THE WIZARDS OF ID

COMPUTER-GAME FREAKS ARE WATCHING BREATHLESSLY FOR QUAKE, SON OF THE HIGHLY ADDICTIVE DOOM

By Josh Quittner 	 Monday, May 13, 1996

In the $1 billion universe of computer games, these are days of feverish anticipation. The twitchy teenagers and addicted adults who spend hours at a time blasting away the phosphorous phantoms on their PC screens know that Quake is coming. It's more like a second coming: Quake's forebear, the virtual reality, blast-'em-up sensation called Doom, is probably the most popular PC game ever created. Countless fans are currently searching 75 Websites looking for signs of Quake as if it were a visiting comet.

Quake will arrive some night during the next few weeks, when a fellow from id Software will quietly upload the game onto a secret Internet-linked computer. Within minutes, Quake will be copied to three dozen public computers nationwide. Then ravening game players, like mosquitoes attacking suntan-oiled vacationers, will suck the program into their home PCs. If they want a second course, they can transmit $50 to id's owners, four game jockeys in Mesquite, Texas, whose software skills and marketing smarts have made them richer than a lucky wildcatter.

The cloak-and-dagger antics aren't just a publicity ploy. When Doom was released to its waiting public on midnight of Dec. 10, 1993, via the University of Wisconsin's computer system, the weight of 1,500 simultaneous download demands crashed the whole network. "Maximum overload," gloats Jay Wilbur, the marketing superego behind id. "We took the whole university out."

With Doom, id perfected a clever strategy. The company gave away the first third of the game over the Internet, hooking huge numbers of players who then later paid $40 for the rest. "Shareware" versions of Doom may have been copied 30 million times. Doom generated more than $30 million in sales, $15.7 million last year.

Doom's charm wasn't its almost non-existent plot line, which involved space marines--or something. The attraction was hunt-and-be-hunted action that put the player behind a shotgun barrel (or a chain saw or a nail gun) in a hellish 3-D world of demons and fireball-spitting ogres.

Quake has a similarly empty script, but by using a radically different "graphics engine," it will deliver mesmerizing 3-D modeling. Doom addict Trent Reznor, of the rock band Nine Inch Nails, has created Quake's heavy-metal sound effects. The enhancements make Quake much more realistic than Doom--and yes, bloodier. (Kids: heads fly off and roll around on the ground! Zombies actually pull chunks of flesh out of their hides and fling them at you, then explode like red water balloons when you shoot them with your nine-inch nail gun!)

V chips aside, the public thirst for video bloodletting hasn't abated. "You couldn't have better timing for a 3-D shoot-'em-up game like Quake," says Richard Zwetchkenbaum, research director for International Data Corp., a marketing-consultant firm in Framingham, Massachusetts. The way Zwetchkenbaum sees it, Quake's arrival will feed two huge markets: the demand for sophisticated 3-D games, and for multiplayer games that can be contested remotely over the Internet.

For the netless, id plans to ship 500,000 copies of a CD-ROM-based version to retail stores. Again, the bad boys at the always-lower-case id (for "in demand") have come up with a novel retail strategy. The disk will contain the first third of the game--and cost just $5. Want more? Call the toll-free number, pay $35 via credit card, and id will unlock the rest.

Success is hardly evident from id's unpretentious headquarters next to a Ford dealer. True, it's the biggest building in town--seven stories--and game architect John Romero's custard-yellow Ferrari leaps out among the pickups and sedans in the parking lot. (It looks better beside the mostly marble, gargoyle-graced home he just built.) And yes, John Carmack, id's president and chief visionary, is having his own Ferrari custom built from parts. But the dress code is shorts and T shirts, as set by the ponytailed Romero, who at 28 is the eldest partner.

That's old enough to pass for a veteran in this industry. Romero, and twentysomethings Tom Hall (programmer), Carmack and the taciturn graphic artist Adrian Carmack (oddly, no relation), formed id in 1991. A year later, they moved from Shreveport, Louisiana, to Mesquite, neither of which will be mistaken for Silicon Valley.

Unlike Valley entrepreneurs, who have used Wall Street like an ATM, id has no plans to sell stock to the public. Why? "Because," says Wilbur, "we want to have fun." If id can sell just half the 500,000 copies of Quake it ships--not unlikely--there'll be some good times in Mesquite, or anyplace else reachable by Ferrari.