Chapter 9 Chapter 8 Summoning Demons

"Oh——" A scream from hell, hoarse and desperate, who is struggling on the verge of death?Or a little alien just born?Or is someone doing a tracheotomy?And a dentist surgeon?Nope, it's from id's office. The office building called Town East Tower has six floors and is boxy with black glass exterior walls. It is located in the suburb of Mesquite, next to the LBJ Expressway, and the road is lined with local Various shops in the city: BBB used car dealership, Sheppler's Western Store, and Mesquite's entertainment center: the rodeo arena.In this rural landscape, the black cube of Zhendong Tower looks like an ominous thing from outer space. In fact, it is just some ordinary lawyers or truck driving schools, but it looks out of place with the surrounding environment, just like the people of id Same.

After deciding to give the world some color, id moved to this dark place. This environment is closer to the theme they are working on, and id named their office Suite 666.The scream came from one of the rooms, and that sound was part of their daily life. To them, it was just ordinary background music. After all, they were playing a game about the devil. What sound could be better than this Does screaming sound more appropriate? In fact, in the fall of 1992, everything fell into place for id.Computer magazines and shareware magazines were filled with stories about Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny, with id and Celestial being hailed as heroes in pushing the shareware model forward.They cornered the top four spots on the charts: two Keen games, Wolfenstein 3D, and Celestial's own Duke Nukem, a side-scrolling shooter starring an Arnold Schwarzenegger (Arnold Schwarzenegger) type tough guy.The media called Tianji: "The most extraordinary, even unprecedented success model in the entertainment software industry... It can already challenge the giants in the industry."

It seems that everyone believed in these cowhide, thinking that Tianji Company is so great, except for id.In their view, although Scott was a friend, he was not doing his job properly.The news comes from a Celestial employee: Sean Green, who has been friends with Romero since Keen was released.Sean grew up in Garland, an avid gamer and aspiring programmer, a rock-and-roll anomaly in a conservative place where he was sent away for refusing to cut his long hair. Go to night school to listen to teachings.When he was working at Tianji, if someone called and expressed dissatisfaction with the ability to shoot wolfhounds in Wolfenstein 3D, his reply would be: "Then you think killing people is right?" Apart from these hypocritical complaints, he told Rome Luo, there are some serious dissatisfaction: some players cannot purchase id games through Tianji.

Scott once posted a job ad on the door of a computer store: "Do you like to play games? Can you answer the phone and play games all day? If you can, come on, our salary is six dollars an hour." Naturally, most of those who came were young students, and these waiters were obsessed with playing slingshots and other games all day long.To make matters worse, there is no computer network in Tianji's office, and all orders are recorded on small slips of paper and then stapled together.Kevin personally called Tianji and found out that this was indeed the case—he couldn't book id's games.

It can't go on like this.Although Scott is their friend, and it was Scott who led id to start a business, he is now a redundant person. id can do things like publishing shareware by itself, so why give half of it to him? ? Doom will only be more successful than Wolfenstein 3D.Jay, Tom, and Adrian unanimously agreed to get rid of Tianji, not to mention Romero, who was the first to propose to leave "Software". He has been thinking about expanding the business.The only objection came from Carmack. Contrary to Romero, Carmack is very conservative about the company's development, and their contradictions on this point are gradually emerging.Carmack, as he has said repeatedly, he only hopes to concentrate on writing programs, as long as he has money to buy pizza and Coke to satisfy his hunger and thirst, he has no interest in running a large company. He believes that the better the business The bigger the business, the more chores they have to deal with orders and marketing, the more distracted they are and the easier it is to forget what they are called to do: making great games.

