Category Archives: QuakeCon 2008

Speaking with Tom’s Games at QuakeCon, id boss John Carmac said that in terms of what platform the company should be focusing on, PC gaming was now “junior partner in the cross-platform strategy.”

“We still think the PC is a market worth supporting, but we’re not making decision around the PC,” he said.

“It’s probably more of the junior partner in the cross-platform strategy, although obviously, our day-to-day development is predominately on the PC.”

Carmac talks about the hazards of digital distribution, as well as how three DVDs would be needed to make Rage look as good on the PC as it does on PlayStation 3, through the link.

By Mike Bowden

VG247′s man in Texas, Nathan Grayson, gives us impressions of id’s megalithic demon-shooting event, QuakeCon. Frags, Carmack trashing Macs and a fleeting encounter with Todd Hollenshead make us want to get on a plane next year. After the link.

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Speaking at QuakeCon, Doom III designer Tim Willits told Eurogamer that although he understands the criticism levelled in some quarters at the horror FPS, he feels the sales figures speak for themselves.

“Games that sell over three-and-a-half million copies are not bad games,” said Willits.

“If you are any self-respecting videogame player, you love Doom, but everyone’s vision of Doom and memories they had of playing Doom, and what they thought Doom should be – everyone had a different idea.”

He added: “When you’re that popular, you will have different opinions. It was very successful for us, and I love playing it even to this day, and there are few games that look better, still, and that game came out a long time ago.”

By Mike Bowden

According to this Shacknews Q&A, id boss John Carmack’s revealed that the developer turned down “good money” to develop a Quake MMO.

The tech overlord says the firm “has no interest in MMO development,” saying he is “fully cognizant” of the challenges and risks associated with the field.

More through the link. Thanks, Blue.

Speaking to Eurogamer at QuakeCon last week, id tech boss John Carmack said the reason Apple doesn’t drive gaming is down to company’s CEO.

“The truth is Steve Jobs doesn’t care about games. This is going to be one of those things that I say something in an interview and it gets fed back to him and I’m on his shithead list for a while on that, until he needs me to do something else there. But I think that that’s my general opinion. He’s not a gamer,” he said.

“It’s difficult to ask somebody to get behind something they don’t really believe in. I mean obviously he believes in the music and the iTunes and that whole side of things, and the media side of things, and he gets it and he pushes it and they do wonderful things with that, but he’s not a gamer. That’s just the bottom line about it.”

There’s a full interview here.

Bit late on this, but John Carmack said at QuakeCon this week that iPhone is more powerful that DS and PSP combined.

There’s plenty on it on AppleInsider, although the quote itself is lacking, sadly. Have a read.

According to this Eurogamer report, Roger Avary is currently working on the script to the long-delayed Wolfenstein movie.

“With the writer’s strike it took so long to get underway and Roger Avary, the writer, had a commitment that was in line before working the Wolfenstein stuff, but I’ve recently been in contact with Roger and he’s actually working on the script right now,” said id bos Todd Hollenshead.

“I think that from a progress standpoint it’s probably gone a little bit slower than what we would have expected – you can’t control these strikes and so on.”

No date’s been given for the film, but the more movies we have involving Nazis and supernature the better.

More through the link.

Speaking to Kotaku at QuakeCon, id boss Todd Hollenshead has joined the “E3 was shit” chorus by saying that… E3 was shit.

“E3 this year, in my opinion, it was pretty much disappointing to everybody,” he said. “The press were disappointed, the people I talked to in the industry are disappointed. Almost everyone agrees that that was the wrong way to do it.”

More through the link.

Eurogamer’s put together a hodgepodge of Doom 4 bits from various interviews at QuakeCon, including info that the game may use some of Quake Live’s infrastructure, that it will be built so the single-player doesn’t allow the gamer to become “pissed off at the game,” and plenty more.

Read it. You don’t have anything better to do.

Stoke that fire, John. Give it a blow. Speaking to Eurogamer at QuakeCon today, id’s John Carmack said he felt 360′s the platform to go for if you want to make games for the modern man. Or woman.

“You could design a game where the PS3 would be the superior platform, but you’d have to go out of your way to do it,” he said. “If you’re doing a game like people just want to do games now, the 360′s the better platform.”

More hilarity through the link.

Awesome. Speaking to Eurogamer at QuakeCon today, id’s Tim Willits said part of the decision to go with EA for Rage was because all the publisher’s top brass are all mental 733t hardcore.

“When we were looking at publishers, there were only a handful, and we were really excited by the leadership. John Riccitiello flew to Mesquite to talk to us and he is more of a gamer than I think people realise,” he said.

“The questions that he asked, and Frank Gibeau, David DeMartini – those guys run the most powerful publisher in the world and they’re all hardcore games. They were excited about the title, and we felt that EA would be the best partner for us, and it wasn’t about money.”

