Bill Gates in DOOM ⛧ Windows 95 DirectX Gaming (1995)

9 months ago
34

PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/Kills_Alone
EVENT: Judgment Day (1995) by Microsoft
"Judgment Day was a combination Halloween party, game developer convention, informal press conference, and entertainment event for the public at large organized by Microsoft and held on October 30, 1995 - also called "Devil's Night". Primarily organized by then-Microsoft employee and principal architect of DirectX, Alex St. John, the event brought together 35 game developers, including id Software, who were given center stage for the event via inclusion of the finals for Deathmatch '95, a previously organized and officially sponsored DWANGO multiplayer tournament for Doom and Doom II. Doom95 would play a pivotal role in the event as a part of Microsoft's continuing strategy to promote Windows 95's potential as a gaming platform. The event also served as the official release party for Raven Software's last Doom engine game, Hexen: Beyond Heretic."

Bill Gates in Doom

"A significant part of the kick-off for the event was to be a video featuring Microsoft CEO Bill Gates being blue-screened into Doom. Alex St. John initially met yet more resistance from Microsoft PR while trying to secure access to the executive, and he eventually bypassed them entirely, bringing the proposal directly to Gates himself. Gates accepted the idea, albeit without an entirely clear picture of what form it would yet take. According to St. John, Microsoft had already been "into making funny viral videos" featuring Gates and fellow executive Steve Ballmer, and this acceptance from Gates was mostly expected by St. John, who found Gates to have a liking for his proposals.

St. John states that on the day of recording, Bill Gates arrived with only 20 minutes to spend on the project. Again, PR attempted to micro-manage the recording, and growing frustrated, Gates himself turned to St. John and asked, "What do you want me to do?" Alex handed the CEO a trench coat and a shotgun and gave him his lines. The video was recorded in a single take, without any prompter or notes, and without rehearsal.

St. John would again insert the phrase, "Who do you want to execute today?", a play on Microsoft's "Where do you want to go today?" promotion, at the end of the video, in part to spite the executive who earlier threatened to fire him over its use.

Upon seeing the results, the public relations personnel demanded that the video was to only ever be shown once, at the event, and was to then be surrendered to the Microsoft archives. St. John states that it is only thanks to a DirectX fan employee who smuggled the video out of the company that it is now widely available."

MORE INFO
https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Judgment_Day

Loading comments...