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First Person Shooters (Games) Quake Entertainment Games

Quake IV No-Show To Distress Hardcore At QuakeCon 42

Posted by simoniker from the quakecon-not-so-quakelike dept.
Thanks to CNN Money for its discussion of the games industry's drive to woo the most committed videogame players, as the article explains: "Hardcore gamers only make up between 20-25 percent of the industry's annual software sales, but the buzz enthusiasts create can turn a moderate hit into a monster." The piece discusses "mecca for the hardcore" QuakeCon, but reveals that "This year, most fans were hoping to get their first glimpse of 'Quake 4,' which is being developed (under id's supervision) by Raven Software. Unfortunately, they're going to have to keep waiting. id CEO Todd Hollenshead said there are no plans to show the game at this year's QuakeCon." According to Hollenshead: "We've been happy with what [Raven has] done, but it's too early to show... When we show the game, we want it to be something that's really impressive for the people who have been waiting for it."
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Quake IV No-Show To Distress Hardcore At QuakeCon More

Quake IV No-Show To Distress Hardcore At QuakeCon

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  • Dissapointing. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TxdoHawk ( 470947 ) on Friday June 04, 2004 @07:11PM (#9340704)
    As a fairly large fan of Quake 3, I keep hoping for a glimpse under the hood of the next sequel, despite the fact that I recall hearing it'll be much more focused on single-player action.

  • After playing UR2004 demo... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonvmous Coward ( 589068 ) on Friday June 04, 2004 @07:19PM (#9340748)
    ... I have some seriously high expectations of Q4.

  • I never played Quake (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jroop ( 772952 ) on Friday June 04, 2004 @07:29PM (#9340815)
    I never played Quake, in any of its incarnations... I have played a few games built on the Q3A game engine though (RtCW, ET, and CoD) and like them all. I certainly expect the next Quake engine to be an improvement and look forward to Quake4.

    Am I disappointed it won't make appearance at QuakeCon? No.. I wasn't going, so why would I care? Sure, I'd like to see some screenshots of the actual game.. but.. I can't say that I am on the edge of my seat waiting for it..

    After all, with all the hoopla over the yet-to-appear Halflife2 and Doom3, why should I get all excited about a yet-to-appear Quake4? The bar has been set pretty low on delivery dates for the next generation of FPS's..

    jr

  • What now? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dizzle ( 781717 ) on Friday June 04, 2004 @07:41PM (#9340922) Journal
    Where do they go from Quake 3? Quake 3 brought the mainly online FPS game to the forefront of gaming, but Unreal "X" has been outpacing them for a few years now. What is going to get me excited about Quake 4 with HL2 and D3 coming out?

    • Re:What now? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by NedR ( 701006 ) on Friday June 04, 2004 @07:54PM (#9341021) Journal
      Let's face it, the formula the id originally became so good at is a field that they have been far outstripped in by their competitors. Doom 3 is a significant departure from this formula (becoming more survival horror-ish, and story-based, despite Carmack's argument that story in a game is like story in a porn movie). Since the guys at id pretty clearly know what they're doing, I think it's most likely that they're heading off into virgin territory (at least for them) yet again.

      • Re:What now? (Score:3, Informative)

        by MindStalker ( 22827 )
        Id isn't making this game Ravin is, they are getting Ids help, but essentially they are taking the DOOM3 engine, and making their own game. Anyways to the parents Quake 4 isn't going to be like Quake 3, it should be close to Quake 2. Singleplayer game with simple storyline. And many mods of multiplayer actions, hopefully coop also (crosses fingers).
      • Story (in the form of cutscenes) is like story in a porn movie. If you can't play and understand the game without watching cutscenes, someone isn't trying hard enough. The story should play out in-game with the possible exception of the intro and a movie at the very end of a game. This does not apply to RPGs, though I prefer when it does.

        IMO what id is best at doing in this day and age is creating game engines and textures. Even the level design skills seem to have tapered off, but then you could as easil

    • You are bashing a game that has not even had screenshots released? Wow, that may be a first, pre-emptive shit talking.

  • Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mike Hawk ( 687615 ) on Friday June 04, 2004 @08:09PM (#9341126) Journal
    So the "hardcore" get to determine development schedules now? This is quickly spiraling into the absurd.

    We make fun of DNF, and fairly, because it was shown, screenshots released, etc. long ago. This is fair. The people involved did this to themselves. Doom III and HL2 are now catching some of this heat, and this is fair as well since they were both at their third E3 this year. HL2 is even worse for already being bundled with a video card that will be a generation old when the game is finally released.

    But here we have a group of people trying to play it low. The game has technically been announced and thats it. Who is clamoring to see this game so bad that they are disappointed its not be shown yet? Who is being harmed so much that the press is reporting on a game that doesn't yet exist and claiming the disappointment could harm the title? That is absurd. Absurd that people feel this way, absurd that the press is reporting it.

    #1 Chill out.
    #2 You are not that important.

    Don't be a dick just because your arbitrary notion of what a publisher or developer should deliver when is not met. Don't trash the game because you downloaded the leaked "alpha" and it doesn't run well on your system. Being "hardcore" and waiting around for the next big thing should not be something that makes you proud. If you identify yourself as hardcore, you are already about as lame as anything I can imagine. Absurd.

    • Re:Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gmhowell ( 26755 ) <gmhowell@gmail.com> on Friday June 04, 2004 @10:55PM (#9342010) Homepage Journal
      Your point number two is wrong. If hard core gamers are 20-25% of the market and influence the remainder, you really don't want those people pissed off. Doing that causes you to lose two ways. First, tossing out 25% of your sales is no good thing. In software, with such trivial marginal costs, that could be pure profit on a game as big as Quake. The other way you lose is that if these people truly are influential, you may lose one sale additional for each of the hard core gamers you piss off. So there goes 50% of your gross revenue. Ouch.

      I agree that many of the 'hard core' in anything are serious dipshits. As consumers, you and I can (and likely will) ignore them with abandon. A profit-making corporation does so at the risk of their future.

    • Small technicality, HL2 was only at its second E3 this year. If I remember correctly, the first official information about HL2 was released about a month before last year's E3.

  • Id vs id (Score:5, Informative)

    by Andy Smith ( 55346 ) on Friday June 04, 2004 @08:22PM (#9341208)
    It has always bugged me that people write Id without the capital I, apparently for no better reason that that's how it's written in the company logo.

    It looks especially bad when it's used at the beginning of a sentence.

    When I wrote for gaming sites a few years ago I decided to get the correct 'spelling' straight from the horse's mouth so I checked with John Carmack.

    He writes it Id so as far as I'm concerned that's how it's written.

    On a similar note, a point of trivia: The manufacturer of GeForce graphics cards spells the company name nVIDIA (small 'n') in the logo, but web/magazine editors are asked to use NVIDIA (all caps) in articles. Why? Who knows. I think it makes more sense to spell it with the small 'n' because at least that gives some clue as to how the word is pronounced, ie: enn-vid-ee-aa
    • I am *fascinated* by how this comment has been moderated up and down all evening!

      Off-topic, informative, off-topic, underrated, off-topic...

      It's a bit of info about Id in an Id-related thread. Off-topic?
    • Id: "In Freudian theory, the division of the psyche that is totally unconscious and serves as the source of instinctual impulses and demands for immediate satisfaction of primitive needs."

      It's a normal word, and should be treated as such. Capital 'i' when it's the first word in a sentence. If you look at their website it says "id Software" all over the place, unless "id" is the first word of a sentence, so that's how I use it ;)
      [/grammar nazi]
      • It's not a normal word in this case - it's a proper name, not just any old noun. Proper names should "always" be capitalized by the rules of the English language.

        Personally, I follow the same rules you do, and capitalize it at the beginning of a sentence and don't capitalize it otherwise unless by reflex and unintentionally.

