The story of Looking Glass is the familiar ahead-of-their-time tale. Now we can easily look back and say, hey – these guys are responsible for most of the best things that have happened in the last decade, so why did they take so long to get recognized? The answer's pretty simple: there was almost always someone cheaper, faster, simpler, or louder. If Ultima Underworld had been free, easy to run, and easy to play, Wolfenstein wouldn't have stood a chance against it. On the other hand, it also wouldn't have been Ultima Underworld. For nearly a decade, Looking Glass pushed so far that nobody could keep up. It's only after they vanished that it became clear what we had all been missing.

The article closes with an interesting contrast between the survival instincts of Western developers, many of which seem saddled with untimely expiration dates, and their Japanese counterparts, which tend to exhibit surprising resilience. It is almost paradoxical; despite the mainstream Japanese games industry being arguably more single-minded than the Western industry, that market seems somehow better equipped to support a range of smaller developers that still exist in the high-end development space rather than casual gaming--even if occasionally their games find a stronger audience over here than back home.