I wish that I had made fewer games, but better games.
But thats getting ahead of ourselves a bit.
“Out of those 13 games, four of them were Commander Keen games.
The idea of immediately making another Keen… it felt like it was just too much.”
I knew we could do better than that."
“We loved the original Castle Wolfenstein - we played the hell out of it.
To make it in 3D with high-speed gameplay was to do something different.”
However, Wolfenstein 3D wasnt intended as a remake as we understand it today.
“It was originally a spiritual successor.
Because we didnt license any games back then - we just made new things all the time.
It was obvious to us that we werent going to call it Wolfenstein.
It was obvious that wed come up with another name, like we had always.”
The size of acquisition deals isnt the only thing that has changed since the 90s.
Viewed from a modern perspective, a six month development cycle is breathtakingly fast.
But by the standards of the time, it was positively indulgent.
Wolfenstein was when we came up with that motto, because we didnt have those limits on our time.
Even those four months to get the shareware version out felt like a crazy amount of time to us.
Its funny, because six months nowadays is just so fast.
No one can get anything done in six months!"
Its an important distinction to make.
Its easy to take the wrong lesson from that.
It’s not that long hours and in the office are crucial to game development.
In fact, as Romero points out, its the exact opposite.
He was never pressured to get anything done.
I wish I had done that back then.
I wish that I had made fewer games, but better games.
“When someone is making you work late, that is absolutely crunch.
We absolutely dont condone that [at Romero Games].
Were all for working at normal times, because people have lives.
People dont crunch here anymore.
Crucially, time for creative exploration, free from overbearing deadlines or exhaustion.
“When youre in crunch mode, youre not innovating, youre just executing,” says Romero.
“Your focus is different, your focus is on completion, not exploration.
Not having that deadline was really important for the innovation of [Wolfenstein].
Its like making a song, having a cool guitar riff and working around that to make the song.
Indies have come up with these cool initial ideas likeReturn of the Obra DinnorHer Story.
These games have these really great ideas, and building around that core takes time.
“Nobody will remember the games we made in 1991.
We made them really fast and we made a tonne of them.
No one cares about those games, they care about the ones that we spent our time on.”
