Matt: 0:14

Hello everyone And welcome to the switch statement podcast It's a podcast for investigations into miscellaneous tech topics

Jon: 0:21

This is our 15th episode on Masters of Doom by David Kushner.

Matt: 0:31

Hey, John, what's going on?

Jon: 0:33

Matt, uh, things are going very well. How are things on your end?

Matt: 0:39

I am doing all right. Um, we start with kind of a grim, grim entry into this, uh, this episode, right? Uh, talking about,

Jon: 0:50

oh my gosh, Columbine.

Matt: 0:52

doom players,

Jon: 0:54

Yeah, it's interesting how, I mean, I guess that's part of what this book is about. It's just kind of the social impact of Doom. Um, But yeah, it's, it's kind of a, a bit of a re emergence of the dialogue we had the other day about, you know, our video games causing violence and young people. And this was just another event that sort of drove that whole debate to the forefront.

Matt: 1:25

I did not realize that, uh, the, the troubled students who, perpetrated, uh, Columbine, they were big into, uh, uh, into Doom, and they even,

Jon: 1:37

In fact, they were modders. They were evidently modders. There was a section where they discussed a mod that one of the perpetrators had made. And they were talking about how his mod had like, you know, gruesome hanging bodies from the ceiling or something like that. But little did they know, he was just using like, the normal Yeah, like it wasn't some original violence that he had come up with. But

Matt: 2:09

I mean, they raised a bunch of the same points that we talked about, essentially like the parents are the arbiters. If, if you have a student who's troubled. And then they go on to both play Doom and shoot up the school, I think it's important to entertain the possibility that video games are causing the violence, but there just doesn't seem to be any real evidence that that is the case. And in reality, you seem, it seems like you have a person who is troubled, and, you know, They could get spurred by anything and it's not that the game itself is, is pushing them into violence.

Jon: 2:48

yeah, yeah. And I think Romero and, and even Carmack would agree with you where I think Romero had a comment along the lines of it's the parent's fault, which I don't think is, is completely true. I think that's, I think there's a lot more nuance. And then Carmack's point was just disturbed people are disturbed people. And they're going to find some outlet and, and just like you're saying, it's like they might use doom as a way to kind of express their disturbed viewpoint. But that doesn't mean doom, you know, is some negative influence on society. And if anything, I feel like the scientific evidence would suggest otherwise. There was a quote from this guy, Gerard Jones, where he said, being evil and destructive and imagination is a vital compensation for the wilderness. We all have to surrender on our way to being good people. And I feel like that's kind of a statement to the effect that like humans are wild animals. Like we have all these proclivities and we have to set them all aside. If we want to be a contributing functioning member of a society. And a violent video game is sort of an outlet of those ancient proclivities. And it can kind of be a healthy thing and, you know, violent play, you know, beating up a wrestling buddy or whatever, uh, which by the way, was a stuffed animal in ancient history that probably no one knows about, uh, or it's not a stuffed animal, stuffed person. I don't know what the name for that is, doll. But anyway, violent play is, is an outlet for these sorts of, you know, instincts, I guess.

Matt: 4:27

to call out the, the crucial point, children know the difference between simulated violence and real violence. And they cite this study where they're like, Oh, these children were shown a video of someone punching a clown doll. And then when given the clown doll, they punched it more, but it's like, it kind of leaves out the fact that children do understand the distinction it's okay to punch the, the doll, because they know that it can't feel anything.

Jon: 5:01

right.

Matt: 5:02

so. And, and all of the like existing art, uh, you know, prior art on the subject kind of ignores that distinction.

Jon: 5:11

Yeah, no, I, it's, it's very much like, it's obviously an emotional topic and you know, when these horrible tragedies happen, people want to rationalize them and, you know, figure out the why of it, but it's just such a, you know, You know, human beings are so complicated and there's no simple answer, you know, there's never, it's never going to be, oh, he saw this film or he played this video game and therefore he did these things. It's just, it's never going to be that simple. Um, and so I don't know, as, as tragic as the event is, I, I just think it's unfair to point a finger at a piece of entertainment like doom. There was a Clinton comment because Clinton was, Bill Clinton was the president around this time And he was talking about these ads, these video game ads, which when I started reading the sentence, it was like, Oh, you know, Bill Clinton rails against these video game ads and I was like, ah, what a silly man, but then it like listed the ads and it was like, eh, maybe he's right. ads just sound, I think there was like this era of just really bad, poor taste video game ads, which included Romero's. You know, whatever. I can't even remember the ad. It was like, suck it, or something.

