Something that I miss from ye olden days of game development is how intimate the teams were. Nowadays the average mainstream game has a credit scroll longer than the game’s actual runtime. It takes thousands of folks to put together a game like Doom Eternal. Whereas the original Doom from 1993 was made by a team that would seem like a small indie studio by today’s standards.
It’s a fascinating time to look back on. An era where gaming history was being made in tiny offices or even just someone’s bedroom. What makes this especially interesting to me is that it makes it easy to track individual accomplishments. We know exactly what parts of Doom any person worked on and those people we can then easily track in the years that followed. Did Doom turn them into celebrity developers that continue to be active to this day or did they vanish into obscurity? Maybe they went on to do something else entirely?
Let’s do a little digging and find out what happened to the original Doom team.
John Romero
One can not talk about Doom without talking about John Romero. The visionary designer who is often regarded as the heart of Doom. Romero was both a programmer and an ideas guy, who designed interesting features and also got hands-on with the levels.
After Doom, Romero went on to work on several more of id’s greatest hits. Fostering strong relations with the team, even as Romero became increasingly famous in the industry. This was not meant to last though. During the development of Quake, Romero and Carmack ended up in arguments over the direction of the game. And though Romero stayed on to finish the project the way Carmack wanted it to, he was made to resign immediately after.
Romero then went on to found Ion Storm studios. A developer that made some great games, sure, but is mostly remembered for the infamous Daikatana incident and its marketing. A story that I won’t even pretend like I can recount it more entertainingly than Yahtzee. Ion Storm Dallas closed its offices in 2001 after the release on Anachronox, with the Austin office under Warren Spector following suit in 2004.
Afterwards, Romero’s career slowed down as he worked on less-ambitious endeavors. He founded Monkeystone Games, which mostly worked on mobile projects. Most famously the N-Gage port of Red Faction. He briefly worked at Midway, but left before any project was completed. Followed by a few years of tinkering away at smaller projects that never gained much acclaim in the wider industry. The absolute low point of which was a Kickstarter for the retro-style shooter Blackroom, which was cancelled after just 4 days. With subsequent attempts to show the game to publishers netting no success either.
So has Romero’s star died out? Not exactly. In 2015, John and his wife Brenda founded Romero Games in Ireland. From which they have been developing a steady supply of interesting projects like Empire of Sin and the SIGIL games. A far cry from those wild days at id, but I am glad to see that the couple has found a place in the industry from which they can work on their own, creative projects.
John Carmack
Carmack is often characterized as the archetypical tech genius. The kind of code wizard who works non-stop overtime and is permanently obsessed with the latest technologies. The kind of guy who can solve any computer problem you throw at him, but has terrible social skills to match. Honestly, it’s a role that suits him well. As Carmack was in charge of bringing about the innovative code that enabled id to make its ambitious games run in the first place. He made the engine Doom would run on and pioneered various other technologies utilized in id software’s games.
Even after other key members left, Carmack stayed at id Software well into the 2000s. Remaining involved in the programming of their games all the way up to Quake III: Arena. This came to an abrupt end in 2013. Carmack, ever obsessed with new technologies, REALLY liked the potential of VR. Making him quite disappointed with id Software’s owners Zenimax for not wanting to be at the forefront of that technology. Carmack thus left to go work at Facebook as Chief Technical Officer of the team developing the Oculus Rift. Leading to years of back-and-forth lawsuits between Carmack and Zenimax over various allegations.
While he is still often credited for his incredible contributions to gaming, Carmack hasn’t worked on any new games for years now. Though he still opines on developments in the industry from time to time and remains involved in various indirect ways. As of 2019 Carmack stepped down from his lead role at Facebook—now Meta—to focus on a new passion: AI. He founded his own AGI company called Keen Technologies and became involved with the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute as a researcher. Though the Keen Technologies website now appears to be dormant and it’s unclear what exactly Carmack has done in recent years. Besides complaining about his former employers.
Adrian Carmack
Adrian Carmack, unrelated to John, was another co-founder of id Software. As well as the company’s lead artist on many of their projects. Adrian was a big proponent of the horror-adjacent style of Doom and responsible for much of its hellish visuals.
Like the other Carmack, Adrian remained at id well after the company’s heydays. He did art for the Quake series for a good while, he worked on Doom 64 and eventually Doom 3. Adrian didn’t leave the company until 2005, after which he immediately turned around to sue them. Alleging that he had actually been fired as a pressure tactic to get him to sell his stake in id Software for much less than it was actually worth.
Since then Adrian has been largely absent from the gaming scene. Being only briefly involved with John Romero’s failed kickstarter project before returning to gaming obscurity. His most significant activity being sharing various illustrations and concept arts of his old games on social media.
