Feature
Quake may be the most influential game of all time. Not the best game, not the most innovative, but the most influential. Without it, the industry would be a very different place today. It gave rise to many of aspects of modern gaming that we take for granted. Its developers, modders, and even the very code of the game itself are ubiquitous in the industry today. Id Software's 1996 FPS gave rise to 3D gaming, client/server online play, the most prolific mod scene in history, multiplayer clans, server browsers, eSports, mouse-look as the PC control standard, Valve and dozens of other companies, and even 1UP's sister website, GameSpy. Without Quake, it's unlikely another game that featured the same suite of innovations would have come along. We would have had to wait for each of those things one at a time.
Quake came together almost by accident. There was no design document for the first half of its development, and the game that shipped was very different from what the creators first held in their minds in the beginning (if they had anything in mind). In 1994 id Software released Doom II. The company was riding high and seemed unstoppable. They announced that their next game would be Quake, a project they had started and abandoned years earlier, according to John Romero, id co-founder lead game designer, and Tools Programmer, "When we finished our first Commander Keen series on December 14th, 1990, we immediately started working on Quake in January. It was a top-down RPG, and was supposed to be based on our D&D; campaign we were playing. The character of Quake was in this group called the Silver Shadow Band. It was a very small elite group of super badass characters. [He was this] Thor-like guy, and he had this amazing hammer, and this thing called the Hellgate Cube -- which was a sentient inter-dimensional cube that would rotate around him and go do its own thing depending on what was going on." He continues "We worked on it for two weeks and it was like, 'you know what, there's no way that this thing is looking as awesome as Quake really is, so let's just stop making Quake right now. So we decided to just sort of shelve it and wait until we had really great technology to make this a reality."
The tech came quickly. Each new id game was a technological revolution. Wolfenstein made the first-person shooter mainstream; Doom introduced the world to deathmatch and modding. It seemed only natural that id's next game would be an equal leap forward. The team made it look so easy. It was anything but. The tech required for Quake was far more complex than they ever imagined, and the id Software that started the game was very different from the one that finished it. In the year following the game's release developer blogs and interviews to the press were filled with gossip about id's troubles. At the same time, the team was revolutionizing 3D graphics and online play with an OpenGL version for then-cutting edge 3D accelerators (known today simply as video cards) and QuakeWorld, which added server browsing and improved online performance.
How did a small company of less than two dozen change the entire industry? The various stories from the game's developers fit together in a Rashomon-like way. Often during our interviews, we would hear the same story from three different people and get three drastically different takes on the past. Sure, the general facts line up, but if we didn't know better, we'd suspect our interview subjects were working on different games entirely. The men who were there making Quake can't even agree on the origins of the game's most revolutionary feature, internet play.
Before Quake, online gaming was something for those willing to pay a premium. Services like DWANGO (Dial-up Wide-Area Network Game Operation) and TEN (Total Entertainment Network) sprang up overnight to provide online play for games like Duke Nukem 3D and Doom that supported LAN play, but had no internet functionality. Quake changed everything with the creation of the server/client architecture still used by games today. Players would login to a host computer that was preferably dedicated solely to that task alone. It was a revolutionary idea at the time, according to level designer Tim Willits, "In 1996 there wasn't much of an internet. Doom was a peer-to peer-system, and a pain in the ass. Quake was the first true PC server/client architecture system. People told us we were crazy. They said, why would anyone run a Quake server on their machine to allow people they don't know to play a game?"
See Also
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Comments (53)
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wow
Posted: Mar 25, 2012 12:00AM PST by DarkshinesRawwr
these articles are so much better than the trash and shit on IGN; props to the writer of this! Very interesting XD
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For further reading...
Posted: Nov 06, 2011 12:00AM PST by SquirrelEiserloh
...check out Masters Of Doom by David Kushner. A fun and easy read.
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Great writing.
Posted: Oct 26, 2011 12:00AM PST by falcon_spawn
Another quality article. I learned lots of stuff reading this. I had no idea that Quake, a game I thought for years as just another id game, did so much for the video-game universe.
