Chapter 180: Friendly Rivalry

This matter was ultimately just a small episode. Infocom indeed did not have any IPs that left a particularly deep impression on him, so it would be better to leave it to Caneghem and let him work freely and create some even better titles. 

What Ethan really needed was Activision itself, along with its four founders. 

"This transition can be considered a restoration to the original path." 

He looked at David, who was still busy gathering his old comrades, and nodded in satisfaction. 

Back in its heyday, these four men had been responsible for nearly half of Atari's empire. Yet now, their names seemed destined to vanish into obscurity, as though they had never played a role in shaping the gaming industry. 

Ethan couldn't help feeling somewhat disappointed when he looked at the Activision of the present day. 

It wasn't that the company had become mediocre. Far from it. 

The problem was that this Activision was simply too different from the one he remembered. The company he knew from his previous life had followed a completely different trajectory. 

As for the gaming giant that would eventually become Activision Blizzard, its real transformation would not begin until Bobby Kotick took control of the company. 

Kotick might have been one of the most hated figures in the gaming industry, but there was no denying his importance to Activision's rise. 2

Without him, the gaming powerhouse that would later become one of the industry's giants, and a company that even Microsoft and Sony would compete fiercely over, might never have existed. 

The future Activision was a company born from the ashes of an older era, rebuilding itself atop the ruins of what had come before. 

After taking control of the bankrupt Activision, Kotick wasted no time. He cut the company's bloated workforce, dismissing the vast majority of its employees, and redirected what remained of the organization toward a single goal: making video games. 

Judging purely by the results, that decision was undeniably the right one. 

But even after the restructuring, Activision was little more than an empty shell. It lacked the talent and creative power necessary to become the industry king it would eventually turn into. 

Kotick understood that perfectly. 

Instead of trying to rebuild everything from scratch, he began looking for talented studios that could fill the void. One of his first major moves was to approach Raven Software and secure an exclusive publishing partnership with the studio. 

That was only the beginning. Soon, other developers joined Activision's growing network, including 2015 and Ritual Entertainment. And among them was a studio that would go on to create something far greater than anyone could have imagined. 

A game that would shake the entire industry. 

Call of Duty 4

Strictly speaking, Call of Duty wasn't created by the 2015 studio itself. It was the work of Infinity Ward, a new company founded by twenty-two developers who had previously worked at 2015. 3

But it was this game that would change everything. 

At the time, Activision was still trailing far behind Electronic Arts. Call of Duty would give the company the breakthrough it desperately needed, allowing it to close the gap with EA and eventually become a gaming powerhouse in its own right. 

Ethan couldn't help clicking his tongue. 

"This is going to be a problem." 

The original 2015 studio had been founded back in 1997. Most of the developers who would eventually make up Infinity Ward were still kids at this point. 

There was no way Ethan could recruit them now and expect them to shoulder major responsibilities. After all, not everyone was John Carmack, someone who had already developed extraordinary programming skills at an absurdly young age. 

Then Ethan paused. 

"Hm?" 

His fingers, which had been lightly tapping against the desk, suddenly stopped. 

"Wait. There actually is someone." 

The lead programmer at Activision's first wholly owned subsidiary, Raven Software. 

A rebellious kid whose early life had been remarkably similar to Carmack's. He skipped school, spent countless hours in arcades, and taught himself programming until he became an exceptionally talented developer. 

Ben Gokey 

His career would never reach the legendary heights of Carmack's, but that didn't make his technical skills any less impressive. 

In the 1990s, while most teenagers were still figuring out how to use computers, Gokey was already building real-time 3D environments in a cluttered garage. 

... 

Wisconsin 

When Ethan arrived at Gokey's home with Carmack, the two were greeted by a sight that left them momentarily speechless. 

The garage was a complete mess. Tools, spare parts, cables, and assorted junk were scattered everywhere. In the middle of it all sat a battered PC and a folding chair. 

That was essentially Gokey's entire development setup. At a time when many aspiring developers were already upgrading to increasingly powerful machines, his equipment looked almost laughably primitive. 

