Carmack Addresses FPS Creativity Concerns

donniebaseball23 writes "id Software co-founder John Carmack defended the creativity of first-person shooter games in a recent interview. The legendary programmer, who was a pioneer in the shooter genre with Doom and Quake, said he doesn't like hearing from developers that shooters aren't good because they're not reinventing the wheel. 'I am pretty down on people who take the sort of creative auteurs' perspective. It's like "Oh, we're not being creative." But we're creating value for people — that's our job! It's not to do something that nobody's ever seen before. It's to do something that people love so much they're willing to give us money for... you see some of the indie developers that really take a snooty attitude about this,' he lamented."

Comments

Still doesnt excuse

[spire3661]

Doom III. I'm sorry but Doom III wasnt a game, it was a tech demo. While I understand what you are getting at, you have some big skeletons in your closet regarding this particular complaint.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[grumbel]

I don't quite see the problem with Doom III. It did actually do a few interesting things beside the graphics. The sentry bots were pretty cool, the highres terminals that you could use directly from FPS viiew are something I still haven't seen replicated anywhere else and it was the first game I can remember that didn't allow shooting civilians by changing your cross-hair into a talk-symbol. Those aside, yeah, the whole flashlight thing was a bit annoying, it did have its fair share of monster closets and running through the same corridors could get a little boring, but that doesn't make it a techdemo.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[black3d]

I don't understand what you're getting at. He only made two real statements, neither of which yours seems to counter.

He said that developers need to create value that people are willing to pay for. Doom 3 sold well, despite it not living up to some's expectations, it certainly fulfilled this statement.

Then he said that indie developers take a snooty attitude about this approach (implying in context that, rather, indie developers believe every game DOES have to be something that's never been done before). This has no relation to Doom 3 at all.

It sounds like you're just taking the opportunity to bash Doom 3. Understand, Carmack is arguing here FOR on-rails shooters. He's saying that games don't need to be incredibly creative and new every time they get released, they just have to do their job - provide entertainment that people are willing to pay for. And you're arguing against that by marching out a game which... provides entertatinment that people were willing to pay for. ..

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[bonch]

I thought the first hour was great, but unfortunately, the rest of Doom III became an unmemorable blur of repetitive metal walls and monster spawns, broken up with an excellent Hell trip. At one point, I began to predict where monsters would appear when I entered a room.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[Anonymous Coward]

I absolutely hate when people don't capitalize words properly. Fuck you.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[DigiShaman]

Turn off the lights with no one else in the room. Ensure that it's quiet except for your PC speakers. Soak up the ambiance and enjoy.

I for one thoroughly enjoyed the game even if it was overly hyped as a tech demo. So much so that I must have played through it all over two or three more times. I admit, Doom III wasn't the best of games in the genre , but it wasn't nearly as bad as others claim it to be.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[VanGarrett]

... broken up with an excellent Hell trip. At one point, I began to predict where monsters would appear when I entered a room.

I found that I hit that turning point about the time I got back from Hell. I honestly thought that effect was done intentionally-- after all, once you've literally been to Hell and back, what then should scare you?

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[jampola]

i completely agree with u :D

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[bonch]

I played with the lights off. That got old after an hour. The game is just very, very repetitive in almost all aspects, to the point that you can barely distinguish one level of shiny metal walls from another.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[bonch]

It sounds like you're just taking the opportunity to bash Doom 3. Understand, Carmack is arguing here FOR on-rails shooters. He's saying that games don't need to be incredibly creative and new every time they get released, they just have to do their job - provide entertainment that people are willing to pay for. And you're arguing against that by marching out a game which... provides entertatinment that people were willing to pay for. ..

You're missing the point that Doom 3 was widely panned for not straying from a formula. Doom 3 is the most recent game from id Software, so naturally, it's going to be brought up. The damn thing had monster closets. It wasn't retro in an ironic way, either.

Incidentally, someone else made the point that the arguments Carmack is using to justify formula shooters are the same that Uwe Bowell and other directors use to justify their generic movies. Carmack is one of those guys who will tell you that big, dumb movies like Transformers 3 are just "doing their job" and that filmmakers making movies nobody has seen before are "snooty."

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[Moryath]

The problem with the FPS genre is that a hell of a lot of it has been done already. And so many designers aren't willing to break the mold, because the people bankrolling them don't WANT them to break the mold: they want Derivative FPS #56 to flesh out this fall's part of the EA or Ubisoft lineup because Derivative FPS #55 still sold well.

The secondary problem is that designers keep insisting on trying to put in lame-ass "puzzles" that just don't work in an FPS environment. The best example is jumping puzzles: when I got to the point of Duke Nukem Shoulneverhaveplayedit where there were fucking jumping puzzles, I just about screamed.

The final point... FPS design has regressed. Used to be, it was about exploration and options. Wide-open areas in Doom, Deus Ex, Duke Nukem 3D. For the last decade, though, it's just been one after another in a long line of goddamned corridor simulators.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[after.fallout.34t98e]

That was the same thing I thought too. My second play-through identified that the whole game was like that though. It took me to hell to acquire the taste for where the monsters were going to spawn, the ideas were there right from the beginning.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[Miseph]

Half-Life had some jumping puzzles. Indeed, the best parts of the game were the puzzles... a lot of them just happened to involve shooting things or lobbing grenades. The difference, of course, is that they did it right, while DNF did not.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[Anonymous Coward]

i and i agree with you, mahn.

I'd like to see a shooter game mixed with Sims. People living their normal life and I can walk around like God or Rupert Murdoch fucking with them in ways they don't notice but directly makes their computer lives even worse. More than just destroying a town with a hurricane, I want to see computer faces breaking down and crying as I give their computer daughter cancer. Then switch to Murdoch Mode where I write headlines saying cancer is cured, so I can see their faces light up before they realize they've been scammed and they have to kill themselves.

I'll call the game, Cunts are Still Running the World, with a hat tip to Jervis Cocker.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[fermion]

Pretty much all good games are tech demos. Games are the one way that developers can push machines to the extremes because games do not have run perfectly. If a game flakes out it is not nearly as bad as a business application flaking out.

That said then, the games have to be something consumers will pay for. I don't think the games have to be violent. Prince of persia, pong, donkey kong, were not particularly violent, yet they were successful. What we are seeing is the rise of very realistic games, and those will take two forms, either sex or killing. Because sex is frowned upon, the killing games are winning out. It is ok to dismember and disembowel a girl, but not make love to her. In any case, it is fantasy and only time will tell what effect it has. What is for sure is creativity always challenges the world view of the uncreative.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[Count Fenring]

I think I've never been made happier by an anonymous coward. God bless you, crazy-ass rasta supervillain. God bless.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[Count Fenring]

There's an interesting article on FPS design, using Doom as the canonical example. http://vectorpoem.com/news/?p=74

The thing I find most interesting is his discussion of relative speed, and what that does to the feel of the game. The Doom guy runs 50 scale miles per hour!

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[Ihmhi]

Well, Half-Life 2 and each of the episode were tech demos. (Episode 1 introduced HDR, Episode 2 introduced improved particle something-or-other.) Team Fortress 2 premiered Valve's facial manipulation technology (Meet the Heavy was basically 90% tech demo of this stuff). Even so, they're all fantastic games.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[Miseph]

And those guys are right, even if you don't like it. Transformers 3 made more money in a day than most movies will ever make. Nobody on that project was being paid to do anything particularly original or interesting... they were being paid to crank out a movie where robots blow shit up. They did their jobs, they got paid, the execs got precisely what they wanted from their employees... and hopefully a chunk of the money that the genuinely creative people who worked on it were paid for churning out the money-making-sequel de jour will go toward creating new and exciting works of art which will genuinely contribute to our culture.

What he's saying is that anyone who criticizes those games or movies simply on the basis that they have failed to do anything particularly new or groundbreaking or edgy are just being pretentious. Who really thought Doom III should have been chock full of "original" FPS gameplay, anyway? If it had been a stealth-based puzzle game designed to comment Kantian philosophy, that just happened to be an FPS, nobody would have praised it for being "groundbreaking" or thought it was great that id put a new spin on the franchise: they would have called Carmack a goddamn moron for shitting all over what everyone expected with some random bullshit. They would have been right, too.

Maybe you think it was shit, but it was still what you thought it would be, and you still bought the game based on that. If you see Transformers 3, you aren't expecting to have your mind blown by complex writing (it does feature some enjoyable snark, but every time Optimus speaks it makes you long for the depth and wit of a GI Joe PSA) or an intriguing plot (unless your definition of "intriguing" is XBox huge plot holes and characters behaving without any sort of consistency or logic), you're expecting to see giant robots that turn into cars and blow shit up. If, instead, you got Crime And Punishment, you'd probably be more than a little bit pissed off, regardless of how "original" it would be for Transformers to go in that direction.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[dudpixel]

Doom III. I'm sorry but Doom III wasnt a game, it was a tech demo. While I understand what you are getting at, you have some big skeletons in your closet regarding this particular complaint.

Yes it was a tech demo in some ways, but that's just a compliment.

It absolutely was a game, just obviously not the one you wanted it to be. I think it was mostly destroyed by hype (some of which can be attributed to id), because there was so much that the game could never possibly live up to it.

The other problem was that HL2 came out around the same time and had an actual storyline. Hardly hear much of either game these days - they both seemed to die quickly in the public arena.

I believe Doom 3 could still be entertaining in its place.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[deathguppie]

This always kind of weirds me out. I mean the way people talk about doom 3 as if they played it for the first time 3 years after it came out and then compared it to other games of the time.

Doom 3 gave people a first glimpse of what every other game that came after it had to aspire to. Yes I agree that some aspects of the story/gameplay could have been more thought out, but again, for it's time it was totally state of the art. It was the most visually compelling game out there. And that first scene when you could hear the other marines screaming over the radio for help, having the world falling in around you.. scared the hell out of me the first time I played it.

2004 GTA San Andreas;
http://www.helloclan.eu/images/reviews/images/gta-san-andreas.jpg
Halo2
http://www.bungie.net/images/news/inlineimages/halo2cine2.jpg
Doom 3
http://www.ixbt.com/video2/images/r9700pro-oc/doom3-2.jpg

Take a look at those images and tell me you don't notice the difference.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[LingNoi]

Doom 3 is not their most recent game from ID, it's not even their latest FPS game. There have been many many titles since Doom 3 was released in 2004. Quake 4, Enemy Territory and 'Orcs and Elves' come to mind straight away.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[ShakaUVM]

>>He's saying that games don't need to be incredibly creative and new every time they get released,

At this E3 or maybe last year's, they did a side-by-side comparison of three of the shooters. Each had identical weapons on screen, with identical blood effects on the borders indicating health.

It was quite depressing.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[SudoGhost]

To be fair though, if I see one more indie tower defense game, I'm going to scream (queue the screams). Most indie games seem to take one approach or the other, either be a clone, or be completely different than anything else (or a clone with a *twist*! that might as well be a clone).

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[slackbheep]

Really? HL2 is still brought constantly in the gaming media at the very least. Perhaps because it's the highest rated game of all time?
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/half-life-2

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[cheekyjohnson]

What he's saying is that anyone who criticizes those games or movies simply on the basis that they have failed to do anything particularly new or groundbreaking or edgy are just being pretentious.

