Id Software
id Software LLC is a video game development company founded on 1991-02-01 by four former Softdisk employees, John Carmack, Adrian Carmack (no relation to John Carmack), John Romero, and Tom Hall, and with help from business manager Jay Wilbur. The four had been writing rather simple games for Softdisk, but, after John Carmack invented a way to pull off fast scrolling in EGA graphics, the four left and formed id Software.
Before forming their company, the group referred to themselves "Ideas From the Deep." Then, they changed to just "ID," an abbreviation for "In Demand." Not liking that, changed the meaning to "id," one of the structures of Sigmund Freud's model for the psyche (id, ego, and super-ego). Despite it being a proper noun, the company name is always spelled with a lowercase i. It is common for people unfamiliar with the company to incorrectly pronounce it as "eye-dee," short for "identification."
id Software has been instrumental in the formation of the first-person shooter video game genre, pioneering a lot of the early technology, terminology, and creating several early games including Hovertank One, Catacomb 3-D, Wolfenstein 3-D, Doom, and Quake. The company also pioneered several video game engines including the Commander Keen engine, the Wolfenstein 3-D engine, the Doom engine, the Quake engine, and several others, and the networked versus multiplayer game structure, death match.
None of the founding members of id Software still work for the company; most were fired as a result of in-fighting with John Carmack. Tom Hall was fired during the development of Doom after creative disagreements with the others. John Romero was fired after Quake due to business disagreements with John Carmack. A lot of the company's creative talent either quit or was fired after Quake because of John Carmack. Adrian Carmack was essentially fired in 2005 for refusing to sell his stake in the company. John Carmack finally quit in 2013 because he was unable to convince the new executives to target virtual reality headsets.
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Personal
I loved the products of id Software from the early to mid-1990s, however, I was unimpressed with Quake, and continued to be unimpressed with each subsequent space marine game that the company kept coming out with, always scraping the bottom of the barrel for another one. However, I have enjoyed several games made by other companies made using the id Tech engines.
Games
These are the games id Software developed that are important to me. For all games, see the category.
Staff
These are people who worked at id whose work I appreciate.
Links
