The Apogee Legacy Interview Series

[Joe Siegler]

Today we lead off a new regular section on our website. Apogee Software has been around since 1987, and while we changed the name we're generally known by (to 3D Realms), the origins of the company are in the name Apogee. We were involved with many developers back in those days. Some of these folks have gone on to bigger things in the game industry. Some are not working in the industry at all anymore. But we've sought out as many of our old developers that we could locate (some of which we haven't had any contact with in a decade) for an interview series based on their time working with us. It's been fun talking to these folks about their time with us, and we hope you enjoy this insight into the developers who helped found what our company is today.

This series will be a regular thing on our website, with a new interview appearing each Monday for you to check out. This first edition of the series is with Jim Norwood. Jim was involved with two projects with us, 1993's Bio Menace, and 1997's Shadow Warrior. Bio Menace was also recently released as freeware, so we thought that would be a good starting point for our interview series..

http://www.3drealms.com/news/2006/01...im_norwoo.html



I think Frenkel will especially like this. Read it Frenk, you'll see why.

[Dreams]

cool interview!

i like his work on the duke 1 backgrounds as you can see from my signature also great he still loves sidescroller games.

[Frenkel]

Best interview ever!

Well, next to this one

[Kristian Joensen]

Nice Interview Joe.

5) Apogee had a policy of letting the designer or studio retain full intellectual property rights to their game. Nowadays, it's rare to find a publisher who allows this, especially if the publisher is providing the funding. Do you believe that it's best for the creator to retain IP rights? Why or why not?

The man footing the bill wins. If a publisher pays for your development costs, he is the one taking all the risks, not you. I believe in that case, the publisher should retain the rights and not the developer.

Interesting but with the way contracts are usually written it isn't the publisher paying the development costs but the developer. The publisher always receives a piece of the pie, most often the developer doesn't see a dime in royalties, to quote Scott Miller on this issue:

[2] Developers ALWAYS pay the development cost of their projects, regardless of who owns the IP!!!

Let this sink in for a moment.

You see, whether the game’s funding comes out of the dev studio’s own pocket, or the publisher advances the funding to the studio, either way the studio pays for the game’s development cost. A publisher's advance is a loan, and the loan gets paid back from the dev studio’s royalty stream.

Publishers argue that they’re still taking on loads of risk in case the game doesn’t sell well enough for them to recoup their advance. But, the truth is that publishers can break even on a game well before the dev studio has repaid the advance. The payback of any particular game’s advance by the developer is not a reliable measure of a game’s profitability.

And this plows head first into my third point...

[3] The way publishers recoup their advances is a long perpetuated industry scam. That’s because advances should not be repaid from the studio's royalty stream. This way of repaying advances severely punishes studios who are working for a lower royalty. Imagine a studio getting just a 1% royalty (unrealistic, but I'm making a point). Let’s say this studio got a $2.5 million advance to make a game. This game would need to sell a GTA-like 8.3 million copies before the studio saw a dime of royalties. (This assumes the publisher makes $30 per game, after COGs.) By the time this studio saw it’s first royalty check, the publisher has gotten gross revenues of $250 million, meaning they’re at least $220 million in the green!

Although this is an extreme case with an unrealistically low royalty percentage, there's an unfair lopsidedness that applies to royalties that are common in the industry, with studios not seeing a royalty check even though the publisher has made millions in pure profits.

The point I’m making is that there’s no connection between a publisher’s profit on a game and the current standard method currently used by publishers to recoup their advances. Publishers have gotten away with installing a recoupment system that on the surface makes sense, but doesn't make sense when you look closer.

Contrast this with Max Payne:

With Remedy, the initial design came from them, and 3DR helped them change it such that it had all the right hooks to be a major hit (3.6 million sold and still selling). We were involved throughout the design, polishing and marketing of the game. And we paid for a substantial chunk of development (as opposed to a publisher, who advances funds, and then recoups them, thus paying zero for development in the end).

Yet Remedy still got co-ownership of the IP.

[Joe Siegler]

Don't forget, we're talking about games from a dozen years ago when things are different. Don't overthink things, man.

[Joe Siegler]

I amended the interview. The text is the same, but I replaced the picture that was in the middle with one of Jim now.

He emailed me a picture of himself shortly after I got the interview up (probably after seeing that horrible picture I did post of him in the middle )... Anyway, check it out, the picture was taken today, so it's about as current as you can get if you want to see what he looks like now.

