The Apogee Legacy #24 - Final Edition

Today we're bringing you the final edition of the Apogee Legacy Interview Series. As this was put together by Joe Siegler, we'll let him talk about the conclusion to the series.

"It's a bit of a sad moment, as this series has been a lot of fun to put together. Apogee has a rich history, being involved in some capacity in over 70 titles in our 19 year history now. I've been here for a long time myself, having seen the majority of these games get released. When Scott Miller originally came up with this idea, I wasn't terribly sure how well it would work, because a lot of the people we spoke with for this series either haven't kept in touch, or we lost track of them, etc, etc, etc... But it worked out well. Managed to reconnect with some folks, including a couple we haven't spoken with as a company in over a decade.

Yes, this is the final edition. It is not the normal edition, as this one is a summary, and has some recollections by folks of the two people who have worked here who have since died; William Scarboro & Dennis Scarff. So let's get onto the final edition."

Of all the people who have worked here (and there's been a lot), we're fortunate that (to our knowledge anyway), they're all still alive. So far only two folks who have worked here have since died. We want to take this time in the final edition of the series to commemorate them.

First up is Dennis Scarff. Dennis is not a name known to most people, because he was not a developer. Dennis took care of some of the business side of things for a few years in the mid 90's. If you look in our older shareware from the late 80's and early 90's, you'll see a lot of them have a listing of foreign retailers, and things of that nature. It was quite hapzardly done (compared to today's standards), and after a time, it was decided we needed someone to coordinate all of that. So Dennis was hired. Dennis was in charge of handling all shareware requests, as well as keeping track of foreign retailers, making sure they paid the royalty money they owed our company, things of that nature. As was said before, he wasn't really known to the public, but he played an integral part of our business side of things at the time.

He was also a tech nerd, although from a previous generation. Dennis was huge into Ham radio, and had all kinds of ham equipment and books in his office. He kept talking about how we all should participate in that. He was also likely to be found in all the local Radio Shack stores looking for parts, and he frequented several of the mom & pop computer stores in the area.

One funny story about Dennis recalled by Joe Siegler..

"As was said, Dennis was always into gadgety type of things. One time when the Dallas Stars first located here from Minnesota, several of us attended a game, including Dennis. In between periods, the Stars would fly this radio control blimp around the arena, and Dennis claimed that it would be easy enough to scan for the frequency of the thing and take control of it himself. He never did that, but it would have been amusing to see him try. Outside of work, that's the kind of thing he was always known for. He always had some parts catalog around, some phone thing, was a great guy. I miss him.

Tom Hall also remembers Dennis.

"Dennis was like the kind ol' grandpa of the company. Always there with a smile, a nod, a reassuring presence. A good fella."

Scott Miller recalls the original hiring of Dennis, and the reason why we eventually parted company:

Scarff was hired from a shareware catalog, the biggest of its type, called Public Brand Software, which was a huge catalog in the early eighties. Scarff was a big Apogee fan, and at the time we need someone to deal with all of the shareware outlets that helped drive our business at the time. But as the 90's moved forward, shareware catalogs and BBSs were replaced in importance by the Internet and the web. So, around 1996 or so we released him.

As was said above, Dennis was not as well known to the public, but to those of us who worked here when he was at Apogee, his is a name that is remembered fondly. It was with great sadness that we found out later he had passed away (via email from his widow).

Here's a few pictures of Dennis around the office.

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Second up is William Scarboro. William is far more known to the public than Dennis was, as William was one of the major folks on our Rise of the Triad project, as well as being the original lead programmer and engine designer on Prey. William died on Aug 9, 2002 of an asthma attack. It was quite sad actually, as we're told he died alone (likely in pain due to the way he died), and wasn't found for a few days after he had passed. But his life was one of fun and passion, and that's the way he's remembered. In fact, most people who knew him will remember him as this photo portrays him, as it pretty much summed him up..

Tom Hall (id, Ion Storm, Midway, etc) recalls Wiliam:

"William was a completely unique character. He was always good for a laugh. He'd describe an event in some crazy anime he'd seen, and then say, "Dude! That's ridiculous!" He'd have his little bag with his tuna/pasta/salsa/Omega 3 fatty acid bowls. He'd wear his odd American Male shirts on his muscle-bound frame, and talk about "chicks". He made the weapons in Rise of the Triad "insanely rockful". One day, he was so into typing code he didn't see the big turtle we set next to him for two minutes. So many little stories. He is missed."

When asked to elaborate on 'The turtle story', Tom replied with this..

Looking a bit sunburnt in a non standard white T-Shirt

"Heh, yeah, he was referring to a document or book two feet to his left. In between the two were two thick books stacked up. So he'd type, refer, type, refer.... Scott almost ran over a turtle, so he picked it up to get it out of the road and take it to water, but he thought he'd bring it in the office. We decided to surprise William with it, so we placed it on those stacked books. He kept turning to the reference, back to the computer, and so on for awhile. Obviously his brain registered "TURTLE!" and threw it out as bad information. Finally he turned and jumped back, his brain finally registering it as really there. :) "

Fellow Rise of the Triad programmer Mark Dochtermann (later Ritual, now EA) also recalls William:

"William Scarboro had uncanny way of boiling the world down into black and white. He either liked something or hated it, he desired it or pushed it away. His desire to classify his world into two absolute states made him a very passionate engineer. When he was into the work that he was doing, he was unstoppable."

Scott Miller (Apogee founder) also touches upon the original hiring of William, as well as his connection to Prey both old school and modern.

A rarity - William in a Tuxedo!

"William Scarboro was one of the first two or three actual developers (a coder) we hired in 1994 when we first shifted to internal development. Up until that time, we had solely worked with external teams, like Id Software and many others. He was hired to help develop an Id-approved sequel to Wolfenstein 3-D, which later became a non-Id game, Rise of the Triad. For the first year William worked here, he wore many shirts of many colors, but soon shifted to an all-black-shirt wardrobe. Made buying shirts easy, I suppose! But this became his signature look for all the remaining years I knew him.

William eventually became the lead coder on Prey, leading development of the Prey portal engine, and just as significantly, the Prey editor, called Preditor internally. At the time, this editor was a significant improvement over any previous 3D game editor we'd seen, and Remedy even used it as the template for their very similar Max Payne editor.

It's a shame that the original Prey project didn't reach escape velocity, and for many reasons it eventually ended. William moved on and away from the game industry, somewhat burnt out and looking for a more sane job. That was the last I saw of him, and two or so years later I heard he had tragically died due to an asthma attack.

William was also one of the industry's hardest, most dedicated workers, and we were proud to dedicate the new Prey to his memory."

Finally, Joe Siegler chimes in on William:

This is quite hard to write, as William was a good friend of mine, and it quite bothered me when I got an email from a (then) co-worker of his that he had died. While we were grateful for the update, we were not happy with the contents. As was said by the others here, William was quite the character. He could be completely into himself with his work, or be completely out there with his humour. One of the things that William an I shared was a case of the giggles. After we had been working together for awhile, there were certain catchphrases we were able to say to each other to set the other one off. One was "Uhhh.... 27?" which was a reference to a Beavis & Butthead episode where Butthead was trying to pass himself off as 27 years old. The other I can't recall right at the moment, but after those had been going on for awhile, it got so all we had to do was look at the other for more than a second or two, and we'd bust out laughing. That kind of friendship is hard to find. William & I attended a few concerts together. One was the tour that Van Halen did with Gary Cherone (which was better than it's reputation gave it), and the other was the tour that Motley Crue did John Corabi as vocalist. William was always on a quest to tour Europe where sex laws were not as uh, "strict" as they are in the US, not sure if he actually pulled that off or not. :)

Anyway, here's something I wrote about William back in January of 2006 when I was looking for pictures of other former developers at the start of this series. I found a picture of WIlliam I had forgotten about, and it inspired me to write this:

-- Start Story --

Every time I see a picture of him, I get sad. It's still depressing to find out the way he went. I also recently found out additional information about his passing. I had run across the original email I got from a (then) current co-worker of his informing me that he had died. I wrote back to him and asked what exactly William was doing when he died, as it occurred to me I didn't actually know that, all I knew was "not in the games industry". Here's what I was told..