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I heart Quake.
Posted: Oct 24, 2011 12:00AM PST by DamnThoseWiffyDogs
Quake was what got me into gaming. I miss the days of CTF on the Texas and Purple vs. Yellow servers. I would always be losing my shit in grapple chases.
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Quake Rulez!
Posted: Oct 21, 2011 12:00AM PST by PLATINO_ITA
Quake: was, is , will be FOREVER the best game ever! and i'm a teenager from 1996!! :-) quake rulez!!
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Mouse-Look was Marathon's Innovation
Posted: Oct 21, 2011 12:00AM PST by UnicornWhisprer
I am sorry to be a dick and point out one partial inaccuracy in such a great article, but the mouse-look was the innovation of the polarizing developer Bungie 2 years prior in Marathon. I do realize that you Michael Moore'd it by saying "mouse look as the PC standard" and Marathon was a Macintosh game, but being the condescending douchebag I tend to be, I still felt I needed to correct it.
Now, despite the nerd-ragey tone of what I just now wrote, I loved this article for both the fascinating subject matter and for the quality of the Winterhalter's writing. I really miss in depth features on gaming like this since the death of nerd-publications not financed by Gamestop.
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The Article DIdn't Say That
Posted: Oct 22, 2011 12:00AM PST by Rwinterhalter
Yes, Marathon had mouse look, but it didn't invent it. You can go all the way back to Wolfenstein and find that Romero reccomended playing that game with mouse look in the game's strategy guide. What Quake did, is make that control scheme standard and nearly universal.
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Thank you id
Posted: Oct 20, 2011 12:00AM PST by whiskey002
As corney as it sounds, Quake changed my life. I never would have been a gamer if my neighbor hadn't come over and said "I gotta show you something, it's going to blow your mind" He downloaded Quake on my PC and I've never looked back. I have fond memories of playing Quake on line and now Rage is here and I'm totaly useless around the house once again!!! Thank you id, your the best.
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Still love QUAKE!
Posted: Oct 18, 2011 12:00AM PST by jsdeprey
I am 40 years old, never been to a quake
con (to far away for me) but I have always loved this game, my name is in the
first or second quakelive skin pack (evil clown), and I still think that is so
cool. before quake I played 4 person DOOM on a BBS, and you had to fool the IPX
networking in DOOM to work over a dialup serial link, it way crazy. But those
days changed my life, and drew me in to computers more and more, its the reason
I work on the ISP service industry today I am sure. before QUAKE I used to sit
in IRC channels and wait for John Romero to come in and give us ideas for what
he thought QUAKE would be like, I actually printed the IRC chat out back then
and saved it, I only wish I had it in digital form cause it is pretty neat to
read. I still have that shit somewhere. QUAKE was a big leap back then from
DOOM's 2d characters, and to us that where waiting for that game at the time
was mind blowing when we saw the beta or test that was 1 level you could run
around in, just to see the 3d characters and weapons, and the fact you could
have complex levels with room over one another was crazy. I still love that
game and will never forget it. I still real all anything Carmack writes today
and we all know he is a pretty special guy... THANKS!
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Gaming History
Posted: Oct 16, 2011 12:00AM PST by ApocalypticSpasm
From all of the discension that occurred during it's development, it is surprising to a degree that it actually got completed. Thanks for the article.
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Gaming History
Posted: Oct 16, 2011 12:00AM PST by ApocalypticSpasm
Terrificly written article. I couldn't stop reading it. Hearing all of the discension that occurred during it's development almost makes me wonder how it ever got completed. It really does look like a great deal of what goes into modern gaming did originate with Quake. Thanks for the article. I learned a lot.
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Good Article
Posted: Oct 15, 2011 12:00AM PST by Timberwolf8889
Good article, nice that you managed to get all of those interviews, interesting stuff.
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Those were the days!
