My first experiences with a PC was with an i386 in my dad’s office, where I learned to free up RAM on DOS to play Wolfenstein3D. Growing up in Hong Kong in the 90s, Nirvana and Oasis may have dominated MTV, but Doom and Deathmatch was what occupied our computers at home and at school.
I read Masters of Doom for nostalgia and found myself scribbling notes. Intentional or not, id’s success have the hallmarks of textbook startup practices.
Co-founders
Carmack is the prototypical technical co-founder, while Romero played the role of the product co-founder. At the point of their founding id Software together, they were already co-workers at Softdisk having launched projects together. Their personalities, background and upbringing could not be more different, but they both shared failed or unremarkable entrepreneurship, and a deep passion for making video games.
Know Your Customers
Their target audience was the growing market of gamers, specifically adult gamers with PCs such as the id founders themselves. They lived in a shabby lake house, playing video games and D&D in their spare time. They were their target audience, and Romero was the ultimate gamer himself. The book makes multiple references to how Romero was knowledgeable about everything that was going on in the industry, and would stay actively connected to his gamer customer base.
Product Market Fit
id’s first product titled Commander Keen tapped into a nascent PC gaming market with a product validated by the popularity of Super Mario Bros. They would follow this recipe through the height of their success: cutting edge technology and user experience. And they were obsessed with both — Carmack would go on to spend months developing new game engines, after which Romero and designers such as Tom Hall would manically produce novel game experience that the world had never seen before.
Their smash hits, Wolfenstein-3D and Doom, would go on to define their lasting legacy, along with a controversial discussion about violence in video games. I think this bares exceptional note; by and large, their partners at Apogee and GTI would raise market concerns about violence, but Romero would push on with the gore and blood. While the book mentions the decision as a fleeting thought, we can presume that Romero and his founders, simply knew their customers better.
Viral Marketing
Before Youtube and Facebook existed, content and social networks thrived on BBS, where Scott Miller and his fledgling publishing company, Apogee, had built up a wide network of distribution channels for shareware. Shareware would be the perfect marketing and distribution medium for PC Games in this era. It was a direct-to-consumer distribution model, similar to the one that would come along in the internet era that would disrupt many other industries. Users would have a chance to download the game from a number of BBS sites or servers(resource leverage), try it, and mail in a check if they wanted to buy the full version.
Stay Lean
They started in a shared house by the lake in Shreveport, and would borrow company PCs at night. Even when they finally moved to Mesquite, Texas, their office would contain only the bare essentials, and the team would not substantially expand until much later in their success. They fired Lane Roathe, a member of their original Gamer’s Edge team because he was not aligned with their PC games vision. They would fire Tom Hall, a founding member, for low productivity on Doom. The ruthlessness would keep their company costs low and their team focused on a singular mission.
Stay Focused
The book paints a frenetic work environment that was described at best like a frat house, where the team literally played games, ate pizza, and made games. Their first Commander Keen game was developed and released in a little over 3 months. This resembles the early days of Facebook or iOS game development. Isolated in their Shreveport lake house, there was no networking events, tech conferences or any of the various industry events that plague us today. Carmack was so singular in his focus that he even retreated to a bland motel room in Florida for a week to work on the Quake 2 engine.
The story of the rise and fall of id Software leaves many points of discussion among fans and readers. The iconic clash of personalities between Carmack vs Romero would symbolize the opposing mantras of Tech vs Design, the merits of each can still be argued today. Without doubt however, id Software delivered its greatest works with the two of them together.