Joe Siegler, William Scarboro, & Stephen Cole at E3 1998.

"RIA provides Income Tax solutions for Corporations, Accounting firms and CPAs. He was part of the Platform Technology Group. This group was responsible for core backend services for computing and printing tax returns. It involved a lot of hard core c++ skills. He was very integral to the group and will be sorely missed."

I also found out that the folks at RIA had gotten concerned when he hadn't shown up for work for a couple of days. Apparently his mother also was concerned as well, and she eventually went to his apartment, and it was his mother who found him dead - terribly sad info.

Anyway, I miss my old buddy, and I wanted to say finding some "new" pictures (or at least ones I forgot about) was a nice treat. Wish you were still around, pal.

-- End Story --

A nickname we had for William at the time was "Da Hur" (as in the whore). All this sounds odd, but if you knew William, it would make more sense. :) Miss ya buddy.

Here's a few pictures of William from around the office:

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We're fortunate that with so many folks we've worked with over the years that so few of them have passed on. There's some that just seem to have up and disappeared off the face of the Earth. Take for example Todd Replogle. Todd is well known as the programmer behind the first three Duke Nukem games, as well as Cosmo, and some others from the ancient days of our company. The last anyone from here heard, Todd was living in the backwoods of the state of Oregon. We heard a rumour that he had turned his money into PVC Pipe and buried it in his back yard. Whether that's true or not, he hasn't been heard from in years, and no one from 3DR has any idea how to contact him. We tried, as we wanted him in this series, but he was unreachable.

We tried getting a hold of some other folks for this series but couldn't. Duke 3D Atomic Edition producer Greg Malone was last heard of being a teacher in Arizona. Bobby Prince did briefly reply when we initially sent out the queries back in December of 2005, but hasn't been heard from since. Some others just declined to participate.

Some of the folks we did get to participate were not easy to track down. Peder Jungck was someone we hadn't spoken to in almost a decade, and was found via Google. Mike Voss was tracked down via another game developer. Lindsay Whipp was difficult, had to go through Google, to find some dead ends, we finally got a hold of him via someone at Wildfire in Australia, who had his email. Jason Blochowiak was difficult, as we had to track him down via a few other former employees. Most of them had him working at Midway Chicago, but a phone call to their receptionist said he wasn't there, we lucked out that someone knew where he went. One of the more interesting ones was Dave Sharpless. Since Dave had a game that was put out over 15 years ago, none of us had much (if any) contact with him in the interim. He was eventually tracked down when Matt at the Jumpman Lounge was kind enough to put us in contact with Dave.

Additionally, we do get quite a few queries about Lee Jackson, so I thought I'd take a moment to answer folks who want to know what's going on. He's doing fine, and after he and 3DR parted company in 2002, he briefly applied at another game company, but decided for a complete change of direction with his life. He went to a Radio broadcaster's school, and now holds a job with a firm in Dallas that does the traffic reporting for several radio stations in the Dallas area, including the big news station KRLD. This company also does reports for Sirius Satellite Radio, so if you have them, and hear a familiar voice, it's Lee Jackson. It's still amusing to me personally to hear "This is Lee Jackson in the KRLD traffic command center" coming over my radio.

So it was fun tracking down all these guys and gals, and it was a blast putting all this together. It's sad that the series is now ending, as it's been a blast going down memory lane these last six months the series has ran.

If need be, we might have special editions of the series in the future, should we make contact with someone who would be a good addition, but this was the final scheduled edition of this series. Thanks for sharing the trip down memory lane with us! This series went on far longer than we thought, and thanks to all who participated, and thank YOU for reading it.

So this ends the series. It's been nice looking backwards at our company, but now it's time to go forwards. The Prey demo is out, the full version will be out soon, so there's great, cool new stuff for you to look forward to.

That's all, folks!

P.S A special prayer goes out to Dennis & William - sorry we couldn't ask you guys directly about this series, it would have been nice to still have y'all around and contribute.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:18 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #23 - Paul Schuytema

Today we bring you the final "new" issue in the Apogee Legacy series. This edition is definitely one of the more unusual ones, and with the Prey demo being released this Thursday the 22nd, a timely one as well.

This week's edition is with Paul Schuytema. Paul was with 3D Realms for a couple of years in the mid - late 1990's as the project lead on Prey. Now what makes this unusual is that Prey was not released when Paul was here, so his insights into things are not the same as what they would be for someone who has published a game through us.

Still, with Prey on the horizon, and having covered Prey's original project lead (Tom Hall) earlier in the series, we figured we might as well hit Paul up too, and he was glad to send in his answers. Suprisingly for someone who didn't technically put out a game with us, he has a lot to say, so make sure and check it all out.

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

I first came to know Apogee from their games.. publishing Wolfenstein and Blake Stone and then ROTT.I was working as the game design editor for Computer Gaming World Magazine when I was sent down to Dallas on assignment to cover Duke Nukem 3D before it was released-it was so obvious from looking at that game that it would be a HUGE hit. I remember sitting in his office and asking George: "So how does it feel to KNOW you have a monster hit on your hands?"

I then worked with them to create a feature for CGW on editing in the Build engine. At the time, I was teaching at Monmouth college and we modeled the student center in the engine-it was a ball.deathmatching with my students through the campus union!

Paul Schuytema's as artwork

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

3D Realms lured me away from FASA Interactive. I was working as the lead designer on MechWarrior 3 and Scott Miller approached me about being the project leader on Prey. While I loved the MechWarrior universe and working on the Mech game, the chance to help grow our own game universe and flesh out a deep and interesting game character was too good to pass up.

In the "small world" category…when I left FASA, my producer was Tim Gerritsen…who went on to found Human Head. We became good friends during my time at 3DR and now his team will be the one that allows Prey to see the light of day.

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

Since Prey wasn't released when I was there, I can't really answer that question. I do have plenty of hindsight, though, on what we could have done better with the game and technology; as they say, hindsight is 20-20!

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

N/A

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

Since leaving, I've had the chance to create games in which we retained no rights at all and some in which we retained nearly all the rights. I think it depends on the game. The honest truth, though, is that whomever bankrolls the project should probably control the majority of the rights, since they are the chief risk-taker.

In a perfect world, a developer would be able to self-fund up to a prototype state and then partner with a publisher for completion and distribution and then retain the major IP rights. The real trick, though, is having the capitol to fund that prototype. That's not a trivial feat to pull off!

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

For the games we've done as Magic Lantern, it's clearly a benefit to own our own IP - it gives us some freedom in putting together distribution deals to maximize our potential return.

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

N/A

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

Yowza... there are so many! Four big ones stand out:

- the first time we showed of portal technology at E3- the gulp of amazement from those who saw it was a real rush for the whole team!

-our team design meetings when we would work on alien race cultures for Prey- the team really came together, time and time again, and we were able to take blue-sky ideas and reel them into nuggets that would fit in the context of an action game

-our team trek to see KMFDM (who was then doing the soundtrack for Prey) in Austin - they were paired with Rammstein, from Germany, and the show was intense and we got to hang out with the band back stage. [ Ed Note: There are still pictures of this event online here. ]

-my last E3 with 3D Realms - for just a few demos, we had a real trick up our sleeve - we did the demo for the press and talked a lot about cool multiplayer stuff and then for a few (I think we only did it two or three times), we had the press sit down and we spun a computer screen towards them and showed them that we could deathmatch right there - that there was game play in addition to the demo - that really wowed them!

Paul in the back room demo area for Prey at E3 1998

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

Every publisher wants to mitigate their risk and taking a chance on a smaller or lesser-known team isn't they way to do that. That's a shame, because it's in those smaller studios that you'll find the real centers of game play innovation.

