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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."
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.
Good-bye
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.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
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.
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.
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.
> 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?
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.
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....
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.