Or perhaps they just believe that it can't be good without being new. Perhaps that is what they personally like. Who knows what they really believe?

They would have been right, too.

That would depend on who you ask.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[AdamHaun]

Doom 3 gave people a first glimpse of what every other game that came after it had to aspire to.

On consoles, maybe. For a PC game it wasn't that great. Even at the time, Doom 3 was widely criticized for exactly the same reasons it is today. There's little to it except the lights going off and monsters appearing, over and over and over. It managed to make surprise attacks boring and predictable -- "Hey, a power-up sitting in a beam of light at the end of a long hallway! Wonder what'll happen when I pick it up?". Granted, the darkness was nice, but it was also way overused. Half-Life 2 came out later that same year and there was no competition. With superior storytelling, design, and an interactive physics engine, it sold at least double what Doom 3 did. [Great game -- give it a try if you've never played it; it holds up well today.]

Actually, even on the consoles it seems like Halo was more influential. I only played the first one, but didn't Halo invent stuff like the now-universal regenerating health mechanic?

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[timeOday]

Carmack is one of those guys who will tell you that big, dumb movies like Transformers 3 are just "doing their job" and that filmmakers making movies nobody has seen before are "snooty."

I think it's more like a restaurant that makes an excellent steak, vs. more "artistic" restaurants always looking to wow you with something novel. Both have a place; the recipe for steak doesn't need changing. People enjoy the basic gameplay of first-person-shooters, just like they enjoy hitting a ball with a racket and don't need to change the rules of tennis every 6 months, because it's not about perpetual novelty. Multiplayer first-person deathmatch can't go away, not because developers are un-creative, but because people like it. Same with racing games. I don't want wild innovation in those, just ever-improving realism.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[icebraining]

It made money and did what was expected from them - no questions there. But they are lower quality works. If Carmack or the Transformers' director want to make cheap popcorn, they can't expect to be treated like people who are advancing the state of the art.

Arrogance is never pretty, but trying to pass these games as being as worthy as any other just because they sell isn't very honest.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[blahplusplus]

The above poster is correct - there was something lost between Doom 1+2 and doom 3 as graphics got more realistic. I'm sure many of us felt that Doom 3 while an average shooter was not as exciting as the original games when they were released and a lot of it has to do with the design and aesthetics. There was a lot of charm to the 2D art style of the doom universe that was lost in it's transition to full 3D. Doom 3 was not true to it's roots it tried to be more of a "horror style" fps where doom was more a full in your face monster bash with entire rooms full of baddies to mow down and armies of demons. The move to 3D meant rooms were smaller and the amount of enemies you were fighting at a given time were a lot lower so Doom 3 ended up feeling like a spin off rather then a direct sequel to Doom 1 and 2.

Serious Sam has more in common with doom then Doom 3 does, it gives you that same feeling you got in doom with hoards of monsters relentlessly coming at you. Doom 3 was much more of a small scale corridor shooter.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[eulernet]

I don't understand what you're getting at. He only made two real statements, neither of which yours seems to counter.

From TFA, Carmack says that the developers need to concentrate on the frame rate, which is almost the only thing he said.
But he completely omits the game play ! (It's easy: search for the word play, there is none in the article !).

The GP stated that Doom 3 had no game play.

As a fellow game programmer, I think that the frame rate is less important than the game play.
Of course, great games include both game play and technical prowess.

It also hurts to hear Carmack speaking of creativity. I personally think that technical skills are not "creative" (and yes, I programmed a lot of games and was proud to be technically strong).

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[master_p]

Doom 3 was a spectacular and breathtaking arcade FPS.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[vlm]

For the last decade, though, it's just been one after another in a long line of goddamned corridor simulators.

First couple times I heard the phrase "rail shooter" I thought that was a clueless attempt to talk about doom's railgun.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[vlm]

I think it's more like a restaurant that makes an excellent steak, vs. more "artistic" restaurants always looking to wow you with something novel. Both have a place; the recipe for steak doesn't need changing.

Its much more like 99% of the restaurants are McDonalds and thru stockholm syndrome, a segment of the population insists that no other restaurant could exist, or should exist. This in a business environment where less than 5% of the population will pay for the product, and the other 95% won't even eat it for free, literally zero dollar value to them. You'd think someone would want a piece of the abandoned 95% of the market, but nooooo...

You see the same thing with formulaic TV and formulaic music. Endless repetitive competition to increase the fraction within the tiny market that purchases, no interest in other markets or increasing market size.

I've got 51% of the horseshoe market, yeah me! Cars? What are those, no one wants them, who cares, now buy my horseshoes instead of my competitors horseshoes!

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[bmorency]

Most indie games seem to take one approach or the other, either be a clone, or be completely different than anything else (or a clone with a *twist*! that might as well be a clone).

What kind of game do you want that isn't a clone and not something completely different than anything else? What does that leave you?

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[bigstrat2003]

Quality is purely in the eye of the beholder, and depends on one's perspective at the moment one is judging anyway. If I want a movie with deep plot and themes, then you're right. Transformers is a lower quality work. On the other hand, sometimes I want to watch robots blowing each other up. In that case, Transformers is an extremely high quality work.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[ildon]

I never understood the problem with "monster closets". You're on mars. In space. With demons from hell teleporting in. And you're concerned about the "realism" of a monster appearing from a small, previously closed corridor behind you? You're concerned about the guy in a costume popping out behind you in the fun house for a cheap scare? What the hell game do you think you're playing? Do you get mad at Portal 2 for usefully illuminating the area they intend you to shoot a portal at? That's just about as realistic, and equally gameplay-serving, as the "monster closet".

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[locallyunscene]

Excellent article. His point on shields replacing agility is well taken.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[Anonymous Coward]

A headcrab hiding in every vent is boring. A headcrab hiding in every third vent is terrifying.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[Khyber]

"Doom 3 is the most recent game from id Software"

NOT EVEN CLOSE. Rage HD.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

I don't understand what you're getting at. He only made two real statements, neither of which yours seems to counter.

He said that developers need to create value that people are willing to pay for. Doom 3 sold well, despite it not living up to some's expectations, it certainly fulfilled this statement.

Then he said that indie developers take a snooty attitude about this approach (implying in context that, rather, indie developers believe every game DOES have to be something that's never been done before). This has no relation to Doom 3 at all.

It sounds like you're just taking the opportunity to bash Doom 3. Understand, Carmack is arguing here FOR on-rails shooters. He's saying that games don't need to be incredibly creative and new every time they get released, they just have to do their job - provide entertainment that people are willing to pay for. And you're arguing against that by marching out a game which... provides entertatinment that people were willing to pay for. ..

And yet, Borderlands was a creative mashup of FPS and diablo... from a giant company ... so it's clear that there is still *some* room for innovation.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

I don't understand what you're getting at. He only made two real statements, neither of which yours seems to counter.

He said that developers need to create value that people are willing to pay for. Doom 3 sold well, despite it not living up to some's expectations, it certainly fulfilled this statement.

Then he said that indie developers take a snooty attitude about this approach (implying in context that, rather, indie developers believe every game DOES have to be something that's never been done before). This has no relation to Doom 3 at all.

It sounds like you're just taking the opportunity to bash Doom 3. Understand, Carmack is arguing here FOR on-rails shooters. He's saying that games don't need to be incredibly creative and new every time they get released, they just have to do their job - provide entertainment that people are willing to pay for. And you're arguing against that by marching out a game which... provides entertatinment that people were willing to pay for. ..

And yet, Borderlands was a creative mashup of FPS and diablo... from a giant company ... so it's clear that there is still *some* room for innovation.

And portal? That was innovative. FPS with no weapons.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[DisKurzion]

Some of Half-life's puzzles were fun. The jumping puzzles were the single most frustrating and annoying part for me. The fact that the rest of the game was pretty damn good is the only reason I endured through those annoyances.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[Omestes]

What he's saying is that anyone who criticizes those games or movies simply on the basis that they have failed to do anything particularly new or groundbreaking or edgy are just being pretentious.

Why the hell would I want to see a movie I've seen before, much less pay for the pleasure? Why not just re-watch the previous iteration for cheaper? If you don't do anything different, then there is no point; I have no reason to give you more money for it.

... If, instead, you got Crime And Punishment, you'd probably be more than a little bit pissed off, regardless of how "original" it would be for Transformers to go in that direction.

Depending on how it was done, I'd be a huge fan. But then again I am the "pretentious" sort. I like my media to be, confusing, and challenging. But then again I also read books in my spare time, which makes me an "intellectual". I'd rather watch Michael Heneke movies than things with Adam Sandler (I haven't seen a movie with him since the mid-90's), or Nostalgia Based Marketing Ploy #300: The Retcon.

Different strokes for different folks. If you want to watch Transformers 3, or play "brown, edgy, shooter #4021" be my guest. But you really can't mock people who want more meat and less filler either.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[icebraining]

I disagree. While the parameters that measure quality are certainly disputable, they're not completely subjective. It simply means that quality is just one factor in popularity.

This isn't elistism, nor am I trying to put down people who enjoy the Transformers: personally, I enjoy plenty of low-quality music and movies, even if not that specific film, and most stuff I do is definitively low quality work.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[bigstrat2003]

If the parameters that measure quality are disputable, they are subjective. That's what subjective means!

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[The Archon V2.0]

Turn off the lights with no one else in the room. Ensure that it's quiet except for your PC speakers. Soak up the ambiance and enjoy.

It worked, for a bit. The problem is that Doom 3 essentially required me to try Method-act my way into the mindset of a scared 5 year old before it got scary. A lot of other games (even recent 8-bit-themed Newgrounds Flash games) didn't ask that of me and gave me the same oomph as Doom 3, some even with the lights on in the middle of the afternoon.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[matthewv789]

And a butt-ugly tech demo, as well. It may have been "advanced" for the time, but it certainly wasn't any more realistic or better looking than lots of more-primitive games (at least how they used it, maybe the problem was with the artists, not the technology). But at any rate, I didn't think it was a very impressive demo even.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[geekoid]

Note to self: Doom III is exactly like my ex-wife.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[Jonner]

Doom III didn't have much of a story or characters, but which Id game did? In particular how was Dooom III any less of a game than the original Doom?

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[jokermatt999]

Actually, the only real "tech demo" game of theirs I can think of is Lost Coast, and that's still pretty fun. The rest may have introduced technology, but that wasn't the main focus.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[icebraining]

No, if they were completely subjective, discussing them would be useless; two contradictory positions would both be valid.

Quality is disputable because it's a human concept, not an universal law. But as a concept it only makes sense if a consensus is reached upon what it means. And such consensus exists: we do discuss the quality of products, and objective reviews are made to assess it.

If someone tells you that a tool is of bad quality, you know what it means, don't you? Sure, the person may value more this characteristic and less another, but in general we agree on what good and bad quality means.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[kelemvor4]

I know what you mean.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[Miseph]

It sounds like you and I share some tastes. I would love Robot Crime and Punishment (and to some extent, as I wrote that, it occurred to me that Transformers 3 almost has some of that... before it dumps all over them in favor of having characters behave in ways contrary to their stated positions and past deeds). I sometimes enjoy watching really stupid movies simply for empty entertainment, but on the whole I would much rather watch something with a genuine message and artistry. Plus, it's kind of fun to pick apart a movie like Transformers 3, where hardly a minute goes by without introducing a new plot hole.