Also, the idea of mentoring is almost non-existent, which is a shame. Without mentors, small studios are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past - with mentoring, they can grow and flourish. I remember being on hand when Scott and George started their relationship with Remedy, and I was really impressed with how they coached and helped Remedy get started as they began work on Max Payne - it was something really special.

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

The consoles have really taken over and everything is "bigger, better, faster, more!" It's very, very hard for small studios, especially US-based studios (where labor costs are high as compared to overseas), to thrive. Also, since so much is ruled by so few, and all the triple-A games need to be multi-platform out of the gates, the barrier for entry is so high as to be almost impossible. Gone are the days when a great idea and a willingness to dive in and learn and work your butt off in your basement will allow you to start a game company - and that's kind of sad.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

I started Magic Lantern (insert shameless plug: http://www.lanterngames.com) in 1999 and since then, I produced and designed 20+ games, from the casual to the hard-core (including a hand in one of the early Rainbow Six games). We did this in the cornfields of rural Illinois, and along the way, became very involved in community and economic development.

Late last year, I "turned the asylum over to the inmates" and started a new career with the University of Illinois. Now I work to make games and simulations to support faculty research - really a dream job for me, since I was in academia before I jumped into the game industry.

At 3DR HQ around October 1997.

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

So far, the grass is pretty green around the ivory tower and I'm making games right now - maybe ask me again in a few years!

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

Honestly, I think we maybe spent too much time living in the now-defunct world of Glide (3DFX's 3D accelerator API) before we jumped to Direct X - we should have made that leap sooner, but of course, that's hindsight talking!

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

Duke Nukem 3D, hands-down. The intensity of the multiplayer action was something I had never experienced before, and the laser trip bombs were just genius!

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

My all-time favorite is the Age of Empires series - the blend of tactical combat with world building and a real historical feel made the whole series incredible.

I also logged way too much time with the first 3D Jedi Knight game - the poly count was low, the characters looked goofy (by today's standards) and the textures were chunky, but the game play and the sense of scale is still unmatched - and the boss battles rank as the best I've ever played.

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

During the time I was at 3DR, the industry was really coming into its own - the PC was still the big kid on the block and 3D acceleration was just starting out - and middleware was just becoming an option - it was very exciting to see so much change - but it was also a spooky time in which you had to guess on which API to support and what system specs to target. Did you use MMX? Glide? Direct X? What sound API?

It was also a time of great variety - there were big players in the market, but also small studios were thriving and the game spectrum was very wide indeed - there was so much to play and so little time, we were crafting our own game, after all!

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A special thanks goes out to Paul for answering the questions. To be honest, I wasn't quite sure what he'd say when approached, but he was glad to help out.

• Our Prey Page
• Official 2K Prey Home Page
• Prey Page on Wikipedia
• Lantern Games Home Page

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the final edition in the Legacy Interview Series. The final edition will be a series wrapup with highlights from the rest of the series, and a tribute to two former 3D Realms employees who have since died.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 12:50 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #22 - The Levelord

As we wind down the Apogee Legacy series (click here for schedule), we will be bringing you some slightly different choices to wrap up the series. Today we are bringing you a mini interview with none othre than the Levelord himself, Richard Gray! The reason why we're calling it a mini interview will be self evident shortly.

Richard worked here back in the Duke Nukem 3D days, and left with some others who were working here at the time to found what would be come Ritual. Rich has remained friendly over the years with us, and we get together from time to time and chew over the old days, talk about what's going on with our companies now, etc, etc, etc.

As Rich was an important part of one of our most important projects (Duke Nukem 3D), we wanted to get his input in this series. However, Rich being Rich, he didn't answer all the questions. So we'll bring you an abbreviated interview with him. He answers some of the questions, but definitely not all. We'll flesh this one out with some pictures from the archives of him. :)

So here goes:

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

I had made some levels for DOOM back in 1994 and uploaded them to CompuServe. They were good enough to catch the eye of Nick Newhard, then with Q Studios. He contracted me to do levels for Blood. Both my DOOM levels and Blood caught the attention of George Broussard. He soon asked me to come to Garland, Texas to work fulltime on Duke Nukem 3D.

Levelord at our 1995 Halloween Party

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

I would have worked at ANY game company, and would have cleaned the bathroom floors with a toothpick, for free, just to get into the industry ;) I was also being offered a job at Q Studios, but I chose Apogee because it was so close to id Software. Just seemed important at the time. This was late 1994 and there were only a few game companies making FPSs.

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

Better, because the Duke Nukem 3D Team was a great one! I also give credit to the technology of the times. Today, I spend more than half my time wrestling with technology. Everything has gotten so complicated and complex. Back then, a decade ago, everything was so much easier to deal with and I spent much more time on the Fun Factor and polish.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

Although I was an internal employee, I would say this holds true for my experience. I was allowed almost free reins on my levels. This gave me creative freedom, and this gave the entire team creative freedom. When asking about retaining IP rights, I must add consideration for ownership and future endeavors with a property. Retaining creative freedom, as related to an IP, is always good. Financial ownership is another thing.

Chowing down at the 3DR Offices

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

Yes, going to my very first E3 in 1996 with the Duke Team. It was the first E3, so that made it memorable. I had lived in Los Angeles from 1980-1990. I lived only a few blocks away from the Nakatomi building in the first Die Hard movie. I lived in the garage of my parents while going to UCLA. Late one night, at about 2am, they started filming much of the exterior helicopter stuff at the end of the movie. I thought it was a real event ;)

Anyhow, that AM/PM store is right there, where the cop bought the Twinkies for his pregnant wife. This store, being so close to home, was just a regular old store to buy smokes and gas. To most others, though, it was an icon. First thing we did at E3 was go to this store and buy Twinkies ;)

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

Trust, and there always seems to be fingers on "the other side". Most external involvement entails external influence, creative influence. It is understandable, putting money into something, a lot of money, and wanting control and oversight. However, my experience is that if you sign-up to have a group of professionals perform a task, you should trust them to complete the task. I always use the metaphor of hiring a caterer and then insisting on being in the kitchen and deciding on my own list of spices and cooking times and such.

---

As you can see, Rich didn't answer most of the questions, he probably got distracted by a picture of boobs or something at the time. So, I'm going to plunder his website for a few funny stories, and go through our own archives for pictures of him.

At 3DR HQ watching a Duke3D demo the night before release. L-R: George Broussard, Doug Wood, Joe Siegler, Allen Blum, Terry Nagy, Dirk Jones, Jim Dose (obscured), Chuck Jones, Levelord

April 24, 1998:

Rich talks about "The Levelord Drinking Game" Joe Siegler invented for our semi-regular trips to the Outback Steakhouse..

"The Levelord Drinking Game"? Okay, I'm in ;) I bet we could make a pretty penny with the travel version. Seriously, you're a funny man, Joe... ...that's why I keeel you laaaast!... ...just in case any are taking this seriously, Master Siegler and I meet at the Outback Steakhouse in Mesquite every few months. He goes for the Bloomin' Onions and I... ...well, let's just say I get very pedophilic with all the high school waitresses and their short, short little skirts showing just a hint of flowery panties underneath and their amply round melon-sized boobs bouncing up and... ...or dear, ...that's two drinks for me!

September 22, 1999:

Rich talks about the advances of gaming tech and Duke Nukem 3D:

I'm so tired of chasing technology! Cutting-edge and special effects have become horrible phrases for me. We spend so much time and effort "getting up" and not enough "going", and for an old fart like me, it just gets tiring.

Keep in mind that I've been in software since before there were floppies. Platter "hard" drives stored a whopping 128k and programming was down on card readers and hoppers. Anyone else remember their Hollerith code and EBCDIC? I remember being in the Navy, dabbling in FORTRAN, and seeing the DPs carefully walking down the halls holding 8" floppies, when they first came out, like some precious serving tray. They were afraid the bits would get jumbled if the floppies got jarred in any way.

