To make this more HN-relevant, I will say that the whole point of Ion Storm was supposed to be unleashing Romero’s game direction, but the business partners who were supposed to give him that space instead provided another level of distraction.
John worked insanely hard and doesn’t blame others for what he’s responsible for, but with all the business chaos at Ion which he dealt with personally, he just could not be on top of everything and that’s the major reason why DK was not the epic game it could have been. That’s the part that he doesn’t want to say, but to me it’s clear.
It’s a good example of why a startup needs its product visionary highly focused at the most critical times. As a rough approximation, every night John went to bed thinking about Ion’s latest issues instead of thinking about Daikatana was a lost chance to make the game 2% better. That adds up.