[Misel]

thanx Joe .. and of course Jim.

I just finished the first episode of Bio Menace and congrats for doing this all on your own

[Micki!]

I liked the Interview..!
Does he have an account here too..? Would be nice to see him pop up, and hear us worship him..!

[Kristian Joensen]

Joe3DR said:
Don't forget, we're talking about games from a dozen years ago when things are different. Don't overthink things, man.

Well the question didn't mention any specific game.

[Gryph]

That was a great interview. Very cool idea.

A very interesting story was the time we had to evacuate from George's house and run for our lives when a certain disgruntled developer who forgot to take his lithium came calling unexpectedly late one night, weapon in hand... I won't go in to details, but that certainly DID get one's blood pumping, and stands as a clear memory to this day. The police arrived to save the day, so we all survived the ordeal in the end.

Whoa! That's rather intense! Is that something you can shed some more light on or is that something you'd rather not discuss?

[Joe Siegler]

Whoa! That's rather intense! Is that something you can shed some more light on or is that something you'd rather not discuss?

Yes I know what happened, as I got a phone call that night myself about the situation (and was told to "hide"). I'd rather not talk about the details, since I don't know who I'd piss off by saying any more than Jim did.

[Joe Siegler]

Micki! said:
I liked the Interview..!
Does he have an account here too..? Would be nice to see him pop up, and hear us worship him..!

I'm not sure if he does or not. I would tend to think not, but then I'm saying that off the top of my head.

[Kristian Joensen]

Joe are you gonna interview Keith Schuler and Allen Blum for this too ?

[Gryph]

Joe3DR said:

Yes I know what happened, as I got a phone call that night myself about the situation (and was told to "hide"). I'd rather not talk about the details, since I don't know who I'd piss off by saying any more than Jim did.

That's completely understandable.

[Joe Siegler]

Kristian Joensen said:
Joe are you gonna interview Keith Schuler and Allen Blum for this too ?

Yes, but please don't get into "who am I going to interview" and guess everyone from our past. There's gotta be some sort of surprise here as to who we're using.

[laffer]

I agree, if we knew exactly who were going to be interviewed and when it would not be as much fun. I prefer not knowing that.

Btw, 3DR really rocks, I don't know any other company that cares as much about its legacy as 3DR does.
While most companies seem to be in it for the money alone almost, 3DR seems to be just as much in it for the love of gaming. At least that's my impression

[Killd a ton]

Hi, just wanted to drop by and say that i think this is cool and a good read.

Also thanks for BM i istalled it on my PocketPC and It's still fun after all thieas years

[TerminX]

laffer said:
Btw, 3DR really rocks, I don't know any other company that cares as much about its legacy as 3DR does.
While most companies seem to be in it for the money alone almost, 3DR seems to be just as much in it for the love of gaming. At least that's my impression

Joe3DR specifically should be thanked for this stuff. From what I've picked up, it's not really 3DR as a whole but more of Joe himself going out of his way to get this stuff going. Definite "props" for that.

[laffer]

Yeah, I had the feeling that was the case, but I don't know the guy well enough to be sure
Thanks a lot Joe

[Halcyon]

Yeah, thanks Joe. Great interview and I'm really looking forward to the next ones.

[Kristian Joensen]

Joe, I agree with you on the surprise thing, I love surprises. I am looking forward to the next installment in this series. This looks like it will be an interesting "feature".

[Joe Siegler]

There are about half a dozen guys I've been unable to track down. If any of you guys know how to reach them, please let me know.

1. Andy Edwardson (Wacky Wheels) (two emails I had bounced)
2. Jason Blochowiak (Xenophage) (email I had bounced, trying through Chuck Jones)
3. Joel Finch (Balls of Steel) (email I had bounced)
4. Dave Sharpless (Jumpman Lives!) (no info, but I have an email out to someone who probably knows Dave's email)
5. Lindsay Whipp (Mystic Towers) (no info, email I found bounced)

[Frenkel]

I guess you already tried to contact Dave Sharpless through Matty of The Jumpman Lounge. He interviewed Dave in
August 2004.

Got any comments or queries (for me or Dave)? - email me at mattyATclassicgamingDOTcom

source

[Joe Siegler]

That's the email I'm referring to in my msg, but he never answered me.