Posted: Oct 13, 2011 12:00AM PST by DaveFrehley
Oh man, I've got some great memories making my own maps in Quake. My best friend created maps for Heretic & Hexen and designed all kinds booby traps that only he knew of that he could use against me. I did the same thing with Quake. He & I are Star Trek nerds so I would use Star Trek texture packs I found and I would create different rooms within a starship. (i.e. the bridge, transporter room, holodeck) I came up with some pretty creative traps to get him.... like a transporter pad that would crush him to death rather than transport him. I also tried to come up with inventive ways to create special effects that would replicate Star Trek stuff. I designed a holodeck that would change instantly at the push of a button... a shuttlecraft that would fly around a big open area. Ahhh those were the days. lol
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My Memory
Posted: Oct 12, 2011 12:00AM PST by Necroserpent
My first memory of Quake was it being advertised in a game magazine with a picture of a knight and dragon. Then when I played it on my 133Mhz it was this dark, gory, improved kind of Doom. My friends and I were blown away by the realism and enjoyed finding various easter eggs the developers had snuck in. Though I still favor Doom, the original Quake deserves mass respect.
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Quake never changed anything
Posted: Oct 12, 2011 12:00AM PST by BananaJane
It's as horrible as it ever was.
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Denial or Ignorance?
Posted: Oct 15, 2011 12:00AM PST by Circlestrafe
They say don't feed the trolls, but I can't let someone starve to death, even if it's just for attention. Quake is, was, and forever shall be the best online multiplayer DM & CTF game ever!
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Quake ran fine on a 486.
Posted: Oct 12, 2011 12:00AM PST by Attorney_at_LOL
The article is mistaken - Quake didn't require a 75 Mhz Pentium to run. It ran at a fairly solid 20-30 fps on my 486DX2 66 Mhz Packard Hell. Awesome memories: )
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Quake was awesome, but...
Posted: Oct 12, 2011 12:00AM PST by aharrison1988
Quake II was the shit, first ID game I ever played and most awesome FPS ever, the guns were so cool and remembrable...
Never played Quake 4, although I really want to, but no xbox or powerful PC, oh well...
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Is there more to this piece?
Posted: Oct 11, 2011 12:00AM PST by secularsage
This was an interesting read, but I don't think it did a very good job of explaining how Quake changed gaming forever. We get a few points (internet servers, the 3D engine, modding, clans) before it turns into a piece about the game's development history. And that, while interesting, is a little different from what the headline promises.
It would have been nice if you guys had taken the concept a little further and interviewed more of the developers who have Quake DNA in their more modern games, and maybe even offered some more insight into the evolution of the Quake engine in modern gaming. Sorry to gripe, but I was hoping that a 6-page piece would have a little bit more meat and a little bit less of John Romero contradicting everyone else about his role in the project.
Also, I hate to nitpick, but the phrase for revealing a conflict of interest is not "Full Discloser," but rather, "Full Disclosure."
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yeah
Posted: Oct 13, 2011 12:00AM PST by pinchedace
It was a great article, but I agree that they could have said more about how they shaped the fps. It's interesting to see how these guys were getting on in the end, it seems like the game is like the yoko ono of the game world.
My friend had 3 comps growing up, we used to deathmatch with his dad all the time. Espicially with quake 2. We used to download so many maps and mods it was awesome. Its a testament to the code they wrote for quake 1 too, the game played at a faster framerate than duke nukem 3d. Quake (like doom) is one of the few games of that age that you can still pick up and play today.
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master of doom
Posted: Oct 19, 2011 12:00AM PST by kudoshinchi
if you want you can read the book call "master of doom" it does explain more details of how they created quake
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Quake is why I work in video games
Posted: Oct 11, 2011 12:00AM PST by EvangM
It's not an exaggeration to say Quake literally changed my life. Fresh out of high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do with myself. College was not for me, but I knew I liked tinkering with computers and I loved video games of all types. When Quake came out, I was instantly addicted and sunk thousands of hours into Q1 and QWTF (Quakeworld Team Fortress for the uninitiated) and led a well-known TF clan for many years. Indirectly, it taught me all sorts of valuable lessons about what it is to be a leader, how to act responsibly and be civil with others, and many other important facets of interacting with a large community of fellow gamers. I would not a multiplayer QA lead and QA manager without Quake in my life, I'm absolutely certain of that. Thanks so much iD and thanks 1Up for taking me down memory lane!
