Hello everyone And welcome to the switch statement podcast It's a podcast for investigations into miscellaneous tech topics
matt_mod_12:Hey, John, how are you doing?
jon_raw:Hello, Matt. Good. How are you? I'm sorry. That was a
matt_mod_12:yeah, you threw off the, you threw off the pattern
jon_raw:but it's destroying our rhythm.
matt_mod_12:I, uh, yeah, I went into kind of a, a spiral there. But this chapter is called Judgment Day, so when last we spoke, are, are fearless. characters were kind of wallowing in the pit of despair. That is their expectations around quake, I suppose.
jon_raw:Yeah.
matt_mod_12:yeah, and so, you know, kind of a misdirect that we start off with a story about Microsoft and how they want to try to, I guess, get the id guys to, uh, to work with them.
jon_raw:Yeah. Yeah, yeah, they mention how, Bill Gates team realizes that Doom is basically outselling Windows. And Windows had made these massive marketing plays and they, they were a popular company in their own right. So they were just like, what the hell is going on? And it sounded like, or at least the way Bill Gates is portrayed in the book is he kind of felt like video games were this like fringe weird thing that he didn't need to care about. Uh, but his, you know, his advisors were like, nah, man, we got to get these id guys on board. We got to create a platform where people can make games for windows.
matt_mod_12:Well, right. And they talked about this, this anecdote where they had gotten burned, where they made this game, it was a, it was a Lion, Lion King, right? Uh, uh, and right at the last moment, there was some hardware change that the company, that their like hardware partner made, and then the game just was crashing all over the place. And. Um, this was very interesting because, I'm sure listeners will be familiar with DirectX. This is this, is it like a translation layer between Microsoft and the hardware? Like, what would you call DirectX?
jon_raw:yeah, my, my understanding of DirectX, which I don't know, listeners should feel free to call in and correct me, but it's a API. It's a consistent API that game developers can use. And then DirectX itself communicates with the drivers, which. You know, drivers can do anything. They have privileged access to all the hardware and stuff. So, and it's, it's similar to OpenGL, which is kind of another API. That's the API itself is super consistent. So you're not going to get this case where like a operating system developer is going to change your API on you. Um, and yeah, and yeah, you develop your game with this API and then you can publish it on lots of computers and it'll just work.
matt_mod_12:Nice. Yeah. And I guess the, I guess the idea is, let's say you have a developer who programmed against DirectX, and then you have A hardware partner who has changed something. I guess you could fix that bug in DirectX. Like, DirectX just now needs to handle that. And then you can update that everywhere. And then now the game works again. As opposed to having to like, dig into the internals of the game. And like, potentially introduce other issues or what have you.
jon_raw:Right, right. Yeah. It's like DirectX is responsible for communicating to the drivers. So the driver software could be as varied, like you don't even care anymore as the game developer. Which is great. It's actually a huge, um, just improvement in the way that games were developed. Although, I just want to tell like a little bit of a story from my childhood. I actually remember DirectX, thinking about DirectX, and this was probably just my naive view at the time, but it almost seemed like Microsoft's way of kind of cornering, you know, the market, like kind of having too much control. And I do, I remember OpenGL coming out and just being like, Oh yeah, OpenGL is the right way. It's sort of like an Apple versus Android thing where it's like Apple has always sort of felt like a walled garden. Like it's, you know, if you're developing an Apple product, you have to use Apple software. You have to use Apple hardware. Um, and whereas Android is kind of more free and it's, it's easier to, to develop on windows, develop an Android app on windows or whatever. I don't know which, like, I do feel like. Looking at it today, they were just trying to provide this easy, consistent way to make games to make their platform more appealing to software developers. But I do recall having that feeling as a young person
matt_mod_12:this is the evil corporation trying to lock game developers into their platform, basically.
jon_raw:right, right. Which, you know, I do think there's some truth to, but they were providing a tremendous benefit to game developers. So there's, it's, it's a coin with two sides, I guess.
matt_mod_12:Right. Well, my question is why wasn't this already a problem? Like was DOS just a more stable platform or, you know, cause like, wasn't there a, like heterogeneous, uh, bunch of hardware already? Like why wouldn't doom have like had this issue?
jon_raw:I mean, that's, that's the million dollar question. I wish I knew. I should have researched this before the episode. I think that DOS basically provided unfettered access to the hardware. Whereas with Windows, you have to communicate to hardware through drivers. So if those drivers changed, you would be screwed. And I think that's what happened with Compaq. Uh, but again, I'm kind of just extrapolating slash making this up based on my limited understanding.
