DirectX之父：Vista不适合玩游戏

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　Shacknews近日采访了被称为“DirectX之父”的Alex St. John，正是这位前微软老兵开启了DirectX技术，并将微软引入游戏业务，不过在他看来，微软最新的Vista很糟糕，不适合玩游戏，也不安全。 　　Alex St. John在采访中回忆了当年他与几位朋友是如何秘密开始DirectX项目、又是如何最终让游戏业采纳这一技术的，还讲述了他、比尔·盖茨、Windows 95与《Doom》之间的故事，以及他差点儿被微软炒鱿鱼的经历。
　　下边是Alex St. John对Vista与游戏的看法：
　　“我认为微软并没有凭借Vista提升PC作为游戏平台的地位。这让我非常沮丧，毕竟那是我曾经战斗过的地方。如果我还在微软，就会花更大的力气确保Vista不插手游戏。在微软，没有人意识到Vista并未给游戏业创造新的价值。它就这么插了进来，微软也认为可以增加更多(功能)就可以创造更多价值。很不幸，微软在Vista里加入的很多东西都在拖游戏开发的后腿。在Vista里创作高质量游戏当然是有可能的，只是这太痛苦了，而且完全不必要如此。微软本应在支持PC游戏方面做得更好，但Vista搞砸了。”
　　对于Vista的安全性，Alex St. John也颇有微辞。尽管微软一再宣扬Vista的种种安全特性，Alex St. John却认为Vista不过是一座安装了玻璃门的混凝土房子。他说：“(Vista的)安全系统做得有点儿过火了。表面上看起来很强大，其实存在很多巨大的漏洞，很容易被入侵，而且还干扰了用户体验。”
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[size=2]Alex St. John [/size][/align]

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[quote]恭喜，你此次发贴获得了 [color=Red]140[/color] 论坛币的随机特别赠送值！