I am so completely convinced that we could release Duke Nukem 3D right now and it would still sell as many copies and be as popular.

February 8, 1998:

Rich remembers (or tries to, it seems like a rambling piece) on Allen Blum, Megadeth, & Duke Nukem 3D:

...Well, it's early Sunday morning, got the stereo blasting away, freshing toasted (toast is so much more crisp when your lungs aren't coated with tobacco smoke;), and cranking on some levels in our new office space. This is way cool, apart from the new space being "new", we were crammed like Bismarck Herrings in the old office. I even have enough room to crack my 16-foot bullwhip! ...hey, man, ...it's Texas, ...live it, ...love it!

Speaking of stereos blasting, I've got MegaDeath's latest blaring (ya, ya, it's a 97 release, but remember how old and slow I am!) and just noticed the title of the 7th track... ...Sin! Yes boys, play it loud please! MegaDeath will ALWAYS remind me of 18-hour stretches of Duke leveling and Allen The Third Blum playing "Youthanasia" thirteen times in a row... ...bless his demented little heart. Dave Mustaine... ...hmmmm, you don't supposed, do you, that Tom has an alter profession like that sCary Spice bitch (how ya doin' BTW, Steve)?

March 10, 1995:

Rich recalls his 10 year anniversary of coming to work for 3D Realms:

Holy sheep shit! (picture is at 3D Realms in March of 1995)

It was ten years ago today when I first rolled into Garland, Texas to start working on Duke Nukem at 3D Realms!

It has definitely been a decade that seems to have gone by quickly (probably due to the time warped perspective of growing older), but it also seems like a LOOOOONG time when I try to remember all the things that have happened in ten years.

The question for me? Would I do it again if I knew back then what I know now? It is a question for me, ...even with all the ultracool things I have gained and enjoyed on the ride, ...it was a truly rough road to travel!

April 20, 2000:

And finally, this one where his Loness writes this about Duke Nukem and 3D Realms:

...and finally, I am really starting to regret leaving Garland. I played pool with George the Broussard last night and Duke sounds fricken incredible! It all brought back alot of fond memories. That sure was a fun game to make and Mr. Nukem has a long way to go before he gets too old. I don't know how they're doing it all without me, but I wish I was still there ;)

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As was said above, Rich was involved with just one title with us, Duke Nukem 3D, but it was an important one. Here's a few Levelord related links for you to peruse.

• Our Duke Nukem 3D Catalog Page
• Levelord's Home Page (graphic material alert :) )
• The Levelord page on Wikipedia
• Ritual's Website

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series, as we wind it down. After this one, there's only two issues left.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 3:00 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #21 - Darren Baker

In 1995, Apogee Software released the first title under our new branded label concept. That was Terminal Velocity under the "3D Realms" brand. This concept was used a second time in 1998, when we released "Balls of Steel" under the "Pinball Wizards" label. As with the "3D Realms" branding idea, the Pinball Wizards one was to launch a series of pinball related titles. However, to date Balls of Steel was the only title put out under the Pinball Wizards brand.

One of the driving forces behind the Balls of Steel title was Darren Baker. Darren Baker was actually involved with two other titles with us before Balls of Steel in 1998. Those titles were Halloween Harry/Alien Carnage as well as Mystic Towers (both in 1994). So Darren has been involved with us for several years now.

Darren, mostly due to his location (Australia), has one of the more unique relationships with us. Despite having worked on three seperate titles with us, has never met us face to face. It's one of the more unique aspects of our company, having developers all over the world. Let's get to his interview:

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

I came into direct contact with Apogee in 1993 (I was 18) through a group of guys here in Brisbane who were developing a very cool (256 color parallax scrolling!!) game called Halloween Harry. I managed to get onto the team and contributed the digital sound engine. My brother Steven also composed a good deal of the music for the game.

Harry was picked up for Australian distribution by Manaccom, who then lined up US distribution through Apogee.

We had heard of Apogee prior to all this of course, particularly with the Commander Keen and Wolfenstein games, so to be associated with them was very exciting.

The Harry project then led to Mystic Towers (with another team on which I was the PC programmer), then eventually to Balls of Steel, as Wildfire Studios.

So basically Apogee published the first 3 commercial games I worked on.

Darren Baker at his desk with Fidelio - Feb 2006

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

I guess the initial reason was that we had the contacts with Apogee, and Scott and George were willing to support and take chances on inexperienced - albeit talented - teams, and overseas ones to boot.

As for going on your own, other people I knew had tried the "do everything" route (eg one or two people doing code, art, sound, manuals, packing, duplication, distribution!), and invariably the efforts were less than rewarding financially. At the time, getting products marketed and distributed properly was not something we properly understood or were even really interested in. We were far more concerned with the challenge of developing the games themselves, and when a successful company like Apogee offers you advances to get on and do what you enjoy, how good is that?! :)

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

I think Apogee did a great job with Balls of Steel. I think sales suffered a bit because the game's promotion led the ship date too far (or the ship date trailed the promotion, depending how you look at it!) That wasn't entirely their fault... ;)

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

I have no doubt the final product was better for Apogee's involvement.

Balls of Steel took a somewhat different direction than we had originally intended for it once Apogee came on board. Originally it was to be more of a true-to-life pinball simulator, but a mixture of Apogee's influence, a need to better our competitors, and good ol' feature creep led it to be more of a hybrid sim / action game. Of course the most obvious Apogee influence is the Duke Nukem table, but the overall 'hardcore' feel probably owes a fair bit to them too.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

Yes, it's best from the creator's point of view to retain the IP rights. But it's also best from the publisher's point of view that the publisher get the IP rights in exchange for the funding. Both can be reasonable points of view depending on the money involved and other specifics of the deal.

I certainly believe that developers should relinquish/sell their IP very reluctantly and only after much consideration. They need to negotiate to keep whatever they can.

Final Balls of Steel Box Art

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

Yes, definitely. After Balls of Steel we reused our pinball engine technology to develop half a dozen more pinball games and licensed it out to other developers.

More recently, a key part of our business in the casual games market is to retain ownership of our brand and carefully control territory and platform distribution rights. This allows us to reuse and license our technology, create sequels and spinoff games, and control revenue streams from online and worldwide retail channels. This strategy has paid off for our hit game Tumblebugs, for instance.

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

The idea has been kicked around on and off. Apogee actually owns the trademark for Balls of Steel (see, Scott's not *completely* silly and giving away IP rights all over the place :)) but we're pretty free to do another game, which is great.

We'd really like to do a Balls of Steel 2... maybe with a Duke Nukem Forever table.. yeah, that would be cool.

In the PC market pinball tends to be a budget title genre though, but I'd want something much better than that. I think it'd be a great fit for the PSP.

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

What's odd is that such stories are quite hard to come up with, because I've never actually met *any* of the Apogee folks. Not one. We've only ever swapped emails, and had the occasional phone call. The upside is I still have something to look forward to!

However, one thing I do distinctly remember is when Scott offered us the Duke Nukem 3D license to include in Balls of Steel.

We hadn't seen the game, and to be honest, we didn't think a whole lot of the first two Duke games (sorry Todd et al!), so we were sceptical to say the least. And it didn't help a whole lot either when were sent nothing but a CD full of raw Duke graphics like static cutouts of pig cops and loads of various gibs :) What's more, we were also going to have to scrap a whole lot of work we'd done on the Devil's Island table to make room for it.

I do remember Scott insisting that the game was definitely going to be a hit, but still, pigs with guns ... riiight...

Anyhow we eventually got a build of the game, and that's when the 'maybe' rapidly became 'yes please'!

(Besides, it was only fair - they put a Balls of Steel pinball table in Duke :))

Pre-Pinball Wizards unused Balls of Steel Box Art

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

I'd guess the perceived risk is the big factor, but I think it's actually a smart business move if you can manage a nascent external team and provide the missing ingredients (funding, marketing, business, management, QA etc) and harness their idealism and creativity.

