Doom (1993 video game)
The ability for others to create custom levels and otherwise modify the game using WAD files turned out to be a popular aspect of "Doom". Gaining the first large mod-making community, "Doom" affected the culture surrounding first-person shooters, and also the industry. Several future professional game designers started their careers making "Doom" WADs as a hobby, among them Tim Willits, who later became the lead designer at id Software.
Development of Doom
The team agreed to pursue the "Doom" concept, and development began in November 1992. The initial development team was composed of five people: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, artists Adrian Carmack and Kevin Cloud, and designer Tom Hall. They moved offices to a dark office building, which they named "Suite 666", and drew inspiration from the noises coming from the dentist's office next door. They also cut ties with Apogee Software, who had given them the initial advance money for creating their first game, "Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons", and through which they had published the shareware versions of their games to date. While they had a good personal relationship with owner Scott Miller, they felt that they were outgrowing the publisher. Cloud, who was involved in id's business dealings, pushed for id to take over shareware publishing duties themselves after investigating and finding that Apogee was unable to reliably handle the volume of customers buying id's games through Apogee. He convinced the others that the increased sales revenue would make up for the problems of handling their own publishing. The two companies parted amicably, and "Doom" was set to be self-published.