Tim Willits

Early life

Willits is a computer science and business graduate of the University of Minnesota and a former member of the University of Minnesota Army ROTC program. Willits was the battalion cadet-command sergeant major (C/CSM) during his junior year and attended ROTC Advanced Camp at Fort Lewis, Washington during the summer between his junior and senior years of college. After an injury during the summer, Willits completed two rotations, being assigned to both the first and seventh cadet regiments during that summer. He held the rank of cadet-major (C/MAJ) during his senior year and was assigned as the battalion training officer.

Career

Willits has stated in numerous interviews that he was inspired to make video games when he downloaded a demo version of DOOM in 1992. This is impossible because DOOM was released on December 10, 1993. He played the first room of Level 1 and thinking that was the entire demo, he then discovered a door that led the player to the other rooms. It was that moment when the door opened, Willits was transported into making video games. Ironically enough, Willits required assistance with developing doors in future levels and games. He joined id Software in 1995 after impressing the owners and development team with Doom levels he forged in his spare time and distributed free over the Internet. Willits has worked on Strife, The Ultimate Doom, Quake, Quake II, Quake III Arena, Quake III: Team Arena and Doom 3.

Willits was lead designer on Doom 3, and executive producer on Quake 4. He was the creative director on Rage and Quake Live. His most recent work is credited as the Studio Director for the 2016 release of Doom.

Willits received attention in August 2017 for falsely claiming that he created the concept of multiplayer maps during the development of Quake. According to Willits, he approached coworkers John Romero and John Carmack with the idea of maps which could only be played in multiplayer, which Willits claimed the two dismissed as "the stupidest idea they'd ever heard". The following day, Romero refuted Willits' statement on his personal blog, claiming that Willits' alleged encounter between him and Carmack never happened. Carmack said that he does not recall the conversation between Tim Willits, John Romero, and himself, and he trusts Romero's recollection of events, in line with the account detailed on Romero's blog. Romero explained that many hundreds of deathmatch-only maps had been made for Doom prior to Quake's release, including a deathmatch map created by then-id Software employee American McGee. Romero also noted that Marathon and Rise of the Triad, first person shooters which predated Quake by over a year, had a large variety of maps exclusive to multiplayer. Tom Hall, co-founder of id Software and director of Rise of the Triad, gave his support for Romero. Willits responded to the article by posting an early video of a map fragment with elements of Q1DM3 shown named Tim14.bsp on his Instagram, and stated that "He stands by what he said".

Willits was interviewed by Warren Spector in 2007 and told the same story about inventing the concept of multiplayer-only maps. Willits also claimed to have created all of Quake's shareware levels. This was disputed by John Romero who claims that Willits created 4/9 of Quake's shareware levels.

Personal life

Married for the second time in 2009, Willits currently lives in a Dallas suburb with his wife and triplets.