Carmack Speaks

mbell writes: "Eurogamer.net's coverage of Razer-CPL has a write-up of a workshop that John Carmack gave on 3d games and hardware. Pretty interesting article, including some talk about id's next game." Kudos to Katherine (Don'tcha love alliteration?) for buying the round of drinks -- and the hints about the potential next game are cool. Think "Not Quake."

Comments

Why Gaming is important

[bmajik]

We should all remember to thank carmack and id for a couple of reasons

• The reason PeeCees have respectable mainstream gfx hardware is because gamers wanted it. Multi-thousand dollar gfx cards have always been available for PeeCees, but now you can get a $200 board that outclasses all but the biggest/newest SGI boxes in terms of low quality poly-pushing power. Gaming has created the demand for faster/better gfx hardware, better memory busses, faster CPUs, etc. Nothing stresses the capabilities of hardware (and software!) more than gaming.
• A great deal of the clueful computer population got their start playing games... perhaps even id/apogee games. I remember the days when you could buy the Commander Keen source code for like $400 or so to see how to write your very own EGA/VGA side scoller with pc beeper sound. id, computing, and the state of game design has come along way since then
• Finally, everyone and their mom is cranking out games these days, but the _fun_ of the games isn't getting all that better. If not with technology and visual dazzlement, the place where id consistantly helps the gaming industry push forward is with the sheer fun value of the products they develop. When it comes down to it, a game is worthless unless its been play tested for months and still shown to be worth playing. I'd say that all of id's releases are still fun games to play, regardless of how long ago they were originally written.