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Originally Posted by Vodstok Daikatana. This game was just awful. Bad. Terrible. This is what happens when you get an arrogant team lead who causes a production to have a turnover rate of an entire team every few months (because they couldnt work with him. his name is John Romero. |
The history of Daikatana was certainly a troubled one but it's problems didn't come from an arrogrant lead rather from one who was too naive. it was essentially decisions that sounded very noble on paper that did DK in.
Ion Storm was launched with a great deal of fanfare and money but it suffered from a lack of necessary foresight. The office was a lavish glass-walled penthouse suite - after the initial euphoria, the team had to cover their cubicles with black paper to avoid the glare of sunlight on their monitors.
Romero hired a lot of complete newcomers based on samples of mods/maps to work on his magnum opus. Unfortunately they didn't have the temperament to handle the harsh schedules of game development. Ion was supposed to represent the triumph of game design over technology but technology proved too big a hurdle. After working for more than a year on DK using the
Quake engine, they saw the graphical advancements of the
Quake II engine and realized that if their game had to be competitive they would have to redo everything in the new technology. This was what exposed the rawness of the developers, who cracked under the unforgiving pressure of professional game development.
Romero was not an arrogant leader but he was basically unsuitable; he was too used to doing things themselves and, from his days with the pros at id, relying on others to do their job without supervision. Also Romero was too busy in media activities (some of which, like the "I'll make you my bitch" ad backfired since people interpreted it as arrogance on his part and became fodder for the growing anti-Ion press that was building up) and not devoting enough face-to-face with the group. This was disastrous for the inexperienced team that could have done with stronger guidance. Internal political chicanery (involving a certain
Todd Porter) also caused rifts in the team that Romero appeared blissfully unaware of.
The walkouts that happened were essentially the last straw. There was a brilliant expose of this at
salon.com, unless they've taken it down. With Romero becoming so desparate to get team members that practically novice mod/map-makers would get hired based on tiny samples of work on the internet, disaster was inevitable.
Sure, Romero is an attention-loving chap but he was never arrogant. His fans will recall him to be one of the friendliest and most unassuming guys they came in contact with. If anything he had so much contact with gamers that his work slipped up, as his former colleagues from id will confirm. I recall, during the making of DK, I had a brief amount of e-mail correspondence with Romero and it was truly a nice experience chatting with him about games, music (he's a huge guitar-rock fan like me). he was even nice enough to send me a level for Quake that hadn't made it to the retail version (originally designed as a part of The Dismal Oubliette but cut out for size problems). I really like Romero as a person and would like for him to get back to what he does best, programming and designing levels for games. Let someone else handle the leadership end.