[endgame]

Fantastic article. I think the title does it a disservice — I expected a disappointing chronicle of sexism, but it's full of details and strategy during one of the most interesting and volatile periods of PC gaming history.

The article mentions that John Cook and Robin Walker made a mod that attracted Valve's attention, and then they shipped TFC. That would surely mean the mod would've been Team Fortress for QuakeWorld, and not for Doom?

[exmicrosoldier]

Yes it was QuakeWorld Team Fortess. Funny story of my own. I had just started at Microsoft and met Robin Walker at a lan party with a bunch of other QuakeWorld TeamFortress fans.

As soon as they hired Robin and John i knew they (valve) were going to be a giant hit. As a former windows PM, it seems that Gabe knew how valuable mod authors as first time game designers were. Valve may not have been the first to make their game engine a platform, but they were the most dedicated to it in that era.

I didn't know their contract with Sierra was so much like a music industry contract and that they didn't own their Half life IP. It makes so much more sense why they recruited the founder of counterstrike, which is an even bigger hit than TF2.

If they had been public i would have bought into valve before 2005. I missed the boat on apple, amazon, and so many others, but that one had a competitive advantage of understanding the industry that I understood.

[jay_kyburz]

I used to play Quake multiplayer with Jon and Robin at the Camberwell Internet Cafe! Ahh, those were the days! (They were much better than me, I was a n00b)

[jamesfinlayson]

Agreed - I thought there was a note about a correction at the end? Maybe she got them mixed up with Dario Casali and Final Doom.

[endgame]

The clarification identifies the mod as TF but the article body still says that it was a mod for Doom.