Similarly, there are only so many truly quality games that are worthy of playing through based on their storytelling merits. Sometimes it's fun to just spam bullets in Call of Duty: Modern Shooterfare: Brown Boxes: Terrorist Hunt 9 for a couple of hours. Immediately after which, I can smugly detail all the ways in which it was silly.

My point is that it makes much more sense to criticize a game or movie based on what it sets out to do and claims to be, rather than on expectations nobody ever had. If Doom III failed on the grounds of being a hardcore shooter with a horror edge and an emphasis on gore... then criticize it for failing to deliver on what it promised. If Transformers 3 fails to deliver compelling action sequences and special effects magic (incidentally, it often flopped on that first point... many of the sequences were sadly reliant on shakycam and visual distractions to conceal the action, or rely on cheap deus ex machina for tidy resolutions) then that is where the truly damning criticism lies.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[Arctech]

I don't believe anyone is arguing that id can't innovate technology-wise, the Doom3 engine was pretty advanced for its time and all of its normal-mapped goodness was pretty well received as far as "good graphics" metrics went. But the actual Doom 3 game, good luck seeing all those pretty graphics when over half the game is played in practically no light whatsoever (at least before you get to the hell levels).

Which isn't even all that bad a trait but for the fact that the actual creative design of the game boiled down to a one-trick pony. Wander around in the darkness -> Pick up an item -> Monster jumps out of the closet. It works for the first few times, and then it's just boring and predictable. For a sequel to one of the most notorious action shooter games of all time, there's a whole lot of wandering around not shooting anything save for the times you happen across an enemy or two. It frankly didn't feel like a Doom game at all, it's like they wanted to be System Shock 2 but couldn't figure out the formula.

Ironically, an earlier released game Painkiller turned out to be a better Doom sequel than Doom 3, not to mention it also stacked up pretty well to D3's fairly well.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[Lemmy Caution]

Although you have a limited point that there's a certain amount of "shut up, it's just a game" that's necessary, if you're going to be spending thousands and thousands of dollars to be visually realistic, why then break the illusion with elephant-in-the-living-room absurdities? The amount of disbelief required couldn't be suspended with a forklift.

Also, Portal 2 actually makes sense: they're all tests, remember?

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[Kevin Fishburne]

While there are some very impressive things in Doom III (which is a game in every way), I think what made it suck was the title. They should have called it anything but "Doom". Doom and Doom II were fast paced, generally well lit, and most importantly you could see groups of enemies at a distance, circle-strafe, dodge their bullets, etc. It was run-and-gun all the way. Doom III was blindingly dark, loaded with screamers like some shitty horror movie, corridor-infested and claustrophobic, and contained very little of what made the previous two games successful. It was no Doom, and therefore it sucked. If they'd named it "Dark" everyone would have loved it.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[ildon]

High graphic fidelity and "realism" are not the same thing. Doom3's human characters were pretty stylized/exaggerated. That should have been a clue. The plot was literally a horror/slasher flick plot. That should have been the second clue.

And the points I'm talking about in Portal 2 where there are lights illuminating portal locations are in the "between zones" and "escaping areas" sections of the game.

The fact is, some people just didn't like the game/gameplay, or were expecting something different from what they were given, despite Id never really portraying the game as anything other than it was: a re-imagined Doom game using a state-of-the-art graphics engine (for the time). Anyone expecting anything different than a goofy horror-FPS that emphasized frantic, arcade gameplay over realism was simply expecting the wrong game. That's what Doom was (although you could argue the "horror" part was less emphasized, but really the original game had dark areas, had monsters pop out of nowhere to scare you, and had satanism and gore everywhere, too) and that's what should have been expected from Doom 3.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[Lemmy Caution]

Well, I'm glad that the game worked for you. It's not like I need coherent fictions in all my games: I'm fine with the mysterious design of Mario World, the weird botany of its fungi, etc. Doom 1 (and Quakes 1 and 2) worked for me. But stylistic/expressionist elements aside, I - and a lot of others, apparently - found the visuals inconsistent with world design in Doom 3 and others of its ilk. High graphic fidelity, esp. with naturalistic grit (a la Gears of War) makes some claim on us that we think we're in a "world" of some kind, not just in a playground with funny doodles. The sense of fantastic dread and suspense vanished quickly for me, and what was left was boring.

I think this should tell game designers something.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[SudoGhost]

I don't think you quite understood. One can be similar without being a clone. Halo is not a Doom clone, nor is it a clone with a twist. Nor was it something completely new. What I was getting at is most indie games try to go to the extremes of one or the other.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[mug funky]

Carmack is correct.

when i worked in post production, nothing gave me a more perverse pleasure than telling snooty film-snob clients about how awesome Total Recall was. and they had to sit and listen to me because i was the one making their own film look good.

look at the Australian film industry. the wank was turned up so high that we wont even watch our own films anymore. cinemas simply will not screen Australian films in Australia. because they can't justify the expense of it versus the 2 or 3 people that they'll get per screening.

being snooty, with an over-inflated sense of entitlement will not get people to enjoy your stuff. people who work in entertainment must remember that they do it for the audience, not for themselves.

Re:Still doesnt excuse

[djnforce9]

From what I remember, Prey had the exact same thing as Doom 3. You could even play a fully functional Pacman game from that FPS perspective whereas Doom 3 just has you clicking buttons to turn different machines on and off.

"if the movie stinks, just don't go."

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

He's placing the blame on shitty games on us, the gamers.

Rightfully so. When a COD game can sell millions just on it's name alone, something's wrong.

Although I think that his take on it is a little wrong. But I think Rage is kind of the right direction away from just the traditional walk, shoot, maybe hide behind some cover paradigm. If Rage for iOS is anything to go by, it'll not only be rich and fun with a good sense of humor but the racing aspects will be a nice touch.

Yes, HL2(and ep 2) had those annoying boat and car scenes, but I trust Carmack and co to get this one right.

Re:"if the movie stinks, just don't go."

[bonch]

To be fair, COD has a multiplayer component driving it, so when people pick up the latest COD, you want to pick it up too so you can play with everyone else online and take advantage of the latest multiplayer additions. That said, even a multiplayer game can be creatively unique--Team Fortress 2 is fantastic.

Re:"if the movie stinks, just don't go."

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

the problem with COD multiplayer since COD4 from a gameplay perspective is that unless you pick it up RIGHT AWAY and grind like mad, you're not going to really have a fun time. Unless you think eating unbalanced unlockable weapons for dinner is a good time.

Re:"if the movie stinks, just don't go."

[interkin3tic]

When a COD game can sell millions just on it's name alone, something's wrong.

It may not be your cup of tea or very original, but the games aren't bad. I know there's a tendency to see lots of people going nuts over something and have high expectations for it, and then be disappointed when it's not God's gift to the earth, but the games are well suited to their target audience.

And to be fair the PC versions sounded like abominations...

Yes, HL2(and ep 2) had those annoying boat and car scenes,

I actually really liked those parts too.

Re:"if the movie stinks, just don't go."

[RockoTDF]

And kill streaks. COD4 was bearable in that department, but MW2 was over the top. TWO harriers? The AC-130? The ability to have multiple aircraft in the air at once drove me mad. I'm so glad they added the "airspace full" rule in black ops.

Re:"if the movie stinks, just don't go."

[filthpickle]

I loved the boat and car part of HL2 also.

I don't really play shooters single player anymore...but I can't stand the multiplayer in CoD. So many people like it that I guess maybe it's just me....but there is rarely any sense of distance, it's just running around in mostly cramped maps going full auto on any target you see. Full disclosure....I was downright awful at CoD multiplayer. I played it on the PC, I never heard that there were any problems with the PC version compared to the console. I would never play a shooter on a console anyway.

Re:"if the movie stinks, just don't go."

[Daniel Phillips]

I think Rage is kind of the right direction away from just the traditional walk, shoot, maybe hide behind some cover paradigm.

The latest video looks just like Quake to me. I'll guess that Rage is Quake yet again with cars glued on. Not that I really care whether John puts out yet another linear, repetitive single player game with MIA story line as long as he keeps setting the standard for render tech.

Re:"if the movie stinks, just don't go."

[Skywolfblue]

It may not be your cup of tea or very original, but the games aren't bad. I know there's a tendency to see lots of people going nuts over something and have high expectations for it, and then be disappointed when it's not God's gift to the earth, but the games are well suited to their target audience.

Well put. Yet all the same, I wish that the gaming audience as a whole had more variance/(even money split).

Which is unrealistic and silly, but oh well...

Re:"if the movie stinks, just don't go."

[24-bit Voxel]

Regardless to what you think (are are ashamed to own up to...AC) the fact you are this passionate about shooters means that what he did worked. Shooters were *defined* by id, they very well might not be what they are today without them. It's a shame you are too childish to see this.

Re:"if the movie stinks, just don't go."

[Haeleth]

Yes, HL2(and ep 2) had those annoying boat and car scenes, but I trust Carmack and co to get this one right.

Annoying? The main annoying thing about them was the load times. Gameplay-wise they were pretty fun.

Re:"if the movie stinks, just don't go."

[VGPowerlord]

CoD isn't the only game that has modifying classes.

Team Fortress 2 has a whole variety of unlockables, but most of them are balanced in some way or another.

For instance, TF2's Heavy (short for Heavy Weapons Guy) has 300 health (up from 125 base), but moves at 80%

He has a Minigun as his primary weapon. Miniguns are one of the strongest weapons in the game. They do damage in a cone shape out from the gun barrel. It takes a second or two to spin up before you can shoot with it, and you move slower while the gun is spinning (holding down the alt-fire button keeps the gun spinning while not shooting).

It has 3 unlockable replacements:

• Natascha minigun, which slows players it hits but fires 25% slower and spins up 30% slower.
• Brass Beast minigun, which deals 20% more damage, but spins up 50% slower, and you move 60% slower when it's spun up.
• Tomislav minigun, which has a silent spinup, spins up 40% faster, but fires 20% slower.

Now, the Natascha was the first replacement introduced and has had several nerfs over its lifetime. Originally, there was no spin up reduction. It was added for balance reasons. More recently, the Tomislav was introduced, and within two weeks of its released, the spin up time increase got nearly halved (from 70% to 40%).

You'll notice that every primary unlock for the Heavy is a Minigun. This is intentional, as it balances out the Heavy's massive amounts of health, just like his movement speed is another balance. Slow Heavy = easy Sniper (instant-kill headshot) or Spy (instant-kill backstab) target.

In essence, TF2 is a gigantic balancing act, much more so than any other multiplayer FPS that I've seen.

Some classes even get alternative playstyles. It's possible to play a Demoman with a shield that allows you to charge (there are two, one hits people for damage, the other causes you to do critical hits with your weapons), boots that give you better turn control while charging, and a sword that converts ammo you pick up to health. Note that TF2 only has 3 inventory slots that you can modify, so a player doing this is a melee-only fighter.

Re:"if the movie stinks, just don't go."

[Patch86]

I watched the first Transformers movie and hated it (and haven't watched the sequels). But plenty of people watched it and really liked it. Liked it enough to go to a second one, and a third one, and will probably go to a fourth one when it's inevitably cranked out.