Matt: 6:36

Suck it down or John Romero is gonna make you his

Jon: 6:40

Yeah, make you his bitch. It's like, what kind of it's just in such poor taste. But these other two ads, apparently a video game was advertising themselves as more fun than killing your neighbor's cat. Like, what does that even mean?

Matt: 6:56

Yeah, that's gross.

Jon: 6:57

It's just absurd. And then another one was get in touch with your cold blooded murdering side, which is just, I don't know, it's not as gross as killing your neighbor's cat, but it still has that, like, it's just weird and like, gross.

Matt: 7:12

It blurs the line. It's funny because the ads for the games themselves are blurring the line. And it's funny because it's like, you're not doing yourselves any favors by making those ads. It's like, you're saying that they are, you know, tapping into these urges. and I mean of course it's just like to shock people into getting notoriety, so we learn, kind of an unfortunate detail. I think So, uh, we brought up Stevie case, a while back and then Uh, I guess Romero was married when he started Eye on Storm. And then, um, I guess, uh, that marriage failed, and then he started to date Stevie Case. it's funny because I, I actually just edited this video. The episode where we introduce her as a character and we're like, oh, it's great It has we're getting a little female representation and then like boom in this she just gets incredibly sexualized And now romero starts dating her and it's like, all

Jon: 8:15

Yeah,

Matt: 8:17

We've lost any like Kind of female powerment this book had at all You

Jon: 8:23

yeah, it was a little sad. It's also just, I feel like Romero is a bit immature and I think that's sort of exemplified in many points in this book. Um, but yeah, just like abandoning his family. His kids moved across, back across the country, far away from him. And he basically ran off with this like, you know, younger woman. Um, yeah. And yeah, I don't know. It just kind of struck me as like, kind of non adult behavior.

Matt: 8:52

Yeah, it's just, and it's really hard to know, you know, from the outside, maybe that maybe the marriage was not going well anyway, but it just smacks of, oh, well, this old relationship has so many like unfun parts to it. So I'm gonna leave that behind and kind of jump over to this new. I mean, but that's kind of how he ran his business too.

Jon: 9:16

Right. Yeah. And we, we sort of see where that, you know, where that got them. Uh,

Matt: 9:23

Yeah,

Jon: 9:25

but yeah, a couple other interesting things there. They talk about the development of Quake three. Which was one of the first times, I guess, that Carmack would take large technical problems and delegate them to other members of the team. And one of those technical problems was bots. Uh, you know, Quake 3 was a pure deathmatch game, so it needed these computer controlled bots in order to make the game interesting. Um, and one of the interesting parts of this chapter, I guess they, they The id team couldn't figure out bots, so they eventually farmed it out to this random Netherlands modder. And this Netherlands modder just like figured out bots and delivered it. And so the, the bots in Quake three were built by this random guy from Netherlands, which I just think that's pretty cool.

Matt: 10:21

there, there was an interesting point in this section where Kushner says Carmack just thought that and everyone would be like self motivated to, to, uh, to really dig in. And then. Yeah, they didn't give a good sense, like, was this guy just lazy and phoning it in? Or was he just like, unable to figure it out? I mean, eventually they did wind up going with this other guy. But, Obviously throughout this book, there's this tension of like making it so that a normal person would want to read this but I would like to know I would actually Love it. If they were like, oh, this was the problem. This is like The the algorithm that they were using and this is

Jon: 10:59

Oh, a hundred percent. I would love to know that information. Because, yeah, wasn't the guy, or maybe I'm misremembering this, but they actually had the guy who built 7th Guest on staff, who, I can't remember the guy's name now, but, you know, very, 7th Guest was a technically very advanced game for its time. I mean, it looks jank AF now, but at the time it looked awesome. And I think he was helping build the bots, so it's weird to me that he kind of couldn't figure it out. But, I don't know. Yeah, it makes me wonder if it was like, a communication issue between Carmack and the rest of the team, or, you know, some technical problems are just extremely challenging, and maybe it was just way too challenging for the staff they had.

Matt: 11:53

So, I wanted to look up, they talk a lot about Daikatana in like the abstract, but they don't give a lot of details about the game itself. I mean, that's not super surprising because it's kind of a hard game to pin down, in terms of like, what kind of game it is. Uh, because it kind of takes place in these four completely different environments, or like, kind of biomes almost. But, um, so there's not like Like, I think it's hard to just, like, come up with a short premise and describe what's going on. But, uh, but one aspect of this game that was, like, heavily derided is that you had these two, uh, agents, like two, uh, NPCs or, like, Comrades that were AI controlled that were supposed to help you out But they turned out to be this major pain in the ass because the logic for them was terrible And they were constantly getting stuck You'd have to like go back and nudge them so that they would get unstuck from the wall And they could proceed and they literally would not let you advance to the next stage unless you had them which is so funny because it's like Just, just warp them. Just like go through the door and just warp them.

