Ion Storm
Ion Storm, L.P. was an American video game developer founded by John Romero and Tom Hall, both formerly of id Software. Despite an impressive pedigree and high expectations, the company only produced one commercial and critical success, 2000's Deus Ex.
The company was founded in
History
Formation
Ion Storm was founded by
In a fashion similar to other
Russ Berger Design Group, a firm most known for its work in designing recording studios, was responsible for the interior design of the headquarters. This included a ten-foot-wide company logo set into the terrazzo floor of the lobby and matching green elevator doors.[4] The headquarters included a "crash room", a dormitory facility with two beds, three couches, a VCR, a wide-screen television, and two telephone booths. It also housed a gaming room with a ping-pong table and four arcade machines, a changing area, and a shower room. The headquarters included these facilities because many employees in the video game industry work long hours at a time.[7] The sun shone through the office's glass rooftop directly into the monitors of the employees, forcing them to cover their cubicles with black fabric.[8]
Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3
The company's first attempt was Todd Porter's real-time strategy Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3. Dominion was already partially completed by Todd Porter's previous employer, 7th Level, and was expected to take $50,000 and three months to complete. Instead, development continued for over a year costing hundreds of thousands. When it was finally released in 1998 it received poor ratings and equally poor sales.[9]
Daikatana
John Romero's
After the game's release, co-founders Romero and Hall along with level designer (and Romero's girlfriend at the time) Stevie Case left the company in 2001 to form Monkeystone Games, a game company that produced mobile games.
Deus Ex
In late 1997, Warren Spector was asked to found the Austin branch of Ion Storm. By keeping well clear of the troubles at the Dallas office, Ion Storm's Austin branch was more successful. Deus Ex, a first-person stealth shooter drawing from a melange of conspiracy theories, released to critical and commercial success in June 2000. With the demise of Looking Glass Studios, Eidos Interactive secured the rights to the Thief franchise and together with Spector tried to relocate as many of the Looking Glass team to Austin as was possible.
Anachronox
Like Daikatana, Tom Hall's role-playing game Anachronox was moved over to the Quake II engine. These changes brought costly delays to an already beleaguered product line. Although Anachronox received critical acclaim for its vast storyline and characters,[14] it, too, was commercially unsuccessful on its release in June 2001.[8]
Closure
Romero and Hall left the company after producing Anachronox in July 2001. On July 17, 2001, four and a half years after the company's creation, Eidos Interactive closed the Dallas office.[15][16] The Austin office remained open to produce Deus Ex: Invisible War and Thief: Deadly Shadows until Spector's departure to "pursue personal interests outside the company" in 2004. A number of other senior staff also left at about the same time. After finishing their 6 game contract, on February 9, 2005, Eidos announced that the Austin office would also close, meaning the end of Ion Storm as a company.[17]
Games developed
Ion Storm Dallas
Year | Title | Platform(s) |
---|---|---|
1998 | Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3 | Microsoft Windows |
2000 | Daikatana | Microsoft Windows, Nintendo 64 |
2001 | Anachronox | Microsoft Windows |
Ion Storm Austin
Year | Title | Platform(s) |
---|---|---|
2000 | Deus Ex | Microsoft Windows, Classic Mac OS, PlayStation 2 |
2003 | Deus Ex: Invisible War | Microsoft Windows, Xbox |
2004 | Thief: Deadly Shadows | Microsoft Windows, Xbox |
Legacy
The rise and fall of the company is documented in great detail in the book Masters of Doom.[8] Doom was just one of a series of blockbuster games Romero had designed, and Ion Storm was founded in no small part on his celebrity status within the industry. This elevation of the game creators over the products themselves caused problems early on, evidenced in a 1997 advertisement which hyped the subsequently delayed Daikatana by boasting "John Romero's About To Make You His Bitch....Suck it down".[18]
In 2010, Romero would later apologize for the infamous advertisement. Romero stated in an interview that "up until that ad, I felt I had a great relationship with the gamer and the game development community and that ad changed everything. That stupid ad. I regret it and I apologize for it."[19]
The critical and commercial failure of
Since its release, Deus Ex has appeared in a number of "Greatest Games of All Time" lists and
References
- ^ Lane, Rick (February 16, 2018). "The History of Ion Storm". PC Gamer. Retrieved October 1, 2019.
- ^ Keefer, John (March 31, 2006). "GameSpy Retro: Developer Origins, Page 14 of 19". GameSpy. Archived from the original on June 9, 2007.
- Imagine Media. June 1997. pp. 8–12.
- ^ a b Tetlow, Karin (July 1998). "Dallas Ion Storm". Interiors Magazine. Archived from the original on September 8, 2008. Retrieved September 25, 2008.
- ^ Directory of Corporate Affiliations Library. National Register Publishing Company. 2001. p. 821.
- Newspapers.com.
- ^ Fast Company. September 30, 1998.
- ^ ISBN 0-375-50524-5.
- ^ Biederman, Christine (January 14, 1999). "Stormy Weather". Dallas Observer. Voice Media Group. Archived from the original on October 3, 2012. Retrieved January 28, 2022.
- ^ Michael Krantz (June 24, 2001). "Beyond Doom and Quake". Time. Archived from the original on October 6, 2008. Retrieved July 7, 2008.
