Ion Storm, L.P.
TypeSubsidiary
IndustryVideo games
FoundedNovember 15, 1996 (1996-11-15) in Dallas, Texas, US
Founders
DefunctFebruary 9, 2005 (2005-02-09)
FateDissolved
Headquarters
Austin, Texas
,
US
Key people
John Romero
Tom Hall
Warren Spector
ParentEidos Interactive (1999–2005)

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 Dallas, Texas in November 1996; a branch in Austin, Texas was opened in 1997. In April 1999, Eidos Interactive acquired 51% of the company in exchange for advances to the developers. The Dallas studio closed in July 2001, leaving the Austin studio as the new headquarters. After financial struggles at Eidos Interactive, the Austin studio followed with its own closure in February 2005.

History

The Chase Tower, in which the Dallas studio was located

Formation

Ion Storm was founded by John Romero, Tom Hall, Todd Porter and Jerry O'Flaherty on November 15, 1996, with its headquarters in Dallas, Texas.[1][2] Hall came up with the name, the "Storm" part coming from Porter's first project for the company.[3] The company had signed a licensing deal with Eidos Interactive for six games, and the founders planned to scoop up titles from other companies that were close to completion, finish them, and push them out quickly to bring in initial revenue.

In a fashion similar to other dot com busts, the company spent lavishly on office decor and facilities for employees.[4] The corporate headquarters of Ion Storm were located in Suite 5400,[5] 22,000-square-foot (2,000 m2) of space in a penthouse suite on the 54th floor, the top floor, of the Chase Tower in Downtown Dallas. Ion Storm spent $2 million on the facility.[6] Lisa Chadderdon of Fast Company said that the penthouse location was "unusual".[7] For the first ten years after the construction of the JPMorgan Chase Tower, the penthouse location had been unleased.[7]

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, Warren Spector and Mike Wilson at E3 2000

John Romero's Daikatana was meant to be finished within seven months of the founding of Ion Storm and was to use the Quake engine. From very early on in the game's development, Daikatana was advertised as the brainchild of John Romero, a man famous for his work at id Software in the development of Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake. Time magazine gave Romero and Daikatana glowing coverage, saying "Everything that game designer John Romero touches turns to gore and gold."[10] During that time, in April 1999, publisher Eidos Interactive acquired a 51% stake in the company, in exchange for advances to the developers.[11][12] An early advertisement for Daikatana, created by marketer Mike Wilson and approved by Romero, was a red poster with large black lettering proclaiming "John Romero's about to make you his bitch", a reference to Romero's infamous trash talk during gaming. Nothing else was featured on this poster but a small tag-line reading "Suck It Down", an Ion Storm logo and an Eidos logo.[13] However, already behind schedule, the decision was made to port the entire game to the Quake II engine, six months into development. Daikatana was ultimately released three years late in Spring 2000, after its promised launch date of Christmas 1997. The game was released to middling critical reviews, and an aggressive advertising campaign in 1997 touting Romero's name as the reason to buy the game backfired as fans grew angry over delays.[8]

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

Deus Ex and Ion Storm director Warren Spector

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 Daikatana was a major contributing factor in the closure of Ion Storm's Dallas office. ScrewAttack named this game the #7 bust on their 2009 "Top 10 Biggest Busts", which listed the biggest failures in gaming, due to its controversial advertising and the hype that Romero built on this game, which in the end turned out to be a failure.[20] GameTrailers ranked this game the #2 biggest gaming disappointment of the decade (the 2000s), citing the game's terrible AI for friend and foe alike, pushed-back release dates, controversial magazine ad, and gossip-worthy internal drama (among other things) as "the embodiment of game's industry hubris."[21]

Since its release, Deus Ex has appeared in a number of "Greatest Games of All Time" lists and Hall of Fame features. It was included in IGN's "100 Greatest Games of All Time" (#40, #21 and #34 in 2003, 2005 and 2007, respectively), "Top 25 Modern PC Games" (4th place in 2010) and "Top 25 PC Games of All Time" (#20 and #21 in 2007 and 2009 respectively) lists.[22][23][24][25][26] GameSpy featured the game in its "Top 50 Games of All Time" (18th place in 2001) and "25 Most Memorable Games of the Past 5 Years" (15th place in 2004) lists,[27][28] and in the site's "Hall of Fame".[29] PC Gamer placed Deus Ex on its "Top 100 PC Games of All Time" (#2, #2, #1 by staff and #4 by readers in 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2010 respectively) and "50 Best Games of All Time" (#10 and #27 in 2001 and 2005) lists,[30][31][32][33][34][35] and it was awarded 1st place in PC Zone's "101 Best PC Games Ever" feature.[36] It was also included in Yahoo! UK Video Games' "100 Greatest Computer Games of All Time" (28th place) list,[37] and in Edge's "The 100 Best Videogames" [sic] (29th place in 2007) and "100 Best Games to Play Today" (57th place in 2009) lists.[38][39] Deus Ex was named the second-best game of the 2000s by Gamasutra.[40] In 2012, Time named it one of the 100 greatest video games of all time,[41] and G4tv ranked it as the 53rd best game of all time for its "complex and well-crafted story that was really the start of players making choices that genuinely affect the outcome."[42] 1UP.com listed it as one of the most important games of all time, calling its influence "too massive to properly gauge."[43]