Jay assured Carmack that leaving Celestial would only be good for id: "We're going to be truly independent, we're not going to depend on anyone, we're going to create opportunities for ourselves, we can't just sit here and wait for Lady Luck to knock me The door, we're going to open the door, grab her by the collar and drag her in!" And, Carmack can continue to study technology without distraction.Unable to hold back Jay, Carmack finally agreed: Scott was out. Scott accepted id's departure calmly. He suspected id a long time ago that he was going to start his own company.Scott is already very satisfied that the cooperation between them can last for so long. id's game gang Tianji has become the leader in the sharing game market, and both Scott and Brassard have driven expensive sports cars.And, there are already other people making excellent games for Astronomical, such as Tim Sweeney, a talented programmer in Maryland, whose company Epic MegaGames has made several popular games for Astronomical.In addition, there is Tianji's own "Duke Nukem", which even surpassed "Wolfenstein 3D" and became the number one, and its sequel is about to be released.It is true that id is very important to Tianji, but Scott believes that he can live well without id.

Scott wasn't the only one leaving id before Doom set sail - there was Miko.Carmack's cat has always been id's heart disease. When she was at the lake house, she never stayed in the nest restlessly, and now her temper is even more weird. Carmack broke the news to the folks at id after she pissed on Carmack's new leather sofa: "Mizi is causing me nothing but trouble. I'm sending her to an animal shelter." "What?" Romero asked in disbelief.Mizi had always been a close friend of Carmack's, and they had even listed Mizi as Carmack's other half in the company's employee directory-now, she just left? "Do you know what you're doing?" Romero asked Carmack. "Nobody's going to take her, those people are going to kill her! You're going to kill her!"

Carmack shrugged disapprovingly and returned to his room to continue working. This rule applies to a cat, or a program, or even, a person: when it becomes a problem, let it go, or, if necessary, weed it out. ﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡ From the first moment he stepped into the East Tower, Tom didn't like it. Compared with the lakeside cabins and apartment rooms full of creative atmosphere, it feels isolated and isolated. When id works, it always gathers together. Now, everyone has their own office, everyone—except Tom himself. On the first day of moving to a new house, everyone is choosing their own room. Carmack and Romero's are close together. Adrian and Kevin are getting closer and closer. They decide to share an office. Spotted a corner of the great room. "This place is good for an office," he said, "just get two more screens to surround it." Others have no objection to his choice, but the screen has not been installed for a long time, and every time Tom asks Jay, Jay told him that the screen was on the way, so Tom had no choice but to stick two tapes on the ground to enclose his creative world.

The invisible barrier is not just those two tapes.Romero gradually moved away from Tom. In Tom's words, Romero's bit has changed since he came here.Tom would often sit in a corner and watch Romero walk by talking and laughing with Adrian and Kevin. This feeling of isolation made Tom sad. disagreement.Romero opted for a fast-paced carnage game in favor of Carmack's engine, leaving Keanley's world of stark characters behind, and since then a divide has slowly opened between technology and design.Tom is still the main designer of id, but what he is designing now is not what he wants, and he still has hope. Maybe, the world of Doom will be different?Things did go as Tom wanted at first.

Around the huge dark wood desk covered with pizza boxes and the LBJ Freeway outside the window, everyone gathered around the table to discuss Carmack's proposal: those devils from the depths of hell.The basic theme is undisputed: it will be a world full of sci-fi and horror similar to "Alien", of course, plus the demons and horror of "The Ghost".But as the chief designer, Tom has made up his mind. This can no longer be as plotless as "German Headquarters 3D", and it can no longer be a massacre without emotion. He used to redefine what is Death, now he wants to make Doom go further in the performance of the theme, like a movie.

