By the time Doom 3 entered development, id Software was a very different studio. The challenging development of Quake had seen the working relationship between Romero and Carmack break down, culminating in Romero’s departure from the company just after Quake’s launch. Romero would go on to found Ion Storm with Tom Hall, where they oversaw design of Daikatana and Anachronox.
Meanwhile, id Software knuckled down on two Quake sequels, the sci-fi, hardware accelerated Quake II, and the exclusively multiplayer Quake III. By 2003, id Software had grown to a core team of roughly 26 people. But the internal dynamic of the studio had also changed dramatically. While visiting the studio in 2003, prior to the publication of Masters of Doom, Kushner noted, “I’ve never seen id’s office as focused as it is now.”
While Carmack’s influence is present in all id early games, Doom 3 is the one where his ideals shine through most clearly. It was Carmack who pushed to make a third Doom game after Quake III, when the original plan was to design a multiplayer RPG called Quest. This led to Carmack issuing an ultimatum to the main proponents for Quest, Adrian Carmack and Kevin Cloud, threatening that he would leave the company unless they made Doom 3. “Obviously no fun for anyone involved,” Carmack later wrote in a .plan file (a prototypical hybrid between a blog post and social media), “but the project direction was changed, new hires have been expedited, and the design work has begun.” There’s no record of Cloud or the other Carmack’s views on the topic from the time, but in a G4 documentary on the making of Doom 3, Cloud acknowledges his original position as “wrong” and that “[Carmack’s] decision was great”.