Jon: 13:07

Yeah, dude.

Matt: 13:08

fine. Uh,

Jon: 13:10

It's funny because I feel like for decades that was like a video game trope where escort missions are the annoying missions. And it was only, I think it was Bioshock Infinite that was one of the first games to like really figure that out. Like there was that woman who followed you throughout many of the Bioshock Infinite levels And she was actually helpful. Like she would throw you guns or throw you ammo and like not be in the way, not easily just get murdered by, you know, the enemies.

Matt: 13:42

that, that is true. Uh, Elizabeth, I think her name is in, uh, Bioshock infinite. She couldn't die though. And that was, I think that was a big thing. She was only helpful.

Jon: 13:53

Yeah. Just like, just make them immortal. I remember all the, I think there was like Goldeneye or maybe Perfect Dark that had these escort missions that were just absolutely infuriating because your guy would just get. You know, taken out by some errant bullet and man, it's just a huge pain.

Matt: 14:09

I think there's a fundamental aspect of game design here, which is when you have, when the player loses as a result of something that's like completely outside of their control, that sucks. And so that just, you know, dials that up to 11 when you have two bad AIs that can die and, and the game, you know, through no fault of your own. Yeah.

Jon: 14:32

exactly. It's like read Jesse shell people. You got to make your game fair.

Matt: 14:37

It all comes back to Jesse Schell's art of game design.

Jon: 14:41

Yep. Which speaking of great game design, there was another game around that time called Unreal Tournament. I think we mentioned Unreal in one of the other chapters, uh, which was basically this huge first person shooter hit that spawned this massive engine. That was kind of like the id engine. It was licensed by tons of games. It actually eventually became a full game engine that now, if you're a game developer, you're probably using either Unity or Unreal to make your games. Uh, but anyway, back in the day, there was this game called Unreal Tournament, which was kind of a competitor to Quake three. Uh, I mean, not even kind of like it, they both came out at the same time and they were very similar games, sort of deathmatch style games. Um, and I just wanted to throw out that I actually played both of these games and I was like, well, that's what I wanted to get to. I was actually a massive fan of both of these games. I remember Unreal Tournament had this like. D Day level. Like, basically, after Saving Private Ryan came out, every single video game that had a first person shooter element had like a D Day level. Even Conker's Bad Fur Day famously had a D Day level. But anyway, Unreal Tournament's D Day level was like, amazing. Like, it was so much fun, I just remember You know, going to land parties with like eight dudes, you know, being all sweaty and drinking Red Bulls and just playing this Unreal Tournament D Day level. But Quake 3 had more staying power. Like I played Quake 3 for years and, uh, I mean, that game just was kind of an old standby. I think it was only finally dethroned when we started getting really into Counter Strike. But, uh, but Quake 3, awesome game.

Matt: 16:30

What was the setup for, like, what was the environment like or the theme of Unreal Tournament? Like, were these space soldiers or space marines or? Mm.

Jon: 16:44

correctly, it had kind of a halo ish type vibe where you were like, you were like a dude wearing armor. Um, the environments were really interesting. Like, I remember the D Day level that I was talking about was kind of like a base, you know, like a futuristic, like military base type vibe. Uh, but they also had like outdoor, uh, environments, which, you know, in the, in the Quake, Quake and Doom series, like all the environments are these kind of like, you know, dimly lit indoor scenes, like it's, it's just very rare that it, it, it opens up into like an expansive outdoor thing. And I think Unreal Tournament had some of that, uh, which was kind of cool, but I don't know, I, I'm not, I don't have like a very good recollection of the games, even though I probably played them for hundreds of hours. But I do remember them being very graphically distinct, you know, Quake was more of that gritty feel and Unreal had more of like a polished, futuristic look.

Matt: 17:47

Right, right, right. we talked, uh, we, we talked a little bit about Romero. The other prevailing theme of this chapter it's just the completion of the mess that was Daikatana. So he actually does release it. It's now like three years since he started it. because, and you know, it's been a year and a half since. He switched the engines, uh, by the time he releases, but that's a full three years since he actually like started the game. So, uh, there's definitely lessons to be mined, uh, from that. I think, I think one of the biggest ones is just more is not necessarily better. Like, it seemed like it was purely an exercise in scale. And just completely left any sort of like examination of the gameplay itself and whether or not it was fun for new players to like on the back burner, basically.

