G
Guest
Guest
THG: toms hardware
TH: id
THG - We know that one of id Software's goals is to make Quakecon bigger and better every year. Now that Quakecon is the biggest LAN party in North America, where do you guys want to go from here?
TH - Well, we want to get done with this one first, obviously. But our goal, as you said, is to try and make Quakecon bigger and better each year. We looked at our venue from last year, and realized that we couldn't get any bigger if we stayed at the hotel in Mesquite. I think that the facility for this year's event, the Adams Mark Hotel and Convention Center, is first class. I've heard from everyone here that they really appreciate the step up that we've taken, as well as the quality of the venue. And I'm not saying that the venue in Mesquite is bad, it just wasn't big enough anymore. It was a bittersweet parting to leave the venue in Mesquite for a bigger one, and we'll always refer to it as "The Quakecon Hotel", whether Quakecon is there or not.
We haven't started the planning for next year's event yet; we'll probably start doing that sometime this fall. Although I think that we've done a great job this year, we're going to try and encourage more people to come out next year, as well as encourage more vendors to come. We'll probably need even more space next year, even though we increased the amount of space considerably this year. We're currently at 150,000 square feet, as opposed to the size of the facility in Mesquite, which was 100,000. We can't make any commitments just yet, we'll have to see what happens. But there is a certain symmetry with Quake 4 and Quakecon 2004; it just seems to roll off the tongue pretty naturally. I think that would be a good draw.
THG - During the keynote yesterday, there were some things mentioned that were very interesting. Perhaps one of the most interesting things though, was the fact that John wasn't there. I'm sure everyone's wondering just as we are why that is. Could you possibly give us an explanation?
TH - I think that's a good question, and there were actually a few reasons that John didn't attend this year. I knew that people would be a little disappointed that he didn't deliver the keynote this year, but he really didn't see any reason to. We're still working with the same technology, and he has not come across any technical revelations, so to speak. So he really didn't have that much new stuff to talk about, and he didn't want to present another version of the Quakecon 2002 presentation. We also wanted to do something a little different this year with the keynote, in order to give some other elements in the company the opportunity to talk about what they've been working on. When John presents things, they're very technical, and this was more ranged. So I think it gave people the opportunity to hear about some different things. Besides all of the reasons about, the main reason that he couldn't make it though, is because he's been sick. So he really wasn't in the kind of physical condition that he needed to be in if he was going to give a presentation. In the end though, I think it was for the better. If John had actually decided to give the keynote, it wouldn't have been too long, due to the fact that he wasn't feeling well.
THG - During the keynote yesterday, you made a comment about RTCW: Enemy Territory. You said that you considered it be the best free game ever, in your opinion. You guys obviously could have decided to box it up and sell it; it's a great game. Could you talk about the philosophy behind why you decided to give it away?
TH - You're right; we could have sold it on the market. But we weren't happy with the single player part of the game. We really felt as though what we had advertised to people was that there would be a single player part of the game as well as a multiplayer part. So we were faced with a dilemma. If we had sold it as a complete package, we would have been selling a game that we weren't completely happy with, and that's not we're about; we don't make mediocre games. We want everything we put in a box to be great. And although we were very pleased with the multiplayer part of the game, we didn't think that it had enough content to sell as an add-on. There weren't a large number of maps, and there were only two campaigns. So we didn't think that we would have been justified, if we asked consumers for $20 or $30 dollars, yet we didn't want to put all of our good work to waste. And we felt that Splash Damage would have been really disappointed, just as the fans would, if we just threw it away. It was a tough decision, since we knew that we weren't going to see any revenue return by giving it away. But we decided that it would be better to release the part of the game that we were happy with, than to put out a game that we felt lacked the shine that it needed to have.
THG - Does this mean that as fans, we can expect to see more for ET? The response has been pretty positive as far as the game is concerned, and there are a number of people wondering about what may lie in the future.
TH - The response has been very positive, actually. I always hate to say "yes, we're going to do this", or "no, we're going to do this". What I can say at this point is that we accomplished what we set out to with Enemy Territory. However, it has gained a lot of popularity, and so it would definitely make sense to go back and expand on it.
THG - Could you talk about working with Splash Damage, and tell us a little about them? We heard Todd say that they were from the enthusiast community, so we'd really be interested to here more about them.
TW - Splash Damage is a group of guys who are located in the UK, who are all hardcore gamers. They did some work on projects before ET, too. Quake 3 F was their first official project under the name Splash Damage. Before that it was just them working on things together, without the name. Because we're so happy with how Enemy Territory turned out, we contracted them to do work on some of the maps for Doom 3. We basically will give them some ideas for maps, and tell them what we want something to look like. Then they'll put some things together, we'll give feedback, and that's just sort of the way things develop. We have a really good relationship with them, so I'm excited to see how things will look once all is said and done.
