like spoil the, the like legislation thread, but ultimately. it was kind of, it was kind of funny how much of a stir they caused and then what the, like, how kind of anticlimactic the outcome of the, of this, like, and it wasn't much like there was, it was just a, uh, I guess a Congress hearing or something.
jon_raw:yeah. Yeah, no, the result was so toothless.
matt_mod_10:so ultimately, and I mean, it's, it is what wound up. Sticking, right? That they gave the video game companies a year to come up with their own standardized system for labeling the video games, um, with like, okay, what, you know, how do you slot a video game into a category according to like, which age group should be able to consume it. And then they came up with the like teen game or, you know, T for teen or M for mature. System. And that's what we still have, right?
jon_raw:I believe so. Yeah. At least some, you know, incarnation of it or iteration of it, which like I found a hilarious even at the time because it was so obvious, like the record industry has had done a similar thing. Right. Where, you know, all these exactly, which that became a badge of honor. Like it was such a dumb, it basically became a marketing. tool. It's like, hey, this rap album has explicit content on it, therefore I'm going to purchase it.
matt_mod_10:I, you know, I'm going to, I think I'm going to disagree with you a little bit where Yes, I think a lot of times there's kind of this two splice enforcement of it. But if you had a parent who cared about this, At least because what I will say is I think that the mapping from there, there weren't games that were coming out that were labeled as E for everyone that had a bunch that were like kind of misclassified, I would say, and so in that regard, if you had a parent who wanted to attempt to police what their Children were playing, um, At least they have some framework for, for making an informed decision. and then were our kids going to be able to get around it? Sure. But at least, you know, in the old system, it's like they would have no idea. Like Mortal Kombat, like, I mean, it's funny because that's kind of, kind of given it away
jon_raw:Yeah, they're really burying the lead with that title.
matt_mod_10:how could a parent know that this might have, uh, violence in it?
jon_raw:Yeah.
matt_mod_10:I guess it is funny, I don't think I thought about this at the time, but it is, it is funny thinking about like how shocked, you know, you have, you have a name like Mortal Kombat and like to, to, to imagine that anyone is shocked when there's, there's like people dying is kind of hilarious.
jon_raw:I love that you're arguing the other side, because I definitely didn't want to Just be totally on the one side and I also wanted to bring up the elements of sexism and racism because I think I think violence in games is one of those things where there's no moral like thread of society that thinks violence is okay in any form like basically violence is one of those things that society has wholly rejected It's almost binary at this point, like any violence is bad, but I do think that video games, for a long time, I mean, for one, I think they were, they were violent, sexist, and racist, I think that's pretty much indisputable, and I think the insidious thing about sexism and racism is they kind of exist on this spectrum, where, it's hard to like, obviously no sexism or racism is okay, but it's really hard to classify what is sexism and racism. Like if you have an attractive woman in your game, like, is that sexist? Like it's so anyway, the point I wanted to make is like, I think while people were silly to get up in arms about violence, cause every kid knows that violence is not okay. That's like a well understood thing. I actually think some of the arguments about. But like other things besides violence that aren't so binary in society are, there's some credence to them. I think there were some games that probably made kids like a little bit more sexist or, or at least just not understand, how to properly respect their peers. So anyway, I just wanted to throw this out as a thought, like, I think Joe Lieberman was definitely, Being a little bit overly, self righteous or, you know, getting super up in arms about kind of a nothing burger. But I do think there's, there's some elements of, of truth to that whole campaign and, you know, hopefully we've learned from it,
matt_mod_10:This, this is, this is interesting because I think, I don't think, I don't think we actually disagree, but I almost, I almost feel like the exact opposite with, I think it's kind of a nuanced, uh, disagreement, but it's kind of like, if you have something that people would say is sexism or racism in a video game, That shouldn't be in the video. Like, I mean, I think we can kind of agree that a video game should generate, it's okay if we just, legislate video games and there's no sexism and there's no racism in video games.
