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By
Barbara Walter
Gamasutra
October 31, 1997
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 Features
The
Storm Speaks: An Interview with Mike Wilson, ION Storm's CEO
True
to its name, ION Storm has managed to create a storm of publicity ranging
from the pre-release hype surrounding Daikatana to the official reports
concerning Romero and Wilson's departure from id Software.
Gamasutra catches up with Mike Wilson and gets the lowdown on the "corporate-culture"
underlying ION Storm's mission to support revolutionary game design.
What
led you, John Romero and the others to form ION Storm?
John Romero, Tom Hall and Todd Porter, lead designers, and Jerry O'Flaherty,
art director, were working at other companies and were frustrated that
for whatever reasons their designs were watered down or held back. They
felt they had this game inside them they weren't being allowed to do.
Where did the company name ION Storm come from?
Tom Hall and John Romero were tossing around company name ideas, and what
the company was about, and they thought it was about imagination, innovation,
inspiration, and all these other things that ended in "ion." So they got
Ion from that. They were looking for something more, and they read this
quote from one of the game guys at Blizzard that said, something was "coming
on like an ion storm." They said, "that's cool," and they looked it up
and found an ion storm is the only thing that can escape from a black
hole. The definition of ion storm is: "positively charged particles moving
at the speed of light, escaping from a black hole."
How many people are on your team?
What time is it? We gotta be up to 85 people. Todd, Tom and John each
have a team of 15-17 people on their respective games. We also recently
picked up the Dominion game from 7th Level, which Todd and Jerry started
developing while they were there. The opportunity came for us to pick
it up, finish it and ship it under our label. With that project came some
more people. Then we picked up a group in Austin, headed by Warren Spector.
Warren had a great reputation and wanted to keep his team together. A
couple of our artists who are friends of theirs tipped me off. We called
them up, told them what ION Storm is all about, and hired them as employees.
They're working on an RPG for us. The working title is Shooter, but it's
not one!
Describe the ION Storm corporate culture.
Evolving. In the last six months, it has evolved from six guys having
a lot of laughs around the table to 85 people working on five projects.
There's a lot going on. A lot of excitement. Everybody here feels like
they are starting at the same level. They are competitive, but it is friendly
competition, since they're not in the same genre. We've only lost one
employee. Everybody here pretty much knows this is one cool place to work
and they don't want to blow it.
Your bio on ION Storm's Storm website says: "Mike looks to drive ION
Storm to the 'big leagues', re-defining what it means to be a successful
developer in the interactive entertainment industry." Describe what you
mean by "big leagues" and how you plan to reach them?
We are in the entertainment industry, not just the games industry. No
matter what level of success we've reached in the past, we're still not
in the mass consciousness. Nine out of ten people haven't heard of DOOM
or QUAKE. Our industry is still young but it's coming of age. It shouldn't
be all about technology any more. It is attracting more than your techno-geeks,
which has been our entire audience in the past. We think it's time to
create some content that can attract other people's interest--mass cultural
entertainment. We've gotten away with murder as far as content in our
games. It's not because of a lack of imagination. It's because the focus
has been on technology; making a game on the PC look as good as a game
on Nintendo or the arcades. We're pretty much there. It's time to stop
focusing on features and focus on creating some interesting content that
people care about, not those just used to being our audience. Our lead
designers have been creating successful games since the beginning. They
can take whatever is the best technology off the shelf or license it and
really change things as far as our little niche of the entertainment industry.
It's also about not being afraid to grow. I don't mean going for a quick
IPO and selling out, but growing when it makes sense. We think we've licked
the reason developers have been afraid to grow. They're afraid of being
bought out, becoming corporate, having all the creativity and magic going
away. With the way we've planned the structure of our company, we basically
have four "garage bands" with all the freedom and flexibility of a small
shop, but we share non-team equities like biz-guys, admin, webmasters,
music studios, etc. We plan to create good enough games using techniques
from other entertainment fields--TV, movies--that will compete for someone's
attention, so that someday the general public will talk about a game instead
of a TV program like Melrose Place.
Recently you were quoted as saying that ION Storm wants to move into
mass markets, sports, kids and even girls/women games. You reportedly
said, "The goal is to break out of the closet culture that is the hardcore
gamer...we don't intend to only sell games to the universe of 500,000
to 1 mill hardcore gamers...it's a tiny part of the mass culture and leaves
a lot of opportunity to move into untapped markets." Was that an accurate
quote?
It was accurate but without proper context. It looked like we were actually
looking to attack the girls market, or edutainment or whatever, that we
were just a marketing company looking for untapped niches. That's not
the case at all. The only way we would go into girls games or kids games
is if the John Romero of girls games or kids games came to us and said,
Let me do it. We don't know how to do that shit. We are just looking for
something that appeals to more than our techno-savvy, early adopter male.
This industry is so young and the leaders are so young, that we absolutely
refuse to be pigeon-holed and fall into a cycle. I'll be damned if I want
to do the same thing each year of my career. If things don't change, it
gets old real fast.
What exactly ARE ION Storm's plans for expanding into untapped markets?