THG - We got to play Doom 3 yesterday, and really enjoyed it. But the question that everyone has been asking is: When can I download it? It was our understanding that was not going to be released to the public. Could you elaborate somewhat on what exactly you consider this "demo" to be?
TW - Doom 3 is going to focus primarily on the single player experience. But we understand that the multiplayer aspect is very important as well. We wanted to provide something at Quakecon 2003 that was a fun multiplayer gaming experience that utilized some of the cool stuff that is in the single player part of the game, such as the flashlight, the shadows, being able to turn things on or off, moving things to hide behind them, and also provide a great realistic look at the environments. We were trying to bring back the feel of what multiplayer Doom games were like. Quake 3 was a big, arena style deathmatch. Doom was a much more intimate experience, because you had to hunt people down, hide around corners, and just generally have a good time.
THG - Tim, can you tell us a little bit more about where this "demo" might be going?
TW - This is not a separate product, what you played was a snapshot of a game that is still a work in progress, and we thought Quakecon 2003 would be a great opportunity to get some feedback on what they've seen. Where else are we going to find 3,000 hard core gamers who will give us the feedback we want in a nice, efficient manner?
TH - There aren't any plans to release this level after Quakecon. We wanted to give people who were here a chance to play it, and it made things a lot easier for us. We were able to let people test the game in a controlled environment where we don't have to worry about a lot of issues we would run into otherwise.
THG - There are a number of other games coming out, such as Half Life 2, and there is quite a buzz in the gaming community. Could you possibly give us any clue as to when we might see Doom 3 on the shelves?
TH - Our job isn't to get the game done by some arbitrary point on the calendar, our job is to make sure that the game is great by the time we're done with it. We do have to ship it in a technically relevant window of course, but that's not our primary objective. We don't anticipate that we're going to be done anytime this year though, so it will probably be some time in 2004. We're going to take the time necessary to make in an experience that exemplifies the potential of what we have put together so far. We want to make sure that it's the best single player game that we've ever done. I think that people make a bigger deal of what they think is going on internally at id Software than it actually is. It's not that we know our release date, and just don't talk about it. We really don't know when it will be ready for release. When you're dealing with bleeding-edge technology, you sometimes run into problems that you weren't expecting to run into. We don't want to announce a release date and then not deliver on that date. So we're just focusing on completing the game and making sure that it's up to our standards.
TH: id
THG - We know that one of id Software's goals is to make Quakecon bigger and better every year. Now that Quakecon is the biggest LAN party in North America, where do you guys want to go from here?
TH - Well, we want to get done with this one first, obviously. But our goal, as you said, is to try and make Quakecon bigger and better each year. We looked at our venue from last year, and realized that we couldn't get any bigger if we stayed at the hotel in Mesquite. I think that the facility for this year's event, the Adams Mark Hotel and Convention Center, is first class. I've heard from everyone here that they really appreciate the step up that we've taken, as well as the quality of the venue. And I'm not saying that the venue in Mesquite is bad, it just wasn't big enough anymore. It was a bittersweet parting to leave the venue in Mesquite for a bigger one, and we'll always refer to it as "The Quakecon Hotel", whether Quakecon is there or not.
We haven't started the planning for next year's event yet; we'll probably start doing that sometime this fall. Although I think that we've done a great job this year, we're going to try and encourage more people to come out next year, as well as encourage more vendors to come. We'll probably need even more space next year, even though we increased the amount of space considerably this year. We're currently at 150,000 square feet, as opposed to the size of the facility in Mesquite, which was 100,000. We can't make any commitments just yet, we'll have to see what happens. But there is a certain symmetry with Quake 4 and Quakecon 2004; it just seems to roll off the tongue pretty naturally. I think that would be a good draw.
THG - During the keynote yesterday, there were some things mentioned that were very interesting. Perhaps one of the most interesting things though, was the fact that John wasn't there. I'm sure everyone's wondering just as we are why that is. Could you possibly give us an explanation?
TH - I think that's a good question, and there were actually a few reasons that John didn't attend this year. I knew that people would be a little disappointed that he didn't deliver the keynote this year, but he really didn't see any reason to. We're still working with the same technology, and he has not come across any technical revelations, so to speak. So he really didn't have that much new stuff to talk about, and he didn't want to present another version of the Quakecon 2002 presentation. We also wanted to do something a little different this year with the keynote, in order to give some other elements in the company the opportunity to talk about what they've been working on. When John presents things, they're very technical, and this was more ranged. So I think it gave people the opportunity to hear about some different things. Besides all of the reasons about, the main reason that he couldn't make it though, is because he's been sick. So he really wasn't in the kind of physical condition that he needed to be in if he was going to give a presentation. In the end though, I think it was for the better. If John had actually decided to give the keynote, it wouldn't have been too long, due to the fact that he wasn't feeling well.
