Continued from previous page I couldn't believe it: id and Romero at the same time. I called Tim Willits and told him my quandary. They hadn't made a decision yet, but he said that if he were in my shoes and Romero had offered him a job, he'd take it. I took that as a generous hint that I was running second in the race at id, so when Romero called me, I accepted. Now here's the thing, and most people in the business find themselves in this position at one time or another: I was already working with a great company on a great game. I'd been unhappy with Epic about some personal stuff, but they were paying me more than I'd ever made in my life, and I was working at home on top of it. And it wasn't about the  money; in fact, I would be making $5k less at Ion. But I was frustrated. UNREAL was in the very early stages of development. The engine changed weekly, and levels that ran fine before suddenly wouldn't work right. This was my first experience being on the ground level of a development team, and at the time I mistook the never-ending changes as incompetence, instead of as the natural give and take that games go through in their early stages. I would find that this was common. But I didn't know it at the time, and used it as an excuse to justify my jumping ship. Besides, this was Romero we were talking about. He was still a god to level designers and I just couldn't say no. So in mid-February 1997 I headed south. John Romero is the most generous human being I've ever met. He had me stay at his own home for my first two weeks in Dallas until I could find a house. There were only about ten people on the DAIKATANA team when I joined. Ion was a dream company. Days and nights were spent DeathMatching in QUAKE. When I went home at night, I had my girlfriend in stitches with laughter over the things that happened daily at "work." Yes, work was being done, but DeathMatch was an important tonic. (I'd been a member of one of the first Quake Clans - 311 - and I used to think I was pretty good until I went to Ion. I quickly found out that I sucked. Of course, I was suddenly playing with people who lived and breathed games 24 hours a day.)

Click above to read my Interview with The Independent, London's most reputable newspaper. This was during Ion Storm's trip to England, which happened to coincide with the funeral of Princess Diana. Click here for my article on our trip to London and my impressions of here funeral cortege in Hyde Park.

Working at Ion Storm and living in Dallas was one of the best periods of my life. You can't imagine a more casual work environment - and I don't mean casual in the sense of cavalier, where no one cares whether any work actually gets done; I mean relaxed and informal, especially (in the beginning) when dealing with such friendly high-profile business people like biz guru COO Bob Wright, CEO Mike Wilson, and CFO Steve Pittsenbarger.

Something else about working at Ion was the inordinate amount of attention the company and its employees were receiving. Seems like every day there was a different magazine reporter interviewing us. Our pictures were showing up in all of the big gaming magazines on a monthly basis. I really got the feeling that I'd finally made it big. It starts to go to your head.

Hey, that's me to the left of Romero, and Sverre to the right.

Which brings me to something that I'd like to clear up. WIRED magazine ran an article in March 1998 on several of us level designers who were making it big in the game industry. David McCandless (who'd written the "Thy Cash Consumed" review of Ultimate DOOM) wrote it after visiting and talking with several of us at Ion Storm for a two-week period in the summer of 1997. Sverre had just turned down an offer from id and decided to stay with Ion. (In fact, he'd been so distracted by it that driving home from the interview he got broadsided in an intersection.) Another level designer at Ritual had turned them down too. So we were talking about how id Software had been the big dream for all of us, and David wrote:

... Accordingly, all the top DOOM babies have been courted by id. And a few years ago, they would have blinded themselves for the chance. Says Anderson: "It seemed inconceivable that we would turn them down."
   But only Tim Willits took the job.

Of course, I was speaking rhetorically - but out of context my remark makes it sound as though I'd turned them down, too. Which wasn't the case! If Willits had even only hinted that I should wait and sit tight I'd have done it. I mention this now because I've kept silent the past five years about every aspect of the Ion Storm debacle.

But now there are a few things I'd like to talk about.

Click here for more.