"How about a story like this: Scientists conducted research on a strange planet at the end of the universe, and then it burst open suddenly, and all kinds of aliens poured out, but as the incident progressed, you discovered that these were from hell. The devils from here, the deeper you go into this world, the more terrifying you will find them. You found the mysterious hole on that planet and went in to visit hell. When you came out, the devils in hell followed into the real world and turned it upside down." Although Romero was more in favor of this idea at first, Carmack said: "The story background of the game is like the plot in a porn movie. Although it is there, it is not the key at all." Tom gritted his teeth.In addition, Carmack added that the engine has been greatly improved this time. He does not want to make a game composed of chapters and levels. "We want to make a seamless world." Entering a new level, the player will feel that he is traveling back and forth in a huge world. Tom hated Carmack's suggestion. It was against their usual practice. Players like to clear one level and then move on to the next level, not some seamless world.His eyes turned to Romero, who again sided with Carmack. Tom went back to his corner alone, and continued to wait for the screen. ﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡ It wasn't just Romero who realized Carmack's importance.One afternoon, Jay and Kevin got together for a smoke and chatted about the so-called VIP Life Insurance, which the company had purchased for Carmack.Kevin suggested that the company buy a copy for everyone except Carmack. Jay replied: "Everyone except Carmack is irrelevant." Mark has become the leader in charge of id, and he is still the dungeon master with the rulebook in his arms. Carmack's various technical attempts during the production of "Shadowmaker" have gradually matured, especially the effect of brightness attenuation. The knowledge of programming is developed based on limited resources, and people can only develop on the basis of current hardware and software. In the fall of 1992, Carmack was still using a VGA graphics card, that is, a maximum of 256 colors could be displayed on the screen at the same time, and he wanted to make the world of Doom smoothly transition from near and far to darkness. The solution is to combine these 256 colors ingeniously, that is, to use the so-called "color palette".For example, you can put 16 kinds of red in it, from bright red to dark red.Carmack then applied different colors to the walls at different distances, depending on where the player was in the room.If the player walks into a hall or open space, the program does a quick calculation to apply the darkest color to the farthest place, and then dynamically adjusts the brightness nearby as the player moves on.In this way, the world of Doom has become not only more realistic, but also more eerie. In addition, Carmack and Romero have always been looking forward to getting rid of the limitation of "pixels": id's previous game worlds, "Kean" and "German Headquarters 3D", were all built like tiles, such as Join pieces of tiles painted with bricks to form a wall, or use walls to form a room.The two of them, especially Romero, hope to have more flexible forms to create the game world, such as having rooms that make people feel huge, weird, and hideous.In Wolfenstein 3D, every corner of a wall is at ninety degrees, whereas in Doom, they are at any angle. Carmack seemed confident in the face of these challenges; as computers got more powerful, so did his technology.He began to experiment with drawing polygons of any shape and size, and adding texture maps to the ceiling and floor.When Romero looked over Carmack's shoulder at his screen, as usual, Romero was stunned again.Carmack briefed Romero on the progress on lighting and polygons, and talked about his plans, such as making the game easier for players to modify, and support for the Internet, so that players can play against each other. . Romero immediately saw the potential of these technologies, an ability that Carmack himself did not possess, and he was not shy about it.Moreover, Romero himself is a programmer, he can communicate with Carmack in the language of programmers, Romero can draw the blueprint in his heart to Carmack, and then realize it by his code.Romero's first thought when he saw the brightness decay was: What can we do with this technology?He asked Carmack: "So you can also change the brightness of the light, can you make it dynamic? Or does it have to be pre-calculated?" "Well, I can make it dynamic," Carmack replied. "Cool! Then we can have light tubes! Think about it, you're walking