Tom Hall
Tom Hall is one of the more unfortunate stories coming out of Doom. He was another co-founder of id Software, who had been involved in many of the company’s prior successes. During the development of Doom, however, Hall found himself repeatedly side-lined. Made to do excessive amounts of redundant work that was then casually discarded by the rest of the team after. While his own ideas for Doom were either not taken seriously or implemented without credit to him. One can’t help but notice that this is an awkward position to be in for someone who was, allegedly, the creative director for the entire project.
Demoralized over his treatment, Hall became less productive at work. Eventually resulting in him being fired midway through development on John Carmack’s insistence. A recurring theme in these stories, I’m sure you’ve noticed.
In a happy twist, being fired from id actually proved to be beneficial for Tom’s career as a creative. He wound up at Apogee Software. Becoming the writer for Hocus Pocus and taking on design work for the Rise of the Triad and Duke Nukem franchises. He then went on to join Romero’s numerous ventures. Becoming the project lead for Ion Storm’s Anachronox and tinkering away at mobile games for a few years. He then worked on NARC and Area 51 under Midway, before becoming involved with various smaller studios over the years.
Though his projects have become sparse in recent years and were certainly marred by a number of Kickstarter failures, Tom remains active in gaming today. His most recent game being the tabletop RPG-inspired Demeo, which released as a VR title on various platforms.
Sandy Petersen
After Tom Hall was fired, Sandy Petersen was brought in to replace him. Quickly proving himself to be a superb level designer that produced incredible stages very quickly. He was responsible for dozens of maps between all the early Doom games and ports. After which his talents were also utilized for Quake and Hexen.
Petersen left the company in 1997 to join Ensemble Studios. Becoming involved in the Age of Empires and Age of Mythology games as a designer and playtester. Halo Wars from 2009 would be his final job at the studio, as well as Sandy’s final credit working on a major game production.
After Ensemble closed its doors, Petersen went into education. Becoming a professor in game design at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He also went on to fully embrace his love for cosmic horror. Kickstarting and producing various cosmic horror board games, as well as launching his own horror magazine called Arcane. He also rejoined his old gang at Chaosium, who once published his Call of Cthulhu board game way back in the 80s.
Petersen is also active on YouTube. Posting regularly on the channel SandyofCthulhu. Honestly, I really admire the guy’s passion. He obviously cares deeply about Lovecraft and horror in general. In training the next generation of designers and sharing information about gaming history with others. Though this has at times led to arguments between him and other Doom veterans over differing accounts of the game’s fabled history.
Shawn C. Green
Shawn Green was another designer on Doom who joined the team after originally working on some of Apogee’s more obscure titles. He did some design work on the original Doom, as well as making a few maps for Doom II and Ultimate Doom. He also worked as a supervisor on Final Doom and the numerous ports, directing the teams working on them so as to best capture the appeals of the original games.
Shawn then stuck around at id until the original Quake released. After which he followed Romero to Ion Storm, where he worked on the ill-fated Daikatana and the less ill-fated Anachronox. Shawn then went his own way, leaving Romero to his mobile games while he himself went off to work on numerous influential shooters. Most notably, he worked on Nightfire, Halo: Combat Evolved, and the Brothers in Arms series.
In 2007 Shawn founded Escalation Studios which produced Samba de Amigo for the Wii and Doom Resurrection. Before a series of acquisitions shuttered the company, eventually leading to it being absorbed into Bethesda as its Dallas branch. That studio then went on to work on Starfield, but Shawn had already left the world of gaming behind him by then. Nowadays he works as a regular software engineer based out of Kyoto.
Kevin Cloud
Working as both an artist alongside Carmack as well as handling the business side of id software, Kevin Cloud is another key member of the team. One of the five originals that originally started Doom, in fact.
Cloud is also remarkable for how persistently he remains a part of the franchises that id created. He continued to work as an artist all the way up to Doom 3. Remaining with the company after the split between Romero and Carmack. He then went on to cooperate with the London-based Splash Damage. Becoming executive producer on Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and Quake Wars. Before filling that same role at Raven Software for the 2009 reboot of Wolfenstein.
In 2016 he returned to Doom as producer of its hit remake. As well as producing its VR tie-in and doing actual development work for the sequel, Doom Eternal. Now that’s what I call commitment.
Dave Taylor
Dave Taylor is a programmer who self-identifies as the guy doing the work that is least-recognized. Working on a lot of the low-level technical systems and libraries that the game needs to run, but which players don’t really engage with directly. Though he did earn some glimmer of fame for creating Doom‘s iconic cheat codes.
After Doom, Dave continued to work on its various ports. Both to console as well as the less-renowned but very important adaptations to various UNIX-based operating systems. He also worked on Quake, before retiring from id to produce the sidescrolling run ‘n’ gun game Abuse.
Dave then briefly left gaming to work for the semiconductor company Transmeta. Doing the kind of intense programming work that I won’t even pretend to understand at even a basic level. He briefly got back into gaming through teaching classes, various odd jobs porting games to Linux, and his role as VP of Naked Sky Entertainment. His most notable credits post-id being engineering work on The Battle for Middle-Earth and porting Abuse to Iphone.
