Alone Together in the Quake Brutalist Jam

The story goes, after Doom 2, id Software definitely didn't want to make another first-person shooter. So they started building Quake, a fantasy-action RPG inspired by their tabletop campaigns.

But a year of false starts and costly reworks burned out the team. Then one fateful meeting, they decided to pivot back to what they already knew how to make. Thus began a grueling seven-month crunch to rebuild Quake as yet another first-person shooter. When designer John Romero uploaded the final game files on launch day, he did so alone, in an empty office. Much of the team quit id Software soon after.

Despite its deep influence on game design and engine tech, Quake (1996) was a stressful disappointment that devastated its creators. No one wanted to make it, and maybe no one wants to play it either, as it remains the less popular middle child to its industry-shaking siblings Doom (1993) and Half-Life (1998).

We Quake modders happily squat inside this ancient world that gamers have long abandoned. We've been quietly fixing up the place, little by little. Decades later, we've added fancy features like fog and sunlight, upgraded the obscure QuakeC scripting language, and built a whole new modern level editor that rivals most other 3D design tools. Few outsiders knew of our secret renaissance... until now.