in this bird room, and suddenly—beep, beep—the lights are all off!" Romero rushed back to his room and brought up the map editor—the program he and Tom used to build the world of Doom. Like the previous level editor, using it like an architectural designer, the screen displayed Lines similar to the floor plan of a building can be clicked and dragged to generate walls.The editor can also switch to the in-game camera, so Romero can easily go into the room he is building to see the effect.Adrian and Kevin are responsible for drawing texture images, or wallpapers, that level editors use to decorate rooms, and by extension, entire worlds. With the map editor, Romero couldn't wait to use Carmack's technology to build the Doom in his mind. He knew how great Carmack's technology was, not only because he was also a programmer, so he admired Carmack's Talent; more importantly, he is a gamer who has never played a game like this on PC, or any other platform in his life.He added light tubes to the room, he let the walls climb and fall to his heart's content, all with the intent of maximizing the capabilities of the Carmack's engine. Carmack couldn't be happier. What more could he want from a partner who appreciates his work and spares no effort in composing beautiful music with it? Romero was also elated: Carmack's technology would bring him even greater success. And Tom felt nothing but depression.Since that meeting, he's been alone in his quest to map out Doom's characters, setting, motivations, and storyline: what the software industry calls a "design document."He wrote: Scientists' experiments on a planet got into trouble, and the player was sent to that faraway place to clean up the mess, only to discover that those researchers had accidentally opened the portals of hell, releasing a large number of murderous demons— Much like Romero did in Dungeons and Dragons.When the game started, the player was playing cards with other soldiers, when suddenly the lights flickered and the devil rushed in and tore apart the player's best friend.Tom hopes that through this sudden tragedy, the player will feel the horror immediately.He named the lost protagonist Buddy—his own name in Dungeons and Dragons. But id no one cares about Tom's job.Carmack casually said in a meeting that he no longer thinks about the seamless world, and the game is still composed of independent levels as usual. "But this design document, which took me two months to complete, is all written according to a coherent world! Isn't this what you want?" Tom shouted in disappointment. All his files had been turned into scrap paper. "Your Doom bible won't help us finish this game," Carmack told Tom, id never wrote any design documents, why start writing this stuff now? Doom doesn't need a backstory, it's a game about chases and fights, as long as the player feels the tension at all times, the player doesn't need to know why everything is happening on the screen.Carmack suggested that Tom should stop worrying about the document and experience the new engine like Romero did. What can it be used for.” He also suggested that Tom go to the library and look through books about military bases for inspiration. Romero agreed with Carmack's suggestion that, while he greatly appreciated Tom's documentation, a story-driven game was clearly not a good fit for Carmack's engine, a world where no one would have time to sit down and play cards, Doom and Wolfenstein Like Doom 3D, it is also a fast-paced killing game, but Doom is faster and bloodier than Wolfenstein 3D. Tom completely gave up the idea of ​​adding a plot to the game, and another plot is about to happen in reality. A mindset similar to Carmack's approach to programming—innovate, optimize, remove all stumbling blocks—has been present throughout id's short history: in games, Keen was abandoned for Wolfenstein 3D, the floor And the ceiling was removed for performance, and in life, Al, Scott, and even Miko, one by one, fell victim to this model.No one knows who will be next. ﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡ Romero stormed into id's kitchen, waving a picture of Bill Burger, the legendary programmer who kept his burger in a drawer for days on end.Tom, Kevin, and Adrian cheered and followed Romero, who pinned the portrait to a chair and picked up a table knife.Revenge is about to begin. id signed a deal with this Bill not long ago to port Wolfenstein 3D to the Super Nintendo, and the release date was approaching, but Bill didn't come up with anything, and he finally admitted that he shouldn't have taken over the game He ran into trouble for one thing: he was an employee of the game company Interplay, and it was clearly