Line #24 Trivia/Daikatana


1	!!The game itself:
2	* The titular Daikatana takes its name from the fabled InfinityPlusOneSword from a ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' campaign John Carmack ran around the same time that Creator/IdSoftware was developing ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}''. As detailed in the novel ''Masters of Doom'', John Romero's character traded a plot-vital MacGuffin, a [[TomeOfEldritchLore demon-summoning tome]], for the sword in question, which eventually led to a TotalPartyKill as the tome was used to summon an army of demons (literally, every demon in the books, several times over) to infest the realm, leading to the destruction of humanity.
3	* CreatorBacklash: The game is a very sore subject for Creator/JohnRomero, who had earned fame for his hand in developing ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' and ''VideoGame/{{Quake}}'', but hedged his reputation on the game that [[CreatorKiller wound up sinking his company]]. In particular, [[http://kotaku.com/5541406/john-romero-is-so-sorry-about-trying-to-make-you-his-bitch he apologized over a decade afterwards for the game's infamous magazine ad slogan]], which read "[[ThisIsGoingToBeHuge John Romero's about to make you his bitch]]". When mentioning that he was working on a new game, he went so far as to announce that it wasn't a sequel to the game. However he at least [[https://twitter.com/romero/status/1306581216418824198?s=21 has a sense of humor about it.]]
4	* CreatorKiller: The game didn't make anyone John Romero's bitch as he wanted it to; it made Romero its own bitch and took his name and career down with it. A combination of this game and the earlier RTS ''Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3'' also contributed to the closure of Creator/IonStorm's Dallas office; not only was ''Dominion'' a huge flop on its own, but the internal squabbling its development caused at Ion Storm was partially responsible for turning ''Daikatana'' into what it is, mostly thanks to how Ion Storm wanted to get ''Dominion'' out of the door as soon as possible so they could have some more cash for ''Daikatana''. The Austin office managed to survive mostly by having absolutely nothing to do with the development of ''Daikatana'', only finally folding in 2005 simply because the senior staff left after their six-game deal with Creator/{{Eidos\|Interactive}}.
5	* RereleasedForFree: Creator/JohnRomero placed the (actually decent) Europe-only [[https://web.archive.org/web/20130319012128/https://rome.ro/games_daikatana.htm GBC game]] as a download on his website, though unfortunately the original page is no longer available and the file hosting site he used no longer has it.
6	* SavedFromDevelopmentHell: Creator/JohnRomero wanted to make you his bitch for [[ChristmasRushed Christmas 1997]]. Due to infighting and a mid-development engine switch, ''Daikatana'' didn't come out until May 2000. By that time, it had ''VideoGame/HalfLife1'' to compete with. And it was released on very dated software anyways.
7	* StillbornFranchise: A sequel was being developed by Human Head Studios on the Unreal Engine. When the project was cancelled, the developers began working on ''VideoGame/{{Rune}}''.
8	* TroubledProduction: As chronicled in [[http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20000619155817/http://www.gamespot.com/features/btg-daikatana/index.html "Knee Deep in a Dream"]]:
9	** Despite the success he'd enjoyed with ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' and its progeny at id Software, John Romero was unhappy with his job because he felt his vision as a designer took a back seat to the company's technological considerations. When his idea to split the company into separate divisions devoted to design and technology was nixed by the founders, he threatened to leave and [[StartMyOwn start his own company instead]], and was eventually let go.
10	** Carrying out his threat, he and id cofounder Tom Hall started what became Creator/IonStorm at the end of 1996, where "Design is Law." On the strength of their names and accomplishments, the company was able to raise millions. Some of this was spent on high-cost real estate, renting office space in the top floors of a Dallas skyscraper, featuring the Ion Storm logo carved into terrazzo in the lobby because, Romero said, he had always wanted to work in flashier offices at id. But all did not go well from that auspicious start.
11	** Romero's dream game, ''Daikatana'', would be the sort of FirstPersonShooter he had pioneered, but with two sidekicks and multiple levels in four different time periods across a 4,000-year period. He told the media it would be available within a year, since the plan was to build it on the ''VideoGame/{{Quake}}'' engine. As you might expect, such an optimistic prospect was just asking for trouble.
12	** First, Ion Storm had some internal warring because the ''Daikatana'' team felt the development of ''Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3'' was stealing resources and staff, which ultimately hurt that game and forced the abandonment of the other early titles Ion Storm meant to bring out.