References

  1. ↑ Lane, Rick (February 16, 2018). "The History of Ion Storm". PC Gamer. Retrieved October 1, 2019.
  2. ↑ Keefer, John (March 31, 2006). "GameSpy Retro: Developer Origins, Page 14 of 19". GameSpy. Archived from the original on June 9, 2007.
  3. ↑ "Does John Romero Still Enjoy Shooting People?". Next Generation. No. 30. Imagine Media. June 1997. pp. 8–12.
  4. 1 2 Tetlow, Karin (July 1998). "Dallas Ion Storm". Interiors Magazine. Archived from the original on September 8, 2008. Retrieved September 25, 2008.
  5. ↑ Directory of Corporate Affiliations Library. National Register Publishing Company. 2001. p. 821.
  6. ↑ Clark, Stuart (February 20, 1999). "Denting the ego of Id". The Sydney Morning Herald. p. 209. Retrieved September 7, 2021 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. 1 2 3 Chadderdon, Lisa. "Demons Over Dallas". Archived March 17, 2012, at the Wayback Machine. Fast Company. September 30, 1998.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Kushner, David (2003). Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created An Empire And Transformed Pop Culture. Random House. 89. ISBN 0-375-50524-5.
  9. ↑ Biederman, Christine (January 14, 1999). "Stormy Weather". Dallas Observer. Voice Media Group. Archived from the original on October 3, 2012. Retrieved January 28, 2022.
  10. ↑ Michael Krantz (June 24, 2001). "Beyond Doom and Quake". Time. Archived from the original on October 6, 2008. Retrieved July 7, 2008.
  11. ↑ "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.
  12. ↑ Biederman, Christine (April 29, 1999). "Vapor war". Archived from the original on October 29, 2017. Retrieved October 29, 2017.
  13. ↑ 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.
  14. ↑ Wolpaw, Erik (June 16, 2001). "Anachronox for PC Review". GameSpot. Archived from the original on March 9, 2013. Retrieved January 14, 2007.
  15. ↑ 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.
  16. ↑ "ION Storm Dallas Closing Down". Shacknews. Archived from the original on October 29, 2017. Retrieved October 29, 2017.
  17. ↑ "Eidos closes Ion Storm Austin". GamesIndustry.biz. February 11, 2005. Retrieved June 30, 2021.
  18. ↑ "The Top 7... PR Disasters" Archived 2007-09-27 at the Wayback Machine Game Radar
  19. ↑ 10 Years Later, Romero Apologizes for Daikatana Tom's Hardware, May 18, 2010 (Article by Kevin Parrish)
  20. ↑ ScrewAttack Video Game, Top 10 Biggest Busts Archived August 8, 2014, at the Wayback Machine, ScrewAttack's Top 10.
  21. ↑ GameTrailers, Top 10 Disappointments Of The Decade Archived June 14, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
  22. ↑ "The Top 25 Modern PC Games". IGN. September 27, 2010. Archived from the original on October 22, 2012. Retrieved November 16, 2010.
  23. ↑ "IGN's Top 100 Games". IGN. Archived from the original on July 18, 2011. Retrieved March 20, 2007.
  24. ↑ "IGN's Top 100 Games of All Time". IGN. Archived from the original on May 8, 2012. Retrieved March 20, 2007.
  25. ↑ "IGN's Top 100 Games of All Time". IGN. 2007. Archived from the original on February 15, 2012. Retrieved December 1, 2007.
  26. ↑ 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.
  27. ↑ "GameSpy's Top 50 Games of All Time". GameSpy. Archived from the original on August 18, 2004. Retrieved March 20, 2007.
  28. ↑ "GameSpy's 25 Most Memorable Games". GameSpy. Archived from the original on January 4, 2012. Retrieved September 22, 2006.
  29. ↑ Leeper, Justin (December 28, 2003). "GameSpy Hall of Fame: Deus Ex". GameSpy. Archived from the original on January 4, 2012. Retrieved November 17, 2010.
  30. ↑ "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 {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  31. ↑ "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.
  32. ↑ "PC Gamer's Top 100". PC Gamer. August 5, 2008. Archived from the original on August 11, 2011. Retrieved November 16, 2010.
  33. ↑ "PC Gamer's Best 100". PC Gamer. August 13, 2007. Archived from the original on October 26, 2012. Retrieved November 15, 2010.
  34. ↑ "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}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  35. ↑ "PC Gamer Readers' Top 100: 20–1". PC Gamer. May 12, 2010. Archived from the original on February 8, 2011. Retrieved November 17, 2010.
  36. ↑ 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.
  37. ↑ "100 Greatest Games". Yahoo! UK. Archived from the original on July 18, 2011. Retrieved March 20, 2007.
  38. ↑ Edge Presents: The 100 Best Videogames. Future Publishing. 2007.
  39. ↑ "The 100 best Games To Play Today". Edge. March 9, 2009. Archived from the original on March 25, 2012. Retrieved November 17, 2010.
  40. ↑ "Gamasutra: Top 12 Games of the Decade". Gamasutra. December 30, 2009. Archived from the original on January 2, 2010. Retrieved January 20, 2010.
  41. ↑ "All-TIME 100 Video Games". Time. Time Inc. November 15, 2012. Archived from the original on November 16, 2012. Retrieved November 15, 2012.
  42. ↑ "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.
  43. ↑ Adkins, Nickolai. "The Essential 100, No. 70: Deus Ex". 1UP.com. Ziff Davis. Archived from the original on March 18, 2013. Retrieved July 4, 2014.
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