3D Games

3D Realms is an American video game publisher and developer based in Garland, Texas. It was founded in 1987 as Apogee Software by Scott Miller to publish his game Kingdom of Kroz. Prior to Apogee's founding Miller had released a few games he had developed himself, as well as a couple "packs" of games developed by himself and others, under a shareware distribution model whereby the games were distributed for free in return for donations. These games were inconsistently marketed under the name Apogee Software Productions, though after the company was founded they were sold under the Apogee Software name. Miller found that the standard shareware model was not viable for his games such as Beyond the Titanic (1986) and Supernova (1987), and beginning with Kroz the company pioneered the "Apogee model" of shareware distribution, wherein games were broken up into segments with the first part released for free to drive interest in the other monetized portions.

Soon after its founding, Apogee began publishing titles by other developers in addition to titles by Miller; these developers were often companies composed of a single designer. As Apogee expanded to include more people, some of these designers, such as George Broussard and Todd Replogle, joined Apogee as employees and designed its later titles; Broussard joined the company in 1991 as a co-owner.In the 1990s, Apogee was best known for popularizing its shareware model and as the creator of franchises for MS-DOS on the personal computer such as Duke Nukem and as the publisher of games such as Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D.

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