THG - During the keynote yesterday, you made a comment about RTCW: Enemy Territory. You said that you considered it be the best free game ever, in your opinion. You guys obviously could have decided to box it up and sell it; it's a great game. Could you talk about the philosophy behind why you decided to give it away?
TH - You're right; we could have sold it on the market. But we weren't happy with the single player part of the game. We really felt as though what we had advertised to people was that there would be a single player part of the game as well as a multiplayer part. So we were faced with a dilemma. If we had sold it as a complete package, we would have been selling a game that we weren't completely happy with, and that's not we're about; we don't make mediocre games. We want everything we put in a box to be great. And although we were very pleased with the multiplayer part of the game, we didn't think that it had enough content to sell as an add-on. There weren't a large number of maps, and there were only two campaigns. So we didn't think that we would have been justified, if we asked consumers for $20 or $30 dollars, yet we didn't want to put all of our good work to waste. And we felt that Splash Damage would have been really disappointed, just as the fans would, if we just threw it away. It was a tough decision, since we knew that we weren't going to see any revenue return by giving it away. But we decided that it would be better to release the part of the game that we were happy with, than to put out a game that we felt lacked the shine that it needed to have.
THG - Does this mean that as fans, we can expect to see more for ET? The response has been pretty positive as far as the game is concerned, and there are a number of people wondering about what may lie in the future.
TH - The response has been very positive, actually. I always hate to say "yes, we're going to do this", or "no, we're going to do this". What I can say at this point is that we accomplished what we set out to with Enemy Territory. However, it has gained a lot of popularity, and so it would definitely make sense to go back and expand on it.
THG - Could you talk about working with Splash Damage, and tell us a little about them? We heard Todd say that they were from the enthusiast community, so we'd really be interested to here more about them.
TW - Splash Damage is a group of guys who are located in the UK, who are all hardcore gamers. They did some work on projects before ET, too. Quake 3 F was their first official project under the name Splash Damage. Before that it was just them working on things together, without the name. Because we're so happy with how Enemy Territory turned out, we contracted them to do work on some of the maps for Doom 3. We basically will give them some ideas for maps, and tell them what we want something to look like. Then they'll put some things together, we'll give feedback, and that's just sort of the way things develop. We have a really good relationship with them, so I'm excited to see how things will look once all is said and done.
THG - We got to play Doom 3 yesterday, and really enjoyed it. But the question that everyone has been asking is: When can I download it? It was our understanding that was not going to be released to the public. Could you elaborate somewhat on what exactly you consider this "demo" to be?
TW - Doom 3 is going to focus primarily on the single player experience. But we understand that the multiplayer aspect is very important as well. We wanted to provide something at Quakecon 2003 that was a fun multiplayer gaming experience that utilized some of the cool stuff that is in the single player part of the game, such as the flashlight, the shadows, being able to turn things on or off, moving things to hide behind them, and also provide a great realistic look at the environments. We were trying to bring back the feel of what multiplayer Doom games were like. Quake 3 was a big, arena style deathmatch. Doom was a much more intimate experience, because you had to hunt people down, hide around corners, and just generally have a good time.
THG - Tim, can you tell us a little bit more about where this "demo" might be going?
TW - This is not a separate product, what you played was a snapshot of a game that is still a work in progress, and we thought Quakecon 2003 would be a great opportunity to get some feedback on what they've seen. Where else are we going to find 3,000 hard core gamers who will give us the feedback we want in a nice, efficient manner?
TH - There aren't any plans to release this level after Quakecon. We wanted to give people who were here a chance to play it, and it made things a lot easier for us. We were able to let people test the game in a controlled environment where we don't have to worry about a lot of issues we would run into otherwise.
THG - There are a number of other games coming out, such as Half Life 2, and there is quite a buzz in the gaming community. Could you possibly give us any clue as to when we might see Doom 3 on the shelves?
TH - Our job isn't to get the game done by some arbitrary point on the calendar, our job is to make sure that the game is great by the time we're done with it. We do have to ship it in a technically relevant window of course, but that's not our primary objective. We don't anticipate that we're going to be done anytime this year though, so it will probably be some time in 2004. We're going to take the time necessary to make in an experience that exemplifies the potential of what we have put together so far. We want to make sure that it's the best single player game that we've ever done. I think that people make a bigger deal of what they think is going on internally at id Software than it actually is. It's not that we know our release date, and just don't talk about it. We really don't know when it will be ready for release. When you're dealing with bleeding-edge technology, you sometimes run into problems that you weren't expecting to run into. We don't want to announce a release date and then not deliver on that date. So we're just focusing on completing the game and making sure that it's up to our standards.
