The 3D Revelation
John was a game developer, but he felt embarrassed handing out his business card anywhere. He worked for a company that published Softdisk, a computer magazine. Strictly speaking, it was a publishing house, yet it had a policy of bundling games as special supplements. And those games weren't bought from distributors—they were made in-house. John's job was to create games for those supplement booklets. Because of that, the games he made were the kind you could churn out in a month: derivative copycats with almost no originality. Even so, his confidence in computers was overflowing. Back in high school, he'd made a game all by himself and sold it at retail stores; he was that comfortable with computers. His programming skills improved day by day, filling him with the belief that he could build anything. On top of that, even though the workplace was shabby, he had plenty of like-minded colleagues, so he never dreaded coming to work.
Still, there were exactly three things he wished were different about the job: he couldn't make the games he actually wanted to make, they only ever asked for copycats, and the pay was abysmal. After covering rent, gas, and food, buying even a single computer part would wipe out his savings. If the part he really wanted was expensive, he had to cut back on living expenses just to afford it. So when he saw the new post on the CompuServe bulletin board titled "Looking for Keyboard Warrior Testers," John knew this was it.
The post explained that they had released an educational program combining typing practice with gameplay and wanted user feedback. Instead of asking for free work, they offered a one-month CompuServe subscription to each tester—the highest-tier plan that included access to every paid service, just like the internet. For John, who found the service fees burdensome, it was the perfect arrangement. The requirements weren't particularly strict either. All he had to do was use the program for three days and post a review of at least ten lines on the CompuServe board. The review couldn't plagiarize anyone else's post, had to be written sincerely, and had to be uploaded at a time specified by the client. Those conditions were unusual, but manageable. The only real requirement was computer specs, and that was no problem. John poured every spare cent from his paycheck into upgrades, so getting filtered out on hardware was unthinkable.
He immediately sent an email listing his computer specifications and his experience as a programmer. Less than thirty minutes later, a reply arrived from the poster, an ID named Remington. "Perfect!" John had been selected as a tester. The review had to be posted by 6 p.m. on November 4th. Once they verified it, they would email him the subscription code. Now all that remained was to try Keyboard Warrior.
John went straight to the CompuServe software library and navigated to the educational software section. "There it is." Judging by how high it already ranked in downloads, plenty of testers had already signed up. He started the download immediately. The progress bar climbed steadily. His recently purchased 9600 bps modem was performing at full capacity. Even though the files totaled two 2D diskettes' worth of data, the download finished in nine minutes. He extracted the archive and launched the program without hesitation.
The ID Technology logo appeared and faded, followed by the Keyboard Warrior title screen. "Hmm. They've got style." Any dismissive thoughts he'd had about it being "just educational software" vanished. The high-quality background music and majestic sound effects coming through the MIDI module were excellent. The real standout was the title itself: the striking font for "Keyboard Warrior" and the protagonist wearing a full-body suit and a fighter pilot's helmet. Only the upper body was shown, which made the image even more striking, surrounded by monsters. The fact that he was holding a keyboard instead of a weapon made John chuckle. A shotgun would have fit perfectly, but since this was a typing program, a keyboard made sense.
"Interesting. The more I look, the more impressed I get." Most people would have hit Enter and moved on, but John spent five full minutes examining the title screen in detail. Nothing seemed out of place. When something caught his attention, he focused on it—that was just how he was. The full-body suit, viewed at leisure, was genuinely impressive. There were plenty of characters in suits already—RoboCop, Iron Man, and so on—but this design was different, sleek in a way that felt ahead of its time. It wasn't a lazy copy of anything that already existed.
"Feels like a waste to use a character like that in an educational game." A good idea flashed through John's mind. What if that character wielded modern weapons like a shotgun or rocket launcher and fought demons? The thought began to waver the moment he pressed Start and entered the tutorial, and it shattered completely once he reached the actual Zombie Crush gameplay.
"What in the world is this?" At its core, Keyboard Warrior was a typing trainer. Yet the way it taught typing was through cutting-edge gameplay, and the fusion was flawless. John tore through the tutorial in a frenzy. From finger placement drills to word practice, sentence practice, and even paragraph practice—everything blended seamlessly with the game. The boss fights were the highlight. The massive boss filling the screen, the barrage of cursed words mixed with attacks, the summoning of minions, the area-of-effect spells—every visual pushed the VGA hardware to its absolute limit, delivering a level of visual shock that made every previous game feel obsolete. The gameplay was already proven. The educational value wasn't lacking either. It didn't just keep kids who were uncomfortable with computers sitting in front of one; it genuinely improved their typing speed. John, a professional programmer, had always been confident in his typing. If even he typed noticeably faster after playing, that said everything.
