Ion Storm Austin
 |
|
| Private | |
| Industry |
Computer and video games Interactive entertainment |
| Fate | Merged with Eidos Interactive |
| Successor | Square Enix Europe (Intellectual Properties) |
| Founded | November 15, 1996 |
| Founder |
John Romero Tom Hall |
| Defunct | February 9, 2005 |
| Headquarters | Dallas, Texas, United States |
|
Key people
|
Warren Spector John Romero Tom Hall Mike Wilson Jerry O'Flaherty Todd Porter |
| Website | ionstorm.com |
Ion Storm Inc. (sometimes spelled ION Storm) was a Texas based developer of computer games founded by John Romero, Tom Hall, Todd Porter, and Jerry O'Flaherty, under the slogan "Design is Law". Hall and Romero were former employees of id Software.
Ion Storm was founded on November 15, 1996 with its headquarters in Dallas. The company had signed a licensing deal with Eidos Interactive for six games and the founders planned to scoop up titles from other companies that were close to completion, finish them, and push them out quickly to bring in initial revenue.
In a fashion similar to other dot com busts, the company spent lavishly on office decor and facilities for employees. The corporate headquarters of Ion Storm were located in Suite 5400, 22,000-square-foot (2,000 m2) of space in a penthouse suite on the 54th floor, the top floor, of the Chase Tower in Downtown Dallas. Ion Storm spent $2 million on the facility. Lisa Chadderdon of Fast Company said that the penthouse location was "unusual." For the first ten years after the construction of the JPMorgan Chase Tower, the penthouse location had been unleased.
Russ Berger Design Group, a firm most known for its work in designing recording studios, was responsible for interior design of the headquarters. This included a ten-foot-wide company logo set into the terrazzo floor of the lobby and matching green elevator doors. The headquarters included a "crash room," a dormitory facility with two beds, three couches, a VCR, a wide screen television, and two telephone booths. It also housed a gaming room with a ping-pong table and four arcade machines, a changing area, and a shower room. The headquarters included these facilities because many employees in the video game industry work long hours at a time.
This location proved somewhat problematic. A notable problem with the office was that the sun shone through the glass rooftop directly into the monitors of the employees, forcing them to cover their cubicles with black fabric.
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Wikipedia