A teenager appeared at the garage door and looked the two strangers up and down. His eyes lingered on Carmack for a moment longer. The two were nearly the same age, Carmack himself was only fifteen or sixteen. 

"Can I help you guys?" 

"..." 

Carmack said nothing. Instead, he slowly turned his eyes toward Ethan. The look on his face practically said, 'Are you sure about this?' 

Even recruiting Caneghem hadn't been this ridiculous. After a moment of silence, Ethan glanced back at Carmack. 

'You're both just kids, so give it a rest.' 

Carmack's expression clearly disagreed, he had never thought of himself as a kid. Without another word, he stepped forward and looked directly at the teenager. 

"You're Gokey, right?" 

"Yeah." 

Carmack nodded and asked, "How'd you like to come work with me?" 

Gokey stared at him. There was something about the way Carmack said it that made the offer sound less like a job and more like a challenge. 

Gokey frowned, clearly having no idea who this strange guy was or why he had suddenly shown up at his garage. 

"Sorry, I'm not interested." 

He turned around and dropped back into his folding chair. The conversation was over, or at least, as far as Gokey was concerned, it was. 

He placed his hands on the keyboard and went right back to work, completely ignoring the two visitors standing behind him. 

Ethan spread his hands at Carmack, then directly stepped backward out of the garage, signaling for Carmack to handle it himself. 

Carmack lightly stamped his foot. Seeing that Ethan really wasn't going to help him, he finally walked over to stand in front of Gokey. 

He looked at the image displayed in the dim, monotonous colors on that pitiful little monitor and raised an eyebrow slightly. 

It looked somewhat familiar. He was imitating the pseudo-3D rendering technique Carmack had used in Wolfenstein 3D. 

Only, he wasn't very good at it, at least, that's how it looked in Carmack's eyes. 

"Uniform grid-based spatial partitioning is already outdated. With a design like this, you can only render those bland spaces." 

Carmack stood behind Gokey with his arms folded. With his very first sentence, he dismissed everything Gokey had spent the entire Christmas holiday painstakingly developing. 

That did it. Gokey had had enough. He spun around and stared directly at Carmack. Faced with these two inexplicably uninvited guests, Gokey couldn't make sense of what was happening. 

"Ha! You don't understand at all. I'm doing this so I can simplify the lighting calculations and achieve smooth lighting gradients. That's something even Wolfenstein 3D can't do!" 

"So, your design is already outdated." 

Carmack remained completely unmoved. "What you need is to properly study computer graphics, not sit here reinventing the wheel by yourself. Using BSP, binary space partitioning, to manage complex geometry is far more efficient than your design." 

Gokey was about to snap, but the anger that had surged into his chest suddenly stalled. 

Damn it, this guy seemed to be right. That only made it worse, it was so infuriating! 

What could be more annoying than that? 

"Then tell me, if you're using BSP, how would you implement the lighting system?" 

He could only stubbornly throw out another challenge. 

"If it were me, I'd use a lightmap and precompute the lighting values for each area. That would allow you to achieve smooth gradients between light and dark." 

Carmack answered without a moment's hesitation. His time at MicroNova had clearly not gone to waste. 

"That's exactly what I meant. When I designed the rendering system for Wolfenstein 3D, I hadn't yet studied computer graphics systematically. If I were designing it now, I wouldn't take such a roundabout approach." 

With binary space partitioning, the entire rendering system could be redesigned from the ground up, significantly improving its efficiency. 

Complex geometric spaces would also allow him to design game maps with genuine elevation changes, rather than the completely flat layouts of Wolfenstein 3D. 

Gokey scratched his head, struggling to wrap his mind around the entirely new approach Carmack had proposed. It took him a long while to work through the implications before he finally nodded. 

Although he still hadn't figured out the detailed logic of how the system worked, he could already roughly estimate just how great the actual improvement would be. 

Damn it! He was right! 

"Hmm, all right. What you're saying does make some sense. Wait... what do you mean, you developed the rendering system?" 3

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