id Software veterans argued in absentia about the authorship of the idea of multiplayer maps
Game designer John Romero has entered into an Internet controversy with id Software creative director Tim Willits. The day before, Willits said in an interview that it was he who came up with the idea of making separate maps for multiplayer shooters.
According to Tim Willits, the idea came to him while working on the first part of Quake.
He noted that his then colleagues John Romero and John Carmack made fun of the idea, but he did not back down and brought it to the end, using fragments of levels from the single-player campaign Quake.
In response to these statements, Romero wrote a post in which he denied the very fact of such a conversation.
Romero points out that the first maps for a multiplayer game were invented and created by Doom fans.
“The Doom player community deserves a mention in the game credits, the project is very much obliged to their creativity and ingenuity. Thanks to them, we started playing deathmatch on special maps a few years before working on Quake. American McGee created his first multiplayer map IDMAP01 in November 1994,” wrote John Romero.
John Carmack confirmed in a comment for Shacknews that he does not remember that these events ever happened.
American McGee also took Romero’s side, referring to his Twitter post.
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