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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 was a great game, imo, however people's complaints about the whole flashlight mechanism were justified, and I can see how it would detract from the entertainment value. Id's goal was to make a scary game, and if you played the game with the swapped-in flashlight as they intended, it was indeed scary. The lighting was better than in any game I'd played at that point and created an unparalleled atmosphere of creepiness.
That being said, the idea that in "the mysterious future" you wouldn't be able to hold both a flashlight and a gun hurt the game's credibility. And going for the cheap scare so many times did tend to get old.
They were also determined to make D3 a single-player game in a field now dominated by multiplayer and massively-multiplayer games. I would have thought that they'd have realized this better than anyone, given that they practically created the market for multiplayer FPS gaming, but they chose to make Doom 3 a single player game, and between that and the whole flashlight deal, many people decided the game was a dud, and thus its fate was sealed.
I still thought it was a great game though!
rooooar
I left id Software in early 2000 about six months after Quake3 came out. Counterstrike was starting to really catch on and I personally don't enjoy "realistic" weapon based first person games. I really like playing with completely unrealistic rocket launchers, laser guns, etc. Counterstrike never appealed to me as there's only so many variations on hit scan weapons (such as glocks, rifles, etc). With Quake3 done, the next game was Castle Wolfenstein with the Quake3 engine. The entire industry was headed for war simulation games, mostly fueled on the popularity of Counterstrike. I didn't want to work on these games--they weren't something I was interested in. I like an arcade game like feel to the game, not a slow tactical game. I'm not saying these were bad games, just not the type of games I enjoy playing or making.
id excelled at making amazing technology and simple addictive arcade like gameplay with that technology. The original DOOM is an arcade game--its incredibly fast with dozens of monsters on the screen. Quake and its sequels were also arcade games, except you can play over the internet against other people.
Doom3 wasn't an arcade game. id attemped something different by building a game that followed a story and because of limitations of the engine, could only allow interaction with a few creatures at once. They tired to do this with some the mechanics from the older single player games (such as monster closets) and while the game is both incredible from a visual and technological standpoint, the gameplay to match this just isn't there. Much of what Steve says is right, when the level of graphics and presentation presented called for realism, old models of spawning monsters behind you when you pick up something doesn't work anymore. That worked in an arcade game, but not in a story driven game focusing on realism.
I hope id realizes their strengths and return to focusing on games with great visuals and technology with simple and addictive arcade like gameplay. That's the id I know and want to play.
/// Zoid.