- ^ "More Eye On ION in the Observer - Blue's News Story". www.bluesnews.com. Archived from the original on October 29, 2017. Retrieved October 29, 2017.
- ^ Biederman, Christine (April 29, 1999). "Vapor war". Archived from the original on October 29, 2017. Retrieved October 29, 2017.
- ^ GameSpy Staff (June 9–13, 2003). "The 25 Dumbest Moments in Gaming". GameSpy. Archived from the original on December 11, 2005. Retrieved April 27, 2014.
- ^ Wolpaw, Erik (June 16, 2001). "Anachronox for PC Review". GameSpot. Archived from the original on March 9, 2013. Retrieved January 14, 2007.
- ^ Divine, Christian (January 2, 2002). "A hardcore elegy for Ion Storm". Salon.com. Archived from the original on November 30, 2011. Retrieved September 25, 2008.
- ^ "ION Storm Dallas Closing Down". Shacknews. Archived from the original on October 29, 2017. Retrieved October 29, 2017.
- ^ "Eidos closes Ion Storm Austin". GamesIndustry.biz. February 11, 2005. Retrieved June 30, 2021.
- ^ "The Top 7... PR Disasters" Archived 2007-09-27 at the Wayback Machine Game Radar
- ^ 10 Years Later, Romero Apologizes for Daikatana Tom's Hardware, May 18, 2010 (Article by Kevin Parrish)
- ScrewAttack's Top 10.
- ^ GameTrailers, Top 10 Disappointments Of The Decade Archived June 14, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "The Top 25 Modern PC Games". IGN. September 27, 2010. Archived from the original on October 22, 2012. Retrieved November 16, 2010.
- ^ "IGN's Top 100 Games". IGN. Archived from the original on July 18, 2011. Retrieved March 20, 2007.
- ^ "IGN's Top 100 Games of All Time". IGN. Archived from the original on May 8, 2012. Retrieved March 20, 2007.
- ^ "IGN's Top 100 Games of All Time". IGN. 2007. Archived from the original on February 15, 2012. Retrieved December 1, 2007.
- ^ Adams, Dan; Butts, Steve; Onyett, Charles (March 16, 2007). "Top 25 PC Games of All Time". IGN. Archived from the original on August 1, 2017. Retrieved March 20, 2009.
- ^ "GameSpy's Top 50 Games of All Time". GameSpy. Archived from the original on August 18, 2004. Retrieved March 20, 2007.
- ^ "GameSpy's 25 Most Memorable Games". GameSpy. Archived from the original on January 4, 2012. Retrieved September 22, 2006.
- ^ Leeper, Justin (December 28, 2003). "GameSpy Hall of Fame: Deus Ex". GameSpy. Archived from the original on January 4, 2012. Retrieved November 17, 2010.
- ^ "PC Gamer". October 2001.
#10 out of 50 Let us count the ways. Deus Ex was a shoo-in to win the 2000 PC Gamer Game of the Year award (as well as receiving similar high honors from around the industry). With its genre-blending mix of roleplaying, first-person shooting, and action/adventure elements combined with multiple pathways to successfully completing missions, Deus Ex created its own genre – the Immersive Simulation
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(help) - ^ "PC Gamer's top 100 PC Games of all time". PC Gamer. February 5, 2010. Archived from the original on November 6, 2013. Retrieved November 15, 2010.
- ^ "PC Gamer's Top 100". PC Gamer. August 5, 2008. Archived from the original on August 11, 2011. Retrieved November 16, 2010.
- ^ "PC Gamer's Best 100". PC Gamer. August 13, 2007. Archived from the original on October 26, 2012. Retrieved November 15, 2010.
- ^ "PC Gamer". April 2005.
#27 out of 50 PC Gamer's Best Game of 2000 opened gamers' (and developers') eyes to "immersive entertainment"
{{cite journal}}
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(help) - ^ "PC Gamer Readers' Top 100: 20–1". PC Gamer. May 12, 2010. Archived from the original on February 8, 2011. Retrieved November 17, 2010.
- ^ Sefton, Jamie (April 26, 2007). "PC Zone votes Deus Ex the best PC game ever!". PC Zone. PC Zone. Archived from the original on October 25, 2012. Retrieved November 7, 2007.
- ^ "100 Greatest Games". Yahoo! UK. Archived from the original on July 18, 2011. Retrieved March 20, 2007.
- Future Publishing. 2007.
- ^ "The 100 best Games To Play Today". Edge. March 9, 2009. Archived from the original on March 25, 2012. Retrieved November 17, 2010.
- ^ "Gamasutra: Top 12 Games of the Decade". Gamasutra. December 30, 2009. Archived from the original on January 2, 2010. Retrieved January 20, 2010.
- ^ "All-TIME 100 Video Games". Time. Time Inc. November 15, 2012. Archived from the original on November 16, 2012. Retrieved November 15, 2012.
- ^ "Top 100 Video Games of All Time #53 – Deus Ex –". G4tv.com. June 13, 2012. Archived from the original on March 10, 2013. Retrieved January 7, 2013.
- 1UP.com. Ziff Davis. Archived from the originalon March 18, 2013. Retrieved July 4, 2014.