Robert “Bobby” Prince
Robert Prince, formally known as “Robert Caskin Prince III” and informally as “Bobby”, was the musician and sound-effects guy for Doom. He wasn’t formally a member of id on account of being an independent contractor, but he had been involved with their projects for years before that point. As early as Catacomb 3D and the Commander Keen titles.
He would take on the same role once more for Doom II before going on to work on various other classic shooters of the time. Among them Rise of the Triad, Duke Nukem 3D, and Blake Stone. He even made the sound-effects for Dave Taylor’s Abuse. How nice.
Bobby Boy’s final credit during the height of his career would be the music for Axis & Allies in 1998. Though he does still work with music. In 2012 he provided the soundtrack for the retro-style first person shooter Wrack and in 2018 he commented on his personal blog about having a lot of projects in the works. And with how often his music has been reused in modern sequels & remakes of the games he’s worked on, I imagine ol’ Bob must be raking in a pretty penny through royalties these days.
Paul Radek
Paul is a more obscure member of the team. Being a programmer who worked on the audio-related components of the Doom engine. The same kind of work he would go on to do for Doom II, but also various other projects. Among them Heretic and Hexen, as well as Raptor: Call of Shadows.
After his time at id, Paul basically left gaming in the sense that we care about here. He started working as an engineer at WMS Gaming; a producer of slot machines and other gambling-related products. Again working on a lot of the underlying technical aspects like drivers, designing testing tools, and interpreters. Paul has since moved to Microsoft where he continues to work to this day. Still working on sound drivers for Microsoft’s various platforms.
Gregor Punchatz
Mr. Punchatz was another independent contractor brought in to help on Doom. A super-talented artist whose focus at the time lay with practical effects. I.e. making art out of physical objects. This approach was used to create Doom‘s iconic boss monsters, who were actually based on models Punchatz made out steel & latex.
Punchatz still works as an artist to this day. Still mostly providing the same kind of practical effects, though for mostly for movies, commercials, and his personal portfolio. Some of which you can admire on his YouTube channel. He also worked on the Spy Kids franchise, Ready Player One, and Doctor Strange. When he does work on games, it’s mostly as a cinematic director and even then mostly for trailers. His most recent endeavors being the intro animations for Borderlands 2 and the Pre-Sequel, and supervising the CG for the trailer of Battleborn.
As a sidenote: it was also Gregor Punchatz’ late father who did the famous box art for Doom.
american McGee
This is me cheating a bit. American McGee was part of id software, but not during the development of Doom itself. He only joined by the time of Doom II, where he worked as a designer alongside the rest of the gang. Though he did also work on the various ports of Doom, so he is retroactively involved. Either way, Mcgee is worth including because his is by far the most interesting career.
American McGee stayed with id until 1998, whereupon he was fired by—you guessed it—John Carmack. This led him to join Electronic Arts and making the game would that would define most of his career; American McGee’s Alice. A dark reimagining of the classic fairytale Alice in Wonderland. Nowadays that might sound trite, but it was a bold idea at the time. Hell, it’s so overdone today in part because so many were inspired by American McGee.
The initial success of Alice led to an attempt to make McGee another celebrity developer in the style of Sid Meier. Spawning games like American McGee’s Scrapland, the episodic platformer adventure American McGee’s Grimm, and the heavily-panned American McGee’s Bad Day LA.
By this point, American McGee had, ironically, left America. First moving to Hong Kong before eventually settling in Shanghai, China. There he founded the studio Spicy Horse, which went on to develop Alice: Madness Returns in 2011. Unfortunately, that is where the good times end. American McGee fought for years to get a third Alice game made. This eventually led to a series of highly-chaotic kickstarter campaigns where the goals and scope of the projects kept changing. A notable example being OZombie. A hypothetical Alice-ification of The Wizard of Oz for which McGee later admitted to misrepresenting the financial estimates to entice potential backers.
All this eventually led to a single successful Kickstarter for the Alice: Otherlands animated series. Originally a bonus thrown in to entice people to back an Alice 3 Kickstarter, that McGee spun off into its own thing when it became clear that a video game sequel was not going to happen. Again, this whole Kickstarter endeavor was chaotic as hell. The 2 episodes produced for Alice: Otherlands can be viewed on American McGee’s Youtube channel.
McGee did produce a few more games with Spicy Horse. Mostly mobile titles and the web-based hack & slash RPG Akaneiro. Spicy Horse then shut its doors in 2016, but McGee kept working on a potential third Alice game. Drafting a full design document to be proposed to EA, who in 2023 ultimately rejected the idea. The document was then shared through American McGee’s personal website where he then announced his retirement from the game’s industry.
Since then McGee has diverted his focus to his family’s business; a webshop for plushies with cutesy horror designs.
