Behind the sudden mainstream media attention to first-person shooter gaming following recent school shooting incidents, other storms are brewing here in Dallas, ground zero for the 3D gaming industry.
First Brian Hook announced his departure (http://www.Q3Arena.com/cgibin/finger.cgi?login=bwh@idsoftware.com) from id software. A key programmer at id since 1997 and regular contributor to gaming newsletter Voodoo Extreme (http://www.voodooextreme.com), Hook is expected to issue a press release any day now revealing his new whereabouts. In the meantime, no one at Slashdot (http://slashdot.org/articles/99/06/02/1259236.shtml) seems to agree on where he's headed next.
And on Thursday the Dallas Observer (http://www.dallasobserver.com) reported that CEO Todd Porter and art director Jerry O'Flaherty had been forced out of IONStorm (http://www.ionstorm.com) in a dispute with their London-based publisher, Eidos Interactive (http://www.eidos.co.uk), perhaps best known for Tomb Raider (http://www.tombraider.com). A new CEO for IONStorm has not yet been announced, but would most likely be chosen from IONStorm's remaining partners, Tom Hall, Warren Spector and legendary id alum John Romero. IONStorm's long-awaited title Daikatana (http://www.daikatana.com) is now slated for a September release.
Porter would be the second CEO to leave IONStorm in the company's short history, the first having been Mike Wilson, who set up the cooperative game publisher Gathering of Developers (http://www.godgames.com) 18 months ago, less than a mile from IONStorm's headquarters in downtown Dallas at the top of Chase Tower (http://america.net/~roblin/Tex_Com.JPG ), affectionately known to hipper Dallasites as the "pierced penis" building.
Many of these events have already been covered in great detail in a series of articles in the Dallas Observer, beginning with a now infamous cover story (http://www.dallasobserver.com/1999/011499/feature1-1.html) back in January. As the Observer is already facing several lawsuits relating to leaked emails, I'd better leave it at that...