Jon: 18:45

That was something that really struck me, you know, you're talking about whether or not it was fun, like, They, they mentioned, and I actually vaguely remember this too. Cause I, I tried to play die Katana when I was young and I think I only played it for like 20 minutes and I was like, screw this, but the game starts off with like this utterly annoying experience where you're like being attacked by. You know, flying bugs or something. And I don't, I don't actually remember this at all. You know, when the book was talking about this, I was like, did I even play this game? Um, I know I played it, but I just don't remember it. Yeah. But the way the book describes it, it's just like completely annoying. And what I'm wondering is like, didn't you put this in front of play testers? Like, couldn't you have just figured out that the first 10 minutes of your game is like atrocious. So I, I was blown away by, you know, years of development, but evidently, I don't know, evidently no, no play testers or the play testers were just lying or something.

Matt: 19:42

there's a funny part where Romero is like, it's fun. And I wonder if there's something that happens where if you play it enough, you just stop seeing all the warts and you know how to work around them. And like, there is a lens in which it's fun, like, but you have to have, you've have to been there through the growth of it. Um, and I guess if you do it wrong with the play testers, like your player test play testers could be. You know, Stockholm syndrome into liking the game after being exposed to it for long enough. So, um,

Jon: 20:21

I think you're absolutely correct. I've seen big organizations kind of all start lying to each other and, and build this mythology that's just straight up not true, you know, usually around like the project you're working on. Like I've worked on projects where, you know, the entire team is like, Oh man, this is great. It's a great idea. It's going really well. But then you, you know, a year later, after the project collapses, you look back on it and you're like, wow, nothing about that was going well. And yeah, I think it's just kind of this weird human nature thing, especially in big groups where you just all start basically lying to each other.

Matt: 21:00

But yeah, I mean that's um That's kind of it. I mean, uh, I didn't really have have any I mean for the big points. I had like a little Random thing that I want to point out, but did you have any other? Any other points you want to bring up?

Jon: 21:15

No, I don't think so. Was this the chapter where they talk about, Oh no, no. Romero getting, uh, let go comes later. Sorry, spoiler alert. Uh, but. That's, that's the next chapter. So nevermind.

Matt: 21:29

there were two little things that were funny actually, I mean maybe not so little but there's this point where they talk about the fact that in response to what we were Talking about earlier about the moral panic around video games it had to post police officers outside of office, which is like It just feels so You Like, the idea there is, I don't like that you made violent video games. So I am going to do violence to you? Like, that's the, that's the idea there. And it's like, how twisted, like, how much mental gymnastics do you have to do before you arrive at that as like, something to do?

Jon: 22:17

Yeah. Well, I mean, we live in the era of Biden, Trump. I feel like, you know, our, our country, which is incredibly unhealthy on average is very good at mental gymnastics.

Matt: 22:29

But I guess maybe there's something reassuring about the fact that it's not like this has just started. Even 23 years ago, people were still making completely irrational, uh, decisions. Um, and then the very last thing, very, uh, very minor, but they talk about this guy, Sean Green. And he, like, he's one of the programmers on the, uh, on the Daikatana team. And then at some point he like destroys his keyboard, what have you. They're in crunch mode. No one's taking any time off. But they just kind of like offhandedly are like, yeah, Sean was going to take a vacation, the first vacation in a really long time. And he was going to go to an abandoned abortion clinic to take some time with his, with his band, his death metal band.

Jon: 23:20

Yeah, dude. I had to reread that no, that was like, I feel like David Kushner does this on purpose where he just like offhandedly mentioned some crazy insane thing where it's like, dude, we need more info here. And then he just doesn't give more info.

Matt: 23:34

more info. It's like, like, I swear this guy, these three paragraphs were just inserted in here so that he could drop that abandoned abortion clinic fact, he said he had this in his like list of random facts that he wanted to cram into this book. He's like, all right, yeah, I can introduce this character for three paragraphs,

Jon: 24:01

Yeah. No, that was great.

Matt: 24:02

but that is truly it. That is all. Those are all my, all my points.

Jon: 24:07

Yeah. I have nothing else.

Matt: 24:09

All right. Well, um, I will then see you for chapter 16 next time.

Jon: 24:17

See you, Matt.