Sincerely,
a Quake fan for life
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Very awesome!
Posted: Oct 11, 2011 12:00AM PST by crimsonsquall
That was fascinating, thank you for the insightful article. And that video of Carmack...good god the nineties were rough. :)
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Yuck, Quake
Posted: Oct 11, 2011 12:00AM PST by Mr.LametoWatch
I played a demo of 1, played II and IV on Xbox 360, tested out III and I find the games so medicore. The Doom games were so much more stylish and if you want a good 3D FPS, turn to UT.
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Hmmm
Posted: Oct 12, 2011 12:00AM PST by ZiggyMoShriff
Kinda missing the point of the article. Although i do agree UT is the shit
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bsofh
Posted: Oct 10, 2011 12:00AM PST by ChaironDeCeleste
Back at work, each time when the UniX network had a slowdown, it didn't take long until the team received angry and worried calls - the canonic answer was 'no worries - we're just implementing new software.' Next moment they were Clan MadDog again, vs Clan Crimson (the Novell network pc guys in another building on the campus)...
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I remember ....
Posted: Oct 10, 2011 12:00AM PST by Nachtritter
Installing that game, DOOM II, and others like ROTT, DN3D and Descent on the PCs in the small computer tech room in college (this was a tiny college in a small Quebec town) back in the 90s. LAN parties in the middle of a computer classroom during break hours. My, that was so f*n awesome!
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makes you wonder
Posted: Oct 10, 2011 12:00AM PST by invidcyborg
Custom skins, levels, weapons, talk shows and capture the flag. When I logged onto a 32 player CTF map I was blown away. This game had a 6 year track record. Always something new coming out for Q2 every day. The days of bringing your computer over to people's houses and LAN partying. People overclocking to the point their shit catches fire. Grand local social circles were made with these games, Wonder when did these type of games became so blase?
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My favorite Quake-related memory:
Posted: Oct 10, 2011 12:00AM PST by Keylimepies
My folks bought me Quake 3 Team Arena on Dreamcast the year it came out for Christmas, and every night over Christmas vacation I would lock myself in my room and stay up till sunrise playing online. I caught a lot of flak from my parents for sleeping in so late when they wanted me to be in the family room since my aunts and uncles were over, but staying up till the crack of dawn fragging fools over Sega's 56k modem was way more appealing. No regrets.
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Saturn
Posted: Oct 10, 2011 12:00AM PST by ShadowTheSecond
Played it on the Saturn first, and later on the PC. The PC version is naturally better, but the Saturn version blew my young mind away.
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Ah, memories!
Posted: Oct 10, 2011 12:00AM PST by spanky_mcnasty
Well I say memories...didn't have a PC when I was a lad (!), so my experiences of Quake and Hexen were N64 ports (Hexen 64...tut tut tut), and Doom on a friends computer. It's amazing how remenants of these games still come up over time!
And if it wern't for Quake, there surely wouldn't be cloud gaming.
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That feel
Posted: Oct 10, 2011 12:00AM PST by Revrant
Augh, that's good mojo, thanks guys, after this catastrophe called RAGE I needed to remember the company that started my gaming romance as a kid, those days on QuakeSpy bumping into the founders of what would one day be GameSpy, and first meeting Dave "Fargo" Kosak, now at Blizzard.
Those were the days, man, when you were a kid and the horrifying blood curdling Shambler scream sent you reeling, I played it through just a little while ago and that scream still makes me jump a bit.
Now...RAGE, which I can't even get to work on my powerhouse PC because it's so poorly bug tested, so poorly optimized, and so directed at consoles that id just didn't even bother trying to get a quality experience for me.
What happened, dudes?