Am I right and they are wrong? Does my opinion on movies count for more than theirs? OK, so many of them will have been 15 years old or less (and I am not), or any other number of mitigating factors; but they're still entitled to their opinions on what they like and what they don't.

People bought COD in their millions because presumably they enjoyed it. I might not have enjoyed it, you might not have enjoyed it, and to a gaming "connoisseur" it may have been mediocre or worse, but as long as each person who forked over £30 for it feels that they got £30 worth of enjoyment out of it, who are we to judge? And who are we to say that the developer shouldn't crank out another one for their fans?

Personally, I like games that give me a new experience that I've never had before- so thank you Mr Carmack, I'd like those indie developers to carry on as they are. But hey, my tastes aren't for everyone, right?

Re:"if the movie stinks, just don't go."

[im_thatoneguy]

That said, even a multiplayer game can be creatively unique--Team Fortress 2 is fantastic.

Hehe, the game based on a Quake 1 mod?

Re:"if the movie stinks, just don't go."

[kelemvor4]

Yes, HL2(and ep 2) had those annoying boat and car scenes, but I trust Carmack and co to get this one right.

I thought those were fun.. /shrug

Re:"if the movie stinks, just don't go."

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

What TF2 does right that COD doesn't is that you can run around with the standard weapons and still murder everyone in sight.

COD(MW2 anyway) on the other hand, doesn't even let you shoot down aircraft unless you've been grinding for quite awhile.

Ugh

[bonch]

It's not your job to do something nobody's ever seen before, sure. But raising the bar should be your goal nonetheless. Visuals are a solved problem, and the days of the tech demo are over. Even the hardware race is over--id's new game Rage is targeting six-year-old console hardware. So what else is there but to push creative expressiveness in a genre that's crying out for some artistic legitimacy on the level that movies and novels enjoy? It's clear that a game like Portal 2 would never come out of id Software.

Re:Ugh

[bigpet]

>Visuals are a solved problem

Psssh, don't tell that to the SIGGRAPH attendees or engine developers because they'll smack you square in the face.

Re:Ugh

[bonch]

I wouldn't need to say a thing. I'd just hold up the sales figure chart for Minecraft and watch them blink in astonishment.

Re:Ugh

[Fluffeh]

Being creative is a terribly subjective phrase. As a level designer (I worked with Epic on the Unreal Tournament projects) I think I have a good perspective of this. Most games that come out do follow the general genre that it is made for - but you know what, so does everything else. You don't see Ford lamenting that they aren't "designing a totally new car..." It's a CAR. People expect it to have four wheels, seats and all the usual stuff inside a car. FPS developers are making a game that people who want an FPS will buy. Can you be creative? Absolutely. Look at titles like Theif for example. It is esentially a FPS, but with a brilliant twist. Same goes for Assassins Creed. You run around and (for the most part) kill folks.

The sign of a truly innovative game (and therefore truly amazing developers) is to take a genre, like FPS and make subtle transformations to it to make it a more enjoyable experience for the gamers. Innovation is great, but making something TOTALLY different is a huge risk. Just look at Black and White. While very well done, it was so totally different in UI and concepts that it never became the smash hit that it should have.

It takes a BRILLIANT game to push a genre a few steps to the left or right. You simply can't expect to make a title that is way out in left field and expect it to become an overnight smash hit. Not saying it simply cannot happen, but most of the time (especially when it comes to publishers financially backing games) you need to take small steps in the direction you would LIKE to get to.

Re:Ugh

[bonch]

I disagree with the car analogy because, for most people, a car is little more than a tool to move them between locations. Games, on the other hand, are purely entertainment. Black & White's problem wasn't its attempt to be innovative (the reviewers who barely played past the first world rated it highly for that)--it's that it turned out to be a buggy mess that didn't live up to the promises Molyneaux made.

You don't have to come out of left field to make something that pushes a genre forward. Taking what exists and adding enough innovative twists on it is also good enough. World of Warcraft did that with the Everquest formula, for example. "Creative" refers to something that the developers care about on an artistically expressive level, that they want to present something that will make it stand out and not just make something that fits an expected standard in order to make money for a publisher.

Re:Ugh

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Tell it to the tens of millions of Wii owners instead.

Re:Ugh

[Boona]

If he creates a game that sells millions of copies it's because he's created experience that people want. It may not be re-inventing the wheel, but if people purchase it, it's because they want the familiar experience but in this new and creative perspective. It's precisely this bizarre sense of entitlement, of him needing to cater to your view of what he should produce or what you believe would give the industry "artistic legitimacy", that he's saddened by. Each time a new ID game is released, millions of people show they appreciate the creative direction his company is taking whether it fits your own narrow minded notion of creativity or not.

I personally love ID games, they are fun, thrilling and they games they produce have a better and more polished feel each time around. It's amazing that they can take the same concept, FPSs, and continuous reinvent them that they blow you away each time.

> Visuals are a solved problem, and the days of the tech demo are over.

Who wasn't blown away by the new Battlefield 3 previews? "Visuals are a solved problem" my ass!

Re:Ugh

[bonch]

The point is that Minecraft has graphics straight out of a 1993 DOS game, written by one guy in his spare time as a hack for his friends to play with. Console games are running on hardware that's over five years old. The days of the graphics-driven video game market are long gone.

Re:Ugh

[Skillet5151]

Efficient real time rendering is a pretty interesting subject from my nerd perspective and I for one hope that games companies continue to spend some time and money on it even though it isn't the most important factor in making a game fun.

Re:Ugh

[bigpet]

Maybe we have a different definition of "solved"

My point was that there is a remarkable amount of people trying to solve a problem that you claim to be solved.

If there were a successful movie shot with a cell-phone cam would you call cinematography solved? What I am saying is not that "better looking" games make better games but that there are games that gain tremendous value from new technology that allows them to look more believable.

Re:Ugh

[Draek]

And yet the same World of Warcraft you defend was, and still is, blasted left and right as another "me too" MMO only with Warcraft characters and less demanding graphics.

As the GP said, being creative is a terribly subjective phrase. So much, that in the eyes of anyone who thought WoW was generic, your post comes across as a defense of Carmack's position rather than an attack on it.

Re:Ugh

[Ihmhi]

Well, Portal didn't come out of Valve. It was originally a student game from Digipen.

A lot of publishers have the following cycle:

1) Snap up a small team/company/indie that made a great game. Have them sell it at the company, or make a better version. Valve has Alien Swarm, Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, etc.

2) Either move the team on to other projects or run it into the ground with bad sequels.

3) Lather, rinse, repeat.

I think the best thing is a mix of the two. Bring in the good works of people from the outside (like how WoW encourages UI mods that can add a lot of value to the game), but also do a lot of work in-house. Sticking to either exclusively doesn't always work well.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't need to say a thing. I'd just hold up the sales figure chart for Minecraft and watch them blink in astonishment.

1) SIGGRAPH has more than just game designers. I'm sure the medical and data visualisation people will be impressed!

2) Would it surprise you to learn that "looks like ass" is one of the reasons I don't like Minecraft personally? I don't think I'm a unique and precious snow flake so there must be other people like me. Visuals will only be "solved" (as if the concept even applies to something so abstract) when it is possible to express anything you can imagine in real-time, it doesn't need to be realistic, impressionism works well, cell shading too, but it does need more vertices, textures and better lighting algorithms.

It's really quite amazing how people insist "graphics don't need to get better" even when you can't even render 1000 NPCs fighting each other in real-time at decent visual quality, there are plenty of flaws that are easy to see yet they are readily ignored. This crap has been happening since the PS1's "photorealism", "we don't need better graphics" and yet the PS2 ate the PS1 and on and on, so much for that delusion. This really just feels like another "get off my lawn" type statement from people who grew up with 8-bit NES or even Atari proclaiming that "in my day graphics were blocky and pixelatted AND WE LIKED IT". Well, guess what? I grew up with that stuff too and it just makes me appreciate how far we've come more than anything else.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just one game. For every Minecraft there's probably a dozen AAA-budget games with fancier graphics and higher sales. Lower ROI, but not every indie game becomes a hit.

I think a better example would Wii games, which have relatively weak graphics for console games but still sell well.

Re:Ugh

[Fluffeh]

Taking what exists and adding enough innovative twists on it is also good enough. World of Warcraft did that with the Everquest formula, for example.

World of Warcraft wasn't innovative. Not really. It was however VERY well polished. Where Blizzard excelled was constant adjustment of classes to ensure balance, putting in a lot of content and really trying to make it work properly. Now, before you start jumping in and saying how buggy it is come patch time or the like, I am not saying that EVERYTHING works perfectly in it, but I did play it for a number of years, and compared to problems in just about every other MMO, it is right up there as being one of the least buggy - especially in the last few years.

A slight variant on a genre can make either a great game, or a game that just doesn't work. Take Unreal Tournament for example. The original took FPS, looked at the really fun bits, introduced a bunch of new game types that weren't really seen too much, made exciting, fun, tight levels that worked very well for multiplayer and introduced (at the time) amazing bots to play against. It was an AMAZING success. However, the follow-up just missed a few things that made the original so much fun. They focused too much on the technical and overlooked the "fun" aspects. So much so, that they eventually released a patch to make it feel more like the original!!

What I am basically saying is that the marketplace (and certainly publishers) are happy for a little "creativity" at a time, but for them to accept something that is totally different to everything they have played requires something that really is magical.

Re:Ugh

[BitZtream]

You do realize a polygon is composed of vertexes right? A vertex simply being a 'point in space'.

Every Direct3d and opengl application on the planet, game or otherwise, uses vertexes to build polygons.

Oh, whats that? You have no idea what you're talking about? My bad, should have guess AC.

Re:Ugh

[Mystery00]

Correction: Narbacular Drop came out of Digipen. Portal came out of Valve.

Re:Ugh

[delinear]

It's precisely this bizarre sense of entitlement, of him needing to cater to your view of what he should produce or what you believe would give the industry "artistic legitimacy", that he's saddened by. Each time a new ID game is released, millions of people show they appreciate the creative direction his company is taking whether it fits your own narrow minded notion of creativity or not.

It seems like Carmack is the one being a little whiny here. McDonalds satisfies a need for millions of people every day, but in no way would anyone claim they were producing fabulous cuisine. There's nothing wrong with meeting the demands of the masses, and it's certainly very profitable, but don't then complain because you're not getting the artistic kudos you believe you deserve. Ferraris get artistic kudos, Fords not so much, which sells more? Do you think the CEO of Ford gets upset that their cars are seen as functional and affordable rather than autoerotica? I'm with you on the id game front, I've enjoyed all their games in the past, I'd just rather he focused on giving us the next game and less on complaining about his lack of respect in the indie crowd.

Re:Ugh

[drinkypoo]

Black and White was not very well done, it was an exploding crashfest tech demo. And Black and White 2 was also an exploding crashfest, proving for once and for all that some studios think they're far better than they are.

Re:Ugh

[Ihmhi]

That's a bit pedantic, but that was what I was basically saying. Sure, Valve hired the Narbacular Drop people to make Portal and it was completely made in house, but it pretty much was not their concept from the get-go. They bought a good idea and paid to have the team expand on it.

