How id Lost Its Crown 164
The Next Generation site has an editorial up by veteran animator Steve Bowler discussing the loss of prestige id has suffered, at least in his eyes, as a result of the latest incarnation of Doom. From the article: "But one day, the industry changed. The consumer changed. It's hard to put one's finger on it. Maybe it was Counter-Strike. Maybe Unreal Tournament. Something happened to the genre between Quake III and Doom 3, and Id somehow didn't take it into account. Call it braggadocio, or hubris, but Doom 3 is no longer the top dog in the FPS market. Yes, it's upsetting. I tried not to admit it either. But it's undeniably true."
Re:Doom 3.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Top dog? (Score:5, Insightful)
I never realized it was ever top dog. It came out, I played it, then it went on the shelf. It wasn't really that impressive and it certainly wasn't good enough to be called top dog. My kids watched me play it for about a half hour and that was enough for them. They never felt the desire to play it. Yeah it was pretty and it had some nice eye candy, but what's that got to do with the value and quality of a game? If you don't have the desire to play it more than once then it can't even be considered top-10.
I'm lost on the point of this article.
Re:Definite loss of steam (Score:1, Insightful)
Did we really need a Final Fantasy TEN?
ye gots id wrong (Score:1, Insightful)
Carmack and Id have always seemed, to me, to be interested in pushing themselves and the technology first, and at one point that made them very popular.
Ok, they're not on the tip of the tonge of every teenager from here to Tacoma, like, say, Rockstar. But does anyone TRULY into games give a shit?
The advances in engine tech from Quake 3 to Doom 3 are probably going to be unnoticed by the unwashed masses. As Call of Duty [gamespot.com] running on the Quake engine showed us- it's really hard to gauge the full potential of an engine at the start. Methinks the same will be true of the Doom engine.
Bad Engine (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is simply that basically all games today look great, full 3d, shaders, bloom and stuff, so it gets a lot harder then in the old days to look special.
Re:Definite loss of steam (Score:5, Insightful)
If it was a true Doom clone, it'd have the same sense of chaos and the rooms full of big swarms of enemies for you to fight. Not one on one battles in a dark corridor. He mentioned the 'Run and Gun' style of play. That's what iD did well, and what they didn't try to do in Doom 3.
He should go play a game from the Serious Sam series. Lots of bad guys, lots of fast paced and constant shooting. It's too bad their engine was mostly overlooked. It's done those huge environments for a long time, and there's lots of fun co-op games going all the time. Wheee!
Re:This is silly (Score:3, Insightful)
A $55USD technology demo marketed as a highly anticipated video game. The $15-20 you can buy it for today is closer to what it should have been sold for. Better - he should have skipped the game and just released it as a benchmarking tool for those wanting to focus on the engine.
I know I feel robbed.
Wolfenstein, Doom I, II, & III, Quake I, II &a (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Doom3 wasn't an arcade game (Score:3, Insightful)
Thanks for all the stuff you have done for us that like the truely fun type of games!
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Snore (Score:3, Insightful)
First of all, the comment above is ridiculous - saying Doom 3 is anything like Quake 3, CS, or UT is just an inherently flawed statement. The only thing they have in common is that they're first person shooters. Doom 3 is clearly exclusively a single player game, and ALL those other games are (for all intents and purposes) multiplayer games.
The rest of the article was just about the fact that he got bored fighting zombies. Zoid pointed out the same thing in his comment. Sure, I can see that. But Doom 3 was always a horror game. Everything id said on the way to release was that it was a horror game. It was about being scared. I don't really have much sympathy for those that bought it expecting anything else, just like I have no sympathy for every other gamer that buys a game without excercising any critical judgement about it (ie, the majority) - Battlefield 2 is another example of this, a horribly busted game that people have bought by the hundreds of thousands.
