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."
Definite loss of steam (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with id, and even valve, is that they take way to freaking long to come out with their next game, and then what is it? Its a sequel to an eixsting game.
While I am not knocking their capabilities of offering state-of-the-art 3D gaming engines, do we really NEED a Quake 4?
While games like HL2 definitly has improved the gameplay over the original HL, by the time you get to the 3rd or 4th iteration of the same concept, how original is it?
I think id should stick to making game engines, and let other, more creative companies designe the game content, and STOP making sequels in general. Develop some new story ideas, and heck, some new gameplay features instead of just offering an new improve clone of the same ol' game
Also, don't hype about a game 4 years before releasing it, then push back the game release for another 8 - 12 months. The game doesn't have to be perfect, just playable. It makes more sence to get a large audience of players running the game, and finding bugs, then fixing them quickly, rather then waiting while a smaller team of people Q/A the product and take years to clear all of the bugs
This is silly (Score:5, Interesting)
Rob
Doom 3 was good, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
That being said, the idea that in "the mysterious future" you wouldn't be able to hold both a flashlight and a gun hurt the game's credibility. And going for the cheap scare so many times did tend to get old.
They were also determined to make D3 a single-player game in a field now dominated by multiplayer and massively-multiplayer games. I would have thought that they'd have realized this better than anyone, given that they practically created the market for multiplayer FPS gaming, but they chose to make Doom 3 a single player game, and between that and the whole flashlight deal, many people decided the game was a dud, and thus its fate was sealed.
I still thought it was a great game though!
But in my view (Score:5, Interesting)
Doom 3 was fun and so was Half life 2 , but neither compared to their previous incarnations , they were better only due to the fact they were released several years after the origionals
ID no longer has the crown as there is no real crown to have.
Competition Is Good Do Something New (Score:4, Interesting)
Unreal Tournament 3 (Score:5, Interesting)
"...and the upcoming Unreal Tournament 3"
So if he is talking about Unreal Tournament 2007, that would be Unreal Tournament 4 in the numbering scheme of how many Unreal Tournaments there have been. 1 would be Unreal Tournament (1999) 2 is Unreal Tournament 2003, 3 is Unreal Tournament 2004. Finally 4 is Unreal Tournament 2007.
Steve Bowler is certainly entitled to voice his opinion on whatever forum he likes; but I know I enjoyed Doom 3 and the expansion pack. If he didn't, well, too bad. The game isn't going to appeal to the kid who plays counter-strike solely (not that CS and CS:S are bad, they just aren't the only type of game), and it isn't going to appeal to the most jaded gamers. Monster closets are obviously a problem with Doom 3, but that is about it. It does something modern new games like Battlefield 2, and all of the Unreal Tournaments don't do; deliver a single player experience with a good modern engine. BF2 has bots, and UT2004 has better bots, but they don't have any kind of good linear single player experience. Far Cry might, I haven't played it beyond the demo. HL2 certainly does deliver on that. Show me another modern engine that runs on your computer and delivers a reasonably good single player FPS experience right now, I'd certainly point to HL2 and Doom 3.
Doom3 wasn't an arcade game (Score:5, Interesting)
id excelled at making amazing technology and simple addictive arcade like gameplay with that technology. The original DOOM is an arcade game--its incredibly fast with dozens of monsters on the screen. Quake and its sequels were also arcade games, except you can play over the internet against other people.
Doom3 wasn't an arcade game. id attemped something different by building a game that followed a story and because of limitations of the engine, could only allow interaction with a few creatures at once. They tired to do this with some the mechanics from the older single player games (such as monster closets) and while the game is both incredible from a visual and technological standpoint, the gameplay to match this just isn't there. Much of what Steve says is right, when the level of graphics and presentation presented called for realism, old models of spawning monsters behind you when you pick up something doesn't work anymore. That worked in an arcade game, but not in a story driven game focusing on realism.
I hope id realizes their strengths and return to focusing on games with great visuals and technology with simple and addictive arcade like gameplay. That's the id I know and want to play.
Re:This is silly (Score:3, Interesting)
Demoing it for what? So Carmack can show everyone how leet he is? Quote article:
What spoiled Doom 3 for me (Score:5, Interesting)
Computer (more specifically, GPU) processing power has increased so much in the past few years that game companies can no longer simply rely on "Uber-realistic graphics!!!" to sell their games. Everyone can do that now. It's old news.
That was id's mistake. I think that Valve properly recognized the "Uber-Graphics" wall in the industry and instead focused on game physics and AI. The result was Half-Life 2, and one of the first (if not the first) FPS games that you could really interact with any aspect of the environment, beyond scripted "push this crate here to open the door" elements. Don't get me wrong, Doom 3 is pretty. But gamers are bored of "just pretty graphics". Doom 3 didn't bring anything new to the party; Half-Life 2 did.
Re:Doom3 wasn't an arcade game (Score:4, Interesting)
I disagree. There are multiple points where that happens in Unreal (the old original one).
Probably the most memorable one is the Stone Titan battle. You see him on his throne, but he doesn't move. You can walk up to him, walk on him, shoot him, make noise, fight the other enemies in the area, whatever. But the moment you steal his treasure, he's gonna try to whoop your ass! It was CLASSIC pick-up-the-item-and-get-ambushed. And it was good.
Why was it good? Because they did it right. They didn't make enemies suddenly appear all around you. They had an enemy that was inactive become active when you stole his stuff. It's something that would be believable in real life (if real life included crash-landing on a planet full of reptile warriors and being the one and only human to whoop ass and live through the ordeal).
This illustrates the difference between "arcade" gamers (as you claim to be), and "realism" gamers (which I seem to share more traits with).
"Arcade" gamers play games for the sake of games. They understand how games work, and therefore, couldn't care less how the enemies got there. They already know how the enemies got there. They understand that The Game deposits enemies into the playing field when it's supposed to, and it's your "job" to kill them.
"Realism" gamers play games to be immersed in a world. They may or may not know how games work, and their pickiness about just how real a game has to be varies from player to player. They see enemies dropping in as a story element rather than a command to blast things to smithereens. They want enemies that appear to be accompanied by dropships or the sparky fizzle of a transporter beam or at least fall through holes in the roof (Unreal did this a lot). But the enemies have to come from somewhere. They can't just randomly appear. (There are exceptions - like random battles in Final Fantasy games, which happen in areas where your zoomed-out view wouldn't allow you to see the enemies anyway.)
I hate to admit it, but I've actually bought a few id games. Quake 3, which people swore was better than Unreal Tournament (damn liars...), Return to Castle Wolfenstein (good, but somehow felt too stiff), and... well... no, that's it. I guess I really don't care if id makes a comeback, and perhaps you can see why. I don't begrudge anyone their favorites, though, so good luck to them and you.
Re:But in my view (Score:3, Interesting)
Half Life was more than prettier Quake. It was prettier Quake with Screenwriting, which made a profound difference in the single player experience (at least up until that abortion of an ending).
You gotta give some credit to the Quake CTF / Team Fortress / Counterstrike creators for making something out of multiplayer beyond simple deathmatch as well.
No John Romero (Score:2, Interesting)
Read the book Masters of Doom for insight into their dynamic, and how much Romero brought to the table at iD.
I didn't have much respect for him after the Daikatana debacle, but gained it back after reading that book.
Games rated by TTGM: Time Till God Mode (Score:4, Interesting)
With Doom3, it took about an hour or two before God mode got selected. With Far Cry, it was at the point where you're breaking out into an open area with lots of monsters. I happily made it through HL2 with no cheats.
Also in Doom3 I debated even finishing it, I was losing interest so fast.