As I said, we will implement the design of a lead designer. The guys we
have right now, none of them could make a sports game, or a game just
for teenager girls. But what they're creating, especially games like Tom's
and Warren's, are worlds that women could enjoy equally with men. We are
allowing these guys to create something they want to create and not worrying
about whether someone will think that's not hardcore enough..."sissified."
They're creating original compelling content that hopefully is appealing
to more people.
Have you done market research on the demand for these types of games?
Wilson: No. We don't believe in market research. We believe in making
games we want to play. Our designers are creating games each of them have
wanted to make for 2-5 years. We regard these guys as independent film
makers and trust their vision. They are all gamers. They would rather
play games than do anything else.
Will you hire new talent, or partner with them as independents?
Wilson: Whichever makes sense. We're not actively seeking anything,
we're merely open to opportunities. If something came along too good to
pass up, such as Warren Spector and his team, we react. It made more sense
for us to hire them than set up a company or do affiliate stuff. There
may well be a company out there that creates this great basketball game
that can partner with us and do something as an affiliate label. It is
just whatever the best opportunity is. We don't have a formula. We have
the business people here to make it happen in a smart way.
Aren't you worried about alienating the hardcore gamers?
I hope we don't. I think our hardcore gamers will see what we're doing
and will get into it. I think initially some diehard QUAKERS may wonder
if we are really hardcore enough for them, but as soon as they see demos
or shareware of our games they will be very quickly won over to what is
the best game... we are going so far above and beyond what is currently
expected in a game.
Is the acquisition of the Austin group the start of a trend; i.e.,
will we see ION Storm studios popping up in San Francisco, Seattle, San
Diego, etc.?
It's not a stated goal. It's just that we're set up in a way that allows
us to react to opportunities that come up. Our company is founded on the
idea of a lead designer, a director, one man with a track record who knows
how to make games, who doesn't do exactly what our other guys do. We believe
in getting behind that proven designer and implementing what visions they
have. Warren is one of those guys. To tell you the truth, there aren't
a whole lot of them left, not that many proven lead designers out there.
How do your programmers view your decision to use existing technologies
rather than developing from scratch?
It's a programmers dream, because you're taking something that fundamentally
works and tweaking it. That's a lot more fun than starting from line one
of new code. We don't hire programmers who just want to do their own engines.
We may start a technology group that is separately funded that doesn't
affect any of our game projects underway. If it is works out and (their
technology) is the hottest thing ever created, we'll use it. If it doesn't,
it was R&D and we'll use somebody else's engine.
What is your assessment of the current and near term (1-3 years) market
for games?
A lot more competition. One of the results of technology leveling out
is, it's an even playing field and easier for competition to spring up.
The big threat is that it may turn into... well, like music or film (industries)
where there's a few giant powerhouses you have to align yourself with
or you're nobody. We think there is time in this industry to save ourselves
from the mistakes made in other entertainment industries, and that independent
developers will be strong. There's definitely a lot of copycat companies
out there. But new games come up every year that create their own genre.
As long as a brand-new genre is created every year, that's huge. There's
always going to be copycats. A lot of people see it as an easy way to
make money. They throw one of those "It's like DOOM-but"-s together. And
gamers are growing up. We see at these trade shows and conferences that
they're much older than people would think. Not a lot of kids can buy
a high-end Pentium. It's people with time and money.
You've been in the games industry since the DWANGO days. What have
you experienced as the top three pitfalls (gotchas) in this industry?
Anything to do with making money off multiplayer gaming :-). Seriously,
it is people getting into this closet culture and forgetting that the
rest of the world is not part of it, forgetting that you are ignoring
99% of the population. It is very easy for people who are in this culture
not to see outside. Also, developers trying to be their own business representatives.
Business people from publishing and distributing companies look at them
as lambs to be led to slaughter. Developers need to find someone they
can trust who is a competent business person, who has an idea of what
a good deal is, or who can do the homework to find out. The reason I'm
here is because I see these guys for what they are, and only want to do
things in this business that benefit the developers and our side of the
industry. Developers shouldn't believe all the happy talk at the start
of relationships. It amazes me that some proven developers out there are
working for royalty rates that are a fourth of ours. Maybe one day we'll
start our own publishing company and do things right, treat developers
with respect.
If your best friend came to you and said, "Mike, I want to start my
own games development company," what advice would you give him?
If it's somebody who has never done it before, I would tell him to go
work for guys that have (developed games) for years. Unless he gets to
play with somebody's else's money. If he was funded with somebody else's
money, I would tell him to put together a team, and by god, go have fun.
The good thing about this industry is that advance royalty payments are
generally forgivable. So under that scenario, I would tell him, go for
it. I would also tell him, don't believe your programmers when they tell
you what they can do. I see a lot of new development groups hang themselves
with new technology. There aren't many other... actually, there aren't
any other John Carmacks in the world. I would recommend finding an existing
technology. Take a lot of the technology guesswork out of it and make
something fun.
When she's not interviewing games industry gurus, Barbara Walter recruits
fulltime staff members for games companies as owner of San Diego-based
search firm, Walter & Company. She can be reached at email (walterco@adnc.com)
or on the web (http://www.sandiego-online.com/forums/careers/
)
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