　　　下次努力哦！……[/quote]Either people love Microsoft, or they hate them, and that's about how most people feel about one of "the Empire's" former influential evangelists, Alex St John. Credited with successes such as initiating the development of the Direct X API in order to move gaming from DOS to Windows, throwing wild parties for game developers, and working hard to get himself fired, Alex may come off as abrasive and too candid to some, while being thought of as spunky and outgoing by others. However you feel about Alex, he's an interesting individual, and that's why I took the time to catch up with him not once, but twice, in order to learn more about the fast-paced life in development that he has led. In the first of our two interviews, Alex discusses his time at Microsoft, his fight to bring game developers over to Windows, and why Vista isn't a suitable platform for gaming--at least not yet.
http://www.shacknews.com/extras/inlines/david/asj1_1.jpgShack: Tell us a bit about yourself, and why you thought PC gaming should move from DOS to Windows.
Alex St John: I used to work for Microsoft several years ago, and I was originally hired to handle their publishing and printing architecture. I worked with Windows 95 and got into multimedia, and they were having some difficulty in this department. Microsoft thought playing videos was the most exciting thing you could do with Windows. I was in the strategy group that said you guys are out of your mind, that is the dumbest thing ever and Apple will kick your butts and they deserve to. Gaming is what people want to use their PCs for. If you really want to have Windows be the dominant operating system it should be built around games.
I started the Direct X project at Microsoft with a couple of friends and as you probably know it was an underground effort. It was not a big company strategy; It has a huge transformative effect on Microsoft because it took off, as you know. When Windows 95 shipped Direct X was not part of the OS. Microsoft would not include the technology with the operating system. What we did is we persuaded all the game developers who wanted to make Windows 95 games for us to ship Direct X with their games.
Shack: How did you go about persuading the developers?
Alex St John: It was very hard. The first step was, I was in charge of game compatibility with Windows 95, so I was working with all the DOS game developers to make sure the games worked better in Windows 95; that's where a lot of the relationships came from. But when I said, 'Hey would you guys consider making your next game on Windows?' they laughed at me. I said, "Well what's the problem?" and they told me, "Your OS is fat, it's slow, it sucks up memory; everything's just in the way, and it doesn't have the features we need." I said, "Well what would I have to do in Windows to make it a better game environment?" They said if I can solve the driver problems Windows had and essentially shut down the OS, that would be helpful.
Essentially it's called Direct X because it was designed to bypass the operating system, to push Windows aside, get it out of memory, get rid of all the garbage competing with games for resources, and just let the games run. A lot of the functionality [was based around] shutting down Win graphics system so games could talk to the video hardware, stopping Windows from paging memory to the hard drive so that games could run at a constant frame rate, bypassing Windows message queue so you could get real-time mouse input so you could actually control a first-person shooter like Doom.
I went to Origin and id first and said, "Look, we don't know what the hell we're doing, we want to make Windows run games, and we need your support. If you trust us with the source to your most popular games, we'll port them to Windows and hand them back to you. If you think the game runs well, you can publish it and keep all the money." Carmack gave us Doom, the very first Direct X game [ever published], and Origin actually did one better and sent three people to work at Microsoft porting the games with us. As soon as we started showing the game community that the most respected games not only could run well under Windows, but were running better than they did under DOS, we started gaining some momentum.
It was Microsoft's initial willingness to shoulder the risk for top developers… that helped establish a lot of the momentum.
Shack: How did stuffy Microsoft suits appeal to the rock-and-roll lifestyle of gaming?.
Alex St John: Well, Microsoft had the reputation of being a big boring enterprise company, the natural enemy to creative people who avoid that industry because they want to make games. In order for Microsoft to have any credibility. In this industry we had to have a cooler, more relaxed, creative reputation, and be more approachable to people from that industry. The best way to do that is to throw a great party, because at the end of the day you need people to be willing to try the technology, but if the technology was great but didn't trust you, it didn't bother how great the technology was, they'd never look at it. So I threw those crazy parties in order to help them with Microsoft's relationship. And they were pretty wild, and they were very successful because they caused the developers to go, "Hey, these guys aren't bad guys, I had a lot of fun at the party, the games and technology are pretty cool." And that's what smoothed the way for a lot of the developers to try [our Direct X] technology.
Shack: I heard the launch party for Doom was pretty insane.
Alex St John: [laughs] Yeah.
http://www.shacknews.com/extras/inlines/david/doom1.pngShack: Would you say that's the event that really clinched the support from game developers you needed?
Alex St John: That was the first party, yeah, the coming out party for Doom for Windows 95. I persuaded 24 game developers to create launch titles for Windows 95. One of the things I felt Microsoft owed them was as much marketing support and momentum as we could give those titles to make up for that big risk they were taking. I wanted to show the game industry that we were supporting them and we were going to help them promote the heck out of their titles, but the other thing I wanted to do was bring them into Microsoft and have Microsoft see how huge the support was from the game industry, and have Microsoft see what kind of games were being made for Windows, that were very different than what Microsoft thought games were about.
So what we did was take over the new game building's parking garage from Patty Stonesifer—without her permission; she was very upset, complained about me to Gates—and we built a haunted house in the parking garage. We want to bring all these developers who are launching titles to build sections of the haunted house, 3000 press and publishers, and we'll just have this crazy party, and it was of course very crazy and very controversial at Microsoft.
[In addition to hosting a WinDoom tournament], id brought Gwar, a pretty unhooked band, they brought in 8-foot tall vagina with a 100 penises hanging from it, OJ Simpson's severed head, all sorts of things among their other costumes. There was a guy with a 4-foot long schlong spraying blood and so forth, and I said, "If we're gonna do this, Microsoft has to suck it up. This is the games industry, let these guys do what they like. We're supporting an open market platform, we're not selling Nintendos where we control what people make, and if people have the perception that that's what Microsoft wants to do, they're going to lose credibility immediately. This is us supporting the game industry, and they're here supporting us."
So we had this haunted house with all the press and Microsoft execs going through the house, and I got terrified; I thought, "You know what? I'm gonna get fired for this." So I was standing outside the entrance watching these people coming out, laughing, covered with blood, getting their pictures taken, what have you, and all the execs came out laughing, having a great time. I went up to [one of the execs] and said, "Hey, did you like the haunted house," and he goes, "Oh yeah, it was fantastic." So I said, "Well, did you see the id room?" And he said "Yeah, they had a lot of monsters." I asked, "Did you happen to see what they were?" He replied, "Well, it was dark, I saw some stuff getting sprayed around, yeah, it was great!" So the funny thing is with all the press and execs walking through here, either they didn't believe what they were seeing or they just didn't see it. I'm going, "Did any of you see the 8-foot tall vagina monster that attacked you?" "No." "Did any of you see the huge schlongs?" "Oh, is that what that was?" So, it was a very successful party, you know, Patty Stonesifer complained to Gates, but all he said was, "Patty complained, but I heard it was a great party."
http://www.shacknews.com/extras/inlines/david/doom2.pngWe got a lot of fantastic press, and the game developers went and told everybody, "Hey, Microsoft is actually cool," so we enjoyed a lot of success, but you can imagine how risque they thought that would be for a professional organization like "the Empire."
Shack: Wow. Was that your first near run-in with termination at Microsoft?
Alex St John: Oh my God. Well, the first time I interacted with [Bill] Gates was 3 months after I was hired. I was 25, I'd been hired to be a publishing strategist, I'd never dealt with press or a lot of big company politics. I was just an engineer who was very good with publishing technology. I think it was Infoweek Magazine, one of the top IT magazines of that time, called and said, "We want some commentary on Windows 95's commentary for publishing," and my boss says, "That's perfect for the new guy, I'll have him talk to you." So they put me on the phone with a journalist, and this was the first time I'd ever talked with the press. I'd never had any PR coaching, I didn't think I had to be careful [with what I said], I was naïve about it. So I was very honest, I said, "Yeah, printing in Windows 95 doesn't work so good, we're going to fix it, we're going to have some dramatic enhancements." And they asked, "How does it compare to Apple's?" I responded, "Clearly, in the case of Windows 3.1, it's not as good as [Apple Macintosh's]."
On the front page [of the next issue] of Infoweek, [the headline reads]: "Microsoft Executive Alex St John says 'Mac Is Superior Publishing platform to Windows.' Apparently I was promoted. The article stated how Windows sucked for printing. I [arrive] at my office and I get an email from Bill Gates going, "What the hell are you thinking? Have you ever heard of the PR department? I can't believe you're talking to the press and making these kinds of comments, [et cetera]." My boss was the first to greet me, looking ashen, and says, "Hey, sorry kid, I may have gotten you fired, oops." So Gates was saying, in his email, that "We have the best publishing architecture, it's superior to the Macintosh's, you don't know what you're talking about."