When it was announced that Zenimax had bought id reactions were pretty positive... unless you were John Romero. It seems that the guys at id agree with the majority of us that being bought by Zenimax was a pretty good thing as it has given the company more money to develop with and more staff to do that developing. At QuakeCon id Software co-founder John Carmack spoke about it all.
“We have more resources to make steps that we wouldn’t make [if] left to our own,” he said during a panel at the event. “For people playing games, the [ZeniMax acquisition] is such a pure win. There’s no downside to this at all. We are still down here in Texas, they are leaving us alone, we are still building our products here.”
So it's still id and nothing is changing, but what is the legendary development company going to do with all these new resources? Why they're going to bring out three new AAA games, that's what. What these games will be is unclear, but evidently they aren't short of ideas as Carmack claims that id now has "the problem of having more good IPs" than it can develop.
“We are staffing up a third team internally. We will eventually be producing three AAA titles," he said, according to Develop. “The big question is what are those three IPs going to be? Is it going to be a Rage 2, a Wolfenstein title, a Quake title? We really don’t know yet."
I like the idea of more of those classic franchises, but I'm hoping to see a new IP out of the developer as well.
Contest:
4:00 PM on 08.15.2009
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Sorry, im just sick of people giving id such a bad wrap on games they didn't even develop, only had oversight on which wasn't much influence on the development process. And as for Doom 3, people saying it was a bad game was simply from a subjective stance, mainly that being "blah blah blah, corridors and monster closets" I personally enjoyed the game for its simple form, and especially loved it in hell. The game itself in terms of structure was well done, and really did have a lot of detail despite its 'plastic' look. And you have to give it one thing, at least it wasn't broken as shit and didn't require months of patches like most games that come out these days do. Its only downfall was that there was a very small range of technology at the time that could handle its power.
Back on topic -- I'm truly excited for this merger, at first I was a little whip lashed from the announcement but the more I look at it, and realize that id Software still has total freedom to develop, they should have a much easier time to develop titles with a wider range of resources, and the fact that they are pushing for 3 major development teams is even more exciting. Now I just want to see the Rage Demo that was shown at QuakeCon today and what the press has been seeing for two days.. if you havent read any of the previews on it I suggest looking them up, it sounds so awesome.
"@wanderingpixel .. so you've only played one 'bad' id game? Considering all other titles other than Doom 3 were developed by other companies such as Raven, Splash Damage, Grey Matter, Nerve, etc :P "
By that logic that means they're batting 50%. That's an F.
Fortunately what you say isn't exactly true. As you can see by typing in "games developed by ID" into google. Today they only have 2 distinct IP's, but that wasn't always the case.
And I still would not hold them responsible for how those games turned out, as, it is a known fact if you check more than just a google search, they did not develop any of these 'failed' titles. They had mild oversight on them which did not influence the development process enough to cause a game to be bad, those studios that made those games made poor choices in the design of many of these titles and were rather lack luster.
I dont see how anyone could hold that against id Software, and hold them for being the reason why those games turned out 'bad'. They didnt develop them, they have been working on Doom 3 and then Rage & Doom 4, and the id tech 5 engine, they had nowhere near the resources to work on RTCW, Quake 4, ET/ETQW.. So in turn, it really is not their fault those games turned out the way they did.
Now with this merger, in a few years from now when they get those 3 teams put together we will probably start seeing more games come out from them, which I am excited for.
WastedTraveller: Don't worry, a lot of people liked Doom 3. It's id's best selling game after all. For some reason though there's a vocal minority on the internets that seems to always complain about it.
What I mean by that: a fairly generic shooter(so far) with features that have a definite tacked-on feel to them(again, so far-- I'm only three levels in). Graphically it certainly doesn't shine as well, but I don't care about that.
I hope that id is put to use for something really outstanding, I guess. They have the talent... It's just clearly being squandered.
And merging with the company that currently houses Fallout and Elder Scrolls can't be a bad thing, not to mention all those extra resources. This can only be a good thing, after all, maybe they won't take years and years on games anymore.