I have asked myself over the years whether I'd do for another team today what Apogee did for us back then, and I'd like to think I would. One difference is I'd want to do more due diligence and manage the teams a lot more closely ('from the inside') rather than just hope that they kept delivering milestones from time to time and didn't drop the ball! It took us over 2 years to ship Balls of Steel, and while I don't think Apogee was overly sweating the advances, it was definitely a long time to be on a project.

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

In some ways that question's quite difficult for me to answer, because I think I have learned and changed so much over that time that it can be tough to compare objectively.

I was going to say that were we starting out now, we would have a much harder time getting a deal, and that there'd be no Apogees out there to give us a break. But with the booming casual games industry over the last couple of years, the window has once again opened for small developers to get games to market, so that's not really true.

There is of course the usual observations that the budgets are bigger, the teams are huge, that most games are based on licences, etc.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

For the most part I've been CEO and Technical Director of Wildfire Studios. I worked as a programmer for a short while in London a few years ago for another developer, and that was an excellent experience. I'm really enjoying the success Wildfire is having, and it's interesting moving my focus from programming, which has always been my passion, to the business to ensure we sustain and grow.

The Duke Nukem table from Balls of Steel

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

Heh, I've thought about *leaving* the industry from time to time, but there's nothing I can think of doing that requires such a blend of technical, creative and business skills. It's very stimulating. :)

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

Yes, quite a few. I think we could have exploited the success (critical if not commercial) of Balls of Steel in various ways, but didn't have the perception and know-how to do it. That said, we haven't done too badly at all, but we could have been smarter and focused on the right things. But overall I regard the early days (including our time with Apogee) as an excellent apprenticeship in the industry.

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

Duke 3D was my favourite, that sucked down (so to speak!) way too much of my time. The network play was awesome.

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

I think the Infocom games (Zork etc) are some of the best of all time.

In more recent years I thought the original Unreal was excellent.

These days I don't play games for entertainment anywhere near as much as I used to, now my interest is more of an analytical one.

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

I would like to thank Scott, George, Joe and the rest of the Apogee crew that we worked with over the years. They were instrumental in getting us started in the industry, and great to work with. I still keep tabs on what Apogee/3D Realms is up to, and listen closely to what Scott has to say about the business of games.

As to our fans - stay tuned. We've got some great new games on the way!

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As was said above, Darren has been involved with three seperate titles with us. We have plenty of information available on them on our website, please use the links below:

• Our Balls of Steel Catalog Page
• Our Alien Carnage Catalog Page
• Our Mystic Towers Catalog Page
• Mystic Towers Page on Wikipedia
• Balls of Steel Page on Wikipedia
• Wildfire Homepage

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series. The series is close to being finished, we have two more interviews planned, plus a wrap up edition. The last couple will be special issues, so you're going to want to tune in for those.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 2:02 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #20 - Joe Siegler

This week's edition of the Apogee Legacy series reaches a milestone with it's twentieth edition. I think when we first came up with the idea, we didn't expect it would run this long. We are reaching the end of the series, as there's only a couple left after this one. This week, we're running a slightly different edition for our twentieth. This twentieth interview is with well.. myself, Joe Siegler. Now I hadn't planned on doing one of these myself, as I didn't think there was a point. Scott Miller asked me to do it, and when I objected, he said "consider it an order", so here I am. :)

The short intro to myself is that I run the website here at Apogee, amongst other things (a more complete list is here). Yeah, I know most people know us as 3D Realms, but I've been here for a long time since before the name 3D Realms came up. Those who know me know I tend to resist change, so even 12 years after we came up with the name, I still refer to ourselves as Apogee.

One of my concerns is that I'm not a traditional developer, and as such some of the questions wouldn't apply to me directly. While that is true, I have a lot of friends who are, and also having read all the interviews before mine, I'd like to think I have some not completely off base thoughts on the matters at hand. As I've already started talking, let's get to the actual questions.

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

Trying to imitate James Hetfield, circa 1993

Well, that would require the firing up of the wayback machine. I started here in Dec 1992, but I was "involved" before that. I was a customer of this company for awhile. I'm not sure which was the first game I ever bought - it was probably either Keen 4 or the original Duke Nukem game. I was working at a computer repair facility at the time, and on the repair floor, Apogee games were used a lot on the computers. You had to test something, and quite frequently to test repaired floppy drives, some Apogee game would get installed. I also was running a BBS at the time, and Apogee's games were quite popular on the BBS scene.

In fact BBS's are the reason why I'm here. Back in the day, I used to dial up Software Creations all the time looking for the latest shareware releases and updates by Apogee. I would download 'em, and then upload them to several BBS's around the country on my own dime, all not knowing Apogee at all. So on May 5, 1992, along with most of the rest of the world, I was totally blown away by Wolfenstein 3D. It was some seriously good shit at the time, and I knew then that I wanted to try and work there, although I didn't know as what, because I was not an artist or a programmer. After the v1.2 update of Wolfenstein 3D came out, I shortly after that saw a "user hack" version of Wolfenstein pruporting to be "An adult upgrade of Wolfenstein 3D to v1.3". I contacted Scott Miller on Software Creations about it, since this file did not orginate there, like all the others did. Scott thanked me, and Apogee/id issued a statement about it, saying it didn't come from them, there is no "Porn" version of Wolf from them, and it was for this reason that there is no v1.3 of Wolfenstein 3D. Not long after this I decided to leverage this and ask Scott if he needed any help being a beta tester. He said yes, and I was added to the beta testing team (which I later on ending up being the head of, which was amusing to me). At the time, Math Rescue was in beta, so that was my first project.

At the Ft Worth Duke3D Rodeo Shootout, 1996. More Info

After a short time doing beta testing of that (and Major Stryker), Scott posted a message in the beta area asking if anyone from the beta team was intersted in coming to work for Apogee. Originally, I was hired to be telephone tech support for Apogee. Somewhere in my dusty archives is the original message he posted, but I can't locate it now. One highlight in his "incentive" package was that the Coke machine at the office cost only a quarter per can. I figured any company which talked about "Wearing what you want", and offering Coke for a quarter in it's "Come work here" pitch probably was pretty cool. So in October of 1992, I made the decision to move to Texas from Philly to take this job. I was to replace Shawn Green, who was the first employee of the company (outside of Scott and his family) who was being bumped up to the newly created "Online Support" position. However, inbetween my getting hired and coming down, Shawn quit to go join id Software. I then told Scott I wanted that job, since it was exactly what I was doing anyway in terms of file releases, support, etc.. So they gave me that job instead, and to this day I thank Shawn for making that move allowing me to get this job. It's kind of amusing, 13.5 years later I'm still here, and I'm still technically in the same job, as I've never really been formally promoted or anything like that. It's just evolved from BBS's to the Internet and websites/email.

It's exactly the kind of job I would have wanted had I actually stayed in school and got a degree (which I didn't).

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

Well, unlike the 19 folks who have preceeded me in this series, I'm not a real game developer as such. Sure, I write tech docs, I do support, maintain the website, and I even dabbled in level design awhile back with Rise of the Triad, but I hold no illusions. I'm not a game developer, I just work at a game company. Back in 1992, it wasn't an issue of working for anyone else, I didn't know anyone in the game industry. Scott offered the job to our beta team as I talked about above, and I took it. So working for anyone else was not an option.

With Joe Selinske (TRI, Ritual, EA, Black Label) at E3 2001

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

Well, I do have two games under my belt as a formal developer, and those are Rise of the Triad, and Extreme Rise of the Triad. For ROTT, I got paid "per level", it wasn't a royalty type of issue there, I got "x" per level I designed. For EROTT though I got paid royalties. EROTT was totally done by Tom Hall and myself, no one else from Apogee worked on that. So I was definitely excited about getting a royalty check.