matt_mod_12:So we set the stage with DirectX. Now Microsoft sees the, you know, the coolest guy at the party. It's id and doom and they're like, all right, well, let's make doom work with, uh, DirectX and it's so funny because they, they, they highlight this. Part in the like there was I guess a demo or something. It's like Where they're showing all these gamers like here's doom But it's implemented with direct X and like this quote unquote hush of reverence fell over the clock at the crowd
jon_raw:I
matt_mod_12:it's like like why the fuck like Did anyone really care like?
jon_raw:It's such a different time in history.
matt_mod_12:I, I just have such a hard time imagining that like that situation that happening today, where it's like, it's the same exact thing, but implemented with a different API, like, and like, that's enough to like, get anyone amazed by it. Because, because, yeah.
jon_raw:uh, well, yeah, sorry. I do think a very similar thing happened with web. Where there was a point where JavaScript was kind of standardized and, all browsers started using the same like JavaScript engine, you know, Chrome's engine. And I do recall having this part little party with my other teammate engineers, because we had spent so much time, like developing hacks for internet Explorer six, uh, and it was a huge pain in the ass. And so maybe, maybe it was a similar event.
matt_mod_12:Yeah, I guess, I guess it's possible that. Oh, right. Because it was the, it was the game developers conference. I see. So, so. And that's, that's the, the blurred distinction that they make it, because they say like the audience of gamers, but it's like, no, it was really like the audience of game developers who, and, and I think you're right, right? It's like, yeah, the end users don't really care, but as a developer, if, if you can, you know, toast the death of IE, IE at all, you know, Internet Explorer at all, then you're gonna, you're gonna cheer. Yeah.
jon_raw:and, and this is, you know, I'm thinking about my own past and I was definitely a nerd and probably more aware than the average person, but I feel like the average person who is into games at that time. Was much more exposed to like the idiosyncrasies of various platforms. And so, so this news might've even resonated with a normal, gamer who had struggled to like run a game on Mac or something, or, like I've, it's possible to me that this news would have been exciting to, to just a
matt_mod_12:Even, uh, even an end end user, like a standard gamer.
jon_raw:Yeah.
matt_mod_12:well, this is actually my, this is my hypothesis. Like that eventually the web is going to eat everything. You know, it's going to continue to eat everything. It already has to a certain extent. Um, and I think, you know, You're like, they're making video editors with web technologies. Like it's possible and it works on every platform. They're not going back the other way. when, once, once you can, like, with, with fairly few exceptions, I don't think, you know, I don't think anyone's moving the other direction because you're, you're locked into this single platform.
jon_raw:Yeah, no, I, like, I would definitely not argue with that. It's like, you just provide a browser and boom, you have access to, this wealth of, of software. So it, it does seem like the direction that things are moving.
matt_mod_12:and my, my hypothesis, like, today, there's a bunch of, like, vendor specific stuff for VR, but I just think that's going to eventually going to be subsumed. Yeah. It might be a couple of like 10 years, but like, I think the web is going to catch up because it's just, you know, it's, it's just a distribution platform at its core and it's like, yeah, they're just going to come up with some API where it's like, but you can publicly go to a website and you're going to be able to download a VR experience, you know?
jon_raw:No, I mean, it's like, it makes you wonder why would something not be web and I guess there are still some. Arguments, like you might be able to get something to run better on some particular hardware because you're not dealing with this like ultra flexible browser, HTML sort of, uh, interface. So, but yeah, to your point, I think as technology has progressed, it's become much, much easier to just have a fully fledged browser on any piece of hardware. So it's like, why not? There's a another half to that, which is like the capabilities of what you can do in web has just become pretty much limitless. Like you're saying, you can have a video editor and web, you can have 3d, fully 3d games in web. So it's, uh, yeah, just seems like a no brainer.
matt_mod_12:Well, that's exactly the thing, like, the only really compelling reason to develop, develop something platform specific is if you require something specific to that platform in order to get the experience that you want. And, and as time marches on, like, there's fewer and fewer reasons you need to do that and get, like, really good, you know, native level performance. So, okay, but let's, let's get back into the, back into the chapter.
