In a recent episode of Nightdive Studios’ Deep Dive podcast, legendary developer John Romero casually revealed a surprising road not taken in both his own career, and gaming history writ large: Looking Glass Studios (System Shock, Thief) founder Paul Neurath asked Romero to co-found the company with him, but Romero had a prior commitment.
Both developers worked for Origin Systems, the foundational PC gaming studio started by Ultima creator Richard Garriott. “I got my job there in 1987,’ said Romero. “My first job was porting 2400 AD from the Apple 2 to the Commodore 64.” Following the cancellation of this port, Romero was assigned to work on the game Space Rogue with Neurath, an ambitious combo of space sim and RPG that presaged the likes of Wing Commander.
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Origin had offices in Austin, Texas and Salem, New Hampshire, but would close its Salem office and relocate staff to Texas in 1989, before the release of Space Rogue. Neurath, reportedly not wanting to leave New England, parted ways with Origin and founded a new game company in its old offices: Blue Sky Productions, which later changed its name to Looking Glass. Romero, for his part, left the company to found a start-up with another Origin coworker called Inside Out Software.
“Paul had asked me before I left if I wanted to start a company with him, and I told him that I’d already promised the week before to found a company with my manager [at Origin],” said Romero. “But he was starting Blue Sky Productions.”
As Nightdive VP of business development Larry Kuperman pointed out in the interview, this could have been a major divergence point in gaming history: Romero working on Ultima Underworld and System Shock instead of Commander Keen, Wolfenstein, and Doom. Would the major players of what would become id Software still form their own company together, or would they have found their fortunes elsewhere in the industry?
Instead, Romero would eventually leave Inside Out for Shreveport, Louisiana-based software company Softdisk, where the later founders of id Software would all work together. Looking Glass and id went on to be friendly rivals in the development of early first person, 3D games on PC, codifying design rules, mechanics, and tech that has influenced everything from Half-Life to The Elder Scrolls.
The interview covered a range of topics from Romero’s career, including why he thinks indies are the future of game development, the strange origins of the hunting sim, and how Wolfenstein’s four-month development was actually leisurely compared to id’s previous games.