I did get a couple of good ones right after release, but it started tapering off not long after that. That's the one beef I had with the game back then - Extreme ROTT was the only game at the time we had no advertising for. We advertised ROTT, and all the other games released back then, but EROTT came out after the 3D Realms label started, and I think the marketing was there for Terminal Velocity, and Duke Nukem 3D was well underway at that point, so EROTT got kind of forgotten about, and if we had marketed it, there might have been more sales for a product that I felt was a lot better with it's level design than the original product was.

It's not a major thing now, because I'm sure EROTT would have been discontinued awhile back anyway, and I thorogouhly enjoyed the experience both from the work done, and working solo with Tom Hall. I'll always treasure that.

With The Levelord (Ritual) & Jim Dose (Ritual, id, Valve) at a Mesquite Outback in Feb 2005.

One final story to this is that the last couple of royalty checks I got were under $10, with the last one I think being about $2. After that, George Broussard (who handed out royalty checks for the company) came to me with a buyout offer, so he wouldn't have to go through all the records just to arrive at a check for $2. So I got a $300 buyout somewhere in early/mid 1996 on my EROTT royalties, which I figured out back then would carry me over to around the year 2035 if I spread out the diminsihing rate at which the checks were coming in, so in the end I made out OK with that in my opinion. :)

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

Well, again only having one game under my belt makes this a bit different, as I'm not sure how to answer this. I'd say the game was fine the way it was. Sure, I know there was a chance to use Build back then instead of the Wolf engine, and I'm sure that might have made the game better had it been used, but to be honest, I rather like ROTT the way it was.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

Well, again I don't own the IP to Rise of the Triad, Scott & George do. I think it's a great idea for the designer to retain IP rights. That is however they don't own it just to bury it like some companies do with some properties they own ( that fans have shown there is an interest in reviving).

With Tom Hall at E3 1998.

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

This is not applicable to me at all. No comment.

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

Well, there was already the aforementioned addon pack for my one game, that being "Extreme Rise of the Triad". While I'm not Scott & George, and I can't speak for them personally, I seriously doubt they'd ever want to do another sequel to that.

However... If I ever ran across the kind of stupid money that would allow me to never have to worry about money ever again, I'd personally fund a Rise of the Triad sequel. I still think there's potential for a killer game in the ROTT franchise, and I'd probably try and hire back as many of the original team as I could. Most of what made ROTT "ROTT" IMO was Tom Hall's silliness - the same zany stuff that made Keen "Keen". There's a bunch of other cool things there too, but this game was very much (to me personally) a Tom Hall game.

However, the amount of money required for that dream is far beyond what this Webmaster will probably ever see in his lifetime. So while I WANT to say yes there will be, the answer is probably no.

In a stretch limo with the rest of 3DR on our way to a good dinner at a Steakhouse in Dallas in Nov of 2001.

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

Oh dear God, there's way too many of them! I've seen an awful lot of people come through here, and have been friends with most of them, I probably could tell a story on all of them. The problem is I know so many stories here, how do I pick for this? OK, I'll do a few of them.

Ken Silverman's US Maps

A few issues back, Ken Silverman did a bit about his drawing the United States anywhere. Here's a story I remembered about that. "One time the group of us were out to lunch at one of the local restaurants. This was one of the places that lets you draw with crayons on the table on paper they put on it. As Ken stated, he generally was pretty quiet, so most of us weren't paying attention, just talking the usual trash nonsense. After awhile one of us looked over at what Ken was doodling, and went "What the hell?" Ken was sketching the United States Map. He apparently has the ability to just draw the entire US map on anything. It pretty much took us by surprise, as he was roughly half done at that point, and from that point on we just watched him finish the map. So if you go anywhere with Ken, don't let him wander off on his own mentally, he'll draw the United States somewhere. :)"

ROTT Release power outage

In December of 1994, we were about to release the v1.0 shareware version of Rise of the Triad. As any game developer can tell you, the day before you release is one of the most stressful and worrysome times, as even if you think your game is going to be good, there's that one moment of "What if it sucks?" Anyway, it was the middle of the night and we were all testing, tweaking, packing, etc, as any end of project was. We were just about done, doing final checks, and then we lost power. At first we thought we blew a fuse, and then we noticed the whole building was out, and then we went outside and noticed that nothing had power anywhere that we could see. It was as if the whole power grid up and died. I recall someone at the time saying "id Software did it!". It was both a relief and a stressful thing as we wanted to finish and get the game out. Some of us handled the break differently. William Scarboro slept on the floor of his office. Some of the rest of us (myself, Mark Dochtermann) went downstairs into the lobby of our office building and brought a water rocket. We were bored, and with no computers to use, we had to resort to other juvenile attempts at passing the time. We chose setting off a water pressured rocket inside the lobby of our office building. So we filled it up with water (there's a picture of this rocket on the ROTT CD), and got all excited. Pumped it up, and the stupid thing went up about one foot, and as I recall got Mark completely wet. It was complete failure. We tried again, but the stupid thing never worked right. For some reason we felt it sounded cooler to name it, so the water rocket from Planet Failure was called "The Avenger". Power came on a short while later, and the game was released without further incident, but the water rocket story from the night of release was one I'll always remember.

At SWC BBS in 1994.

Monty Python Tech Support

Back when ROTT was being developed, the Tech Support department in 1994 consisted of Kevin Green, Steve Quarrella, & Lee Jackson (picture). From time to time I'd need to jump in and help them as we were pretty busy at the time. When the four of us were together, it seemed to prompt what I called "Monty Python Tech Support". You see, Lee, Steve, & myself were huge fans of British Comedy. Monty Python & Red Dwarf in particular. The three of us knew the routines, the lines pretty darn well. At a moment when relief was needed (or more likely) when the group of us were just goofing off, or when we wanted to mess with Kevin, one of us would start a Python routine. Since the three of us knew 'em so damn well, we could do them, and we'd do 'em rather a lot. Ended up driving Kevin bananas. That issue aside, it was cool that the three of us had that kind of rapport where we could do that.

More ROTT Development

There's a couple of stories from ROTT development that I'll tell here (although I could do a whole entry on that game's development too). The first is one called "50 Kills". The second is called "Death to a Coffee Cup".

Towards the end of ROTT development, we (even then) were hearing the cries of "You're taking too darn long". So Tom Hall, in his bizarre sense of humour, decided to make a video out of that. We had made this video where he pretended to be an undercover news reporter, and I was his cameraman. We "broke in" to the Apogee HQ, and he was going to do this expose as to why it was taking so long. We ran upstairs, into our offices, and looked around at people's desks, and there was no one there. We eventually found a couple of guys playing ping pong in another office, and it was something along the lines of "Hey, it's game research" or something liek that. My memories of how the video ended are fairly cloudy now. We had Rise of the Triad running in the background on various people's computers, but the funny part of this for me was when Tom got into the offices and looked at one of the computers, the rather distintive sound of a ROTT multiplayer game came up. Tom yelled out in a rather dejected sounding voice "50 KILLS!" - he had set the game's kill total to 50, so the game ended. This compltely ruined his "crazed undercover news reporter" thing and we had to shoot the video again. This was never released, unfortunately - and is lost to the ages. I tried finding this a few years ago to release, but no one knows if it's even around anymore. Shame, as it was pretty darned funny.

Also as a side story to this, the story of losing to an inanimate object in ROTT deathmatch comes to mind. Back then, ROTT had a record for allowing 11 people to play at once in a deathmatch game. Doom was the king of deathmatch, but it was limited with the number of players. With all due respect to Spinal Tap, Rott "Went to 11", and when we were testing deathmatch we didn't always have that many people to play. So we'd fire up ROTT on other computers, and stick down the fire button, so that player would at least be doing something, if not actually "playing". The sad part of this is that we used coffee cups on a lot of the computer keyboards to wedge down the fire button. More than once, one of the coffee cups managed to win the game. I've been accused of not being very good at deathmatch games, but losing to a friggin coffee cup is rather embarrassing.