jon_raw:The chapter kind of centers around this like party. And this, I guess this was like the party where they were announcing Doom on Windows and it was called the Judgment Day Party. This party sounds amazing. They talk about how Id had this exhibit that was put on by this band called GWAR. Uh, which was like a massive vagina. With a bunch of dildos attached to it.
matt_mod_12:gross. Yeah.
jon_raw:Yeah, it just sounds like such a like neck beard kind of thing. Um, but they also mentioned this video that I really, I need to search YouTube and see if this video exists where they had a, you know, it was a, it was a video of doom, except the main character was replaced with Bill Gates and he's basically going through the game and like murdering demons and stuff. Some demon comes up and asks for his autograph and he just blows him away with a shotgun and he's like, don't interrupt me. And anyway, I just want to see this, this video. Cause it's probably such a great combo of like, you know, ultra nerd, like trying to be cool. Uh, but also, it does sound kind of cool.
matt_mod_12:I feel So split on this, like, I've, It sounds like the cringiest thing I've ever heard, frankly. Like, just imagining Bill Gates with his, like, huge ass glasses, like, with a shotgun.
jon_raw:It's sort of like when he jumped over that office chair. It's like, it's so cringe that it loops back over into being cool.
matt_mod_12:Yeah, I do feel like Bill Gates does have He does have this weird and inexplicable cool factor to him.
jon_raw:He, yeah, he's got like a weird charisma. Cause he's just so unapologetically himself.
matt_mod_12:Yeah, yeah, yeah. It doesn't sound like the party I would really like to be at. I don't know. As soon as they talked about this, like, 10 foot tall vagina display, I was like, you know what? And it's just wild to imagine that some corporation is associating themselves with this. because this was put, wasn't this put on by, uh,
jon_raw:Microsoft.
matt_mod_12:Microsoft.
jon_raw:Yeah. Yeah. No, it's insane. They even talk about how the Microsoft executives were walking through this vagina and then all these members of GWAR came out and started like hitting them with, with dildos, which, yeah, I mean, if I was an executive, I'd be like, what the hell is this? Like, I'm, I'm paying for this, but apparently they were, they were cool with it. Uh, they must've just saw the dollar signs at the end of the tunnel.
matt_mod_12:I guess in the world, in the world, in the pre like Twitter world and pre like everybody's online and knows about everything, you could probably get away with this thing where it's like okay, yeah, you just have all the weirdos who like Doom there and like they're loving it. And there's not some public debacle because people who don't really care about that stuff, they, they never saw it.
jon_raw:yeah, yep. I think you're right. they talk about, office culture degrading at id man. This is just more like, I used to really love Carmack. I still think Carmack is amazing. I think he's just a brilliant, brilliant engineer, but he just sounds like a massive asshole. Like they talk about this section where he's getting increasingly fed up with Romero. Who, granted also kind of sounds like an asshole, but he starts giving out grades to his, his teammates. Like he'll send an email to his teammate and be like, you get a C. And like, can you imagine that as office culture? I would just be like, what is this?
matt_mod_12:he, he literally wrote a program that would allow him to, to see what Romero was doing on his computer. It's like, it's crazy because yeah, there was that one time where he like broke into a school and like was going to steal computers, which seemed like kind of bad. But then this time he just seems like a real, like, just. Asshole in terms of, I just like, yeah, just domineering in terms of like, no, I need to make sure everybody is working enough. And it's like when he was just a weirdo, like spending 12 hours of every day, seven days a week working on his stuff, like that was endearing. But now that he's foisting that upon all of his other teammates, like that's just shitty. Like it's
jon_raw:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe this is the, the curse of being a rockstar engineer where you're just kind of like, why can't everyone else keep up with me? You just don't see the world in a normal way. But like, I just watched Whiplash last night. Have you ever seen that movie? Um, pretty, pretty solid movie, but like the premise is this. This music teacher is like trying to inspire a student who is really good at drums to be like the best drummer ever. But the way that he's, he tries to inspire the student is like incredibly toxic, just horrible. Um, and it's kind of a weird movie. Like it has sort of an unclear message, but, uh, I was just getting vibes of Carmack from, from the teacher and that film. Like, he's just going. You know, at all costs, he's trying to like get his team to perform, squeezing out every last ounce of performance from his team, but, uh, in a toxic way,
matt_mod_12:The thing that's confusing about it is, I think maybe he was just projecting. Because, the reality is, they weren't holding the game back. It was, it was the engine not being able to do what it needed to do. That, like, so, At the end of the day,
jon_raw:it's his fault.
