John Romero was a good map designer but the real skills were from John Carmack who was at the forefront of game engine design in the 90s. Oh, and Ion Storm was the epitome of excess with throwing money at their lavish offices and the game itself and getting little in return.

I agree with #1 though, an even more ridiculous sum of money was tossed at the Gizmondo with investors duped into thinking they would have the next greatest thing on their hands. I believe they had tens of millions in debts when they were shuttered which is worse than the Ion Storm + 3D Realms cockup combined.

Duke Nukem Forever was already a joke status five years ago and I would be surprised if anyone ever took it seriously after that.

Well actually Looking Glass Studios folded mostly because while making incredible innovative games that were highly praised critically they never sold enough copies and constantly needed capital injections.

When Eidos over reached with its frivolous funding for Ion Storm it couldn't come up with the capital to sustain LGS, the company folded and much of the staff got rolled into Ion Storm Austin.

With Ubisoft buying old Eidos IPs there is alot of speculation that after Dues Ex 3, Ubisoft will be resurrecting the Thief franchise.

One of the best overlooked games to come out of the debacle that was Ion Storm.

Deus Ex was great.

Deux Ex: Invisible War (or 2, if you prefer) was crap, and we all know it wasn't Romero's fault, but the damn X-Box "crowd"...or perhaps just the crowd the people in charge believes uses X-Boxes.

Mind you, I don't think it's fair to say Deus Ex was the only good thing to come from Ion Storm...Anachronox was an excellent game, clever and fun, and I'm bitter we'll never get a sequel to that at all, half-assed (ala DX2) or not.

Oh well.

The only good game to come out of the Ion Storm fiasco.

No thanks to Xbox for fucking up Dues Ex 2 and Thief 3. Somehow it must be John Romero's fault.

I agree that actual simulation of battlefield is impossible, but it's still achievable as shown by the link I provided previously. I mean Operation Flashpoint lead into the development of VBS1, both used by various armies to simulate combat runs. What I was talking about was simulating massive armed conflicts, as the purpose of these systems is not to teach soldiers to fire a weapon, but how to effectively respond to the pressures of battle, the chaos of war, maneuvers and tactics. As they cannot typically service out a Red Flag type of scenario or say a F-16. But enough about that... regarding game development...

But isn't that mostly due to the developers themselves not taking the risks and costs implicated in making a true hit title? Look at HL2, they knew they had to deliver some more of the same, but they decided to push the envelope further then anyone before (facial expressions, narrative progression and TONS and TONS of actual play testing not bug testing). The same is of Operation Flashpoint and STALKER at the moment.

Consequently they had a massive hit, countless awards and a fan base they basically switched on into Steam, as much as I dislike it I still have it on my computer. The development in games in going into the direction of visual wankery to me, it's all about gfx and what not. However there is little to really tell apart the games now days based on their graphics, most are dark, bloomed and that awful brownish tinge that seems to be 'realistic'.

It's the publisher's fault of trying to push developers into the same avenues, there is no freedom given to developers to provide new and compelling games. Look at God of War, Jaffe had to fight a while to be allowed to do something like that. And even now he's being forced into making God of War 3. The freedom that designers enjoyed probably got killed off by Romero and Ion Storm fiasco.

We'll see how it goes.