Scott Miller made a living from games that looked like text. His Kroz series, written on one of the first IBM PCs, drew its mazes and monsters from the machine’s character set, with a yellow smiley face for the hero. What made him important was how he sold them. He gave the first game of each trilogy away as shareware and sold the other two, a method Computer Gaming World later called “The Apogee Model”. He used it to publish id Software’s first hits, and it carried his company, Apogee, from his parents’ house in Garland, Texas, to Duke Nukem 3D.
Fast facts
- Born: 1961.
- Founded: Apogee Software, in 1987, with Kingdom of Kroz.
- Published: id Software’s Commander Keen (1990–91) and Wolfenstein 3D (1992).
- Created: Duke Nukem, with Todd Replogle, in 1990.
- Later: vice-president of 3D Realms, Apogee’s 3D label and later its name, alongside George Broussard.
- Recognition: 14th in a 1997 Computer Gaming World and GameSpot ballot of the most influential people in computer gaming, “for originating the shareware model”.
Kroz
When Orson Scott Card wrote about Miller in COMPUTE! in October 1990, he presented him as proof that one person could still make PC games. Miller was his own art department, programming department and design department. He had started on an original IBM PC, and by 1990 he was working in Turbo Pascal 5.0.
Kroz, “Zork backward”, was not a text adventure. The player moved a smiley face through mazes full of traps, monsters and magic with the arrow keys, and Card thought it took as much dexterity as Lode Runner. Because it used only the standard character set, it ran on a monochrome screen with little memory.
Miller wrote the games in threes. One game of each trilogy went out as shareware, complete in itself, through “dozens and dozens of shareware libraries”. Anyone who wanted the other two had to buy them from him: $20 a trilogy, including hint books and maps, or $7.50 a game. Apogee Software, Card noted, “sounds like a corporation until you realize that it consists entirely of Scott Miller”, who copied each order onto disk himself. He averaged 50 to 60 orders a week, with highs over 200.
Computer Gaming World dated this model to Kingdom of Kroz in 1987, and reported that by 1990 it was bringing in up to $2,000 a week, enough for Miller to give up his day job. Shareware as an idea was older: Andrew Fluegelman and others had used it for utility programs since 1982 (see Shareware). Miller’s change was to stop asking for a donation and sell the rest of the series instead.
Romero, Keen and Wolfenstein
Miller wanted other programmers’ games to publish. He admired John Romero’s games for Softdisk’s monthly disks, and because Softdisk screened its staff’s post, he sent Romero fan letters under different names. Romero proudly pinned them up, then noticed that every letter came from the same address. Miller told Computer Gaming World that Romero wanted money in advance for a game and named $3,000: “It was almost all the money I had. I only had $5,000 in the bank.”
The game was Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons, which Apogee published in December 1990 with its first episode as shareware. Romero and his colleagues John Carmack, Adrian Carmack and Tom Hall left Softdisk to found id Software on 1 February 1991. Apogee published more Keen episodes and then, in May 1992, Wolfenstein 3D. When id published Doom itself, Miller lost his best-selling developer, and, in Computer Gaming World’s words, Miller and company “suddenly found themselves without a game, a development team or an engine”.
Miller’s help reached other shareware authors too. Tim Sweeney, whose first game ZZT launched Epic MegaGames, later thanked him “for his early advice and encouragement with ZZT”.
Duke Nukem and 3D Realms
Miller told Edge in 1998 that he and Todd Replogle created Duke Nukem in 1990. The first game, an EGA side-scroller, came out as shareware in mid-1991, and Miller called it “the biggest shareware success until Wolfenstein 3D’s release a year later”. He described the character as “patriotic, a chauvinist”, a hero who “shoots first”, and said the sunglasses were his idea; George Broussard mostly managed Duke’s voice in Duke Nukem 3D.
By then Apogee had set up 3D Realms for its 3D games. In 1995 Edge found Broussard as 3D Realms’ president and Miller as its vice-president and, “confusingly, Apogee’s co-president”. Miller liked shareware because it let them “put out an early beta version” of a game “and invite people’s opinions”. The Apogee name was dropped in 1996, and the company traded as 3D Realms from then on.
Later career
Miller stayed with 3D Realms through the long development of Duke Nukem Forever, which the company halted in 2009. He also helped form the publisher Gathering of Developers in 1998, and later the Radar Group. In April 2021 he and Terry Nagy bought the Apogee name back from 3D Realms and relaunched it as Apogee Entertainment.
Sources
- Orson Scott Card, COMPUTE! issue 122, October 1990, p. 74: Miller in Garland, Texas, the original IBM PC and Turbo Pascal 5.0, Kroz and its character-set graphics, the trilogy method and prices, the one-man Apogee and its orders.
- Chris Lombardi, Computer Gaming World issue 120, July 1994: id Software feature (the fan letters to Romero).
- Edge issue 24, September 1995, pp. 36–37: Broussard and Miller’s positions at 3D Realms and Apogee, and Miller on shareware.
- Ken Brown, “Duking It Out”, Computer Gaming World issue 142, May 1996: “The Apogee Model” and Kingdom of Kroz in 1987, the earnings and the day job, the Keen deal in Miller’s words, and the loss of id.
- Computer Gaming World issue 159, October 1997: “The Most Influential People in Computer Gaming”, a ballot with GameSpot (Miller 14th).
- Edge issue 65, December 1998, p. 77: interview with Scott Miller on Duke Nukem.
- For id Software’s history and Tim Sweeney’s thanks, see the id Software and ZZT entries and their sources.
- “Scott Miller (entrepreneur)” and “3D Realms”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): his birth year, Gathering of Developers and the Radar Group, the 2009 halt to Duke Nukem Forever, and the 2021 relaunch of Apogee. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Miller_(entrepreneur) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_Realms