13	** Then, they tried to move from the old ''VideoGame/{{Quake}}'' engine to the ''VideoGame/QuakeII'' one, a process [[PortingDisaster much more complicated and time-consuming]] than they thought. In June of 1997, they made it official — ''Daikatana'' would not be shipping that year. That didn't stop the company from taking out ads that cheekily promised "[[PreAssKickingOneLiner John Romero's about to make you his bitch]]", alienating some gamers and ramping up expectations for others. Romero has since apologized for the campaign and tried to distance himself from it; others involved say he was much more enthusiastic at the time.
14	** Romero's prowess as a designer and programmer, despite his experience at well-managed id, [[ThePeterPrinciple did not transfer to management or leadership skills]]. His entire development team quit on him en masse to start their own company because they were so fed up with the lack of direction they were getting. To maintain goodwill with potential competitors, Romero avoided hiring away any of their programmers, instead hiring amateur programmers whose homebrewed levels for id's games had been the most downloaded — a fact which, another Ion Storm executive admitted later, told them nothing about what it was like to work with this person or what their work habits were. During the development of the game, the staff changed completely three times.
15	** This turnover had a chaotic impact on the game code, with fragments inserted here and there by totally different people who had never communicated. Demos made from this increasingly buggy mess failed to impress at industry events. Communications between all the people working on the game did not get any better: infamously, one artist submitted a texture file for a crossbow bolt that was inexplicably 640 pixels by 480 pixels. [[note]] For reference, that's 4/5 the size of an average computer monitor in 2000, just a shade under the game's actual resolution, and a hell of a lot larger than the space a crossbow bolt actually takes up. [[/note]] When Romero hired his then-girlfriend, Stevie Case, to work on level design, [[{{Nepotism}} he nearly triggered another full-staff walkout]].
16	** The programmers who ''were'' working had some unexpected physical problems with the skyscraper office space. Some of them were under skylights where, around midday in the Texas sun, they would get too hot to work, and even if they didn't the light was too distracting. People were covering their cubicles in blankets to get their work done. [[WackyStartupWorkplace The office also had a movie theater and plenty of toys and games]]. These proved to be distractions and slowed progress. Also, a lot of money was spent repeatedly repairing the theater's projector because no one knew how to operate it properly and they kept blowing out the very expensive bulbs.
17	** Ion Storm missed ''Daikatana''[='=]s 1997 ship date, and its 1998 ship date, and its 1999 ship date. It became a punchline within the industry, as [[Webcomic/PennyArcade one webcomic]] memorably demonstrated. Eidos, Ion Storm's parent company, finally had to step in and straighten things out. And as things were finally turning out, id released the ''Quake III'' game engine. Recalling how much fun they had had three years earlier upgrading to its predecessor, Ion Storm understandably opted ''not'' to do it again, meaning the game they had poured so much design effort into would be [[TechnologyMarchesOn technologically behind]] from the moment it was released.
18	** The game ended up [[{{Vaporware}} delayed]] so much that, by the time it came out in 2000, it was seriously outclassed by competing games like ''VideoGame/HalfLife'', ''VideoGame/SystemShock2'', and even Ion Storm's very own soon-to-be-released ''VideoGame/DeusEx'' (developed by their Austin studio). ''Daikatana'' ended up being a complete bust and pretty much [[CreatorKiller ended the fame and career]] of Creator/JohnRomero, who, before ''Daikatana'', was a superstar developer on par with Creator/SidMeier and Creator/TimSchafer thanks to his work on ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' and ''VideoGame/{{Quake}}''.
19	* {{Vaporware}}: ''Daikatana'' was believed to be vaporware for about three years.
20	* WhatCouldHaveBeen: A Platform/PlayStation version was cancelled during development.
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22	!!Proteus and Suspicious' LP of it:
23	* CreatorDrivenSuccessor: Proteus and Suspicious, as part of a 2011 megathread whose gimmick was [[StylisticSuck making 2007-style LPs]], would later do a co-op LP of ''VideoGame/QuakeII''. Proteus claims in his opening post for the game that it's thematically appropriate as a successor to the ''Daikatana'' LP, because it had the opposite primary problem - whereas John Romero without id Software to reign him in was too ambitious for his own good and included too many bad ideas in ''Daikatana'', id Software without John Romero to offer ideas [[SoOkayItsAverage played things far too safe]] and made [[ASpaceMarineIsYou a boring and generic shooter]] with ''Quake II''.
24	* KeepCirculatingTheTapes: Used to be hosted on Google Video, and didn't make the jump to Website/YouTube. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc65E2Zb7AU&list=PL8WmeOtpejoTb19Wkpvjh1FAOCV50nOEu&index=1 Luckily, somebody decided to upload the whole thing]] (sans the Deathmatches, which are still up on Dailymotion) onto Youtube. The videos are also still hosted on Archive.org.
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Context Trivia / Daikatana