Joost Schuur Interview

Joost is one of the longest serving and most respected faces on the Quake/Doom scene. His work maintaining the id games 2 archive at ftp.cdrom.com is vital to the Quake community and since his fabulous Aftershock site shut down, Joost has been busy running the ultimate Quake site directory, Slipgate Central. Here's what he had to say...

Tell us a little about yourself (like how old are you, where do you live, what do you do in the 'real' world :)

i'm 25, live in london, england, and am a software engineer for online magic, a web authoring house, where i do mainly research and development. there's a real world? well, after a (usually long) day at work, i like to go to the pub around the corner with everyone else at work. we're all one big happy family ;)

You've been on the Doom/Quake scene for a long time. What were your first encounters of 'the id experience' and when did you become 'actively' involved?

when doom first came out, i had a web server running on a university machine, that university didn't even know about. it was a bit tricky to make sure the server was up all the time, and eventually, pjotr from doomgate got in touch with me. that's how it all began i suppose. i was lucky enough to meet some of the id guys on irc and get involved with them, and eventually, pjotr even recommended me for my current job here at om.

How did you first become involved in maintaining the id games archive at ftp.cdrom.com?

irc again. i met a friend of the old maintainer of the site on the #doom channel and started helping him out, until it turned out he had less and less time, so i took over full time. frans de vries now helps me with the idgames section (actually he does most of the work), and i've concentrated fully on idgames2 (quake) now. only recently (in february '97), frans has taken a break from the net and ty halderman (from team tnt) is now handling the old /pub/idgames dir.

How do you manage to maintain the file area from another country :) ?

all you need is a telnet connection really. i don't actually maintain the machine, that's done by people at walnut creek (in california). i'm one of many admins who remotely maintain sections of their site.

What exactly 'is' ftp.cdrom.com? :) Most of us know it as THE resource for everything related to id's games and sort of take it for granted. I'd be interested to know why it allows us all to bombard it with massive files every day :)

they sell cdroms of some of the files from their web site, that's where they get their money. they're very much interested in getting as much publicity as possible, and in return, they offer one of the biggest ftp sites in the world. a fair tradeoff, don't you reckon?

How much contact do you have with the guys from id?

less and less, lately. literally none right now actually. they're a small group and i've not had the need to bother them with any requests in the past half a year. even when i did have more contact, we never met in person, and i think there were only a few phonecalls.

Were you involved in Quake's development in any way?

nope. no way whatsoever. i got one of the betas a few days before the sw came out, but no feedback came into the game.

A lot of staff seem to be leaving id at the moment, right at the time when the Quake scene seems to be exploding. Do you think everything is happy in John Carmack's world?

it's only natural for different people to have different ideas. right now, i think the quake world can only benefit from companies like ion storm and hipnotic, who are after all licensing the quake engine and broadening the scope of games using it.

A lot of people are saying that id have become a lot more insular lately and aren't encouraging the feedback from their customers (i.e. us) that they once did. Personally, I've received immediate replies recently from both John Carmack and Mike Abrash on technical questions I've asked them with no problem. Do you think this criticism is unfair or an inevitable result of a very 'open' company getting back down to work again?

the net is simply too big and it's simply too easy to email someone for id to answer every mail. i've often heard of people who've sent genuinely interesting questions have gotten quick responses, and i'm sure they love feedback to a certain degree, but in the end, the less mails they answer, the more time they have to develop their next game. i'd consider myself lucky if i got a reply to a query, but would understand if my mails remained unanswered.

Do you think that the departure of John Romero will effect the 'look and feel' of Quake 2?

considering that john wanted to take the game into another direction and id was hesitant to do so, no. id have a few very good level designers now, and i'm sure the game will be great (but not please everyone, as usual of course).

What do you think makes a great Quake web site?

good, often updated, but most importantly original content. a consistent design. a feel for what the people want. perhaps a certain degree of interactivity. a sense of devotion to the game.

too many quake sites start because someone thinks it would be 'cool', to have a site on quake, but they underestimate what it takes to maintain one. i've always recommended people to find a niche area in quake that hasn't been covered yet and give people an incentive to come back to your site and not someone else's. while slipgate central isn't perfect, i think it's a good start.