[Rider]

The game industry is for the 'big boys' now. It's moved into a multi-billion dollar industry and the little guys either get assimilated, or destroyed if they resist (sorry for the obvious geeky reference there). Or they just plain run out of funding because they cannot compete with the quality of projects that really large game companies are capable of now.

Ah dang, and here I was hoping to break through with making old-school sidescrollers for a living

Really cool interview! Props to you! (Joe)

[ZuljinRaynor]

Joe should interview Joe.

[pjohnsonjr]

ZuljinRaynor said:
Joe should interview Joe.

I don't know about Joe, but I'm a boring conversationalist when I'm on both ends . I'm looking forward to further installments. I'll be surprised if he gets ahold of Todd Replogle for an interview.

I have to be nerdy here and say I dig development team behind-the-scenes stuff and the bonus stuff they usually pack with games. To me this is great, because no other company does this. Gamasutra has a where are they now, but it's nothing in-depth (they just tell you about the guy's career briefly and then says what he's doing now).

Looking forward to future installments.

[Kalki]

pjohnsonjr said:

I don't know about Joe, but I'm a boring conversationalist when I'm on both ends . I'm looking forward to further installments. I'll be surprised if he gets ahold of Todd Replogle for an interview.

Why, Todd made an appearance on the forums some time ago. I'm sure Joe may have stayed in touch or is able to if Todd checks his e-mails from time to time.

[tpz]

He did? Can you point me to one of his posts or tell me what his username was/is?

[Kalki]

Todd Replogle, last posted in 2003.

[Joe Siegler]

Last week we started a new series on our website about some of our developers from the past. We called this series "The Apogee Legacy Interview Series". In our first edition, we brought you an interview with Jim Norwood. For the second edition, we are bringing you an interview with our own Keith Schuler. Keith has been involved with us for a very long time, and continues to do so to this day. His first project with us came out back in 1991 (Paganitzu), and then he went through Realms of Chaos, the aborted Duke aNukem Forever scroller game, as well as Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition, Shadow Warrior, and now Duke Nukem Forever.



So without further adieu, we bring you the tallest developer in our history, Keith Schuler...


<br clear="right"><div align="center">
<font size="4" face="Verdana,Arial" color="#ffffff">The Apogee Legacy</font>

<font size="2" face="Verdana,Arial" color="#ffffff">Past Pioneers of the Shareware Revolution

Issue #2 - Keith Schuler</font>
</div>



1) How did you first come in contact with Apogee?



I had seen Kroz games in shareware catalogs and other places, so I was familiar with the name. Big Blue Disk published one of my earliest games, Chagunitzu. About a month later, they forwarded a fan letter to me. It was written by a little boy, and he wanted to know what my high score was at Chagunitzu. I thought it was an odd question, but I couldn't ignore my fan, so I wrote a letter back to him.



http://www.3drealms.com/news/2006/01...ogee_lega.html

[Kristian Joensen]

Very cool, interview Joe. How many kids has Keith got ?

[Joe Siegler]

Two. One relatively recently, around the same time mine was born.

[Micki!]

Cool, this interview was great too...
Kieth's wife looks pretty... He's lucky...

I really liked the way Scott contacted him..!

Joe..! Are you going to interview yourself too..? I mean, i suppose we all want to now more about the man who's writing all this..!

Anyways, i'm looking forward to next monday-evening... (i was like waiting the whole day for this interview to show up today... by me it first showed up around 9 PM)

[Joe Siegler]

No, there's no point in interviewing me for this. The only time I was ever a "developer" was on Rise of the Triad about 11.5 years ago. This is geared towards developers of old stuff, not guys who did a few maps for one game.

However, I was sent an interview about myself from another site after I started this. But I'll deal with that later.

[ultra tree 85!]

Micki! said:

I really liked the way Scott contacted him..!

So did I.

Great interview, i'm looking forward to reading about more of Apogee's employees.

[Joe Siegler]

ultra tree 85! said:

So did I.

It's a story that happened before - he did the same thing to John Romero when he was at Softdisk.

[Micki!]

Joe3DR said:

It's a story that happened before - he did the same thing to John Romero when he was at Softdisk.

Haha..! So he actually did it more than once..?!
I'll never ignore "fan letters" from now on..!

[Joe Siegler]

Yeah, the Miller/Romero story is not a secret. Been told many a time over the years. It's also in the Masters of Doom book.

[Micki!]

Well, despite it being mentioned several places before, i must've have missed it anyways...

Are there any other than Keith and John who got this "Fan letter" from Scott..?