Graeme Devine Leaves id Software

Thanks to Gamasutra.com for their news report (registration required) indicating that Graeme Devine has left id Software for Microsoft-owned Ensemble, the developers of the Age Of Empires series. The article elaborates: "Devine's career covers a substantial swath of videogame history, starting with porting games such as Pole Position for Atari while still in high school in the U.K. in the early 1980s. He later co-founded Trilobyte, where he was central to the development of the seminal CD-ROM title The 7th Guest and its follow-up, The 11th Hour. Most recently Devine was working on Doom 3 for id, in roles ranging from project manager to designer to programmer." Further details are as yet unavailable, but the piece suggests "..in his new role at Ensemble, Devine will be focusing primarily on game design."

Comments

Throws fist up in the air and says

[The Analog Kid]

...damn, lost another one to the enemy.

Re:Throws fist up in the air and says

[Directrix1]

I know what a fucking trader. iD stand strong with OpenGL and don't go to the dark side.

Warm up the lawyers in the bullpen...

[BigChigger]

in 6 months MS will have a Doom3 knockoff.

BC

Re:Warm up the lawyers in the bullpen...

[Anonvmous Coward]

Based on what exactly?

I bet he was reading slashdot...

[magsymp]

And all the Microsoft ads turned him over to the dark side.

Now will this affect Doom3? I don't know, even if it does I don't think it will affect it as much as the release of the HL2 engine.

conspiracy!

[bigbigbison]

So Devine goes to microsoft on the same day it is revealed that microsoft had bid on 3do's assets? Conincidnece? I think not. Devine is a closet fan of the army men series!!!!

Give me a break

[lidocaineus]

Nothing was lost. A good game developer left one studio and joined another one, which, I might add, also makes good games. Simply because it has a "Microsoft" banner under it doesn't mean the games coming out of it are going to be unplayable. In fact, that's what we all want, right? Good games? Who cares where they come from.

Grow up.

Re:Give me a break

[AvitarX]

Maybe for all j00 M$ Winbloze l00zr n00bs

real men lost a great one

Re:Give me a break

[Anonymous Coward]

Regarding parent being modded down, another atrocity has been committed by the (assumes Wizard of Oz voice) Bastard Moderator From Hell. When will the BMFH strike again?

Re:Give me a break

[lidocaineus]

Oh jeeze. That's such a moronic comment that's I'm tempted to put your age at no more than none.

Keep in mind that

A - Any gamer will most likely have a Windows box laying around to play the myriad of games that have not been ported to linux.

B - You have no idea what my Window-Linux-other usage patterns are.

You have obviously shown that you don't really care about games/gameplay themselves, only the politiks(sic) behind them. Go troll elsewhere.

Re:Give me a break

[AvitarX]

God, I posted an obvious tired troll. But anyway, I agree that no serious gamer would be using only Linux.

But there are plently of people like me who are casual gamers that do (at least 2 dozen by my count). And we have suffered a loss.

That was the way I interpretted the original post. That Linux users have lost a game programmer. It doesn't matter where he goes, since ID is about the only big company really supporting Linux.

Obviously you use some Windows, or you would consider it a loss when someone to leaves a company that supports Linux to go to someone who doesn't.

A shame, for Mac users especially

[Arkham]

Graeme has shown himself to be an asset to the Mac community. He did the OSX port of Quake 3, and did significant work on the port of Return to Castle Wolfenstein for OSX. He also did the Altivec version of Q3 that added about 20% to the framerate on my G4.

I hope the id can get someone else with good Mac experience and dedication to ensure that the Mac ports of their games are as good as they can be.

Re:A shame, for Mac users especially

[Gogo Dodo]

Age of Mythology is being ported to the Mac by Westlake Interactive. MacSoft already released AOEII way back when and is publishing Age of Mythology, too.

Re:A shame, for Mac users especially

[TotallyUseless]

And none of this has anything to do with Graeme or id software. id doesn't make RTS games, if you didnt notice.

Re:A shame, for Mac users especially

[Gogo Dodo]

True. I was reading too fast and made the conclusion that the parent poster was saying that Graeme's arrival at Ensemble would mean Ensemble's games would be ported to the Mac. I was pointing out that Ensemble's already do exist.

Unrest

[wynterwynd]

One must wonder what prompted this, and whether the move to Microsoft is financially or personally motivated. I mean it's not like someone with his resume would have anything less than his choice of jobs. Perhaps it was desire to take a bigger role in the projects - in a place like ID... well it's hard to be the big fish in a pond of big fish. Of course there's always the fact that M$ is called that for a reason. As all truths usually are, it's probably a bit of both.

No so amazing

[VikingBrad]

Sandy Petersen, currently a game designer at Ensemble, used to work at id and also worked on the original Doom, Doom 2 & Quake.

Also since they'll down Texas way it wouldn't be such a huge change.

Petersen is working on a secret project unrelated to the Age series and I guess they need some more help. With the success of the Age series and now the financial backing of MS hiring great game designers is a smart move.

Cheers

VikingBrad

Now I know who is to blame!

[Anonymous Coward]

...central to the development of the seminal CD-ROM title The 7th Guest and its follow-up, The 11th Hour

...containing masses of boring puzzles in games with no plot and that repeatedly crashed the OS.