> Doom/Quake

Doom was a tense collaboration between Carmack and Romero. Carmack was geniusing out the engine, while Romero was pulling hard on the game atmosphere, music, level design and details like the timer that spawned Doom's speedrunning culture.

Quake, which was Romero-less, was a technical masterpiece, but not a very memorable game. There was the brown level, the other brown level, and the brown level again but different. Its modding potential plus competent network code really made it a big hit.

The artist of doom is a forgotten hero apart from Romero/Carmack. He had a background with nasty medical images, so the hellish deformed people were a good fit.

Without it's art, doom would be a very different game.

That's Adrian Carmack (no relation to John). He made most of the characters you see in the game out of clay before they were pixelated.

Can't recommend Masters of Doom enough, the book that talks about the history of id Software. That all these guys came together in the same place is a miracle in itself.

And in Shreveport, nonetheless. Go look at that building on Google Street View sometimes.

One of the strangest buildings I've ever seen. I wonder if it wasn't a street-level stall market or something first because now it's basically a parking lot with an unfortunate building packed under it.

> the timer that spawned Doom's speedrunning culture

Could you elaborate on that? I'm aware of speedrunning (it's fun to watch!) but I don't know anything about "the timer".

Doom was one of the first games that showed how long you'd spent to complete a level at the end of each level. This made it easy (and obvious) to compare times and compete with others.

Ah, the levels were timed. Got it, thanks!

What about Wolfenstein 3d?

Romero worked on Quake all the way up to release. He was the one that built and uploaded the first beta release and has talked about it extensively.

Quake: Let's not forget the NIN-composed soundtrack!

At least on the story front, Alpha Centauri seems to owe much more to Brian Reynolds than to Sid Meier, according to [1]. Unless you mean he was the "strong single author" there (instead of Sid Meier), I'd argue there were at least 2 strong authors.

[1] https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/2015/02/17/introduction/

Yes, Reynolds for SMAC and Sören Johnsen for Civ4, after Civ3 was his learning step.

>Popoulous, Doom/Quacke

These examples, at least (the others are a bit outside of my knowledge), fit the pattern outlined above of having worse successor projects headed by a former team-member.

By your own words Civ does not fit that pattern, because you said Civ II was the best instance. Now I am unsure what your point is.