The nineties were a very different time for the gaming industry and its developers…

The 1990s saw a huge expansion of the FPS, or first-person shooter, genre. CliffyB, Cliff Bleszinski, who at the time was a game designer under Tim Sweeney at Epic MegaGames (the name of the company at the time), was also involved. He had worked on Dare to Dream and Jazz Jackrabbit, but it was Unreal, released in 1998, that brought him and the studio into the limelight and gave id Software (John Carmack) and Ion Storm (John Romero, after leaving id) new competition.

Bleszinski is now working on Broadway, but still keeps an eye on the gaming industry. And in an interview with IGN he openly admitted that he used to see Romero as an enemy! He was jealous of id Software’s success and Romero’s rock star persona. He wanted Romero out because Bleszinski had nothing, and he wanted to change that while flexing his wealth. That’s why he wanted to beat Quake at Epic.

Unreal was developed as a direct “counter-programme” to Quake. They wanted a multiplayer first-person shooter with bright colours, not a dark, dreary art style. Unreal came in with its colour palette, sky-high castles and beautiful environments, while Quake had deep, dark, Trent Reznor-esque, Cthulhu-style dungeons. Of course, both IPs changed the genre and the industry, as id Tech engines would later appear in other games (though nowadays only id Software uses them again…), and the Unreal Engine became one of the most widely used technologies, and is now at version 5.

And what about the relationship between Bleszinski and Romero? Well, they’ve both mellowed since then, and there’s no bad blood between them anymore. They smoked the peace pipe, and eventually CliffyB got credit for the later Gears of War (too). So this story has a happy ending.

Source: PCGamer