Probably an unfair question, but what are your own personal favourite sites? :)

quakewise? the usual news sites probably, where i find out about new sites. to be honest (and this might come as a surprise), my main interest isn't actually the sites themselves, but rather to categorize and list them in slipgate central, so that other people can find them easily, visit them and benefit from them. i'm out to offer a service to others, even though personally, i might not be interested in the latest quake editing tips or canadian clan news e.g.

The Quake scene has forged a lot of friendships (mostly by mail) between people all over the World. Do you ever get to meet any of these guys (such as Blue, sCary, etc) in person? If so, are they what you imagined them to be like? :D

i met blue and a few other new york quake folks recently. i missed out on missing some of the uk quake people a few months ago, because i was too busy.

it's always unusual to meet someone from the net in person for the first time. i don't actually have any expectations in people before i meet them, since i know from the days i went to mud gatherings in germany, that in real life people can be a lot different than their online persona.

Aftershock was an immensely popular site - did its success eventually make it more of a burden than fun?

the pressure to update it frequently did, yes. back then, i realized that it limited the oportunities to go out and have fun, since i might have missed out on a big story. slipgate central is different, i can update it every few days and not worry about not being the first to report on a scoop.

I remember that Aftershock shut down almost as soon as shareware Quake was released - did you decide to get out deliberately before the quake *really* hit? :)

that was a coincidence i suppose. i had thought about discontinuing it for a few weeks and finally pulled the plug.

Slipgate Central (as Aftershock) seems to be a huge success - were you expecting that?

yup. i either do things right, or i don't at all. i see no point in producing a web site that only a few people visit. if i invest time in it, it's either because i enjoy it, or because i know others will enjoy it. the more people enjoy it, the more i enjoy it.

How much time do you spend maintaining the site every week and is it still fun :) ?

i'd say about 30-60 minutes a day. it's still fun, but lately, a bit of works has piled up, that i'll probably clean up in one long night.

How long did you spent putting together the site before its launch? Did you personally trawl around the .net looking for sites for months prior to its release? :)

i'd been gathering links for 1-2 months before, and actively categorized them and wrote the scripting for maybe 2-3 weeks before the launch. i did a lot of the work during my holiday in new york last november actually (the company has an office there).

Your hit rate on Slipgate must be pretty high, yet you've resisted the temptation to host advertising for profit on your site unlike other popular sites like Blue's - was this a conscious decision?

right now i get around 4000 page impressions a day. the site runs on a machine at work, and i'm not allowed to make money from that, but even if i could, i'd chose not to. it doesn't take too much time to maintain, like i said and it's my personal decision to do this site for free. there are very few quake sites out there that are really worth the ad banners actually. probably half a dozen or so.

Has the explosion of Quake sites, levels, patches, utilities, etc. surprised you?

nope. i saw it happen for doom and knew there was going to be even more happening around quake, since it offers more flexibility and there already was an established doom editing scene who were waiting to take the next step. i'm a bit worried about quake levels right now. too many of them are mediocre and because each level includes it's own set of textures, they take up lots of space.

Do you get to play much Quake nowadays? If so, what is your favourite playing style (i.e. Quakeworld, one-on-one deathmatch, single player, etc) ?

we have about a dozen active quake players here in the office, so we normally play regular quake dm on our own server (quake.onlinemagic.com). lately i've been playing a bit of quakeworld too.

Do you get to play much of the user-created stuff?

i try and test most of the single player levels uploaded, but hardly ever try and deathmatch levels uploaded.

You've also just become the maintainer for Unreal on ftp.cdrom.com. How did that come about and what do you think of Unreal's potential as a 'Quake killer'? :)

based on all i've read about the game, it seems to have the potential to be a much better game than quake. of course no-one can tell before the game is out, but i like to become involved sooner than later, and i think i've gotten my foot in the door quite nicely here. it's interesting to see the unreal scene develope similarly to the quake scene, with 'cults' instead of clans and news sites like www.shadows.co.uk.

What is your favourite Quake level designed by id?

dm4.

What is your favourite user created level?

varies. i have a terrible memory, and usually forget them a few days after playing.

What is your favourite monster?

zombies (they explode so nicely).

What is your least favourite monster?

shamblers (they take forever to kill).

What would you like to see in Quake 2/Trinity?

more interactivity with the environment. a plot (*shocker*) for some of the levels.

Thanks for your time :)

you're welcome ;)

Interview © Matt Sefton and Joost Schuur, 1997.