Doom-Ed

Well, this is going to be an interesting .plan update.

Most of this is not really public business, but if some things aren’t stated
explicitly, it will reflect unfairly on someone.

As many people have heard discussed, there was quite a desire to remake DOOM
as our next project after Q3. Discussing it brought an almost palpable thrill
to most of the employees, but Adrian had a strong enough dislike for the idea
that it was shot down over and over again.

Design work on an alternate game has been going on in parallel with the
mission pack development and my research work.

Several factors, including a general lack of enthusiasm for the proposed plan,
the warmth that Wolfenstien was met with at E3, and excitement about what
we can do with the latest rendering technology were making it seem more and
more like we weren’t going down the right path.

I discussed it with some of the other guys, and we decided that it was
important enough to drag the company through an unpleasant fight over it.

An ultimatum was issued to Kevin and Adrian(who control >50% of the company):
We are working on DOOM for the next project unless you fire us.

Obviously no fun for anyone involved, but the project direction was changed,
new hires have been expedited, and the design work has begun.

It wasn’t planned to announce this soon, but here it is: We are working on a
new DOOM game, focusing on the single player game experience, and using brand
new technology in almost every aspect of it. That is all we are prepared to
say about the game for quite some time, so don’t push for interviews. We
will talk about it when things are actually built, to avoid giving
misleading comments.

It went smoother than expected, but the other shoe dropped yesterday.

Kevin and Adrian fired Paul Steed in retaliation, over my opposition.

Paul has certainly done things in the past that could be grounds for
dismissal, but this was retaliatory for him being among the “conspirators”.

I happen to think Paul was damn good at his job, and that he was going to be
one of the most valuable contributors to DOOM.

We need to hire two new modeler/animator/cinematic director types. If you
have a significant commercial track record in all three areas, and consider
yourself at the top of your field, send your resume to Kevin Cloud.