jon_raw:right? Oh no, I, I agree with that. Like I, I think the issue I have, like there's a game called soul caliber. It's a fighting game. And then there's women characters you can play as, and they have boobs that like shake when you swing your sword. And it's like, is that sexist? It kind of is, but it's, it exists on this weird, blurry line where it's like. You know, it's just very hard to, um, actually, have you ever heard that phrase? This was from a Supreme court justice. He was talking about porn and he was like, you know it when you see it, which I do. I do think it's true with porn, but I think with things like sexism and even racism, I just think it's more subtle. And I think while like, I completely agree with you that if there's a game and like. You know, a hundred out of a hundred people say like this game is sexist. I think it should be pulled from the shelves. But I think the issue is like, it's just really hard to get that unanimous opinion about something,
matt_mod_10:Right. Whereas, like, You could have a game that is You know, a hundred out of people, a hundred out of a hundred people say that it's violent and it's, you know, the case, now the case, it's still ambiguous as to whether or not, like, should the, you know, should this be, um, it's kind of a measure of degree then. Um, so like, I think again, like this is a very subtle distinction, but yeah, like you're, it's like classifying something like it's your point is. It's easy to classify violence as violence, and it's the line between like sexism and not, you know, sexist and not sexist and racist and not racist is difficult.
jon_raw:right?
matt_mod_10:you do make that distinction, in all three of those cases, it's like for violence, now the question is like, okay, what's the threshold of violence that, is completely disqualifying versus like once you've made the distinction for sexism, racism, like that in itself is disqualifying. So like, I, I think that was a lot much, much ado about nothing, but I was just like kind of raising the distinction between like, you know, The class of the initial classification and then like the degree once it's classified into those buckets.
jon_raw:Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think and yeah not to I feel like I'm gonna start to beat a dead horse here but like I think part of the other element about violence is it's just Sexism and racism are a very nuanced thing that get redefined with society every day. Whereas violence is violence. Like it just, you know, so, and, and violence is just, everyone knows that violence is bad in any form. So I just think that,
matt_mod_10:I think I disagree with that because I think like a good example like John Wick, for example. That's like a perfect movie where It's like the director is very intentionally trying to make you feel like the Violence perpetrated on like the quote unquote bad guys in the movie is justified. Um, and like, Like I agree that everyone would say violence in a vacuum is bad, but like, I think there's a lot of ways in which like pieces of media will set up a circumstance where The audience and like myself included i'm not like watching john wick and being like tsk tsk Like he should have been turned the other cheek I'm, like yeah, like kill those guys But like i'm also at the same time acknowledging that this is kind of a well not kind of a i'm not mentioning Trying to mince words here. It's a glorification of violence. So,
jon_raw:right. Well no, but I think that actually, I think that actually plays into my point. Like what Joe Lieberman is saying is that people are going to experience this media and then behave in that way. And in my opinion, I think, people experience the media of John Wick. They see all this violence on screen. But there's, they know that violence is wrong, you know, they know that they can't go home and behave that way. But if people watch a movie in the 80s and a male character says to a female character, go make me a sandwich, or something horribly, uh, sexist like that, it's not as clear that they can't behave in that way. There's no obvious signal, or, I mean, I, today there, there is, I'm sure. But I think back during this time, there was no obvious signal to young people to be like, don't behave that way. So I, I think that's my point, like there's just so much more nuance to these other things, like I would not be so worried about the violence just because I feel like, you know, kids know not to be violent and there's a lot of, it's very easy to classify violence. I, I would be worried about sort of these other elements of video games, which I do think were prevalent at the time.
matt_mod_10:Right All right, so, um, you know, setting, setting the, uh, moral panic aside for the moment, it sounds like Doom dropped on the scene and everybody lost their mind. The, the id team included, apparently, with the, the, uh, multiplayer.
jon_raw:100, 000 per day they were making.
matt_mod_10:In, in 1993.
jon_raw:what is that like 10 million per day?
matt_mod_10:I, I don't, I mean,
jon_raw:we need to do the, uh, the inflation calculations, like
matt_mod_10:Alright, let's do that. Yeah. Uh
jon_raw:But yeah, the other thing is, uh, I mean, the historical context around this game is just insane. Like we just discussed the whole moral thing, but also this was around the same time as the advent of the internet. And, you know, Doom was one of the first games that had multiplayers. So it was just this very seminal event in history. I mean, maybe that's a little bit overplaying it, but I mean, truly it happened at kind of a crossroads in history and
matt_mod_10:so it would be, it would be about, uh, 214, uh, thousand dollars a day. So,
jon_raw:dang,
matt_mod_10:which is crazy. It seems like I would've expected that to be more, lemme make sure I'm checking those zeros. Uh, yeah. So it's, so, it's only, it's only doubled since, uh. Since 90, uh, 93. So, uh,
jon_raw:Wow. Well, a million per week. Good man. Can't really go wrong with, uh, that.
matt_mod_10:So yeah, even, even things like people at this crazy, uh, or not this crazy, but this, this advanced physics laboratory are hijacking their network at night to, to play, uh, doom, uh, death matches.