stated in his work contract that the copyright of all the results of the employee belonged to the company. Therefore, the "Wolnstein 3D" he transplanted now falls to Interplay under the name. The folks at id are outraged. "See," Romero said, "when you're dependent on other people, this shit happens." Tom took out his pencil and sketched an ugly Bill with a hamburger dangling from the corner of his greedy mouth. What a piece of meat, Romero said, grabbing the paper, and now we're going to make him pay.In the kitchen, they took turns stabbing at the portrait, laughing, shouting, and urging each other, but it was not enough to vent their anger, and the chairs also suffered and were trampled to pieces.When Bill came to id's office a few days later, the kitchen was still in a mess. Bill saw the paper with his name hanging on a knife blade, so he asked cautiously: "Oh, what is this?" id gave him The answer was to terminate the contract.The Super Nintendo port will be done by Carmack himself. Pranks like this are commonplace at id.Humiliation is here a challenge and competition of creativity and artistic beauty.Adrian had installed a program on Romero's machine. When Romero turned it on, a picture of him having some kind of unconventional sex would appear on the screen. After the success of Wolfenstein 3D, Tom appeared on the covers of some magazines, which naturally became the creative material of Romero and Adrian. Their most successful work used a small sausage, two meatballs and A small jar of whipped cream. The extended id family even had a nanny: business assistant Donna Jackson.Donna has a sweet southern accent and long shaggy hair. She likes to wear pink business clothes and lipstick of the same color.She quickly became id's housekeeper, buying snacks and sodas, making sure no one was hungry, healthy, and happy.Her former hobby was gambling in the casinos in Shreveport, and after arriving at id, she quickly became a sharpshooter in the game.She calls id's 20-somethings "my boys," and the folks at id affectionately call her id's mom, or Miss Donna. But this mom is just an employee of id, she's not going to reprimand anyone, not even when the kids are wrecking havoc in the office.Wrecking to vent has become a sport at id, and the room is littered with smashed keyboards, monitors, disks.For example, Romero would walk up to Kevin and joke with him: "Hey, Kevin, that trash can said you were a poor birdman." Kevin would respond blankly: "Oh, really?" Then A flying kick kicked the trash can into the corner. Adrian and Kevin's room has become a dark arts dream workshop. Doom was the kind of game Adrian had long wanted, one in which he could unleash his nightmares.Together with the rest of id, they created the hideous creatures: the Imp - a brown monster with blood-red eyes, a gorilla-like body, but with protruding steel spikes on its shoulders; the Demon - a bull-like The guy with two horns, bloody mouth, red body, disgusting; there is the most miserable mechanical demon (Cyber ​​Demon) - one arm has been converted into a machine gun, and the other arm , but for some unknown reason, the work was not completed, only half of the bloody broken arm dangling around. The animation of the Nazis in Wolfenstein 3D required Adrian to paint frame by frame to show their various stances and steps, and now, thanks to technological advancements, when they animate the monsters in Doom With new means, and the effect is more realistic.They first made clay models of the monsters, recorded them from different angles, then read the tapes into a computer, colored them, and then used a tool written by Carmack called "Fuzzy Pumper Palette" (Fuzzy Pumper Palette) Shop) to create coherent animations. "The end result is pretty distorted," says Kevin, "but, this is Doom." Adrian and Kevin are having so much fun, they even try to scan themselves into the game.One day, Kevin rolled up his sleeves and stood behind the camera, sticking his hand out from under the lens to record various weapons firing, such as plastic shotguns, toy pistols, and one that Tom borrowed from his girlfriend. The chainsaw, the real thing, looks exactly like the one used by the main character in Ghostbusters.These images will appear directly at the bottom of the screen in the game, and the player will seem to be watching their own hand-actually Kevin's hand-reaching out into that world.Adrian also scanned his snakeskin boots and used the mottled pattern as the wallpaper in the game, and when Kevin dragged his injured knee to work one day, they did not forget to take the bloody wound Scan it down.In the world of Doom, there is nothing out of the ordinary. The new year has arrived, and