Doom Co-Creators Get Social

Andy Chalk

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Nov 12, 2002
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Doom Co-Creators Get Social


id Software co-founders John Romero and Tom Hall are together again at Loot Drop, a new game studio dedicated to social game development.

For most of us, the names John Romero and Tom Hall inspire hellish visions of rampaging demons, heavy weaponry and copious amounts of blood and gore. For good reason; as two of the four co-founders of Quake [http://www.idsoftware.com]. But those days are long gone and they now appear interested in making a splash in an entirely different emerging videogame market: that of the social.

Loot Drop will be focused on the development of social games on RockYou [http://www.facebook.com], which is turning back to the social game space after spending last year dedicated solely to its ad network business. RockYou will publish, promote and maintain the game.

Romero and Hall have a long history together, beginning at id and running through Ion Storm, Monkeystone Games and Midway. But that doesn't explain why two pioneers of the guns-n-guts school of gaming are so determined to make some noise in the casual-social arena.

"I really like the faster cycles where you can respond a lot faster to the users," Romero told VentureBeat [http://venturebeat.com/2011/01/20/rockyou-signs-deal-with-doom-creator-john-romeros-social-game-studio-loot-drop/]. "We are not interested at all in going back to the normal game industry cycle where it takes years to do a game. This audience is unbelievably massive, and we are very early in its history. I feel like it is 1981 again, and the industry is ready for an explosion of creativity."

Details about what Loot Drop is working on for RockYou or when it will be ready weren't revealed.


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Nouw

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Mar 18, 2009
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Interesting, although I'd much prefer them to work on Doom 4 >.>.

Ah well I'll give it a look on Facebook. Eventually...
 

Fr]anc[is

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May 13, 2010
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You seem to have run out of rockets, you can either wait 5 minutes, or pay $500000000
 

Andy Chalk

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Nov 12, 2002
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Everybody makes mistakes. Daikatana was amplified because of the expectations heaped upon Romero by Doom and Quake. Hell, I was pissed off at the guy for years for sucking Looking Glass Studios into the Ion Storm gravity well. And although I don't expect he'll ever again make a game I'll have any interest in playing, at least not as long as he's on this social/casual kick, I think it's time to give the man a break on the whole "make you his *****" thing.

Tom Hall, for the record, has been cool throughout, and looks much better since he shaved his head.
 

Formica Archonis

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Nov 13, 2009
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Andy Chalk said:
Romero and Hall have a long history together, beginning at id and running through Ion Storm, Monkeystone Games and Midway. But that doesn't explain why two pioneers of the guns-n-guts school of gaming are so determined to make some noise in the casual-social arena.
Allow me to summarize the problem I see with this.
Andy Chalk said:
Crowd: "YAY!"

Andy Chalk said:
Ion Storm
Crowd: "BOOO!" (With cries of "Deus Ex!" and one guy screaming "Anachronox!" mixed in.)

Andy Chalk said:
Monkeystone Games
Crowd: "Who?"

Andy Chalk said:
and Midway
Crowd: Descends into chaos with a mix of "Who?", "They were at Midway?", "Isn't Midway bankrupt?" and "MORTAL KOMBAT!!! BRUH NUH NUHNUHNUH NUH!"

The track record starts strong, gets rocky, then... kinda... peters out.
 

SovietSecrets

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Nov 16, 2008
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I'm still sad that no Doom 4 was shown at QuakeCon 2010. I was insanely looking forward to that.
 

kitsuta

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Jan 10, 2011
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You know who I'd like to see start making social games?

Nintendo. They'd make the Wii Sports of social games. ...or the Wii Music. Either way, it'd be entertaining.

Back to real life, I find their reasoning the most interesting. While Schafer &co have run to the refuge of XBLA, and many other developers are finding good success as indie companies, these guys are acting like social games are the only games with quick turnaround and innovation. Perhaps they are just trapped in a certain way of thinking about regular console/PC games. Either way, having more developers that are not Zynga is a good thing. Now they just have to make actual games instead of experiments in behavioral psychology and it'll all be good.
 

JediMB

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Oct 25, 2008
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This could be terribly interesting or just plain terrible.

Only time will tell.

But my number one question is:

Do I have to shoot John Romero with a rocket launcher to win the game?
 

Sixcess

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Feb 27, 2010
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Andy Chalk said:
"We are not interested at all in going back to the normal game industry cycle where it takes years to do a game."
After Daikatana I'd be amazed if anyone would ever have trusted Romero with several years worth of development budget again.