Daydream Software
Their first game was "Safecracker", a point and click adventure game published by DreamCatcher Interactive. The game had a tumultuous production, starting when GT Interactive bought initial publisher Warner Interactive Europe. Daydream Software went public in late 1996. The company's goal was to increase its economic and decision-making freedom, and to secure the ability to select a publisher at the end of each game's development rather than at the beginning. President Jans Phersson-Broburg argued that self-financing Daydream's future games with money from Swedish investors, instead of obtaining "funding linked to specific projects" from publishers, would offer the developer more stability, flexibility and room for growth. For Daydream's public launch, roughly 20 million kr worth of shares, or 45.5% of the company, were offered to investors in Sweden. The initial public offering was a success, and Daydream opened on the Stockholm Stock Exchange's Stockholm Börsinformation (SBI) list in January 1997. Daydream was eventually able to buy back the rights to "Safecracker".
Development of Doom
The initial concept for the game was proposed in the fall of 1992, after the release of "Wolfenstein 3D" and its sequel "Spear of Destiny". Lead programmer John Carmack was working on creating an improved 3D game engine from those games, and the company wanted to have its next game take advantage of his designs. Several ideas were proposed, including a new game in their "Commander Keen" series, but John Carmack successfully proposed a game about using technology to fight demons, inspired by the "Dungeons & Dragons" campaigns the team played, to be titled "Doom". The initial months of development were spent on prototypes, while Hall created several iterations of the "Doom Bible", a design document for his vision of the game and its story; after id released a grandiose press release touting features that the team had not yet begun working on, the "Doom Bible" was rejected in favor of a plot-less game with no design document at all.