Re:Ugh

[Mystery00]

And the team used Valve's Half-Life universe to expand in. Are you suggesting Valve steal their idea and do it themselves instead of adding people that can come up with good ideas to their team? It's not about Narbacular Drop, it's about the people that made it.

Re:Ugh

[Methuseus]

I, personally, don't give Ferrari much (many?) artistic kudos. I just think many of their styles are just ugly. But that's subjective, just like any type of art. I love Monet's works, but am not much into Picasso at all. That doesn't mean Picasso is bad, per se, just that I don't prefer the aesthetic.

Re:Ugh

[tecnico.hitos]

A car can be like any other car, because it's a tool with a specific function. Games are meant to entertain, novelty factors significantly. If every sci-fi book was like every other sci-fi book, it wouldn't work so well. The problem is that not only most games aren't trying to push the genres, they aren't even trying to nudge them.

It isn't so much "for the sake of art", either. When a game plays the same than a dozen others that you've played before, it playing gets dull.

Re:Ugh

[gknoy]

Most gamers tend to play games whose visuals are not striking. Minecraft, various Wii games, Farmville -- what's compelling is often not the graphics, but the core gameplay. There will always be people who prefer games like Bayonetta or Heavy Rain (both of which had some interesting gameplay aspects too) or Call of Duty or TF2, where the visual style is amazingly well done, but that's not the point.

You can't please everyone and stay within budget. Minecraft (and Farmville ...) shows that a good game concept can net you a ton of revenue and devoted players, even if there are still large numbers of people who decide not to touch your game with a ten foot pole.

Re:Ugh

[Rexdude]

It's been years since anything as good as Thief came out, and I'm only talking about FPSes.
For me, 'good' in terms of FPS tends towards a good narrative, and intelligent enemy AI in addition to the basics like controls/gameplay.
Games like Deus Ex, No one lives forever, Thief and Assassin's Creed. In recent years, maybe Fallout:New Vegas, which I haven't played. How about some variation of genre? Where are the swashbuckling steampunk FPSes where you go around in airships shooting at your enemies with rayguns and rescuing damsels in distress? Or alternate history FPSes starring ...civil war zombies?

It requires a big budget, but attention paid to script and dialogue as well as graphics; something well within the means of EA and other big publishers. I'm quite sure such games will be well received too.Yet they're content to keep dishing out sequel after sequel to WW2 shooters.

Re:Ugh

[jbonomi]

I think he's trying to say voxels, not vertexes.

Re:Ugh

[geekoid]

The point, I think, is that graphics are quite good enough for the users. Can they be better, faster, smaller? probably. But for the most part it's just 'neat'.

Do we need even more realistic foam when a wave crashes on the beach? probably not. If we get it will we like it? probably. IN any case it's not selling games.

Re:Ugh

[geekoid]

No tio wasn't. WoW solved many issues the haunted previous MMOs, especially Everquest.
They realized that death was its own punishment
The fixed many grinding issues.
They fix all the current, at the time, loot issues.
They vastly improved auctioning.
Stil ahs one of the best story lines.

NO ONE blasted it as a 'me too' MMORPG when it came out. IN fact, they where pretty much blown away.

Re:Ugh

[ildon]

It's clear that a game like Portal 2 would never come out of id Software.

They don't make puzzle games. They make first person shooters.

Re:Ugh

[jnpcl]

Minecraft isn't as impressive as you think.

Minecraft didn't have to spend millions in order to make millions.. That's what's impressive.

Re:Ugh

[jwhitener]

Taking what exists and adding enough innovative twists on it is also good enough. World of Warcraft did that with the Everquest formula, for example.

World of Warcraft wasn't innovative. Not really. It was however VERY well polished. Where Blizzard excelled was constant adjustment of classes to ensure balance, putting in a lot of content and really trying to make it work properly. Now, before you start jumping in and saying how buggy it is come patch time or the like, I am not saying that EVERYTHING works perfectly in it, but I did play it for a number of years, and compared to problems in just about every other MMO, it is right up there as being one of the least buggy - especially in the last few years.

A slight variant on a genre can make either a great game, or a game that just doesn't work. Take Unreal Tournament for example. The original took FPS, looked at the really fun bits, introduced a bunch of new game types that weren't really seen too much, made exciting, fun, tight levels that worked very well for multiplayer and introduced (at the time) amazing bots to play against. It was an AMAZING success. However, the follow-up just missed a few things that made the original so much fun. They focused too much on the technical and overlooked the "fun" aspects. So much so, that they eventually released a patch to make it feel more like the original!!

What I am basically saying is that the marketplace (and certainly publishers) are happy for a little "creativity" at a time, but for them to accept something that is totally different to everything they have played requires something that really is magical.

Blizzard excelled at taking out the 'hard parts' of the mmo experience and presenting a polished game for the masses. Guiding you from quest to quest, no death penalties, no corpse recovery, instantly formed groups. It allowed a completely casual gamer with no notion of what an MMO was about to start the game, and just play.

There wasn't a single innovative thing about World of Warcraft when it came out, unless you want to count the 'easifying' of the mmo experience. EQ had a metric ton more content, quests, items, guilds, recipes, features, etc.. and a highly balanced player vs environment. Blizzards emphasis on PVP is another thing I consider to be something done for the masses, not as an innovative mmo invention.

Re:Ugh

[Draek]

NO ONE blasted it as a 'me too' MMORPG when it came out. IN fact, they where pretty much blown away.

Wrong. Perhaps it was luck that you didn't meet any of them, or perhaps it's just your rose-tinted glasses, but there were no shortage back then just as there are now, whether you think they were justified or not.

Indie anything = whiner

[dave562]

Of course the "indie" developers are whining. That is what "indie" people do. They whine about how everything is not good enough and how they could do it better. Maybe some indie developer can come up with a revolutionary game where you ride around on a Vespa and go to poetry readings at various coffee shops.

Re:Indie anything = whiner

[hedwards]

Not really, indie developers claim that they can do better and actually try to do better. It's pretty clear from your tone that you know precisely zip about what you're talking about. Otherwise you'd realize that indie developers do put their money where their mouths are. Often it doesn't work out well and sometimes you get something that nobody has seen before.

But to dismiss it as whining when folks point out that the quality of games could and should be higher is just as ignorant as your suggestion of a game involving that vespa and coffee houses.

Re:Indie anything = whiner

[powerlord]

... Maybe some indie developer can come up with a revolutionary game where you ride around on a Vespa and go to poetry readings at various coffee shops.

Grand Theft Goth?

Re:Indie anything = whiner

[sammyF70]

... or with a game in which the world is blocky albeit completely de- and con-structable, a run and jump game including altering the timeflow to solve puzzles, a fighter adventure game involving rabbits and wolves, ... ah silly indy developers! Thankfully one can still count on formulaic games from the major outlets.

Re:Indie anything = whiner

[bonch]

You don't seem to understand what "indie developer" is describing. It doesn't suggest anything about their personality. It's simply someone who's not selling through a traditional publisher. One of the reasons innovation is so important to them is that it's one of the ways they are able to compete in a market dominated by EA, Bethesda, and other tie-wearing behemoths.

Re:Indie anything = whiner

[jemmyw]

Maybe some indie developer can come up with a revolutionary game where you ride around on a Vespa and go to poetry readings at various coffee shops.

That sounds brilliant!

Re:Indie anything = whiner

[slackbheep]

You're confusing the kids in wool beanies and box frames with developers who aren't interested in, or able to court major publishers. Poor joke, but nice try. I suppose.

Re:Indie anything = whiner

[Lemmy Caution]

Actually, it sounds like Carmack is whining, and the indie developers are just making games. Which don't suck and aren't boring.

Re:Indie anything = whiner

[dintech]

Don't need it, we already have Whinecraft.

Re:Indie anything = whiner

[drinkypoo]

If only GTA4 had been designed with modding in mind you could take a Faggio to get a Cappucino.

Re:Indie anything = whiner

[vlm]

Maybe some indie developer can come up with a revolutionary game where you ride around on a Vespa and go to poetry readings at various coffee shops.

They called it "second life". It had that, and gambling until they took the gambling away. And it had sex until they took that away too.

Now I'm not sure it has anything; creepy empty ancient ruins, I suspect? Kind of like Myspace now, or soon to be Facebook once everyone switches to G+.

Used to be a slashvertisement post about second life roughly every other day, perhaps a decade ago up to about five years ago..

Re:Indie anything = whiner

[dave562]

Used to be a slashvertisement post about second life roughly every other day, perhaps a decade ago up to about five years ago..

I remember those. They were usually followed by the meme, "Get a first life!"

Re:Indie anything = whiner

[geekoid]

Good games are so mainstream.

Re:Indie anything = whiner

[Patch86]

What I think Carmack is overlooking (or not addressing, anyway) is why indie designed tend to go for left-field creative ideas.

Big studios (like id) have huge resources to direct towards BIG games- big graphics, big sound, big plot, big level design, big everything. For the likes of id, it's perfectly viable to look at a great game like the Doom/Quake series and say "I think we can do that again- but better!", and set about making a similar game wih the bigger-everything applied.

For an indie studio, that isn't an option. A three man basement set-up is simply not going to be able to make a Quake-clone better than id; they simply can't out do them on any of those aforementioned points. If they try to churn out a marginally-improved version of what already exists, they'll be slaughtered. If the three-man-basement-dev-teams of this world are going to produce a break-through hit, their only possible hope is to out-think their bigger competitors; to come up with a better idea, or set of ideas, or something that feels so unique that the gamer feels that they're playing something truly new and original.

Darwinia (nominally an RTS) wasn't trying to compete with (say) Dawn of War (which came out a year earlier). It was trying to be it's own thing. Darwinia felt like a truly unique experience (even though, in retrospect, an awful lot of it was in-homage to something or other), so I enjoyed it immensely and have very fond memories of it. If it had just been a DoW clone (or whatever), do you think it would have gotten the mindshare that it did?

Re:Indie anything = whiner

[ildon]

99.9% of indie games are fucking garbage. Like actually complete, unplayable garbage. Some of them have really cool concepts but don't flesh them out well or don't implement them well, or some of them try something really new and innovative but it ends up just not working in practice, but the vast majority of them are just absolute shit. They take a shitty, derivative concept and completely fail to execute it in every way. Just because that 1/1000 game turns out to be awesome and made by 2 guys in their spare time doesn't excuse the rest of the assholes calling themselves indie developers from claiming they can do better than professional developers when they demonstrably cannot.

Re:Indie anything = whiner

[Lemmy Caution]

The vast majority of indie games are bad, given. That's because there is no distinction between a prototype and a finished project: it's a fail-early-and-often-until-you-get-it-right sort of thing. The nice thing about indie games is that there aren't huge marketing campaigns trying to get you to play the games that suck, and a lot of the indie designers will even admit that many of their own games sucked (but were valuable for trying out ideas or even just learning basic techniques.)

I will disagree with you on the record of the majors, though: almost every great, innovative title from a major publisher swims in a sea of predictable, boring crap.

Re:Indie anything = whiner

[PwnzerDragoon]

99.9% of all games are fucking garbage.

FTFY

AAA games have the exact same problems you just described, except usually with less emphasis on the "new" and "innovative" parts. Remember Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap.

