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How id Lost Its Crown
The Next Generation site has an editorial up by veteran animator Steve Bowler discussing the loss of prestige id has suffered, at least in his eyes, as a result of the latest incarnation of Doom. From the article: "But one day, the industry changed. The consumer changed. It's hard to put one's finger on it. Maybe it was Counter-Strike. Maybe Unreal Tournament. Something happened to the genre between Quake III and Doom 3, and Id somehow didn't take it into account. Call it braggadocio, or hubris, but Doom 3 is no longer the top dog in the FPS market. Yes, it's upsetting. I tried not to admit it either. But it's undeniably true."
"Doom 3 is no longer the top dog in the FPS market."
I never realized it was ever top dog. It came out, I played it, then it went on the shelf. It wasn't really that impressive and it certainly wasn't good enough to be called top dog. My kids watched me play it for about a half hour and that was enough for them. They never felt the desire to play it. Yeah it was pretty and it had some nice eye candy, but what's that got to do with the value and quality of a game? If you don't have the desire to play it more than once then it can't even be considered top-10.
I'm lost on the point of this article.
I think what the article was getting at is that Doom 3 wasn't really a sequel in a lot of ways. It wasn't a prettier and improved version of Doom and Doom II. It was a poorly designed game with impressive graphics.
If it was a true Doom clone, it'd have the same sense of chaos and the rooms full of big swarms of enemies for you to fight. Not one on one battles in a dark corridor. He mentioned the 'Run and Gun' style of play. That's what iD did well, and what they didn't try to do in Doom 3.
He should go play a game from the Serious Sam series. Lots of bad guys, lots of fast paced and constant shooting. It's too bad their engine was mostly overlooked. It's done those huge environments for a long time, and there's lots of fun co-op games going all the time. Wheee!
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
id's problem has always been that they were a one-trick pony...i.e., graphics. John Carmack took what was at the time a largely theoretical specification, (BSP) first built two genre-defining games out of it, (Doom and Doom 2) and then went on to display an increasing level of technical mastery with it by adding full three-dimensionality. (Quake) As far as pure graphics are concerned, the man is without peer...he occupies a place fairly close to Einstein in my own head. (And he's a Texan, no less! ;-))
However, problems eventually arose from the fact that graphics alone are not what make a truly engaging FPS. It might have been the first engine to utilise OpenGL, but from a *gameplay* perspective Quake 2 especially was complete crap in my book. The situation got markedly worse with Quake 3 as well, from the point of view that the base engine was the only part of it which id actually produced themselves. Everything else (the AI, the cutscenes) had to be outsourced. Q3's credits list is very long...and id's own staff do not occupy a very large part of it.
Q1 was id's finest hour in my mind...I still don't think I've ever had a more immersive or atmospheric multiplayer experience since then. (and I've played my share of Q3 and UT 2003 online) I realise however that such is a completely subjective statement...but I've long tended to believe that the development of any technology follows a bell pattern, where it hits a peak of development/refinement, and then actually starts to come back down somewhat. (I don't include visual photo-realism as a criteria here either; quite the opposite, actually) For me, (purely in terms of multiplayer) the original Quake was the proverbial summit of the mountain.
The release of Unreal and Unreal Tournament certainly didn't help matters for id though, either...because not only were they beautiful graphically, (the original UT is still a completely acceptable visual experience in my book) but they also included all sorts of innovations where AI and gameplay were concerned...not to mention an extremely discoverable and user-friendly editor, which made it easy for any net-dwelling 14 year old to create their own scenarios as well. Epic might have been ardent worshippers of id, but they were probably more responsible for their idols' demise than any other single factor from what I saw.
So, yeah...that to me is the main issue. Carmack is/was a graphical genius...but they were only able to get away with graphics alone for maybe three releases. (Doom/2, Quake) These days, graphics alone aren't what sell a game...You need good level design, decent AI, and people generally like a strong storyline with a high immersion factor as well.
id were the first, and they will always have that distinction...but they were not able to reinvent themselves...and the world has moved on.