During a voice recording session for Duke Nukem Forever in 2001.

Mt. Xenophage

Back before I started working here (and right when I did), we used to take our own 1-800 phone calls for orders. Back then we had a guy working for us who took orders named Jason Reed. When we put Xenophage on sale, like every other title we sold, we got a bunch of stock to sell. Jason went and sat on top of the pile of Xenophage boxes, and we took his picture up there. For some reason the image of this picture has stuck in my mind over the years, and it's come to be known as "Mount Xenophage". We ended up using this picture as a Camera Captioning Contest entry back in 1997. The memory remained, as some years later in 2002, we recreated the picture with Bryan Turner on a pile of boxes.

Blackburn on the log

We haven't done this in ages, but from time to time we used to go out collectively as a company and do something outdoors. One day many a moon ago we had rented (or just took over, I can't remember) a park in Garland where we had our own private BBQ. The majority of the company came, and we had a great time playing volleyball, having a cookout, and just generally hanging out.

After awhile we started exploring the grounds behind the picnic area in the park, and ran across a creek with a big tree that had fallen over it forming a bridge to the other side. Since it looked pretty unsafe, it instantly became a dare as to who would have enough balls to cross the thing. Funny thing was that the daughter of one of our employees was the most nimble, going across it like there was nothing to worry about. Some of us tried it but without as much aplomb.

Eventually, Steve Blackburn crossed over, got to the other side, and the got stuck there. He apparently was afraid to come back either because of abuse he was taking, or he just got scared of crossing - don't remember that now. Anyway, this prompted mass taunting and abuse from the others here, particularly Scott & George, who were calling him several names I won't print here. Even the aforementioned kid ran up to him, stole his hat, and came back.

The climax to this story was when Scott Miller got out halfway on the tree, and started throwing things at Steve. No one was hurt, but damn were those of us watching this laughing our asses off. There's a picture of Scott tossing another tree branch at Steve online here. We haven't done anything like this in awhile, and I miss these kinds of company outings.

There's so many others, I could spend all day recounting stories. Some of the others I thought about using here were the story of when we shipped Max Payne, how Corrinne Yu loved to eat cereal in the lunchroom, the entire company going out to dinner to celebrate completing Duke Nukem 3D, Tom Hall's "Iced Tea, No Lemon, No Spoon", Mark Dochtermann's "Lookin' for some Hot Buns!", there's just too many, man!

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

I'm gonna pass on this one. I think the folks in this series have already said way better what I could possibly do with this one. Check out the other entries in this series for that.

As Heinrich Krist during the video recording session for Rise of the Triad on Jan 22, 1994.

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

Well, I'm still here, so the "when you worked" doesn't apply. :) But my answer is the same as most people's. Money. Size. Scope. The industry is not what it was when I got hired. Gone are the days like that. There might be a few small independants around on the scale of the old days, but as a whole, the industry has gotten much larger, and much more expensive.

I've always said for years that this kind of thing would come, because there's always this drive from customers for the latest, the newest, the best graphics, etc, etc, etc. Companies that didn't move forward or just stayed at the current level they were at generally got left behind, and nobody wanted that. So the drive internally and externally to provide something bigger and better has gotten us where we are as an industry.

Game budgets are stupid huge, I often wonder how in the heck money can be made given how much these things cost (or so I'm told they cost, anyway). The days of things like Crystal Caves, Cosmo, or other games like that where you could have a team of at most two or three people doing everything, or in several cases one guy doing everything are dead, gone, buried, decomposed, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public enquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters. The public won't allow that level of game anymore, unfortunately.

Packing Foreign Max Payne Orders - July 2001

We tried a couple of years ago to have a throwback game like that, which evoked memories of the past (this would be Duke Nukem Manhattan Project), but it sold poorly. My gut feeling is that we won't see any more of those old school kind of things from us, unfortunately. I could be completely wrong, but I don't think so.

Of course, "casual games" have their market too, and things like the games on Xbox Live Arcade on the 360 have proven to be rather popular. Plus there's other things like Gold Miner Vegas and things of that nature which aren't going to set the world on fire sales wise, but are darned entertaining games, so what the hell do I know? :)

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

Well, I'm still here, so this doesn't apply at all.

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

Well, this sort of applies to me, as I do work here, but I don't "make games" in the classic sense of being a game developer. I've often thought about doing maps again. I have dabbled a bit with "Duke's Enormous Tool", as well as having several ideas for Prey levels, having played it a lot in the last few months. I might do something after the fact - we'll see if I have the time. :)

Scaring Bryan Turner & Nick Shaffner at DFW Airport on the way to E3 2001.

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

Not really. I'm pretty happy here, and the company has been pretty nice to me over the years. I guess the opportunity I was offered some time ago and did not take was a good one, so it's a "reverse missed opportunity". I was offered a job working for Dan Linton up in Massachussets at Software Creations. It would have been a pay increase as I recall, but I turned it down, because I am a creature of habit, and I didn't want to upset the apple cart and leave Apogee. Good move, as Software Creations ceased to exist within two years of that offer.

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

Let's see, since I can't say ROTT (ha), I'll go with Monster Bash, Wolfenstein 3D, Commander Keen, Death Rally, and Raptor. I liked all of our games for some reason or another, but these are my favorite "games", or old some special meaning to me. Keen 4 was the reason I got my first sound card - I was a PC Speaker person, but at my computer repair job I mentioned above, one of the test machines had an (original) Sound Blaster card in there, and I loved the extra sounds - so I ran out that night and bought my first sound card just to hear the cool sound and music in Keen 4. :)

Joe at his desk (holding Alf) on May 22, 2006.

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

Oh dear, there's way too many! I don't know where to begin. I am a fan of Sports games (baseball & football mostly), as well as open ended things like the Sims and GTA, and the like. Some other games I've enjoyed in the past are Unreal Tournaments, Quake 3 Arena, Doom, Monster Truck Madness 2, Big Rigs (just kidding), and .. there's just way too many.

I have a shelf full of games, a lot are there because I know someone from another company who worked on it. A lot of old friends of mine from other companies (Joe Selinske, Levelord, Jim Dose, etc) are people whose games I like to have on my shelf, it makes me feel good. Also seeing all those games by friends reminds me of how lucky I am to be in this industry and to have survived as long as I have. Granted, my not being a formal game developer has a lot to do with it I'm sure (not the same pressures and issues), but so many of my friends have bounced all over the place, and several aren't even in the industry anymore. It's probably silly, but I like seeing my friends work on my bookshelf.

But for things I truly enoy from other companies, I'd say the ones in the first paragraph, plus Animal Crossing. I wasted a lot of time on that one, and I can't wait for Animal Crossing Wii. :)

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

Thanks for buying our games over the years and keeping me employed. ;)

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Thanks to myself for doing the entry. :) Yeah, this is the bit where I usually thank the person doing the interview, so how do I thank myself here? The series is winding down, there's only a few left, so make sure and stick around for the finale of the series. Here's a few pages about myself or other things I've done.

• My bio page here
• Our Rise of the Triad Catalog Page
• My Page on Wikipedia
• My Page on imdb.com
• My Blog
• My Black Sabbath Fan Site
• My Texas Rangers Fan Site
• My Anti Dallas Cowboys Fan Site

Another thing I'm proud of in having done this series is getting a lot of other games released as freeware. Given this was my own entry, and my stuff is either still available for sale (ROTT), or is freeware (EROTT), I decided to look into the past and see what obscure thing I could get released. Found one. Some time ago we released an addon for Wolfenstein 3D called "The Wolfenstein 3D Super Upgrades". This package consisted of a boatload of extra levels for Wolf (over 800), a level editor, and a random level generator. This is pretty obscure, in fact, most people don't even know we sold this for awhile. But it's another step in my goal of getting everything we don't sell anymore released as freeware. You can download it from our downloads page in the Wolfenstein 3D section. Enjoy.