Re:Indie anything = whiner

[ildon]

That was basically my point.

id makes and sells gfx engines, not games

[hardtofindanick]

Interestingly it seems /. agrees that a company that made wolfenstein, doom, doom, quake, quake, quake, wolfenstein, doom, quake should not be the one to comment about FPS creativity.

Thanks for the technology, but their gaming experience is still where it was 15 years ago. To top it off, visuals have come a long way since Q1 that it is really hard to sell a game purely based on "pretty" gfx.

Re:id makes and sells gfx engines, not games

[LingNoi]

their gaming experience is still where it was 15 years ago

You've obviously not seen anything about their latest game rage to make a comment like that. Also you're missing the point. Carmack is saying you don't always need to innovate, seeming as they're still in business doing the same gaming experience you seem to have proven his point.

Doom and Quake? 1993 & 1996...

[Anonymous Coward]

> pioneer in the shooter genre with Doom and Quake

When you're still known best for things done 15 and 18 years ago can you really claim "creativity" as one of your strong points?

It's 2011

[Hsien-Ko]

Where's have the cool brackets+enter inventory system and use keys from 1994-97 gone to? We were doing so well until Halo came.


Duke3D wasn't just fun for the 'attitude' and "THE BOOBS ON E1L2" you know, Heretic/Hexen also explored the more tactical FPS elements no one cared about (and no one really did still anyway. fps cockfighting wasn't seen again until 15 years later when ArmA 2 came out).

Let's not forget that one '1993 vs. 200x level design' picture, the strict lameness of oververbose design documents written by a dedicated 'game designer'. I remember people saw the little GTA design doc here months ago as offensive for not being a "proper design doc" because it left a lot of room for the rest of the team to get creative by themselves to make the game by featuring little detail outside gameplay. It's getting so 'by the book' these days to make/sell linear one-track experience by linear one-track experience, we can't even have clever easter eggs anymore either.

Let's also not forget the whole "DLC" movement, clamping down on custom content opportunities, destroying potential modding communities in the name for money.

Re:It's 2011

[Ihmhi]

Honestly, I think the best way to do things is to give the individual team members a set of specific goals and then let them fill in the blanks.

If you told a class full of 30 film students to make a 2 minute short film involving a tortoise and a traffic cone, I imagine that every one of them would be quite different. Some would be comedic, some would be dramatic, and some would be so over-the-top dramatic that it goes back round to the comedic side.

Too many cooks spoil the broth.

Re:It's 2011

[drinkypoo]

On one hand I agree with you about the Halo influence. On the other hand, I found Reach highly enjoyable...

Let's also not forget the whole "DLC" movement, clamping down on custom content opportunities, destroying potential modding communities in the name for money.

Have we seen such a thing in an iD game yet?

Re:It's 2011

[Hsien-Ko]

Have we seen such a thing in an iD game yet?

The idstuff/ folder could qualify for some of the products as "DLC", like buying Master Levels for Doom II or Hexen: Deathkings over the phone by downloading the locked/encrypted archive from their FTP's idstuff folder, and purchasing a serial number for that.

Summarized

[Gideon Wells]

Current state of affairs

Indie: We need more creativity!
Nostalgia: We want doom level newness!
Carmack: We made some creative stuff, but now we are doing it for the cash. Here, have another COD where you can endlessly fight each other in the same maps.
Nostalgia: *whimpers*
Steam: Here, we have hats!
*It is super effected, Nostlagia feints*

Indie: Art matters. Art... *stomach growls*
  Steam: We'll package your stuff together and drum up sales.
Indie: Can't make art if dead from starvation....

Re:Summarized

[Hsien-Ko]

Carmack: We made some creative stuff, but now we are doing it for the cash. Here, have another COD where you can endlessly fight each other in the same maps..

Carmack != Kotick.

Portal And other musings.

[Anonymous Coward]

So Portal wasn't creative or new idea?
Sure the original game was out in 2007 but the concept was new (AFAIK).
There have been FPS games where you can completely move in 3 dimensions but they haven't been as commercially successful, so of course development studios are going to target as large an audience as possible. It is more economical for them to refine a current idea rather than reinvent the wheel.

Blizzard have built their name off taking popular ideas of games and refining them to be marketable to the masses.
Shakespeare based his plays off of other plays around at the time does it make his contribution to literature less important?

Re:Portal And other musings.

[Stormwatch]

Prey's portals were of very little relevance to the gameplay. So it doesn't really count.

Re:Portal And other musings.

[grumbel]

Sure the original game was out in 2007 but the concept was new (AFAIK).

The portal gun was new, the basic concept of portals itself however has been kind of around. Mirrors in old Doom-era FPS where essentially portals. Also Prey had them in 2006 and here is a GDC talk of Peter Molyneux 's "The Room" from 2005, the fun with portals starts at 6:20. And essentially all teleporters in games are just a less graphically fancy version of portals (not all however preserve momentum). The interesting thing with Portal is that it took the core concept and build an all out puzzle game around it, instead of just having it be a random curiosity of the game engine in a normal shooter.

Re:Portal And other musings.

[ildon]

Portal is not an FPS. It's a first person puzzle game.

Re:Doom and Quake? 1993 & 1996...

[sirsnork]

Not to mention Wolf 3D was the real begining :)

Oh Carmack

[atomicbutterfly]

Carmack, I like you. I respect you and appreciate what you've done for 3D gaming. But it's clear your strength is in engine design and not game design. Stay in your niche please, and don't pretend to believe that indie developers are somehow being 'snooty' so much as in offering an alternative gaming experience compared to the big-budget studios who are afraid to risk trying anything different.

Re:Oh Carmack

[Lemmy Caution]

His rant is really petty. Essentially, he's butthurt that people actually are designing games with higher artistic (and conceptual) goals in mind than just pushing the graphical power of another FPS, and he's taking it personally that they find his games boring. The "snootiness" that Carmack detects is a by-product of his commitment to commercial games. Well, John, you can console yourself with the money you get for the "value" that your are bringing, making your product. You chose your road, live with it, and let people who have other ambitions do what they do.

It is actually another chapter in the are-games-art saga: Carmack is one of those generation of game designers who were artistically unsophisticated, yet craved the credibility of "art." Now that sophisticated game designers are doing stuff, Carmack is perplexed that his stuff isn't getting past the velvet rope. Even though "games are art" now, it doesn't mean the games that old-school gamers liked are going to cut it as good art.

Re:Oh Carmack

[gknoy]

Well, John, you can console yourself with the money you get for the "value" that your are bringing, making your product. You chose your road, live with it, and let people who have other ambitions do what they do.

I'd be pretty happy to console myself with the kind of money he's gotten. :-D

Re:Oh Carmack

[xtieburn]

What an ironically snooty post...

'Essentially, he's butthurt that people actually are designing games with higher artistic (and conceptual) goals in mind than just pushing the graphical power of another FPS, and he's taking it personally that they find his games boring.' - That is _entirely_ fabricated. He never put down those aiming for originality, he never commented on them finding his games boring, youve invented your straw-man for a good beating.

'You chose your road, live with it, and let people who have other ambitions do what they do.' - Hows beating on that straw-man going for ya? Or would you like to quote the part that Carmack said other people should dump their ambitions.

'Carmack is one of those generation of game designers who were artistically unsophisticated, yet craved the credibility of "art."' Wow... do you know the guy? Were you friends for some period of time? The number of assumptions crammed in here youd have to know the guy or this would just be a really arrogant thing to say. Needless to say Carmack has never claimed to be aiming for fine art, that was pretty much a good chunk of what he was saying.

Carmack basically made one point, originality isnt the be all and end all. He didnt say people shouldnt be original, he didnt say people had to accept his games, most of his references werent even to games he made. He is just sick of the bracket of people that pooh pooh _incredibly_ successful games because each new game isnt 'creative'. Or to sum it up from the article, hes basically down on the attitude that 'if it’s popular, it’s not good'. (and NO that doesnt mean hes saying 'if it is popular, it is good' mister interpret things for vicious straw-man beatings.) You want to disagree with that fine but quit making crap up to get riled about and actually read what the man is saying.

Re:Oh Carmack

[Lemmy Caution]

Indie devs aren't poo-pooing Portal or Portal 2, which is incredibly successful. They aren't poo-pooing Rock Band, or Little Big Planet, or even L.A. Noire. They are poo-pooing FPS-of-the-month tedious clones. I am reading what the man is saying, and holding him accountable for it.

Ironic

[Dahamma]

we're creating value for people — that's our job! It's not to do something that nobody's ever seen before. It's to do something that people love so much they're willing to give us money for

Wow, he's using almost the same argument for making DOOM 3 as the producers did to make DOOM the movie. Or Uwe Boll used for every movie he ever made. Say it ain't so, John!

Re:Ironic

[RazorSharp]

we're creating value for people — that's our job! It's not to do something that nobody's ever seen before. It's to do something that people love so much they're willing to give us money for

Wow, he's using almost the same argument for making DOOM 3 as the producers did to make DOOM the movie. Or Uwe Boll used for every movie he ever made. Say it ain't so, John!

While I disagree with Carmack's statements, I must point out that the DOOM movie was actually pretty damn good. It certainly exceeded all of my expectations, and it was more creative and entertaining than DOOM 3.

Re:Ironic

[Dahamma]

Wow, I thought the DOOM movie was horrible. But I have to say at least I managed to finish it, unlike DOOM 3. And I paid a lot less for the movie...

Re:Ironic

[AdamHaun]

I must point out that the DOOM movie was actually pretty damn good.

Yeah, that was a surprise. Oddly enough, it seems like the games that have the least plot end up making the best movies.

Re:Ironic

[Dahamma]

Not for me ;)

Re:Ironic

[Jonner]

The movie was terrible and had almost nothing to do with any of the games. Doom III was not innovative in game play, but it was entertaining in the same way that the original Doom was. Playing Doom III took me back to how scary some of the dark areas of the original were when I'd hear imps behind me coming out of the walls.

Carmack's creativity

[br00tus]

Obviously Carmack is not the sole fount of creativity in the world. But his output is amazing. I still know people who talk about Commander Keen. As far as Doom, Quake and the like, the market has spoken. I have spent many hours playing Doom and Quake deathmatch. There was a time the Internet component of Doom's deathmatch was seen as innovative. As far as I'm concerned, Doom and Quake set the bar for FPS, the way Age of Empires set the bar for RTS (I'm biased against Starcraft...)

Carmack released id Tech 3's code as GPL. Go look at that code. I spend so much time looking over other people's crappy code. That code looks real nice. I couldn't believe how good the code looked. Clear as a bell what everything does. It's also amazing so little code can do so much in games like OpenArena.

Reading the book Masters of Doom made me admire Carmack all the more as a coder. I don't know who was wrong or right in the office politics with him and Romero at I.D., most people I know who have met Romero say he's a nice guy. But there's no taking away Carmack's technical prowess.

Re:Carmack's creativity

[bonch]

You're referring to a multiplayer era that existed almost 20 years ago. id Tech 3's code is neat, but how is that relevant to a discussion on FPS creativity?

Re:Carmack's creativity

[Anonymous Coward]

Carmack wasn't the cause of creativity at id software. He was the tech guy, the creativity came from Tom Hall, John Romero, Adrian Carmack, Amaerican McGee.

Re:Carmack's creativity

[Lemmy Caution]

The argument "the market has spoken" applies also to McDonald's, Microsoft and tract housing.

Re:Carmack's creativity

[drinkypoo]

Dune 2, Warcraft 2, Total Annihilation, Starcraft. Every other RTS deserves no better than honorable mention. There is a clone of AOE now though (0AD has much the same smell) so I guess it can get on the list in a few years :p

Re:Carmack's creativity

[bigstrat2003]

Your list is severely lacking the best RTS of all time, Dawn of War.

Re:Carmack's creativity

[Jonner]

Obviously Carmack is not the sole fount of creativity in the world. But his output is amazing. I still know people who talk about Commander Keen. As far as Doom, Quake and the like, the market has spoken. I have spent many hours playing Doom and Quake deathmatch. There was a time the Internet component of Doom's deathmatch was seen as innovative. As far as I'm concerned, Doom and Quake set the bar for FPS, the way Age of Empires set the bar for RTS (I'm biased against Starcraft...)

Carmack released id Tech 3's code as GPL. Go look at that code. I spend so much time looking over other people's crappy code. That code looks real nice. I couldn't believe how good the code looked. Clear as a bell what everything does. It's also amazing so little code can do so much in games like OpenArena.

Reading the book Masters of Doom made me admire Carmack all the more as a coder. I don't know who was wrong or right in the office politics with him and Romero at I.D., most people I know who have met Romero say he's a nice guy. But there's no taking away Carmack's technical prowess.

I don't think anybody's impugning Carmack's coding prowess or creativity in game engine design. The discussion is about creativity of game play. Id has not innovated much in game play for at least a decade while others have. However, if people continue to find their sort of game entertaining, there's no reason Id shouldn't keep making them. I'm not willing to pay money for more of the same from Id, but I don't bear any grudge against them.

Re:Carmack's creativity

[loopitup]

Dawn of War is a watered down version of Company of Heroes (simplified cover/tanks) by the same devs. Company of Heroes, check it out.

Re:Carmack's creativity

[bigstrat2003]

I've played Company of Heroes (and DoW can hardly be called a watered down version of CoH, since it predates it). I far prefer Dawn of War.

J. Romero was 1st to die, & ID Software suffer

[Anonymous Coward]

Just remember what ID Software was before Carmack booted Romero. DON"T YOU FORGET IT! ID Software was once an inovator of both Science and Art, married together by a glue of fanbase, and ever since the Johns wparted ways it just resolved to be nothing more than a stock ticker. Sure Doom3 was nice, but so is Planet Earth without water. A Slideshow of artwork could have been presented by Romero with a multiple-choice question on how to continue, and it would still be cooler than Doom3.

Doom3 the engine was an attempt to synthesize John Romero back into ID Software, but it had no soul and was void. It was void just like all the other game engines that built their fanbase on multiplayer hoping activity and some AI would make it fun, but nope -- nothing that Romero couldn't do with a stroke of a brush.

I hear ID Software was sold to another company since about 3 months ago, and Carmack was reduced to a mere production manager while an entire pigeon-coup of naturalized illegal aliens were imported to do the work of him, but none of them could do as Romero because:

Our Father who Arteth in Purgatory,
unwritten be thy name!
Thy commode come!
Thy pallet never done!
On lucid canvas between the heavens!
Give us this Turtle our daily waypoint,
and chart us a segment,
and Forgive us our Undo as we redo those that made better to us whom were silenced by the Adversary.
And lead us not into a Microsoft Compiler but deliver us from
the Aquisittor for thine is the Independence and Beauty and Strength forever! Humen!

People still buy Coca-Cola even if it's not new

[Marurun]

If the game is successful and people like it, companies sell more of the same thing. If it's not selling as well they create a variation to gather some more appeal. That's sorta how any form of product marketing works.

A lot of great indie games.

[Beelzebud]

I've had more fun with indie games in the past few years than every id game since Quake 3 combined...

Re:A lot of great indie games.

[pieisgood]

You mean doom 3? I don't think it's hard to have more fun when you're pitting every indie game over the past few years with one game from 2005.

Re:Doom and Quake? 1993 & 1996...

[cob666]

Just because they are well known for something they CREATED 15+ years ago doesn't make them any less creative.

Re:you kids...

[RazorSharp]

1. Quake 3 was never king of anything but as a test for hardware. People would say things like, "sure, the specs are nice, but how well does it run Quake 3?" That contributed to the game's sales big-time. When you spend over a grand on your computer, spending $50 on Quake 3 to push it to the limits and show it off to your friends was no big deal.

2. Quake 3 was a shitty game. It's actually a good example of why people have mostly played such games on consoles since the XBox came out: those with the largest monitors, fastest hardware, fastest connections, and most twitchy mice had distinct advantages. Not that it mattered. The battles were so chaotic one was liable to be blasted by a random rocket at any time.

3. The pinnacle of game design is the exact opposite of what you described. It's Metal Gear Solid. Complex, gimmicky, creative and meaningful storyline, full of strange and sometimes useless features, and always taking risks. At the very least, if you want to put all the emphasis on 'dynamic and strategic gameplay' and 'time-tested ideas,' then Starcraft would take the crown.

lol @ dumbasses who call others 'noob' as if it's a real insult

he --was-- an indie developer

[decora]

him and that wild man Romero, tore the gates off the entrance to the PC graphics and game industry, and stomped on them. they were years ahead of their time, only a tiny tiny handful could do what they did. what they did was absolutely pioneering.

Romero's creative angst ridden genius + carmack's technical skill = compelling nightmare world

you take one of those and separate it from the other? well, maybe you have to at some point,, they couldnt be shareware cowboys forever.... but sometimes 1+1 is much more than 2 and if carmack can't see that i dont know what to say.

Re:Doom and Quake? 1993 & 1996...

[Ihmhi]

Seeing as other FPS games were initially called "Doom clones" for many years after Doom's premier, I would say yes. That is indeed a strong achievement that you can be proud of for decades.

it's a bit hard to predict, though. 20 years from now we might be looking at games where the user can heavily modify the environment cooperatively and look back at Minecraft as the game that popularized it - or, it might end up just being a fad. Who knows?

Re:Not for the single player component

[LingNoi]

It's because as a consumer it's a safe bet. You enjoyed game Y 3, so you know game Y 4 will be good too. As a consumer you have never played game X so you have no idea if you're going to like it or not. There is a risk in departing with your cash.

Re:Doom and Quake? 1993 & 1996...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nintendo is still best known for creating Mario the character over 25 years ago. Whats your point?

'ere cometh Blake Stone and Halloween Harry.

[Anonymous Coward]

They both would like to have a word with you.

Let us not ignore the fact that Rise of The Triad (of 3DRealms fame) was basically the better Wolf3D until
"innovator" John Carmack demanded they remove all references to NAZIS or face lawsuits from the courts because Wolf3D from ID Software already had the "prior art" of Escaping a NAZI prison.

Oh yes, and Bear Grylls mighth face lawsuits from ID Software for teaching how to "survive" and "escape" Castle Auschvitz.

Obviously what little Carmack innovated through ID Software he simply captured the light that was mis-handled by Apogee to create fanboys just as bad as the Microsoft camp. First Person Shitters simply can't prove they own much in terms of innovation, whereas other top-down 3rd-perspective titles are the ones that pioneered the 3D POV that won Zelda64, Mario Kart64, & Myth(1 & 2, that was re-engineered into Halo). Then when you take the perspective into play, you'll discover notices of prior art from an earlier title called Wacky Wheels, and even Battlezone from the 80's.

Nothing has been innovated. The appearance of ID Software on the scene was an equivalent of the Day That Never Ended when AOL'ers arrived on the scene, only the people that bought and liked Doom2 and Wolf3D and Quake1 are the AOL'ers. The reason why ID Software and even Microsoft prevailed in court disputes over prior art is because the potenntial of generating government revenue would favor that every prior artist bend and submit to the current thief because prio rart without commerce just makes the science of computing look like it's dominated by non-profits and stubborn undiscovered potential like how a patent troll would intentionally invent technology to prevent anyone from benefitting it and shooting down all competitors just to block all advances i nthe industry rightfully-so because they are the owners of it.

Re:'ere cometh Blake Stone and Halloween Harry.

[MBraynard]

Props to you on reminding me of Rise of The Triad.

I never played Castle Wolfenstein but remember that we got Rise of the Triad somehow on a CD. My dad said it was too violent for us but I snuck to the computer in the middle of the night to play it.

Ah, the memories.

Games Could Be An Artistic Genre

[Phoenix666]

I completely agree with this sentiment. We have only begun to scratch the surface of gaming's potential. FPS's, RTS's, Sports Sims, and puzzle games were fine in the first generation of video games, but they've grown quite stale by now.

There are, however, glimmers of something greater out there. We all know Half Life and Shadow of the Colossus. There was also Black & White. I'm sure Slashdotters will jump in with half a dozen more. And recently I played Enslaved, which is one of the best games I've ever seen--bracing, beautiful, moving, and ... fun; it had real character development, humor, rage, and all the dramatic elements that draw you into a good film. So as an expressive medium games are just getting started.

But there are also the ventures in serious games that are still trying to strike the right balance between learning and entertainment. I don't doubt we eventually will, because the learning that happens when you're completely absorbed by something leaves every other kind of instruction in the dust.

Put those two things together and you'll have an expressive medium that will leave all others in the dust.

I only hope I live to see it.

Re:J. Romero was 1st to die, & ID Software suf

[MadKeithV]

A Slideshow of artwork could have been presented by Romero with a multiple-choice question on how to continue, and it would still be cooler than Doom3.

As evidenced by the roaring success of Daikatana.

I think what he is trying to say is....

[brim4brim]

Indie developers are only Indie developers until they get a hit. Part of that I suspect comes from being so obsessed with the thrill of making an Indie game with mass appeal makes them determined to try to do it again with a sequel since one is unlikely to hook into that popularity twice in ones career anyway. I think if most of todays Indie developers had of created Doom, they'd be doing and saying the same things.

Translation

[Leo Sasquatch]

"I'm sorry I haven't done anything original in 15 years. Please buy my latest iteration of Doom anyway. I promise you exactly the same crap I've been peddling for the last 18 years, but with 5% extra shiniez. No nasty surprises,no interesting gameplay mechanics, no unusual environments, just generic corridor shooting the way you like it. Legions of cookie-cutter mooks from the clone vats, despite the fact that doing a little randomising on the facial features would take zero effort. Locked doors won't respond to anything but the correct key no matter how much ordnance you have, and if your way is blocked by two pieces of furniture piled up, get ready to find an alternate route. All enemies are combat robots, who are 100% effective until you drain all their hit points. This mechanism made sense 20 years ago on machines with tiny RAM and limited hardware, so there's no reason to stop using it now, just because it's silly.

We're trying to make money here, not games or works of art, so please buy yet another generic FPS, if for no other reason than it's got my name on it and I did a couple of cool things 20 years ago. Admittedly, if you're old enough to remember or care who I am, you've probably got dozens of near-identical FPS games in your library anyway, but please buy this one, because at least I'm not responsible for Daikatana."

You can say that but....

[Mystery00]

Just one of Valve's "creative" games brings in more money than all your unimaginative games put together.

Re:you kids...