  • Hmmmmm (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Sevn ( 12012 ) on Friday June 04, 2004 @08:48PM (#9341395) Homepage Journal
    "Hardcore gamers only make up between 20-25 percent of the industry's annual software sales"

    But spend about 3.5 Billion dollars a year on gaming hardware. Perhaps that's why there is a buzz.

  • vaportalk (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BortQ ( 468164 ) on Friday June 04, 2004 @10:36PM (#9341939) Homepage Journal
    The future, the future, the future... blah blah blah blah blah....

    Why not talk about all the great games that are available right here right now? All the rest is just fluff.

    • yes yes (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I can look at my pile of Pentium2-era titles and SNES games and see plenty to keep me busy to this day. I get lots of crap for that from the younger generations ("omg, lol I'd shoot myself if I could only play 16-bit, etc. etc.") but no one really realizes how brainwashed they are by the media into the continual "newer is better" way of thinking.

      This industry is most likely going to take a dive because of that sooner or later. It'll be back, or at least stick around for a while in smaller, indie forms, b

  • I must have missed the memo. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mirkon ( 618432 ) <mirkon.gmail@com> on Saturday June 05, 2004 @01:36AM (#9342773) Homepage
    Hardcore gamers only make up between 20-25 percent of the industry's annual software sales

    Putting aside the fact that the 20-25% figure is obviously straight out of a marketing exec's ass, what, exactly, constitutes a "hardcore gamer" nowadays?

    Gosh, I love statistics.

  • Letting the hardcore set the agenda (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RogueyWon ( 735973 ) on Saturday June 05, 2004 @02:55AM (#9342962) Journal
    I'm always wary of developers who give their hardcore fans too much of a say in the development of their games. From what I can see, there are a number of reasons not to do this. First of all, hardcore gamers tend to be pretty far removed from the gaming mainstream in a whole host of ways. My own experiences of them (I used to be the head admin of a major UK-based online gaming league) have demonstrated that the real hardcore tend to be ultra-conservative change-phobics, whose only real hopes for any sequel are that it will look better and not force them to learn any new skills or, god forbid, make them go through any kind of introductory period in which the great unwashed might a chance to frag them. As a result of this, sequels developed in this way tend to be dry, devoid of any gameplay innovations and off-putting to the casual gamer, with Quake 3 being perhaps the arch example of this. The other thing I've noticed is that even if a developer goes all-out to take on board the feedback of the hardcore players, they'll never be happy. Most hardcore gamers will live, sleep, eat and breathe their game. For them, the prospect of the next installment in the series is viewed much how an evangelical Christian would view the Second Coming. When the sequel in question finally arrives, it inevitably disappoints. The hardcore community immediately rants about the developers "selling out" and decides to demonstrate how "l33t" it is by staying with the previous installment for at least a year. Finally, one of the striking things I've observed about hardcore gamers is that they don't actually buy many games. For them, their game of choice, be it Quake 3, Counter-Strike or Everquest, will be the only game they play. Moreover, as a large proportion of hardcore gamers are kids, students or the unemployed (as the only groups with the time required to hone their skills to the levels needed), their natural state is broke, and if they can pirate a game, they often will. It's interesting to note that what's almost certainly the most successful and enduring online fps ever (Half-Life, and its mods) was developed as a mass-market, singleplayer focussed game. I suspect that the best way to get a hit like this is to ignore a lot of what the focus groups and message boards are telling you that the hardcore want and just make the game on the basis of its original vision.
  • I usually attend Qcon, but don't participate in the tourneys... It's really just a blast to hang out in the BYOC LAN all day with some pretty cool people. Unfortunately (for Id), Q3A is really one of the least popular games at the event. I saw more interest in IL2 and BF1942 last year than any other game. Of course, now that everybody's tired of those games, Quake will teh l33t again.

    Id just wants to maximize the exposure of D3 this summer. QIV could definitely make an appearance in some form or anther

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