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 2:42 PM | Discuss this story on our forums

The Apogee Legacy #19 - John Romero

Anyone that knows our company should also know the name John Romero. If you don't know him, you haven't been paying attention. His name as been attached to some of the most notorius games in our industry's past. Both with us (Commander Keen & Wolfenstein 3D), and not with us (Doom, Quake, Daikatana).

John has bounced around a bit since his id days. He's been involved with Ion Storm, Monkeystone, Majesco, Midway, amongst others. His name carries a lot of weight in our industry, so we were glad to have him participate in the series.

Enough of this lame introduction for someone who shouldn't need introducing anyway. :)

1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?

Scott Miller had several of his games published through Big Blue Disk and had a monthly subscription to it. He saw one of my games, Pyramids of Egypt, on BBD and was really excited by it - seeing an opportunity for me to take the game, create additional levels, then publish it through Apogee Software.

Scott knew I worked at Softdisk and knew they filtered mail to make sure no one was trying to steal their programmers and artists. So he sent me about 4 letters in the mail, all of them pretending to be someone who played the game and wanted me to write them back for various reasons ("I think I found a bug, write me back!" or "Please write back - I'm 67 years old!"). The names were all different but the mailing address was the same on them all.

I didn't pick up on the duplicate mailing addresses until I was reading PC Games magazine and read an article about Scott and his Kroz games. At the end of the article was the address and I was thinking "I know that from somewhere. Where could it be from???" as my head slowly turned toward my wall where I had my prized fan mails. WTF!!??? I admit I went nuts. Mostly because my ego was instantly gibbed because I realized those weren't really fan mails they were just some guy trying to get me to contact him.

Well, I wrote Scott back and we got in touch and very quickly we settled on doing a trilogy of games for him titled "Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons". We worked day and night for 3 months and Apogee released the trilogy on December 14, 1990. If you want more detail the book Masters of DOOM does a good job with this part of the story.

2) Was there a reason you decided to work with Apogee, say versus going on your own or working with another company?

Well I wasn't trying to moonlight while at Softdisk since I was really focused on my work there - Scott just provided an opportunity and I took it. Regarding why I didn't do a startup instead: before Softdisk I had already had two startup companies where I had about 17 published games between the both of them. I wanted a break from it for a little bit.

John Romero, recent vintage

3) Looking back, was there anything Apogee could have done better, regarding the marketing and distribution of your game?

Apogee did a wonderful job getting the game out in front of people. Software Creations was a great tool in that respect. It was probably the biggest and best BBS back then, run by Dan Linton.

Apogee could have done a better job with taking orders in the early 90's by using their income from Wolfenstein 3D and buying a networked order-taking system instead of the "stacks of paper" system where operators took the phone orders, wrote the info down then entered all the orders into a computer at the end of the day. We had a talk with Scott about this and gave him some time to implement it but he didn't - that's why we self-published DOOM.

4) Do you think your game was made better or worse by working with Apogee?

I don't remember getting much creative feedback from Apogee because we were fairly experienced at game design and development - we just finished the game and handed it over.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

We wouldn't have signed a deal with Apogee back then if we couldn't have retained our IP. Besides, Apogee didn't pay for the development of our games - they gave us a $2,000 advance during Keen1-3 development but that was all for our entire relationship.

5a) And if applicable, have you benefited from retaining ownership of your own IP?

id Software definitely benefited from retaining ownership. If you look at the time period from 1990-2005 you'll see that the Keen and Wolf3D properties have had sequels and made money for id and Activision.

John & Tom Hall during the Ion Storm days

5b) Do you think there'll ever be a sequel to your game(s)?

Yes and there have been sequels made. I don't doubt more will be made in the future.

6) Is there any story/incident that stands out as interesting during your time associated with Apogee?

There are actually many fun stories about that time...but I'll bring one almost forgotten story up here.

I remember when I had discovered Raven Software in Madison, Wisconsin and gone over to meet with them and came back impressed with their team. I talked to the other 3 id guys and then Scott Miller (over the phone) and we both came up with a development budget that I could propose to Raven if they'd move over to PC game dev (they were Amiga guys) and license our Keen4-6 engine and make games for Apogee.

They declined the offer and one of their founders quit because he was upset with the decision.

Not 6 months later they had a deal for a PC game with EA and so we modified the Wolf3D tech and licensed it to them for Shadowcaster. Id saw no money from this engine license - the only time that had ever happened.

7) Apogee was an early pioneer in terms of teaming up with external designers and studios, and continues to do so even to this day (currently working with Human Head Studios on Prey). Why is it that so few other studios do this (mentor and fund outside projects with lesser known teams)?

Did you know that I helped Human Head Studios become a company? I gave them $250,000 so they could leave Raven, get an office, buy computers, etc. and start making a game for me using Unreal tech.

Actually, most big publishers find and publish outside projects all the time. In fact, they are always on the lookout for unknown teams with talent because the cost is much cheaper especially when the studios are outside the USA.

Much rarer is having a developer (not publisher) help other developers with their businesses and game designs because most developers are always struggling to stay alive. Id Software was one of the first to do this (Raven, Valve, Parallax, Rogue, Ritual).

John at the Ion Storm Dallas offices.

8) What the biggest difference in the industry nowadays versus when you worked with Apogee?

Well, the PC gaming industry is much more mature. We were there at the very beginning of when the hardware was just starting to be something you could do smooth scrolling and animation like console systems (with a lot of tricks and fancy coding).

Nowadays the gaming world is all 3D thanks to Wolf3D, DOOM and Quake. The world has definitely changed since those days, each of those games forever altering the course of 3D game development.

Quake brought the world into high-speed full 3D games then Quake II brought 3D acceleration and color; everything since then has been icing on the cake.

9) What have you been doing since your time with Apogee?

Games! I'm currently on my 7th startup company and I've returned to the PC from five years of mobile games and then console games. And now I'm developing in the genre that I consider the future of PC games - MMOG. If you want to know exactly what games I've been working on you can simply check my MobyGames profile.

10) If you're no longer making games, have you thought about returning to this industry? If not, why not?

N/A!!

11) Looking back, are there any missed opportunities that you wish you'd have jumped on?

The only opportunity that I'm aware of was when Paul Neurath asked me to join him as his first employee at Blue Sky Productions (later Looking Glass Technologies). I didn't take the offer because I had already planned on starting a company with my boss (Inside Out Software). If I had taken the offer at Blue Sky then an incredible amount of things would have been different. I'm glad I did what I did.

12) Other than your game(s), what's your favorite game released or produced by Apogee (or 3D Realms)?

Duke Nukem 3D, hands down - I love that game so much it's crazy. I actually listened to the music from Duke 3D for about 5 years every day while I worked....THAT'S how much I loved the game (and music). It was such a fully featured and well done game - and it was truly the very last of its breed when it was released just before Quake hit the scene.

12a) And what's your favorite 2-4 games released by anyone else?

My favorite OTHER games: Chrono Trigger, Resident Evil 4, World of Warcraft, Half Life 2.

13) Is there anything else you'd like to add about your time here or to fans of your title(s)?

If you're a fan, there's a lot of pages out on the net about the games! And if you want to know what I'm up to just check out http://rome.ro. Over and out!

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Of the games that John did with us, we still sell them all, so check out the links below. John is also a record holder with us - having the longest hair of any developer we've ever worked with. ;)

• Our History of Keen Page
• Our Keen Vorticons Catalog Page
• Our Keen Galaxy Catalog Page
• Our Wolfenstein 3D Catalog Page
• John Romero Page on Wikipedia
• John's Homepage
• John's a cartoon!

Make sure and tune in again next Monday morning, when we bring you the next in our Legacy Interview series.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 4:51 PM | Discuss this story on our forums