id's Tim Willits claims to have invented multiplayer maps, gets shut down by Romero, Hall and McGee - Sensationalist Headlines

[QUOTE]"The story told about how he came into the office and talked to me and Carmack about his idea, and we responded with how it was the stupidest idea we'd ever heard," Romero wrote in a blog. "This never happened. In fact, we had been playing multiplayer-only maps in DOOM for years already. There had been hundreds of maps that the DOOM mapping community had made only for deathmatch by that time. DWANGO was a multiplayer-only service that had many multiplayer-only maps that are legendary today. American McGee even released a multiplayer-only map in November 1994 named IDMAP01. The incredible DOOM community invented the idea of designing maps only for multiplayer mode, and they deserve the credit. The game owes so much to them." Romero went on to point out that the first commercial FPS to ship with multiplayer-only maps was Rise of the Triad, directed by Tom Hall—another id alumnus—and released in 1994. "We did not have 'all these fragments of maps' that were used to make the multiplayer maps in Quake," Romero continued. "All multiplayer-only maps that shipped with Quake were original maps made specifically for deathmatch." Additionally, Romero pointed out that he, American McGee, and Tim Willits all contributed to the maps that comprised Quake's shareware episode. "Revising revisionist history re: #quake #deathmatch #maps @romero gives a serial credit thief the what-for," American McGee wrote in a tweet that linked to Romero's blog. [/QUOTE] [url]http://www.shacknews.com/article/101179/all-id-software-co-founders-refute-tim-willits-quake-map-anecdote-updated[/url] [url=http://rome.ro/news/2017/8/30/multiplayer-only-maps]John Romero's blog post[/url]

What an incredibly bizarre thing to lie about.

I don't know much about Willits or what else he has said in the past, but whenever I see videos or interviews of him, he always kinda struck me as an arrogant individual. I didn't really think about it until now, though.

Looks like Romero made him his bitch.

how the fuck would inventing that even be a thing that was invented like its literally the thing you just naturally come to doing when you make any multiplayer shooter

[QUOTE=J!NX;52634629]how the fuck would inventing that even be a thing that was invented like its literally the thing you just naturally come to doing when you make any multiplayer shooter[/QUOTE] Try to think from the perspective of designers in 1994, not with the perspective of having grown up with multiplayer shooters. Back when Doom released, multiplayer was essentially a gimmick. Multiplayer maps were repurposed singleplayer maps, because it made no sense to focus effort on something that would be experienced by a minority of the community. It wasn't until Doom's deathmatch became popular that it started to evolve as a subgenre, and IIRC Quake III was the first major success to be focused on multiplayer over singleplayer. As the article notes it was the Doom modding community that came up with the idea of making maps specifically for multiplayer- it's not like it was part of FPSes all along.

Hell, I'd say that the idea that maps made specifically for multiplayer were a DOOM modding community invention as debatable. It could be argued that Maze War from 19[B]74[/B] came up with that concept; "invention" is a pretty tall word. Of course, I think most of us can agree that Tim's claim is not even close to being plausible let alone true.

[QUOTE=catbarf;52634741]As the article notes it was the Doom modding community that came up with the idea of making maps specifically for multiplayer- it's not like it was part of FPSes all along.[/QUOTE] And to be fair Tim Willits [I]was[/I] part of the modding community until Id scooped him up and made his work official. Guy's clearly exaggerating and all but he was quite instrumental in the further development of games past Doom 2. Funnily enough his wikipedia page was already updated with this drama :v: