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Despite New Owner, id Still Lives Or Dies By Their Engines
The Guardian has an article about id Software's status after being purchased by ZeniMax (Bethesda's parent company) not long ago. While id gained considerable financial stability out of the deal, it's clear that what Bethesda has to gain is access to top-of-the-line engine technology, which they've often needed to license. id's Todd Hollenshead said, "The videogames business is defined by technology, which is why guys like JC [John Carmack] are still so significant. Consumers may not be as in touch with the intricacies as they used to be, but you can still make significant, impactful change. We're confident Rage will be one of them..." He also mentions that "the PC market has receded in terms of significance," a sentiment evidenced by id's aggressive expansion into the iPhone games market.
Thanks id Software, for the GPL of Doom/Quake. Right now it is a serious blessing! Thanks!
"the PC market has receded in terms of significance,"
While its true that PC gaming is sharing a larger and larger chunk of its gaming dollars with consoles, there is still money to be made on PCs IMO. For people like me I'll take mouse/keyboard over a console controller any day for FPS games. Perhaps id would make more money if their more recent PC games were actually good. Given their new found financial resources I hope id takes the time and creates something other than Doom X with shiny id Tech Y. Try adding some new, innovative game play in your next game and perhaps I might buy it.
With the recent closing of the doors to 3d Realms it's good to reflect on the old heavy hitters in a contemporary complexion.
Back in the day it was the Unreal Engine and the Quake engine that were the benchmark for graphics. The build engine for 3d realms spawned countless titles, though that was the last great engine they had.
So today, it seems that what is most important to some firms is the quality of the engine rather than the games they produce. This however results in titles that are simply showcases, appose to good games.
It would be nice for developers to have enough in house resources to do both. Create an amazing game around an amazing engine.
With that I look with optimism to the future of id in hopes that they bring back some of that old sparkle that has been lacking as of late.
I wonder if this means they wont GPL any further game engines... This news was kinda sad, one of the top tier developers sells out... a sad time for pc gamers... but I guess it could have been worse, EA could have bought them.
"Any advantage the mouse/keyboard combo gave the PC (which was substantial) is shrinking; it nearly went away with the wiimote. "
Wait, why? These are completely unrelated, and the game types are completely different. How do you play a FPS or a RTS (which account for most of the PC games) using a Wiimote?
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Why is John Carmack the only developer of commercial game engines who actually releases the source code after they have become technically obsolete? I mean it's very nice, since it's given us games like Urban Terror and OpenAreana which can be released completely free as standalone games, but companies very rarely do things out of the goodness of their hearts.
The only reason I can see him doing this is because he believes in the open-source cause, but will his new owner allow him to continue this trend?
The keyboard and mouse combo is still very far from being surpassed. The problem is that 99% of games these days are cross-platform, and as such the control scheme is designed for the lowest common denominator (consoles), and thus doesn't make use of the possibilities offered by keyboard+mouse.
Another advantage the PC has is much more powerful hardware.
Infinite time means everything that can happen, will. You being you is absolutely incidental. You do not exist.
It would seem from a number of ways of looking at it, that the PC is as large a market as any given console. It is the "4th console" as it were. As such that means the market is not at all insignificant. Part of the problem I think is that some publishers view it as "PC vs Console" where all consoles are unified in to one market, and the PC in a separate one. They then think that the PC market should be as big as the console market and bemoan that it isn't. That's just not a good way to look at it.
Also some developers at least are showing a renewed interest in the PC. Capcom, for example, decided to bring Street Fighter 4 to the PC. It comes out next Tuesday. They had done some of the SF games on PC, but stopped after Alpha 2. However now they are trying again. Part of it may be because the Arcade version of the game is a Windows PC (it runs on Taito X2 hardware which is an XP embedded PC) but they also must see the PC market as worth the port, as they've already one Xbox 360 and PS3 ports.
I do think you are on to something with the quality of iD's games. I have been very unimpressed. Quake 4 in particular was a real disappointment. However not only have their games disappointed me, but their engine has as well. That was traditionally their big thing. Their engine was the cutting edge.
Well when Doom 3 came out, showing off iDTech 4, I was real underwhelmed. The "all real world light sources" were neat, but poorly done. Shadows were very dark and very harsh, owing to the fact light only bounced once in the engine. What's more, texture detail was substantially below what I was used to. Personally, I felt UT2004 (Unreal Engine 2) looked better over all. Not as many advanced features, but the graphics were more pleasing. Also Doom needed a beast of a system to do what it did, whereas UT2004 ran very well on moderate hardware.
Also iDtech 4 hasn't advanced much at this point. It is still their top flight engine and Unreal Engine 3 totally blows it away. Thus far, they've had no good response.
You can see it in the sales too. Currently there's 7 games that use iDTech 4, and over half of those are iD or Raven (who works closely with iD) games. UE3, which has been out for much less time, has near 100 games using it, including non-FPS games (such as the Last Remnant, an RPG).
It seems like iD isn't making first flight engines, which would be ok if their games were great, but their games are also rather undifferentiated. That is not a good situation to be in. A mediocre game with amazing graphics can still sell well, and of course the engine can be licensed out for all kinds of stuff (maybe the game is just a tech demo more than anything). Likewise a great game can get by just fine with mediocre graphics. However being not so god at both isn't a real recipe for success, especially not if you are spending the money developing your own engine.
We'll see what happens. I hope iD Tech 5 is awesome, but I worry. There really hasn't been anything out of them in terms of news or demos or the like since 2007. That is not a good sign to me. A lot changes in computers in 3 years, you'd think we'd see at least some more news about the status or demos or something. Any time a project is announced and then falls silent for a number of years, I worry that there are problems and it isn't going to be what it should.
"The videogames business is defined by technology"
Really? I've only been playing games since pong, and worked in them for 10 years, but stupidly I've been defining the videogames business by 'fun'.
It's a pity this has ended up a minority viewpoint.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
I guess now we know what TES 5's subtitle will be now that Bethesda has the option of iD's engines... The Elder Scrolls V: The Sacred Torch
Karma is for whores
Also, there is no way they're going to stick with the name "Rage". I believe they learned once before that you need to use your engine as a marketing tool by tying it to your identity as a business and not calling it something obscure.
You mean by calling it something like... I dunno, "id Tech 5"?
It's pretty clear to me what is going on.
Someone who spends 300+ dollars for a console (which is nothing more than a propitiatory computer) are more likely to spend money on games for that platform and then turn around and buy the new platform in 2 years. They are already totally on board with the idea that they will have zero control and are willing to pay whatever you demand. People who play or did play computer games are much more likely to cause trouble and bitch.
Some people do hack and mod the systems but most people who run out and by a PS3, wee or XBOX360 will never do so. I have an xbox v1.1 I paid 20 bucks for broke, fixed it, installed a 300gb HD drive packed full of games and emulators and flashed the sucker. When people see it they beg me to mod their systems until I tell them they need to fork over the money for the mod chip and hard drive and then strangely they don't want to do it anymore. I say strangely because the total cost to mod is less than buying two games but I guess they don't see it that way.
As far as hardware compatibility problems.. I don't think that is much of an issue being that there are only two video chip makers and two processor chip makers left. Everyone runs WinXP for games and turning off antivirus isn't hard or even needed most of the time so I'm pretty sure it's all about the DRM and fanboys being fanboys.
Owning a computer is normal but talking about how fast it is is being a nerd. Owning a PS3 is cool and means your mommy and daddy must love you enough to hand over their credit card.
nuff said...
"There's a lot of factors. Piracy -> DRM -> problems -> Piracy."
This is a scapegoat I'm sorry, many games were released during the age of broadband and the internet and were easily downloadable then (pre 2000, 1998/1997). Warez scene has been around since ye old shareware days and before that. Copies of Dos / Win 3.1 were shared rampantly via sneakernet.
What really happened is this:
Game graphics tech got more and more complex with the advent of 3D acelleration, which upped development costs for creating assets by an enormous amount. The game industry did this to themselves, their belief that in order to expand the market they had to keep pushing the graphics envelope, etc, etc. From a business standpoint they pushed their development costs higher and higher but the gaming market for each game could not grow in tandem with their development costs.
The advent of 3D acelleration was a blessing but also a major burden for PC game development. The original games (duke 3d, Doom, Doom 2, diablo, starcraft, etc) were *ALL* games that could be rendered by a traditional 2D graphics card. This changed with the advent of 3D accelerators, the like of nvidia and 3dfx so a "Race to the death" in terms of PC graphics performance, new cards every year and then every 6-8 months from nvidia really did a lot to fragment and skew the PC game market for people that didn't even know what a 3D card was.
It took a while until every system had 3D acceleration like today, but even today your onboard 3D acceleration still sucks ass and it's better to go with an add in card.
Descent 3 and Freespace 1 + 2, part of the reason they bombed was because a large segment of Descent and other game players did not have 3D acceleration or could not afford it. This was lost on a lot of PC game developers and they ended up folding or going consoles (volition of freespace and freespace 2 fame comes to mind).
"Freespace had a software renderer, so how did that one bomb?"
Descent 3 and Fs2 both had lower then expected sales, D3 and FS2 were both 3D accelerator only.
Descent 3 didn't technically bomb but it was nowhere near the sales of D1 and D2 according to interplay it sold "respectable numbers" in contrast to Freesapce 2.
Descent 1 and 2 by contrast could run on any system. Back then (around 1996/7/8), 3D accelerators did not have enough market penetration outside of certain genre's, Mainly FPS (quake, etc) and this did a lot to deter PC game developers because they didn't understand the dynamics of what hardware was out there. If there was something like Steam back then giving hardware surveys the could have made a lot more intelligent decisions in terms of making games.
Freespace 2 bombed, the first one didn't obviously (they had an expansion, silent threat). But Freespace 2 was 3D accelerators only, also note a game like Starcraft's popularity in korea was partly due to the fact that it does not *require* 3d acceleration and can run on most any system.
Id was at its best when Jon Romero worked there since Carmack would focus on the graphics and Romero would focus on the gameplay. Since the break-up of this partnership Id's games have gone drastically down hill while Romero found he couldn't make a game without Carmack. Romero appeared to have trouble with the technical side of Daikatana with lengthy delays and terrible visuals when it finally was released. Daikatana received a poor reception but the gameplay was clearly there with some innovative ideas and great feel to the movement control. It was the technical execution that was lacking, likely a result of not having somebody like Carmack.
Carmack's engines always look amazing but the engine is now Id's only selling point and their games are just dire. Id desperately needs to recruit someone with a proven record of making fun games so they can bring their gamplay up to the level of their engines. I vote for Romero, and bring American McGee back while you're at it. That would really return Id back to its past glory.
Keyboard shortcuts are an integral part of most RTSes. It's a ridiculous amount of work doing everything on the mouse.
Same way you play them with a mouse. Tense up, breath heavily, make swift twitching movements and press the left click/fire button eight times for every needed press. Then issue a stream of profanities, whether or not you're winning.
May the Maths Be with you!
I agree with you, but i wouldnt toss Valve into the mix. Valve has been great on the PC. Steam while it still is a copy protection scheme, is still a pretty dam good distribution platform and a great gaming community. Yes its a form of DRM but they're pretty fair with the users and Steam doesn't hassle the user in any way really. Its very light on resources and it enhances the gaming community.
Valve has also been incredible with Team Fortress 2. They've supported it quite well and Its far better than anything ID has ever put out.
The Left 4 Dead 2 thing was a kick in the ass to PC gamers that bought L4D (such as myself). The reason being is that Left 4 Dead was too simple, too short, and seamed like a mod (which in reality it is and they some what admit to it if you read about the history of its development).
The problem was Left 4 Dead was so simple and under developed, that fans had expected Valve to support it with lots of free content that would enhance the game such as new campaigns, new weapons, better AI, etc. This expectation was due to the fact that Valve had been so generous with Team Fortress 2 and they still are to this day. They have been openly supporting TF2 at their own cost, selling the game for $10 on several occasions. They managed to grow a large user base by building a community of gamers and supporting it, so much that we all expected them to do the same with Left 4 Dead.
L4D is a really shallow and boring game. Its a great idea that never really came to light in its execution. Valve probably knows this and decided to just go ahead and do a Left 4 Dead. I dont think L4D was EVER expected to be as popular and as huge as it became (thanks to the hype). L4D2 will remain a thorn in most gamers minds until it is released. I plan to buy L4D2 if it is of quality this time around. L4D was a huge disappointment but a great idea.
Anyways... I agree... PC gaming is not dead.... YET. If developers like ID dont start actually making games.... It will die.
Valve has done far more for PC gaming than id has done recently. id may not even be relevant these days because they're too slow to develope and no one is interested in their games because no one ever hears of what they're doing. They might as well not even exist. id is legendary but they need to produce something NOW.
I just bought Street Fighter IV on steam... I own it already on xbox360. So I dont think PC gaming is dead. The PC has the best version of Street Fighter IV, and MadCatz's xbox 360 Tournament Arcade stick works perfectly on the PC as well.... so its a match made in heaven.
Developers like CAPCOM (makers of street fighter), whom are traditionally console developers have been supporting the PC more than ever now a days. More so than even id software. Capcom has put out more PC games than id has in the past 10 years. I find that interesting.
That said... Xbox live is a great community, and the xbox hardware itself is good enough to play 720p games while sitting back on your couch looking at a giant HD LCD screen. More people use voice coms on xbox live than on pc and more people have xbox's than a gaming PC.
The consoles are going to win this war because developers are going where the people are first, and second they do still care about piracy. The PC versions of console games tend to come out after the console release. The console releases all get priority (Street Fighter, Lost Planet, Red Faction all came out later on PC).
This is why i wont toss valve under the bus... Valve has created an Xbox Live like experience with Steam. A friends list, voice coms, game invites, messages, personal webpages for gamers, digital download distribution with a very friendly drm scheme.
Valve is doing the right thing, and I'm proud of their fair pricing and often ridiculously cheap prices on their hit titles... They're quite fair to gamers in many respects. The whole Left 4 Dead 2 thing is a bitch but i cant complain too much. I bought Team fortress 2 for $10 on Steam, and they have given me so much free additional content for TF2 and have kept the community alive and well that it really is admirable. I cant kill Valve for the Left 4 Dead 2 thing yet... not until I see the final product.
Any advantage the mouse/keyboard combo gave the PC (which was substantial) is shrinking; it nearly went away with the wiimote
WTF are you on? the wiimote sucks for anything other than sports/minigames,
MMORPG - forget having a complex worlds with different spells at your fingertips with just a few buttons
RTS - seriously no chance of playing anything but a simplified RTS with just a few buttons
FPS - you need an aimable area much bigger than that of a tv screen
shooters - timecrises/zombie flick/etc well these kind of work, but you never actually point to shoot, you move the crosshair about (but fundamentaly these DO work on the wii)
The other advantages of PC games are ofc: :- counter-strike, day of defeat, gary's mod
easy mods
better graphics - The id5tech engine will have to trade off fps for graphics quality on rage, on pc you get to set this yourself because high-end pcs can already
better bang for buck for hardware - Ok some specs are better on game systems when they are first released, but given that pcs can be upgraded and generally come with more than 512MB ram, if you spend $400 upgrading you system every 3/4 years (probably more often if you bought an xbox) you system would be far more powerful than any current gen system.
Free(ish) multiplayer gaming for most genres.
Better communities / multiplayer architecture for most genres - having dedicated servers, forums and admins, produces a much better gaming experience than xbox/wii/ps3-live ever can
All consoles really have is:
noob friendly (is that really a plus)
local multiplayer
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!