Kickin' up a storm: The Ion Storm Story Part One

Some people seem to think that buying a line-up of stars is guaranteed to bring you acclaim, money and most importantly, all-round success. However, if you look back almost all of these ventures have failed. Perhaps the best example is the Real Madrid soccer team this season. Over the summer they bought several hugely expensive players to bolster an already enviable line-up, all of whom have fallen flat on their faces. The club now lies, two managers later, one place above relegation, and it is almost certain that their riches will be swiftly disposed of come the end of the season. Bringing together a load of hot-shots can often create a frictioned, unproductive, and sometimes downright hostile working environment, and sports has demonstrated this enough times. However, three years ago this November, some of the daddies of the games industry - the "best of the best of the best" - teamed up to give us Ion Storm development. This was the equivalent of God teaming with Satan in a wrestling tag team. Abrasive personalities had seemingly become kindred spirits. The group promptly signed a massive publishing deal with Eidos, moved into the worlds most luxurious development suite atop a Dallas skyscraper, and set off to make games. The list of collaborators seemed hugely imperssive:

John "I'll make you my Bitch" Romero - he of ponytailed ID software fame. Although he was seen as the mouth rather than the brains of the ID operation, he was still hugely admired for being part of the team that created such revolutionary games as Doom and Quake. CEO Todd Porter. Advanced Technology Director Corrine Yu - a hugely admired technology programmer. Mike Wilson (now the leader of the Gathering of Developers). Flamboyant Jerry O'Flaherty. RPG Guru Tom Hall.

But even a matter of weeks into the life of this company, things had started to go wrong. Top of the already lengthy list of employee gripes were complaints that the $3-million a game up-front for six games contract that the Board of Directors had signed with Eidos was too restrictive, crushing true creative freedom in favour of deadlines and pressure on fledgling teams. And it seemed that the company was already trying to cheat on this agreement, as it bought up the unfinished and quite frankly sub-standard RTS game "Dominion: Storm over Gift 3" from 7th Level games, promptly went way over the $3 million budget limit on it, and proceeded to sell about as many copies as Al Gore has stylish suits, and in so doing netted themselves a huge loss, and a bad reputation based on their first game. To drum up renewed interest, the flamboyant Romero announced his first game for the company, the 3D shooting game Daikatana. Two years, lots of expected release dates and a huge amount of money-and-time-wasting later, this has still not appeared. Neither has the other game announced at that time, the "inventive" RPG Anachronox - both of which could have been true genre advances if they had been released on time, but now both look dated, even before release. A brighter spot on the games front is Deux Ex, a "futuristic, conspiracy-based Life-Playing-Game". That is (shockingly) on schedule and looking cutting-edge and very good.

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