the world of Doom has begun to take shape, and id decided to reveal the news to the outside world.Tom wrote in the press release: "Texas, Dallas, New Year's Day 1993 - a new round of PC game revolution is coming. id Software's Doom will let you re-recognize what a computer is... In this world, You will face enemies from another time and space! You were a soldier stationed in a science laboratory, facing various documents and reports all day long. When you were extremely bored with your work, your life changed a little: A tide of monsters appeared in front of you, and the people in the entire base were either killed or possessed. You looked around blankly, only seeing corpses scattered all over the field. What can you do? What should you do? What are you going to do? No Choose, you must fight your way out! Destroy their lair! And when you finally find out the truth, you suddenly feel that the world in front of you is not where you are, and you don’t understand anything that you once thought was simple..." Tom also described several technological breakthroughs of the new engine, and even mentioned multiplayer games-they haven't realized this function at all: "The game supports two players to play against each other directly through the serial port or dial-up, and if it is in On a LAN, four players can join together... We sincerely expect Doom to be the culprit for a massive drop in productivity around the world." The words have been let out, and Doom is becoming more and more clear in id's mind.Players will walk through a huge maze, with the barrel of a shotgun in front of them, the room is winding and eerie, the surrounding walls are mostly black, gray, brown, and occasionally a door or two is gorgeous blue. id also deliberately made the corners of the wall into various shapes other than vertical, such as octagon.In addition, there will be stairs and elevators in the game.Carmack's engine now also supports windows in walls, through which the player can see into the next room, but doesn't know how to get there.Fluorescent lights were also added to the game.In the end, the demons and ghosts lurking in every corner make the whole world full of vitality and murderous intent. When spring came, id picked a few levels and made a demo version, which was just a very immature version, which is the so-called alpha version in the software industry.It was distributed to some friends and beta players, as well as several selected outlets. Computer Gaming World followed with a glowing review: "We don't know what's wrong with the groundwater source in that small Texas town, but it's clearly giving these lads quite a few weird hallucinations, To make matters worse, it also magically brought them incredible graphic programming techniques to bring these hallucinations to life on our screens in a game called: Doom." Although the outside world is very optimistic about id, inside id, the two Johns are still very dissatisfied with Tom's work.Tom followed Carmack's advice and read a lot of military building materials. He was so serious that the levels he made looked the same as the real military bases. He even stubbornly included the rejected design documents. The scene of the scene brought to Doom, such as a few soldiers sitting around the table playing cards; the room he described is very similar to the real office: gray walls, reddish-brown carpet, office chairs, filing cabinets and so on.That was unacceptable to Romero, and even though Tom was trying to please Carmack, Doom couldn't be like this.Romero wants to show everyone what game design is and what Doom is, even if Carmack's engine needs to be greatly improved for this. Romero went back to his room, opened a can of Coke, and went to work, where he sat clicking and dragging his mouse for hours on end.He draws a line segment in the map editor, and switches to the main perspective from time to time to see the effect.He knew what he was going to do, he was going to break the conventions, throw the conventions aside, to hell with the nondescript military bunkers, he wanted big, wide, twisted, weird, abstract spaces.A few days later, Romero had the effect he wanted, and he brought the id people into his office and showed them the world. What came into view at the beginning was a small gray room. Going to the right, there is a wall in front of you. Through the gap in the wall, you can see the courtyard outside, but there is no door to go out. There is only a hall next to it, and there are two Huge light tubes, the end of the hall seems to extend to the outside, you can see the gloomy sky and the misty distant mountains, but after walking in, you find that the road just leads to another room, and