matt_mod_12:it's you're optimizing the wrong part of the code basically, which is kind of ironic that he would make that mistake, right? It's like, you're like, Oh, I don't know, this is an N squared for loop. And you don't realize that it's like, well, there's only ever going to be like 10 elements in, in this list. And you're making a network request. So it's like, of course, it's like, Yeah. the network request that's going to be the slow part of it. So you're not even, you're not even changing the performance characteristics at all. Like,
jon_raw:dude, this, this analogy is so meta. I feel like you're criticizing Carmack in the terms that he would understand.
matt_mod_12:yeah. Yeah. It's like, dude, like just, I don't know, put the data center closer. Like that's the, you know, that's your, your problem right now is not that you're, you have bad, you have bad algorithms, but, um,
jon_raw:Amazing. They mentioned the, uh, ID IPO. I just thought this was funny. They mentioned that it was bigger than Netscape, which I don't know, just thinking, you know, Netscape was a browser for anyone who's not over 35. Um, and it, it was really, really big for like a brief period, but it, it quickly faded into anonymity.
matt_mod_12:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't even realize, I don't even think I realized that it, uh, that they IPO'd. I think I missed that, uh, that point, but, um,
jon_raw:Yeah, actually, like I don't even, are they still publicly?
matt_mod_12:I think they got acquired. I think, I think they're, at least when I, when I was just downloading these games, or, uh, I just downloaded Doom and Quake, uh, it's, it's all branded with Bethesda. So like, I'm pretty sure that they got acquired at some point.
jon_raw:yeah, okay,
matt_mod_12:Um, speaking of, speaking of this, and like more traditional, like, I don't know, businessy stuff, they got into this pretty like, dirty situation with GTI I guess GTI was the company who originally broke them into the retail market.
jon_raw:yeah, good time interactive,
matt_mod_12:good time, interactive uh. They then went on to have a bunch of additional successes. They were making a tremendous amount of money. They now, like, didn't really need id anymore because they had a bunch of other video game companies.
jon_raw:yeah,
matt_mod_12:And then, it's weird because it doesn't sound like GTI did anything bad to id. They were basically just, annoyed at how inconsistent they were being. But then it basically pulled this kind of a shitty, like, backwards deal where they were able to just bypass, uh, GTI, because they had the full game on the shareware, and then people were basically just able to pay, uh, you know, pay, and this is, this is something we talked about in the last, uh, in previous episodes, where they had the full game on the disk. And then they could pay to unlock the game. And then I guess that just didn't require them to buy the retail game.
jon_raw:yeah, yeah, yeah. So that part was really interesting and I mean, did they talk about how GTI reacted to that?
matt_mod_12:I mean, they didn't like, they, they talked about how the guy was, you know, Ron Kaimowitz was, you know, they, they didn't really have any move in this instance, but was there another, was there another. Or are you aware of like
jon_raw:Well, that, yeah, yeah, and I'm asking that question because I'm just confused about the They, circumvented GTI and like, you know, they had agreements and GTI was making a tremendous amount of money off it. And it just seems weird to me that they just completely circumvented them. But I, as far as I could tell, there wasn't like some reaction on GTI's part. Maybe that'll come later, but yeah,
matt_mod_12:Yeah, maybe, maybe so. But I, I mean, it's just like, it just seems short sighted because then you're never going to get another deal with GTI, right? Like, um,
jon_raw:They don't strike me as very. Savvy businessmen, like they're just very capricious, they'll get emotional and make a quick decision. And yeah, they're not good with partner management. Like they're just very willing to throw people under the bus. Um, so, and that, and that just continues, like we'll actually get to another instance of this.
matt_mod_12:Oh,
jon_raw:Yeah. One last thing I had was, was Tim Willits. So they, they bring on this guy, Tim Willits. And Tim Willits very, very quickly starts to eclipse, Romero, who is quote unquote, not pulling his weight and also American McGee in terms of levels that he's designing. And he, he gets so like big within id that Carmack actually gives him the honor of having his level be featured in the shareware. And this was sort of a. A slap in the face to Romero, who is like the lead designer and it should be his level in the shareware. So I think this was partially like a political thing that Carmack was doing, but also just a testament to how good Tim's levels were.