jon_raw:Yep. Yeah. There's a long section in the book where he talks about these different groups of people basically slacking at their jobs. You know, the whole productivity of the global economy must have just completely collapsed when Doom was released, at least according to David Kushner. He mentions Trent Reznor, which I think is a little bit of foreshadowing. Um, because Reznor does become sort of intimately involved with ID, which I'm sure
matt_mod_10:don't know.
jon_raw:to. Um, but he mentions Trent Reznor is sort of, you know, sprinting off the stage after a concert, this characterization just cracked me up. Cause you know, he ends his concert, throws his mic on the ground, runs off the stage and goes to play doom. There's all these hot girls that want to, you know, get with them, but he's like, no, excuse me, I need to go play doom. And that was apparently how Trent Reznor was behaving.
matt_mod_10:Apparently, um, but, but yeah, no, so the whole, whole wide world is, uh, is losing their mind. And this guy named, uh, Ronnie Kaimowitz, who started a company called Good Times Interactive, catches wind. And he, he was something of like, a small time, like, Kind of I guess like a diamond in the rough renaissance man kind of like he was just kind of had his ear to the ground and it was like Looking for a kind of undiscovered talent And you know, yeah
jon_raw:he was evidently incredible at finding undiscovered talent. He found Gloria Estefan. Has anyone ever heard of Gloria Estefan? He found, he found Julio Iglesias. And also he found, uh, Jane Fonda evidently had a point in her career where she wanted to make workout tapes. And he helped her like market her workout tapes, which I've actually heard from other sources that these Jane Fonda workout tapes were extraordinarily successful. So I think this guy was just really good at sort of finding things and it's further evidenced by the fact that he, he found it basically. Nice.
matt_mod_10:My my mom had Cindy Crawford Clone workout tapes. I'm sure that she was just following in Jane Fonda's Um, but yeah, so, uh, Good Time Interactive, uh, really tries to, um, yeah, and this is, this is Ron's, Ron's kind of like video game arm, I guess, uh, tries to, keeps on trying to, uh, pitch them on breaking into the retail market. And they're, they're not, they're not biting for a while.
jon_raw:Well, so they'd be sacrificing a lot of their. Well, not a lot of their revenue because the upside would grow tremendously, but they would introduce a lot more overhead into their business. Because the whole shareware model, I mean, maybe you don't get as much reach, but you basically just get a hundred percent of the profits. Like there's very little overhead to like distributing your game or even marketing because the whole point is like people, you know, it's word of mouth. Early in the episode, I mentioned how my family like was loosely aware of DOOM. Like I remember my brother mentioning it. I think he was playing it at friend's houses, but DOOM 2 was the game that my family actually like purchased. And that was the first one I personally played. Um, and I think this is why I think this Ron guy is basically the reason why.
matt_mod_10:It's interesting, and I can kind of see why they, someone waltzes in and is like, Hey, I can make you like a ton more money. I think if I was in that same situation, I would kind of be looking around being like, Hey, we're making a million dollars a week. I'm not sure, what kind of catch is there going to be if this guy is like, you can make way, way more money? Like, I feel like the, the deal would need to be really sweet. And I feel like ironclad in order for me to want to mess with, cause there's going to be, you're going to have to give up something for this, for this deal. Like, and be it. And what they gave up was now they had this obligation to deliver Doom 2, which I guess ideally what you do is you align your obligation with basically what you wanted to do anyway, and then everybody wins. Yeah, so I mean, I felt like the rest of the chapter was a little bit less. Oh, yeah a big, a big thing that, um, that they then go on to, to talk about is like modding, right?
jon_raw:Yes.
matt_mod_10:I, I've never, I've never really gotten into this scene like we're digging into the internals. Um, I think it's super cool how they approached it. Um,
jon_raw:Yeah. Well, doom was one of the first games, uh, maybe the first to provide like. Intentionally provide, like, really good modding tools. They had this file format called a WAD, which I actually never knew what that stood for, by the way. And I just learned from reading this chapter that it stands for Where's All the Data, which is like the dumbest.
matt_mod_10:Is that, is that a backronym? I feel like they, it's like, ah, just put it in the WOD, you know. You know, it's just, it was just called the WOD originally. Uh,
jon_raw:thought it was just like. You know, like a wad of napkin or whatever. Like it was just a word that they would use to describe a bundle of data. Um, but according to this chapter, it stood for where's all the data, but anyway, all of the configuration of the game was in these wad files. So you could literally take it. Like, they talked about, there was like a, um, Star Wars version of Doom, that some modder released that became very popular, um, and this was intentional on its part, like, they designed the game so that people could do this, because Carmack was, you know, sort of an OG, um, you know,
matt_mod_10:The Hacker Ethic.