So there you go. Riccitiello frags in his pants while heavy-breathing into a Bluetooth headset. We knew it.

According to this Kotaku piece, id boss Tdd Hollenshead said at QuakeCon today that he’s open to doing another Doom film.

“Personally I’d like to do another Doom movie, I thought working with it was a blast,” he said. “There are some lessons we learned. The best way to do things better is to get the experience.”

More through the link.

Speaking to Shacknews at QuakeCon today, id’s John Carmack said that Doom 4 isn’t going to be a survival horror. Stop the press.

“It’s not that you’re running around frightened down to your last bullet [in Doom 4],” added Carmack.

“There will occasionally be that, but it should be much more of you winning, because that was always the point in Doom – you are the hero, and you are winning. You’re going to beat back all the hordes of Hell using all the tools at your disposal.”

John Carmack may have taken top place in the “which developer we love most” list for that. Winning. Winning for the win.

After the break. These have come out of QuakeCon which started in Texas yesterday.

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Speaking at QuakeCon today, John Carmack said that Doom 4′s multiplayer aspects would be in excess of those from previous disc-based iterations in the company’s shooter franchises, but would fall short of the upcoming free-to-play Quake 3 close, Quake Live.

“[Doom 4 multiplayer] will not be as good of a multiplayer as Quake Live is, but it should still be good, and we will intend it to be better than Doom 3 or Quake 4 multiplayer,” he said.

He didn’t quantify exactly what he meant by the statement – whether “better” means more modes, levels, etc – but it’s good news nonetheless. Hooplah.

Thanks, Shacknews.

According to this Shacknews piece, id revealed at QuakeCon today that the firm was forced to change the name of upcoming free-to-play shooter Quake Live from the original Quake Zero because of a domain squatter.

Apparently the company announced the game without registering the domain. Sensible.

“This was an idea we had mere weeks before QuakeCon [2007],” said Carmack, emphasizing the speedy nature of the game’s confirmation.

An enterprising individual captialised on id’s lack of plan, but Carmack was having none of it.

“They offered us a considered buyout option for it,” he said. “We just decided heck, we’re only a few months into development of this, we’ll just change the name.”

Speaking at QuakeCon today, John Carmack insisted that the decision to publish post-apocalyptic shooter Rage with EA instead of Activision was borne largely from Valve’s expereience using EA as a partner and nothing to do with a soured relationship with Activision.

From Shacknews:

The way we did it with Rage is, we’ve actually gone out and shopped the title three times. It’s nice to know that we have the position where publishers will say, sight unseen, we’ll give you this many million dollars. And so we said okay, we’ll think about it. We’re in a nice position where we can fund our own game development.

If we had signed a deal before we did the reboot from Darkness, that would have been really traumatic for the publisher.

Just recently we did the third round.. and said okay, everybody make your final offer. In addition to Activision and EA, we talked to THQ and Sega. There were pros and cons to every publisher.. In the end it came down to the heavy weights, Activision and EA.

Valve speaks very highly of their relationship with EA Partners, and that was very important to us.

We have Riccitiello in from EA, and he was making cogent game comments about the game, comparing it to other things, design level things, and that was kind of interesting to see, a CEO at that level really does care about the specifics of the game. But again, there’s every chance in the world we’ll end up with Activision for Doom.

So now you know.

Although id didn’t show Doom 4 at QuakeCon today, the company did say that the shooter will be a graphical monster, and significantly more visually impressive than EA’s Rage.

Doom will “not be another four-year development period”, said tech lead John Carmack, but will have “three times the graphics richness” because it runs at 30 frames-per-second, rather than 60, which Rage targets.

“You can expect the Doom game to look like it’s developed with the next-generation graphics technology,” said Carmack.

No release date as yet. More on Eurogamer.

Speaking at QuakeCon today, id’s John Carmack said that there may be room for a fully-fledged sequel to Quake III Arena, but it’ll be down to how gamers respond to upcoming free-to-play browser shooter Quake Live.

“The door is not completely shut for another Quake project, and I’d say probably the success of Quake Live is going to determine whether or not we do another Quake Arena project,” said Carmack.

“But right now the publishers aren’t all that interested in a multiplayer project on there.”

Thanks, Shacknews.

Speaking at QuakeCon, id’s Tim Willits said that we’re going to be waiting a while for shooter Rage just yet.

“It’s not like we know and we’re not saying,” project leader told Eurogamer. “It’s just, again, it’s when it’s fun and when it’s done. Unfortunately that is the answer I have to give.”

Willits was asked if Rage is a 2009 game, 2010 or 2011, and all he’d say is that it’s “not that far out” in response to the last one.

More through the link.