Outside QuakeCon 96, talking with friends

Unbelievably so, it's been 10 years since QTEST (Quake Test) was unleashed upon the world a mere 4 months before the full release of Quake on June 22nd, 1996.

QTEST was a test version of Quake that we uploaded to the net to gather information on how people's experience went. At the same time we invited seven people (The QTEST 7) to come to our office and play the game in front of us and give us their honest feedback - these were all hardcore DOOM players and very sensitive to gameplay issues. It was a great time having them there and getting the feedback....I still have DoomDeity's feedback that he sent to me.

You'll see in the pics a guy named Mark Fletcher - I hired him to be my MIS guy at Ion Storm and he was at Ion for the full 8.5 years of the company and working with Warren Spector at his new company now. Also pictured is John Cash, the network coder for Quake, who went on to become the Lead Programmer for World of Warcraft! You go, John - major props!

Here's a great site about QTEST.