jon_raw:yeah, the hacker ethic, exactly, exactly,
matt_mod_10:One of the most salient examples of this was someone hacked Doom so that it looked like Uh, Star Wars, right? They, they made Star Wars into Doom, which I thought was hilarious. Now, did you, did you get the sense, was it just a movie, basically, or did they make a Star Wars based game?
jon_raw:I thought it was a game where you're like fighting stormtroopers and stuff. That's the sense that I got. Uh, because I played a few of these, uh, I think for quake or whatever, you know, this was years later, but, um, I remember like a quake. Mod, for instance, where you have, you had this ball and chain that behaved like a grappling hook and it was amazing. My friends and I played death match with that mod for, I don't even, I mean, I don't even want to think about how long, cause I was just wasting my childhood, but, uh, it was brilliant. So yeah, this, this chapter talks about the modding scene, which, uh, is amazing. And I, I feel like something that it was really ahead of their time on like a lot of other things. Um, but then the, towards the end of the chapter, they sort of transition into, I think the beginnings of a rift that is forming between Carmack and Romero, where Carmack is, he just wants to work. Like, the guy is not interested in soaking up the rays that are hitting Id. He just wants to work on technology. Um, whereas Romero, he wants to be a rock star. He loves the fame, so he's relishing it.
matt_mod_10:What was, what was his, uh, his handle? The, uh, he was the Ace, Ace Programmer. I mean, that was, he was, he was building that Rockstar, Star Programming brand since, you know, since he was like 16. But, uh, and now he gets to live, live that dream.
jon_raw:Uh, huh. Yeah, and then, uh, a couple other super tiny things I wanted to mention. So, you know, they're hitting all these, um, like, uh, conventions showing off the game. Uh, super tiny detail from the chapter that I thought was interesting. They mention a shirt that Carmack really liked. It's basically a yellow smiley face with like a bullet hole, like someone had shot the yellow smiley face. Um, And I looked up the shirt online and it's extremely reminiscent of there's a comic book that I really like an Alan Moore comic book called Watchmen that on the cover of the comic. There's like this bloody smiley face. Anyway, I just wanted to mention that connection because I feel like there's no way that
matt_mod_10:That's gotta be a reference. Yeah, I mean, that's got, because Watchmen, when did Watchmen come out? It must have been in, like, the late 80s, right?
jon_raw:I think you're right. Yeah, I think it's mid to late eighties. And so this had to still be in the zeitgeist, especially with people like this who are sort of. Um, anyway, I just thought that was interesting. This chapter also mentions American McGee for the first time, which, uh, I've talked a few times about this book being a trip down memory lane for me. Like my friends and I, uh, like these guys were our heroes basically. And American McGee was a huge hero of ours. Like, I remember we used to play the levels that we knew American had made. He was a level designer, which I don't think I mentioned. Um,
matt_mod_10:on the levels? Like, how, how did you figure out who, who had made any one? And, and were you just, like, skipping the other level, or was this, was this when you were playing Deathmatch, or was, when you were playing through the game?
jon_raw:like we'd be playing through the game and I mean, this is like for my childhood, so I barely remember. I do think that you could, there were, uh, places where you could figure out who had designed each levels. Like it was known sort of in the, in the zeitgeist or whatever. Um, And yeah, I just recall us sort of playing Doom together and being like, Oh yeah, this is like an American level or probably Quake was more when this became a thing that we did. Um, but yeah, we just, we really liked his design sensibilities. He sort of was a blend of like, you know, the Romero action, but also like really leveraging the capabilities that Carmack was designing. Like he would do really cool things with the mechanics. And American went on to design whole games. Like he designed a fairly popular game called Alice, uh, that I played. It was kind of this weird, dark re imagining of Alice in Wonderland. Uh, so just a cool guy all around.
matt_mod_10:My only question is, what CD past is American McGee running from? Like, what was his real name? And why is he hiding his identity?
jon_raw:He does.
matt_mod_10:that that's actually his name.
jon_raw:Yeah, he's got an absurd name. And actually speaking of his past, he has a insanely interesting life story, which we will actually cover a little bit in the next chapter.
matt_mod_10:Whoa. Okay. Well, maybe that's, maybe that's the perfect place to leave off. Did you have anything else you wanted to bring to this episode?
jon_raw:I don't think so. I'm excited for the next one.
matt_mod_10:Alright, see you for chapter 11, Tom.
jon_raw:See you later, Matt.