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Impulse 9
Posted: Oct 10, 2011 12:00AM PST by amicusorange
Man, what a great article. It's hard to believe that Quake could be perceived as overlooked -- playing it, working on half-completed mods for it with friends, LAN parties, the whole thing was a defining part of my adolescence. It really was the birth of the mod and clan community, which was a grand old time. On the other hand, I don't really miss the days of keeping server IPs in a .txt, then printing out the document and keeping a log of good servers. You actually had to have a fair bit of know-how just to make the games work properly.
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No Mention of Trent Reznor/NIN?
Posted: Oct 10, 2011 12:00AM PST by Titus_Pullo
I'm surprised there's no mention of Trent Reznor providing the soundtrack, given how big NIN were in the immediate aftermath of The Downward Spiral and Cobain's suicide, it was a pretty huge thing to have him scoring the game. While it wasn't ground breaking as people like Michael Jackson had provided music for Sonic 3, it's one of the first examples of Rock music and computer games colliding.
The fact the guy has gone on to win an Oscar only emphasises this.
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great read.
Posted: Oct 10, 2011 12:00AM PST by kittenkilla
quake was amazing. i didn't catch it until two came out. those bomb throwing guys pissed me off so much. scroll left they get you. scroll right they get you. scroll back and then right they still get you... fuck. fuck those things.
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Agreed, should have mentioned Trent
Posted: Oct 12, 2011 12:00AM PST by SpinoPrime
It was HUGE that they got him to make the soundtrack for this game. I love NIN and was a little dissapointed to not see this in the article. The soundtrack to Quake was great. They even had the NIN logo on the ammo boxes for the nailgun. Also, Kittenkilla, what does that have to do with the post you replied to?
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hear hear
Posted: Oct 19, 2011 12:00AM PST by foodi
Somewhat shockingly, little is typically said of the powerful mood Quake created. One of the essential aspects of Quake's longevity was its atmosphere, and music and sfx have everything to do with that. Not only was Quake obviously breaking technical ground, but it was taking an unconventional and unique aesthetic approach as well. This, atleast in my mind, raised the idsoftware folks to the level of artisans rather than fanboy-catering geeks.
This despite the unfocused/troubled nature of the development. Quite an accomplishment.
None of their other games, prior to or since, has managed this quite as well as Quake did.
It certainly didn't hurt that at this point in his career Trent could literally do no wrong. In many ways i consider his work on Quake to be some of his most memorable (and underrated).
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Ah Quake...
Posted: Oct 10, 2011 12:00AM PST by imercenary
When I first played Quake I was still sticking to keyboard-only controls and the singleplayer campaign absolutely crushed me. But I was stubborn. It wasn't until I played a LAN multiplayer match with my friend did I see the errors of my ways and adopted the keyboard+mouse controls we all know and love today. (With inverted mouse controls! Its all about the flight sims!)
Oh and online multiplayer? MADNESS! My 9600 baud modem would never allow it!
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My absolute fav to this day
Posted: Oct 10, 2011 12:00AM PST by BadTron
Quake will forever hold a piece of my heart. When I first bought this marvel, I only got it because a X-Men game was an expansion pack to Quake. At first play, Quake blown me away forever. Left behind the N64 or SNES and stayed hooked. The music score was hauntingly amazing. To this day, I still listen to this high calibur score created by Trent Reznor. It makes perfect Holyween music :D The graphics, beautifully cadent. It deffinitely has aged but with a nostalgic charm. I would gaze at the details in this game from the slow cloud movement to the haunting lighting effects. Quake really has helped shape the gaming industry to what we see today. I look to the 'dark' day when we can exalt the glory of a true Quake HD version.
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Romero told me he uses this
Posted: Oct 10, 2011 12:00AM PST by Rwinterhalter
If you want Quake in HD. You can use this to mod it to more modern form. http://icculus.org/twilight/darkplaces/
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Glad you've addressed this game's importance in the industry
Posted: Oct 10, 2011 12:00AM PST by asoasojapanapuh
Incredilbe article! Boy I have so many amazing memories with this game.
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Quake
Posted: Oct 10, 2011 12:00AM PST by 6StringSamurai
Quake Multiplay and the mods were the best. Quake II really brought it up a notch. I remember Battle of the Sexes. ActionQuake II was one of the best.
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