Interview With id Software's Robert A. Duffy

LEXI writes: "Accompanying our recent first set of Q3Radiant Tutorials I had the chance to interview one of the programmers behind the editor and the new engine, Mr. Robert A. Duffy of id software. 10 questions asked, 10 answers given. Topics range from personal details, education, job description, over to the new engine and the new tools, to violence in games and George W. Bush. The English original can be found here; the German translation resides at this very spot. The interview should be interesting for as well the quake player desperately awaiting the new engine, as the fresh or old-school mapper."

Comments

What a waste of questions.

[reaper20]

As far as I understand legislation in your country, it is part of the constitution that every american citizen is allowed to wear a gun. In my opinion that is one major reason for teenage high-school killings - while claiming games like "Doom" guilty is completely ridiculous. What is your opinion?

Are you kidding me? They get a chance to ask this guy 10 questions and this is what they come up with? Anyone do any research on this?

Slightly offtopic, but I was wondering how typical non-American's view Americans concerning the second amendment? Surely people don't think we're a bunch of cowboys shooting everything in sight ala Homer Simpson.

Re:What a waste of questions.

[dgroskind]

I've actually been quite sucuessfull in persuading a large quantitiy of French people that personal responsibility and personal accountability are the true choice of a Liberty seeking people

Perhaps you succeeded where Montesquieu, Voltaire, and the Declaration of the Rights of Man failed.

Perhaps they were delighted to have an American explain what their true choice should be as a libery-seeking people. After all, the French had only abolished slavery in France a mere 70 years before it was abolished in the U.S.

Perhaps the French had no paragons of personal responsibility and accountability to match Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton and thus were happy to use your humble self as a working example.

Now perhaps some of your fellow Americans could stand some similar enlightenment.

No firearms?

[WhaDaYaKnow]

Robert Duffy: Well wearing a gun and owning a gun are two very different things and neither of them have to do with any game in my opinion. The only countries I have ever seen citizens wearing guns are ones where it was illegal. I don't think to date I have seen a citizen wearing a firearm in public here in the US.

Riiiight. That's not a gun in my pocket, I'm just happy to see you.

In Case of Slashdot Effect

[long_john_stewart_mi]

In case of the Slashdot effect, here's the interview:

Interviewer: Boxers or briefs?

Robert Duffy: I'll have to keep my take on this to myself.

Interviewer: We would like to thank Robert Duffy for taking the time to answer our questions and wish both him and id software all the best for the future.

It's not far from the truth

[schmaltz]

Relative to the rest of the western world, Americans have an astronomically high number of gun deaths each year. For 1998, there were 30,708 firearm-related deaths, 11,798 of which were homicides. And this was the lowest point of a 35 year downward trend.

To contrast, the United Kingdom, which has a population of around 60 million, had 49 firearm homicides in 1998. If you scale this to the US population of about 270 million in 1998, that would still only be 217 deaths. Given this, the US has roughly 50 times the firearm-related homicides of the UK.

So it's no wonder why the rest of the world thinks Americans are gun-toting cowboys... relative to them it rings true.

Just to provide balance, the United States doesn't have the highest homicide rate in the world, just of industrialized western nations. For example, Canada's homicide rate per 100,000 is about 2 in 1997, whereas the US is 7.2, yet Mexico is 14.6.

South Americans, on the other hand, enjoy an even higher homicide rate, ranging as high as 70 per 100,000 for Columbia in 1997. But Americans don't compare themselves to "third world" nations, only to G7 nations, really.