Ion Storm | Code Like It's 198x

“Judging by the line-up of talent,” Edge wrote in February 1997, “Ion Storm is all set to become the next id.” John Romero, fresh from Doom and Quake, founded it in Dallas in 1996 with his old id Software colleague Tom Hall. It had a ten-year publishing deal with Eidos and offices at the top of a downtown skyscraper. Four years later its first big game, Daikatana, was a byword for hype and delay. Yet the same company, through a second studio in Austin, also made Deus Ex, which Edge called “the anti-Daikatana” and BAFTA named the PC game of 2000.

Fast facts

Founded: Dallas, Texas, 1996, by John Romero and Tom Hall, with Todd Porter, Mike Wilson, Jerry O’Flaherty and Bob Wright among the founding team.
Publisher and owner: Eidos Interactive, whose ten-year publishing deal Edge reported in February 1997, and which took majority control in 1999.
Studios: Dallas (1996–2001) and Austin, run by Warren Spector (1997–2005).
Dallas games: Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3 (1998), Daikatana (2000), Anachronox (2001).
Austin games: Deus Ex (2000), Deus Ex: Invisible War (2003), Thief: Deadly Shadows (2004).
Closed: Eidos closed the Dallas studio in 2001 and the Austin studio in February 2005.

A company of stars

Romero left id in August 1996 and started talking to Tom Hall about a new company months before he went. In January 1997 Computer Gaming World described “ION Storm” as “John Romero and Tom Hall’s new venture”, with strategy, action and role-playing games planned. Todd Porter, who had recently left the developer 7th Level, had joined them. The next month Edge reported Ion Storm’s ten-year publishing deal with Eidos Interactive.

The founders presented themselves as a band. Ion Storm’s first print advertisement, two pages in Computer Gaming World in December 1997, introduced six “misfit, zealot freaks” with photographs: Romero, Hall, Porter, the former id marketing man Mike Wilson, the artist Jerry O’Flaherty and Bob Wright. It promised that rules “must be broken” and the status quo “spanked”. Four years later the magazine’s Jeff Green looked back at the same advertisement and its motto: “Design is law.”

The offices matched the pitch. When the German magazine PC Player visited in 1998 it found Ion Storm “ganz nobel weit oben, knapp unterm Dach” (very grandly, high up just under the roof) of the Chase Tower, a downtown Dallas skyscraper. Even the air-conditioning vents and partitions were designer pieces, and the floor held a motion-capture studio, a “Deathmatch Area” for testing multiplayer games and a screening room with a THX sound system.

Dallas: three games in four years

Ion Storm’s first release was not its own design. Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3, a real-time strategy game, had been started at 7th Level; Ion Storm bought it, and Porter, its lead designer, told PC Player that when the code arrived from 7th Level the game would not even install. It came out in 1998, published by Eidos at $59.95. Computer Gaming World’s review was headlined “Ion Storm’s First Launch Lands With a Resounding Thud”, and found it derivative of Red Alert, Total Annihilation and StarCraft.

Daikatana, Romero’s own game, was a first-person shooter that travelled through four periods of history with two computer-controlled companions. Romero had promised it for Christmas 1997; it came out in mid-2000, rebuilt on the Quake II engine. Along the way a 1997 advertisement became notorious. Its slogan boasted, in crude terms, that Romero was about to humiliate the player. APC later called it the kind of marketing “that would make even the most confrontational of ad agencies cringe”. When the game’s demo disappointed players in 2000, Computer Gaming World reported that they were “referring back to the infamous” advertisement, and Romero later apologised for it. The reviews were poor; PC Zone opened with “Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear”. The John Romero entry tells the story in full.

Behind the delays, the company was losing people. Several developers who had worked on Daikatana left to found Third Law Interactive, which made KISS Psycho Circus. In the summer of 1999 PC Zone and Computer Gaming World both reported that Porter and O’Flaherty had gone too, apparently removed by Romero. Eidos’s publishing director John Kavanagh, who had spent much of 1998 in Dallas overseeing Ion Storm, told PC Zone that the press should “focus on products, rather than the ridiculous rumours of boardroom antics”. By 2001 an Eidos spokesman was describing Eidos as “the company that owns ION Storm”.

Tom Hall’s Anachronox was the last Dallas game. It was a role-playing game in the style of Final Fantasy, with turn-based battles and a washed-up detective hero, Sly Boots, built on a heavily reworked Quake II engine. It came out in the summer of 2001, and it divided the critics. Edge gave it four out of ten, and thought it had more in common with Daikatana than with Deus Ex. Computer Gaming World praised its characters and dialogue, and Jeff Green called it “easily the best console-style RPG ever made for the PC”. By then, he wrote, Eidos had shut the Dallas studio down: the game was “released simultaneously with the company’s closure”. Romero and Hall left to found Monkeystone Games.

Austin: Spector’s studio

In the summer of 1997 Warren Spector, who had produced Ultima Underworld and System Shock, joined Ion Storm and set up a branch in Austin. Its first game, Deus Ex (2000), mixed shooting, role-playing, stealth and hacking in a near-future conspiracy, and let the player solve most problems in several ways. In November 2000 BAFTA named it the PC game of the year. The Deus Ex entry covers it in detail.

Austin’s later games were received less warmly. Deus Ex: Invisible War came out at the end of 2003 for PC and Xbox, and Edge gave it seven out of ten. The studio also took over Thief 3, which Looking Glass had begun before it closed in 2000. Randy Smith, who had co-led the design at Looking Glass, became its project director at Ion Storm, and it was released in 2004 as Thief: Deadly Shadows for PC and Xbox. Edge gave it seven; Computer Gaming World liked its lighting and its new third-person view but thought it “rushed out the castle door”. The Thief entry tells the series’ story.