Anyway, these articles are everywhere and (imo) they're always the same - they're all people complaining because they didn't appreciate the game for what it was - a pure horror game. I played the whole thing with the lights out in a small room with surround sound set up (fortunately my sister had just moved out so I was able to steal her room and use it exclusively for a Doom room the entire game). I spent the whole time jumping out of my chair. Sure, I've killed enough zombies in my time as well, but it was about BEING SCARED.
Re:But in my view (Score:2, Insightful)
The fact that it is basically the only game worth buying on a console you bought doesn't change the games worth for anyone but you and others who bought the console. It's actually a common phenonenon for people who buy failed consoles. They tend to latch on to the one or two games worthwhile for the system with a religous sort of fevor in some hope that others will see the light or at the very least make them feel less like idiots for buying a console no one else wanted.
Sorry, great games don't need to be 'given a chance' or need to have someone 'understand' some deeper aspect that the masses are missing.
Bugie might have had grand plans before they sold out to MS, but so does every company making games. In the end, Halo is a bit player in the hugely competitive first person shooter market. About the only thing that will be remembered about it is it was very shiny.
Re:But in my view (Score:1, Insightful)
It has to make a profit.
id's main problem (Score:5, Insightful)
However, problems eventually arose from the fact that graphics alone are not what make a truly engaging FPS. It might have been the first engine to utilise OpenGL, but from a *gameplay* perspective Quake 2 especially was complete crap in my book. The situation got markedly worse with Quake 3 as well, from the point of view that the base engine was the only part of it which id actually produced themselves. Everything else (the AI, the cutscenes) had to be outsourced. Q3's credits list is very long...and id's own staff do not occupy a very large part of it.
Q1 was id's finest hour in my mind...I still don't think I've ever had a more immersive or atmospheric multiplayer experience since then. (and I've played my share of Q3 and UT 2003 online) I realise however that such is a completely subjective statement...but I've long tended to believe that the development of any technology follows a bell pattern, where it hits a peak of development/refinement, and then actually starts to come back down somewhat. (I don't include visual photo-realism as a criteria here either; quite the opposite, actually) For me, (purely in terms of multiplayer) the original Quake was the proverbial summit of the mountain.
The release of Unreal and Unreal Tournament certainly didn't help matters for id though, either...because not only were they beautiful graphically, (the original UT is still a completely acceptable visual experience in my book) but they also included all sorts of innovations where AI and gameplay were concerned...not to mention an extremely discoverable and user-friendly editor, which made it easy for any net-dwelling 14 year old to create their own scenarios as well. Epic might have been ardent worshippers of id, but they were probably more responsible for their idols' demise than any other single factor from what I saw.
So, yeah...that to me is the main issue. Carmack is/was a graphical genius...but they were only able to get away with graphics alone for maybe three releases. (Doom/2, Quake) These days, graphics alone aren't what sell a game...You need good level design, decent AI, and people generally like a strong storyline with a high immersion factor as well.
id were the first, and they will always have that distinction...but they were not able to reinvent themselves...and the world has moved on.
Re:But in my view (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Doom 3 was good, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
People need to remember that no matter how photorealistic the graphics get, these are still GAMES. Do people ask why when Mario picks up a mushroom, he gets taller? No, because it's accepted as simply a gameplay element because Mario is not a life simulator. Neither are FPS games. The flashlight weapon switching is an essential gameplay element, IMO. It causes tension and makes the gameplay more frantic.
Doom3 was poorly accepted because most of the people who went out to buy it expected Doom/Doom2/Quake/Quake2 single player, but ended up with (basically) first person Resident Evil.
Re:Doom 3 was good, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
No it doesn't, because that doesn't break the suspension of disbelief. Players know there are going to be demons from hell because that's a very central part to the premise of the series.
It does certainly hurt the games credibility when they don't teleport in, but instead just POP in to view with no manner of accompanying animation (due to crap design and implementation), often right in front of you, because that DOES break the suspension of disbelief.
Doom3 was poorly accepted because most of the people who went out to buy it expected Doom/Doom2/Quake/Quake2 single player, but ended up with (basically) first person Resident Evil.
I would say it was poorly accepted because it simply wasn't a very good game.