So, let's switch gears and go back a bit about when you started in the business. You actually started out at DWANGO, and then moved on to id. So maybe talk a bit about those days, and what inspired you to get in the business, and, as young as you were, what made you think that you could be a VP of Marketing at DWANGO, and then move on to id and do promotions for them, and some of the ground-breaking things you did at id.

MW: I got into this business, like anybody does, because I had a buddy that was a pen and paper artist that ended up being one of the guys that did the artwork for Doom. And I hung out with those guys from id when they were still playing Dungeons & Dragons in their underwear in a lake house in Shreveport. I was maybe 20 when I met these guys, and I already had a wife and a kid, and was trying to do that "provider" thing. And eventually, while I'm watching these guys move from Shreveport to Dallas, and then they make Wolfenstein, and then all the sudden they're making money, and, like: "What is this? Computer games? Really, you're making money?" And because it's your buddy, you're like: "Wow, he bought a car."

I remember when Adrian Carmack -- he didn't send me an email, because there was no email -- he actually called me on a real phone, and said: "Dude, I just got a raise to twenty-three thousand dollars a year!" And I was like: "No wayyy! Really? Making games?" Yeah. Yeah, Apogee moved them to Dallas; gave them ten thousand dollars to make Wolfenstein.

Anyway, I was sorta doing my entrepreneurial hustler thing, and then these guys said: "Hey, these guys in Houston have come up with a way for people to be able to play Doom, from home, against each other over a modem. And this was before there was any internet, and before anybody thought that was even possible, because of bandwidth, and modems, and packet sizes, and all the same things we talk about now -- but these guys had figured it out, and they were like: "We think it's going to be pretty big. Maybe you should go help 'em." So I was just, like, the trusted buddy, and that's when I was like: "OK, I guess I'd better figure out this 'game' thing."

And I went down to Houston, and flew around the country installing little modem racks; we'd buy a bookshelf at Home Depot, and load it up with 14.4 modems and a 486 server, and leave them running in a closet all over the country! So that people could play Doom against each other from home!

At DWANGO, I also met my then-and-current business partner, Harry Miller. He also started off at DWANGO, and he stayed there when I went to id. And he was still there when we crushed DWANGO with free Quake. And eventually he forgave me! You know, wasn't my fault. We had grown DWANGO from two guys and a server in Houston, to serving most of the country. We had covered just about every major area code; it was all about area code, so you could make a local phone call. About six months into that, id said: "You know, we're going to start publishing our own stuff, because our publisher sucks. And they're making all the money. Would you like to come do that?" Yes I would.

So then I got to go to id Software, and be their VP of Marketing and Distribution, at age 24. Which was cool, you know, it's like managing The Beatles at age 24. They were kings of the world at the time. And then shortly after, John Carmack made Quake freely playable over the internet, and therefore crushed DWANGO forever. I felt really bad for my old friends at DWANGO.

Yeah, well, these guys, they were already groundbreaking when I got there. They made the coolest game in the world. They had learned from their publisher, Apogee (which is now 3DRealms), about shareware, and they were some of the early shareware marketers, and I just expounded upon that a little bit. Again, we were kings of the world, and could do whatever we wanted. So, that was my job, as a 24 year old entrepreneur! It was a fun time, and totally the Wild West.

And the reason that I did things that were sort of off-the-wall is, there was really nobody to learn from, and the people that I interfaced with at GT Interactive clearly were not gamers, and were not interested in learning that culture. They were just old guys that were in the toy business, and then they were in the Disney-knock-off-video business with Wal-Mart, then they heard about these CD-ROM things, and they had Richard Simmons Deal-A-Meal CD-ROM, and Fabio screen saver, and then they had Doom. And when I met these guys, really, the inspiration was: "Wow. Not that bright, these guys. I think I can do this. I'm not saying I'm the smartest guy in the world, but I think I can do better than this."

So, you know, we tried things like encrypted shareware for the first time, and put Quake in the 7-Eleven stores with encrypted shareware -- and of course it was all immediately hacked, but it certainly improved the shareware conversion ratio. And those guys all made lots more money, and that enabled us to renegotiate our deal with brick-and-mortar store publisher, GT Interactive.

You know, honestly? I was just really, really lucky to be there at that time, when everything was just breaking, and it was the Wild West. At the time, video games did not seem like a big opportunity -- but, you know, you see concrete evidence of the thing that was growing, and everybody you meet on the development side of the business, especially back then, were really, really smart people. Way ahead of their time. I was with these guys that were already savvy enough to be fighting for their intellectual property rights; to already be fighting to put their name on the front of the box. You know, for creative control over their marketing and their PR -- and obviously I still believe all that stuff that I learned and fought for, there, with our publisher. All these really valuable lessons.

Again, it was like early Hollywood, and you're woking with Errol Flynn or something. It was just, like, kings of the world for a little while, and a great place to start off.