Spector left Ion Storm late in 2004; Eidos said he would stay on as a consultant. In February 2005 Eidos closed the Austin studio. The German magazine PC Games put the closure down to disappointing sales of Invisible War and Deadly Shadows, and noted that the lead designers Harvey Smith and Randy Smith had already left in 2004.

What came after

Ion Storm’s games outlived it. Eidos, bought by Square Enix in 2009, revived both of the Austin studio’s series at Eidos Montreal: Deus Ex: Human Revolution in 2011 and a new Thief in 2014. Harvey Smith, lead designer of Deus Ex, went on to make Dishonored (2012) with Arkane Studios, a stealth game that Edge traced to his experience with “both Deus Ex and Thief”.

Sources

Computer Gaming World issue 150, January 1997, p. 40: “4 Companies Ride The Boomstick Wave With Quake’s Engine” (Ion Storm as Romero and Hall’s new venture; Todd Porter from 7th Level; the quotation).
Edge issue 42, February 1997: Ion Storm’s ten-year deal with Eidos Interactive (the quotation).
Edge issue 48, August 1997, pp. 70–72: Romero on leaving id and talking to Tom Hall about a new company.
Computer Gaming World issue 161, December 1997: Ion Storm’s first advertisement (the six founders; the quotations).
PC Player (Germany), July 1998, pp. 40–42: visit to Ion Storm (the Chase Tower offices and their contents; founding in 1996 with Todd Porter; Dominion acquired from 7th Level; Porter’s quotation; Anachronox).
Computer Gaming World issue 171, October 1998, p. 284: Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3 review by Terry Coleman (three years in development, first at 7th Level; $59.95; Eidos; the headline).
PC Zone Christmas 1999 edition, p. 55: John Kavanagh of Eidos “has spent most of last year in Dallas overseeing the Ion Storm operation”.
PC Zone issue 79, August 1999, p. 34, and Computer Gaming World issue 181, August 1999, pp. 34 and 46: the departures of Todd Porter and Jerry O’Flaherty; Kavanagh’s quotation (PC Zone); Bob Wright and Mike Wilson among the founders (Computer Gaming World).
Computer Gaming World issue 197, December 2000, p. 111: family tree of Dallas developers (Porter persuading Romero to form a company with Hall, Wilson, Spector and others; Mike Wilson leaving to found Gathering of Developers; developers leaving to found Third Law Interactive). PC Player (Germany), September 1999, p. 31: Third Law’s team included former Daikatana developers at Ion Storm.
Australian Personal Computer, September 2004, p. 109: Daikatana (the promised Christmas 1997 release, the mid-2000 release, the advertisement and the quotation).
Computer Gaming World issue 192, July 2000, p. 41: “Daikatana: The Soap Opera Continues” (the demo’s reception and the advertisement).
PC Zone issue 91, July 2000: Daikatana review (the quotation).
IGN Unplugged issue 3, June 2001, p. 8: Eidos, “the company that owns ION Storm”, denies rumours that the Dallas studio is closing.
Edge issue 100, August 2001, p. 96: Anachronox review (Eidos; Ion Storm; £30; four out of ten).
Computer Gaming World issue 207, October 2001, pp. 74–75: Anachronox review (Tom Hall; the Final Fantasy influence; Sly Boots).
Jeff Green, “Requiem for a Dream”, Computer Gaming World issue 208, November 2001, p. 164: the December 1997 advertisement and “Design is law”; Eidos closing the Dallas studio; Anachronox (the quotations).
PC Player (Germany), March 1998, p. 38: Spector joining Ion Storm in summer 1997 and setting up the Austin studio.
Edge issue 88, September 2000: Deus Ex review (“the anti-Daikatana”). Edge issue 94, February 2001: BAFTA’s PC game of the year.
Edge issue 132, January 2004, p. 94, and issue 133, February 2004: Deus Ex: Invisible War (PC, Xbox; seven out of ten).
Edge issue 136, May 2004, pp. 43–45: Thief: Deadly Shadows preview and interview with Randy Smith (Thief 3 begun at Looking Glass early in 2000; the move to Ion Storm; Smith as project director).
Edge issue 139, August 2004, p. 15: review scores (Thief: Deadly Shadows, PC and Xbox, Eidos, Ion Storm, seven).
Computer Gaming World issue 242, September 2004: Thief: Deadly Shadows review by Johnny Liu (the quotation).
Electronic Gaming Monthly issue 187, January 2005, p. 49: Warren Spector has left Ion Storm; according to Eidos he will still serve as a consultant.
Electronic Gaming Monthly issue 191, May 2005, p. 61, and PC Games (Germany), April 2005, p. 6: Eidos closes Ion Storm (sales of both games and the departure of Harvey and Randy Smith, PC Games). GameSpot, “Ion Storm closes its doors”, February 2005 (web, secondary): https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ion-storm-closes-its-doors/1100-6118364/
Edge issue 242, July 2012, p. 58: Dishonored (Harvey Smith, “Ion Storm and Origin veteran”; the quotation).
“Ion Storm”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): the founding date of 15 November 1996; Eidos taking 51 per cent of the company in April 1999 in exchange for advances, citing the Dallas Observer, 29 April 1999; the advertising campaign of 1997 and Romero’s apology for it; the Dallas studio closing in July 2001. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Storm