matt_mod_12:Carmack just comes off as, like, such a megalomaniac at this point. He seems like he's unilaterally making these decisions. Like, I just don't even understand, like, how were any of these decisions making, getting made? Carmack's making the engine. Why is, why is he deciding which, he doesn't even really play the video games. Like, they call it out in these chapters, like, he doesn't even really understand why. People want to play them. It's
jon_raw:Yeah, I, I did not understand why he was the one making the decision on what level would be featured in the shareware. It's like Romero is the lead designer, shouldn't he be,
matt_mod_12:seems like you're just out of your, outside of your, your domain of responsibility.
jon_raw:exactly. So I don't know, it was weird, but maybe it was something that the team, that the team did agree on. And the way David Kushner portrays it though, it does seem like some weird unilateral thing from Carmack.
matt_mod_12:Now, I mean the very last part of this chapter is, We've been alluding to it, but there's these increasing tensions between many of the parties of the company. Like they had to change what, like their direction. We said they were doing this fantasy theme, but now they needed to do the, they, as you mentioned, they had this like cluster of disconnected levels that they needed to somehow cram together into this, cohesive world. Um, and you know, in all this tension, like Carmack is basically like. Yeah, Romero, like you're not doing your work and we're gonna fire you. He just serves him the, the, or he sends them these papers to sign for his resignation and termination, I guess.
jon_raw:Yeah. Well, yeah, which was just, and it wasn't like Carmack had been sort of waging this, uh Game of Thrones campaign against Romero for a while. Like he had been trying to convince Adrian Carmack and, uh, uh, what's the other guy's name to, to basically turn against Romero. Um, and it was hard, it was difficult because these other guys didn't want to, they felt sick to their stomach, even thinking about cutting out Romero. Cause he was such a big part of it. Carmack through persistence and, and also I do think Romero was a little bit lackadaisical. Like Carmack eventually won, and he, and they fired Romero, or they got him to resign.
matt_mod_12:yeah, Kevin, I don't remember his last name, but it was Kevin.
jon_raw:Yeah, yeah, yeah,
matt_mod_12:um, yeah, I mean, and I guess everyone kind of. Intuitively understood that And I think that this was kind of shown I Wonder if this was part of why he picked Tim to Tim's levels to be at the beginning of the game because it kind of demonstrated like we don't need Carmack like
jon_raw:yeah,
matt_mod_12:But you need me like I built this whole this whole Engine, it's like without me None of this is happening. So, and they even say that directly. Um,
jon_raw:like, it's very kind of. Machiavellian political maneuvering on Carmack's part to just slowly erode confidence in Romero and, um, yeah, just to eventually take him out.
matt_mod_12:I just don't, I just don't understand. Like, I, I don't understand CarMax motivations. If he's these, this unfeeling robot who all he wants to do is program. Just, it's just confusing to me why he all of a sudden seems to want so much control.
jon_raw:Yeah. And like, I'm actually also just on Romero's side in terms of, Id had done a great job. And so for the, the leads of Id to kind of relax a little bit. Like, I actually think that's totally fine Romero kind of enjoying his life a little bit and maybe just working nine to five and clocking out at the end of the day. Like what's wrong with that? So I, I feel like I'm on Romero's side.
matt_mod_12:Yeah. I mean. I think the, I think the thing is, is like. The reason they got as far as they did is because that was their approach, which is just aggressively hustle like even though because because if they were the kind of people to who would like have Been okay making games for the doom engine They would have already just been okay with continuing to make games for the the side scrolling engine probably so um, yeah, so I guess it's not surprising that they, they kind of took that tack, but
jon_raw:totally.
matt_mod_12:well, yeah, I don't, don't think I had anything else. I don't know. Did you have any other, any other good tidbits?
jon_raw:No, I think, uh, ending on the sour note of a ruined friendship is perfect.
matt_mod_12:Yeah. Oh God. Um, well hopefully we never wind up like, uh, Carmack and Romero.
jon_raw:I just don't, I, that just doesn't seem conceivable to me. I think our personalities are so, so different from Carmack and Romero. Yeah,
matt_mod_12:and I'll, I'll quickly be, um,
jon_raw:I put, your severed head on a steak in Brain Explorer. You'll find it eventually.
matt_mod_12:I can't wait. Alright, well, I'll see you next time for Deathmatch. IRL chapter 13. It's about the real deathmatch between Karmic and Romero.
jon_raw:Oh man, I can't wait. Alright, see ya man.