[gangien]

1. You have no idea what you are talking about.

2. quake 3 is pretty much what people measure against in terms of deathmatch. there's an element of randomness in every game pretty much, but quake 3 was nice because it wasn't random it was skill.

3. metal gear solid the pinnacle of game design? right..

I think i just feed a troll :( oh well

Disagree

[Tei]

All videogames, to this date, are "derivative work" from older titles. You take the mechanic of a old game, or older games, and you recreate the formula, tryiing to make it better. Just adding things that already exist, may feel "short" and get poor reviews from both critics and public. It would really feel like a bad game.

So from your point of view as game engine programmer It can be ok to iterate the same game, with better graphics, but this is going to fail wen the public opinion will find your game a "rehash" of old stuff.

Carmack next title is not just Doom3 enhanced. He has added vehicles, a new way to author maps for mapper artist, some RPG elements, and a imaginative new world. He is not doing what he is talking about. He is doing what all game devs in the history has always been doing: improving gaming.

We have moved very far and very fast away from the original asteroids/tanks/galaga; games are now gigantic, or deep, or wide,.. this process is going to continue, and is a good process.

Re:Doom and Quake? 1993 & 1996...

[dintech]

If anything, Catacomb 3D was more like the beginning. But, ID was just ripping off the still-in-development Ultima Underworld. That game in turn borrowed a lot from the 'stepped' real-time 3D dungeon games like Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder.

JC is a pioneer.

[bronney]

Of course, the Phoenix isn't as pretty as the Enterprise-E. But it f$%king warped! People should learn some manners before they bash Doom 3 :D

I agree HL2 is the best FPS so far in how it's like an addictive novel. You just can't put the mouse down and want to know what's next. But I never forget the refractive panels and the dynamic shadows in Doom 3. JC gives the tools to fellow developers to make more good stuff and I respect that.

New Type Of Game

[mlauzon]

FPS from id are getting kind of old, it seems that's all they know how to do, they need to do something new, something that isn't an FPS.

Re:Doom and Quake? 1993 & 1996...

[gizmod]

Albert Einstein is most well known for his Theory of Relativity. That was by no means his only achievement, but it got him the spotlight alright. If he were alive today he would ***still known best for things done x+15 and y+18 years ago*** Was he a creative out of the box thinker? You bet. Can he claim it as a strong point? Absolutely, but Einstein was known to be modest ;)

Re:Doom and Quake? 1993 & 1996...

[eennaarbrak]

Strange point. Do you measure creativity by how much you are known for it?

Bullshit.

[crhylove]

Like many geniuses, Carmack is clearly out of his depth when discussing topics outside of his field. Quake 2 might be one of the greatest games of all time, and GPLing the code for that and quake 3?!? As far as I'm concerned, Carmack is a god. However, he's full of shit using sales to justify crap sequels. I hear people do that all the time for movies and music too, and the argument fails for the same reasons: Corporate power and brand recognition ALWAYS create sales. But those sales are short lived and cower compared to new and more original works, like Grand Theft Auto 3, or Minecraft, or Tetris, or Civilization....

I'm glad there are new versions of some classic games, quake 2 and civilization 2 being key examples. But it's shocking and sad how often a sequel loses most of the essence of what made the original great and only sells based on brand recognition (I'm looking at YOU Civ 3-5, Doom 3, Mario Kart Double Dash...etc.). Money doesn't justify crap. It just makes you a soulless and worthless hack, unable to compete on an even playing field with the new generation, and worse: the younger you. If you are just in it for the money, please, just go start investing and saving, and leave the creative process to younger, hungrier artists. That goes for games, music, movies, books, whatever. I'm tired of the corporate "safe investment" clones and sequels. There's a reason nobody under 30 pays for music or movies. And it's only PARTLY because torrents are more convenient and easier to get a hold of. It's also because deep down, even 13 year old kids don't want New Kids on the Block 6.0 to make money. And in the game world, Doom 3 was definitely NKOTB 6.0.

Now will somebody PLEASE make a Civ 2 clone with updated graphics? Civ 3, 4, and 5 aren't even fun in comparison.

Rage is looking pretty interesting

[benengel]

For all the people here saying ID is yesterdays company churning out boring generic games then i would suggest looking at these videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBuGZCzPxRc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSABcqGtJo4&feature=related

They show off the gameplay from their upcoming title RAGE and while I wouldn't say they are bringing any amazing groundbreaking new elements to the FPS genre with it there are definitely enough unique and interesting elements within it that are keeping me interested in its upcoming release. I also believe the decision to go with a new IP and not just stick with an established cashcow signals a conscious choice by ID to try something a bit new and interesting. Coupled with their ususal polish and graphical excellence I am very keen to see what they can bring to the table.

I wouldn't be counting Carmack out yet :)

Re:Rage is looking pretty interesting

[Frangible]

Uhh, I've played the Rage on-rails shooter on iOS and while it is technically relatively impressive (though less so than Epic Citadel) it is not a fun game. The IP is a pretty obvious cross of Smash TV and Fallout.

Yeah, Quake etc were awesome and the source code is amazing but I'm not sure booting every dissenting voice at id did the right thing for creativity.

On the other hand ...

[kikito]

Setting up a game in a post-apocaliptic future wasteland is a paradigm of creativity.

Carmack, what they mean is

[Snaller]

Stop making shit.

Says the creator of Doom 3

[DSS11Q13]

The most linear, uncreative, rehash that relied solely on graphics appeal...pretty much typifies the problem.

Short version

[argStyopa]

No, iD isn't being creative.
They haven't been creative in a content sense since Quake2.

That doesn't mean that John Carmack doesn't deserve long-term kudos for what he (largely) developed in terms of the genre. But while he's applying his prodigious technical intellect to developing phone games (?), in the PC game arena I'm more and more convinced that iD/Carmack belong in the hall of fame like Garriot, Meier, Bunten, and Molyneux - all of which are legends whose creative time has seemingly passed.

What Carmack means is

[vicviper]

Don't buy shit, wont' be shit.

Re:CoD sucks..

[Frangible]

MW2 sucked and was terribly overrated, but COD4? Was a much better experience single-player than most games. The Pripyat levels were just epic in particular. And while WaW's grenade-chucking-to-keep-you-moving was extremely annoying, I don't recall where Wolf3d had the Battle of Stalingrad or planting the Soviet flag on the roof of the Reichstag.

People always like war, and it has a lot of sequels. The same is true for video games about war. Was the moniker "xxxx 2" even in use until World War 2? "World War 2 -- everything you loved about World War 1 is back. All new-diabolical enemies, new weapons, new technology, research trees, all-new Africa campaign maps, and more!"

Same old thing...

[MaWeiTao]

I can't help but agree with his statement. There's a reason why a game like Super Mario Bros is still popular. It takes an old formula and executes it well. There are a lot of indie developers out there who produce games that have a ton of impact, visually and stylistically. But far more often than not they're not really consistently fun on a fundamental level. The struggle for style, the desire to be different ends up getting in the way of gameplay.

Of course, then we've got the other extreme where developers keep pumping out the same old crap. It's just as big a problem on consoles as it is on a platform like iOS. What game in the app store isn't some sort of puzzle game? You can't find a straightforward platform game that hasn't been turned into some obnoxious puzzle.

But ultimately it's all the fault of gamers. Developers are only producing what gamers are buying. Of course there's always someone out there willing to take a risk on something difference, but those guys are few and far between. Few are willing to take the leap when gamers continue buying the same tired old thing.

Re:Its better to make the analogy to a rock band..

[V for Vendetta]

If a band makes the same shit over and over, peers are not going to be fond of it.

The Rolling Stones, AC/DC and many many other successful acts want to have a word with you.

Bottom Line:

[Beelzebud]

The guys at id need to bury the hatchet and call up John Romero. I never thought I'd say that, but over the years it has become obvious that while Carmack drove the technical prowess of id, the soul of the company came from Romero. They need to get the band back together. Otherwise expect another decade of Doom clones, and whatever Romero has been toiling with over the years.

Re:Bottom Line:

[sgt scrub]

Romero certainly hasn't lost any of his creativity. http://www.facebook.com/RavenwoodFair It would be nice to see another fps from him, regardless of if it did or did not use an iD engine. Something magical, like hexen, would be nice.

He won't last a year in the game biz.

[sgt scrub]

Laff. Game developers are crazy. Especially when they go around saying crazy things like, "It’s to do something that people love so much they’re willing to give us money for." Who wants a game they will love or will feel like they got their moneys worth? The nerve! Carmack won't last a year in... oh wait.

Why settle?

[TiggertheMad]

If I want a movie with deep plot and themes, then you're right. Transformers is a lower quality work. On the other hand, sometimes I want to watch robots blowing each other up. In that case, Transformers is an extremely high quality work.

Implicit in your statement is the idea that you cannot have both. There is no reason why you cannot have movies that have some depth, story, character development, and big fucking explosions. Look at a movie like Aliens. It had close quarters machine gun battles with alien monsters, and got Sigourney Weaver a best actress nomination.

As long as you are willing to settle for the crap that Michael Bay dishes up, you won't get better. Demand more, and Hollywood will give you what you want.

There's only a handful

[kelemvor4]

IMO there's only a handful of great FPS.
For me: Duke Nukem (the original), Unreal (first one), and Half Life (first one). All of those games really made me just say "wow" and I enjoyed them thoroughly. There's others that I enjoy, Quake 2 comes to mind.. I used to love to play online when my ISP provided a dedicated server for customers. It was fun, but not in the same class as the others I mentioned.

Hey, on another topic. WTF is up with this whole "AAA Title" bullshit? How is a "AAA Title" defined? Something that John Carmack squats down and delivers to the fans beneath him?

Re:There's only a handful

[Cederic]

Doom 2, Duke Nukem, Unreal.. Never got into HL. A couple of the LucasArts FPS have been fun, purely because the world environment and technology makes an engaging and fun place to be. GTA3 doesn't qualify, it's more of a driving game. More recently I've really enjoyed Borderlands but just can't be bothered with most of the 'new' FPS.

Online gaming FPS, Unreal Tournament then Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield Vietnam.

Sadly BF:V remains the peak of online FPS for me - the variety, game balance, mix of maps, sheer fun factor.

I know a lot of Counter Strike fans too, just never enjoyed it myself.

But no, modern games aren't innovating, and often aren't delivering on the promises made by earlier games. Or maybe some of them are and the market is too saturated to find them. I just replayed Max Payne and loved it, irrespective of the decade old graphics.

The problem I have with FPS games.

[JustAnotherIdiot]

Is they very quickly degrade to "go kill that stronger enemy with this bigger gun"
Yawn. Boring. Done it a thousand times.

Creativity

[UnclePickle]

There didn't used to be anything wrong with not being creative as long as you deliver an entertaining experience. But the problem is the FPS market is flooded now more than ever; you need to create a unique experience to sell a game or it will become lost and forgotten in the sea of shooter clones. Developers realize this and release games like Bulletstorm and Timeshift; standard shooter fare with a "unique" gimmick. They seem to assume this alone will sell a game, but as sales of both of those titles have shown, it will not. And it's not because they're "bad" games (well Bulletstorm anyway...) but $60 is a lot of money to drop on a 6 hour experience. A game needs to provide either replayability or an incredible story-driven experience to warrant that much money. The fact is, even the shooters that are considered "creative" just don't.