the wall inside is bigger than the front wall. Higher, just before you get used to the flickering lights, a group of puppet soldiers possessed by demons rushed towards you, and suddenly there was a burst of gunfire, and you only saw those rotting bodies flashing in the darkness. Romero stopped and looked at the crowd around the monitors, the answer written clearly on their faces—Tom's clichéd levels were out, Romero was: That's game design, that's Doom. Since then, Tom's situation has gone from bad to dismal.It seemed that anything he made, anything he tried to make, was thrown aside.Tom couldn't help thinking back to the situation when he finished sixth grade, some people became technology fidgeters, some people were striving to be a good student, and you, don't know where to go, only know that you seem to be on the wrong path.Romero is now almost as if Tom didn't exist: no more joking together, no more smashing things together, no more babbling alien languages.As with everyone else, Tom's suggestion of a game was met with disapproval.Soon, Tom began to hate the office, the place that only made him sad, so he got a girlfriend and stayed out when he had nothing to do. It didn't take long for Carmack to find Romero and suggest that Tom should be fired.Romero knows what the decision means, and while none of the founders has left the company so far, they've considered the possibility.They've sat down and discussed it since the early days of id, and all agree wholeheartedly: id's fate — not any of them's — is what matters.The experience in "Floppy Disk" made them understand how fatal damage to the company would be caused by unnecessary internal friction, and they didn't want ID to be ruined by such things. They reached an agreement on two points: First, the dismissal of a shareholder required the unanimous consent of other shareholders of the company. At that time, Adrian, Romero, Tom, and Carmack were the most important shareholders of the company. Wen and Jay also own small shares; secondly, once fired, the person loses all his shares and the future of the company will have nothing to do with him.They don't want someone leaving to jeopardize the company's success, which means that Tom won't get even a dime from Doom, let alone Keen and Wolfenstein 3D, and his future will only be on his own. Hoping to give Tom another chance, Romero convinced Carmack.He had other things on his mind—he was married again!He and Beth became more and more in love with each other, and they both regarded each other as their indispensable companions. Beth gave Romero enough space to fight for his career. She also liked to cook and enjoy life. The game wasn't of much interest, but she wouldn't get in the way of Romero doing what he wanted. Romero and Beth went to Aruba for their honeymoon on July 4, 1993, and when he returned he was more motivated than ever.Although his son in California keeps in touch with him, those single days are still difficult for him, and his relationship with his ex-wife Kelly has become more civilized, but now, he has a new family and a new beginning. Wolfenstein 3D was bringing in around $100,000 a month for id, the Doom demo was critically acclaimed, and everything was fine: everything—Romelo soon discovered—except Tom.No one could stand him any longer, and everyone demanded that Tom be fired immediately, but Romero finally agreed. Romero wished to tell his old friend the news himself, so he invited Tom to dinner at his house, which Beth would cook for himself.Tom was very happy, he hadn't been on good terms with Romero for a long time.At the dinner table, they seemed to be back in the past, joking loudly, talking about games and movies.In such an atmosphere, Romero couldn't speak. The next day, there was a meeting of all shareholders, and when Tom walked in, he found everyone sitting around the table, looking down at the carpet. "Tom," Carmack finally said, "it's clear the company can't go on like this, and we ask you to resign." Tom thought he had misheard, and then he remembered that Romero had talked to him the night before, and there was something he wanted to tell him, but couldn't. Tom froze in place, he numbly lifted a piece of sticker on the table and rubbed it in the palm of his hand.尽管有过那么多次暗示和提醒，但他没料到真的有这么一天，沮丧和羞辱啃食着他的内心，他觉得这可能不只是因为游戏上的分歧，他一直以来都觉得大家不喜欢他，他不是来自一个破碎的家庭，也不是个叛逆的少年，他是个在父母的溺爱下长大的孩子，他是个大学毕业生。他开始小声为自己辩解，他谈起他可以为Doom做的种种事情，但大家的答复只是沉默，不一会，他自己的声音也渐渐微弱了下去。大家请他离开会议室，他们要再讨论一下。 当会议室的门在汤姆身后关上时，他的心情忽然有了转变，一股力量在他身体里苏醒。那么多天以来，他都那么的沮丧、那么的凄凉、感觉那么的可有可无，他从未正视过导致这些的原因，更没有考虑过怎么才能摆脱这样的处境。他回想起刚毕业时那些衣冠革履的面试人员问他这是不是他想要的工作，他那时的回答是：不，这不是我要的，我想做的是游戏；现在，五年过去了，他的回答还是：不，这不是我想做的游戏。 他走回办公室，告诉大家：“不用再讨论了，就这样，我辞职。” 汤姆在id的游戏结束了，其他人的则刚刚开始。