John Carmack Not Enthused About Android Marketplace

An anonymous reader writes "During an in-depth and informative interview, Doom creator and id Software co-founder John Carmack opines on iOS game development, the economics of mobile development vs. console development, why mobile games lend themselves to more risk-taking and greater creativity, and finally, why he's not too keen on the Android Marketplace as a money-making machine. '...I'm honestly still a little scared of the support burden and the effort that it's going to take for our products, which are very graphics-intensive.'"

Re:Rage for Android?

[Anonymous Coward]

The fragmentation issue is honestly just marketing nonsense. Do you hear PC developers complaining about the same? The problem is plain and simply that of a console vs an open platform. Carmack is abandoning his roots in favour of console development. It's shameful.

Re:Rage for Android?

[polyp2000]

"now I am eager to see whether it is even possible to port such a demanding 3D game to Android" ;

It Is absolutely possible , let there be no bones about it.
The hardware of latest iPhone is pretty similar to many high end android devices, in fact some Android devices actually have slightly higher specs in terms of horsepower.

Google have the market saturation now though - its time to reign things in a little bit and tighten things up. Perhaps they should consider some sort of
hardware rating system to help developers and consumers have some sort of target to aim for. Better still have some dialogue with luminaries such as Carmack and find a solution.

N.

Carmack Makes Other Valid Points

[polyp2000]

That which apply to both Android and iPhone.

In that touch screen interfaces are a burden to game design.
"You're somewhat hampered by the touch interface—there's a lot of places where tactile controls really are better—but you can definitely do a lot."

Its possible to get creative - but it doesnt matter how many polygons NG smartphones can push - a touch screen is not a good interface for Doom 3 for example.

Re:Rage for Android?

[hedwards]

What Google needs to do if they want to support larger file sizes is change the mechanism completely. Probably make it a bit more like Jigdo, or a torrent without the p2p features or some other method of downloading and verifying in a piecewise fashion.

I've got a Nexus One and often times due to crappy reception the updates I'm trying to download will freeze out and have to be restarted. I would assume that Apple has a more bandwidth efficient way of doing it if they're allowing such large files to be downloaded. Even requiring certain ones to be downloaded via the computer or WiFi would likely go a long way.

Re:Rage for Android?

[hedwards]

And yet Apple seems to have figured it out to his satisfaction. I dislike the Appstore, but there's something fundamentally different about the Appstore to the Android Market in that the file size for the market is capped at about 30mb.

His main complaint and one that I can't argue with is that he can't serve the file through the market place and as a result he'd have to set up his own server and override the wisdom people have of not getting Android apps from unknown sources.

Re:Rage for Android?

[bonch]

So that's why Valve/Bioware/Blizzard have ported their games to Android...oh, wait.

Carmack's technology is on the cutting edge of real-time 3D rendering, so of course he's going to worry more about supporting hardware platforms and their specific features. Bioware targets consoles which are fixed in features, Valve targets hardware of yesteryear, and Blizzard targets hardware from the stone age, so their concerns are obviously going to be a little different than id Software's.

It sounds to me like some people are just annoyed that Carmack is being critical of their beloved Android platform.

I agree with Carmack

[thetoadwarrior]

I own an Android phone and I love it but I'm not sure I could be bothered to develop for it. You can't guarantee what the user will have and you can't even rely on the store to show your product in the best light.

For instance, there was some fuss being made over Angry Birds. I decide to check it out. It shows up in my app market, there are no limits listed so I download it. It fails. No error message than it's not gonna happen. Was it a bad net connection or was my phone not up to it? Fuck if I know.

Google maps was updated and crashing constantly (like upon boot up) and as long as it went on I suspect it was only happening to older versions like mine (1.6). Another app bricked my Android and considering I mainly only use Google made apps and connect bot it's not like I'm downloading shit.

The hardware guys aren't willing to update my software and Google isn't doing enough to guarantee I only see apps I can run. That's shit and something like Rage would cause such a hassle for ID, imo, so I wouldn't bother if I were them.