Even the game's world-building was perfect. Beyond paragraph practice, there was something called "long-form practice"—an entire short story. It maximized science-fiction imagination while maintaining excellent prose. It was good enough to be published as a novel and become a bestseller, yet here it was buried inside a game. But what truly shocked John was the message that appeared after finishing the boss fight: "Thank you for playing the English Keyboard Warrior preview version. Please look forward to the full release."
That single sentence filled John with doubt about everything he'd made at the company. His own programming skills, which he'd been proud of, felt like they had crumbled in front of Keyboard Warrior. The silky-smooth scrolling that moved the entire screen was something he'd never seen before. While maintaining that ice-like fluidity, hordes of zombies poured across the screen. The impact when typing made them explode was satisfying. And the music—John owned nearly every rock album worth owning, yet the boss battle tracks here belonged in the same conversation as classic records.
"This is really just the preview?" Even as it stood, this could be a massive hit in stores. It could easily sell for forty or fifty dollars like a full-package game. Yet this wasn't the final version. When he read the list of features planned for the full release, his jaw dropped. More stages, more varied boss fights, four-player co-op over networks, boss rush modes over networks—the list went on. It was as if they were trying to fit a hundred-dollar game into a single package. If it actually released like that, John would gladly pay a hundred dollars for it himself.
At the same time, his fingers itched. He wanted to dive into debugging and reverse engineering right away—to figure out how they achieved that buttery scrolling and how they handled countless objects simultaneously. Doing it without source code would be difficult, but for John, it wasn't impossible.
"First, I should write the review." Before starting anything else, John decided to do what he was supposed to do. He would write the review. He didn't know how the full version would be distributed, but at the very least it would appear on CompuServe first, so securing the subscription came first. He paused briefly over the title. He wanted to convey exactly how the game had impressed him.
"This should work." Settling on a title he liked, John began typing at high speed.
Keyboard Warrior. A shocking game that has it all—3D!
In America, people usually called something incredible "crazy," but John had coined "3D" to express an even stronger feeling: Deadly gameplay, Deadly sound, Deadly performance—hence 3D. The review, which was supposed to be at least ten lines, ballooned to over ten pages. From the tutorial to the boss fights, from the bug-free coding even in a preview build—every word was pure praise. As a well-known user on CompuServe, John's review exploded in views almost instantly. And he wasn't the only one deeply affected by Keyboard Warrior. Other testers were busy spreading their own intense impressions, and Keyboard Warrior spread rapidly in turn. It appeared on internet servers run by MIT, Stanford, and Caltech, as well as private BBS systems and even major software distributors.
"3D, huh." After posting the promised review, John felt a sudden flash of inspiration. It had started as a pun, but actually making something three-dimensional seemed entirely possible. Even Keyboard Warrior already hinted at a slight sense of depth. In Zombie Crush mode, the character moved forward while facing the screen, and the movement was incredibly smooth. The faster you typed, the quicker the character walked, giving a real sense of speed. If you simply added vertical walls to create spatial depth, wouldn't that produce a 3D effect? And if the playable character wore the same full-body suit and stylish helmet from Keyboard Warrior, it would be perfect. Just like he'd first imagined—a 3D game where the character carried a shotgun instead of a keyboard and ruthlessly carved through demons.
The next day at work, John immediately shared the idea with his colleagues. "That sounds incredible," his close friend Romero said, immediately agreeing. "Instead of demons, what if we had them fight Nazis?" Adrian and Kevin chimed in with their own suggestions. Buoyed by their positive reactions, John finally voiced the thought he'd been holding onto for a long time.
"Then how about we make a real game instead of those magazine supplement titles? Mr. Miller said he'd fully support us if we took the lead."
In an instant, John and his colleagues were united. They decided to quit Softdisk and found their own game development studio. "But if we're starting a company, we need a proper name," Kevin pointed out cautiously. John smiled as if he'd already thought of everything.
"ID Software!"
"ID Software? Man, you were really impressed by Keyboard Warrior. The 'ID Technology' influence is way too obvious."
"It's not ID, it's id."
"ID, id—same difference. Anyway, I'm in."
The nuclear bomb Yoo Jae-won had dropped sent countless shockwaves through the world. The early founding of ID Software was one of the larger ripples.