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First Person Shooters (Games) Quake Entertainment Games

ZeniMax, Parent Company of Bethesda, Buys id Software 147

CelticLo writes "ZeniMax Media Inc., parent company of noted game publisher Bethesda Softworks, today announced it has completed the acquisition of legendary game studio id Software, creators of world-renowned games such as Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein, and its upcoming title, Rage. In an interview with Kotaku, John Carmack said, 'We're really getting kind of tired competing with our own publishers in terms of how our titles will be featured. And we've really gotten more IPs than we've been able to take advantage of. And working with other companies hasn't been working out as spectacularly as it could. So the idea of actually becoming a publisher and merging Bethesda and ZeniMax on there [is ideal.] It would be hard to imagine a more complementary relationship. They are triple A, top-of-the-line in what they do in the RPGs. And they have no overlap with all the things we do in the FPSes.' The press release confirmed that id's projects will remain under Carmack's control."
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ZeniMax, Parent Company of Bethesda, Buys id Software

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  • Competition. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jaysyn ( 203771 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2009 @12:46PM (#28455459) Homepage Journal

    Looks like they might have a bonafide Atari stomping machine.

  • I was about to post it. Its hard to belive! I hope Quake live goes on for Linux... I wonder what happens to legacy IP from ID and how will it blend with Bethesda IP. Quake vs Terminator: future shock? =-P
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sanosuke001 ( 640243 )
      The company is still going to be run by John Carmack. It looks like it's more of a business decision to make publishing/marketing easier and to get a hold of new tech than to merge IPs.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by MindKata ( 957167 )
        "The company is still going to be run by John Carmack"

        Everyone company that gets sold to another company says things like this. My question is, "The company is still going to be run by John Carmack" ... yes, but for how long? ... I've lost count of the number of companies who say this sort of thing and then a year or two later their founders leave saying they are going to pursue new business avenues and new opportunities etc..

        Which leaves ID high speed easy to control style of games and ID's attitude t
    • by pugugly ( 152978 )

      Elder Scrolls V: Aliens Versus Daedra

  • Linux native games (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zebslash ( 1107957 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2009 @12:48PM (#28455503)

    I hope they will carry on using OpenGL and providing Linux native binaries.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Unending ( 1164935 )

      I saw Carmack give a talk a couple weeks ago and OpenGL came up in the Q&A session.
      Carmack's take on it was that OpenGL had not continued to be update to take advantage of newer technology and had therefore largely fallen into disuse, though he also said that the graphics code was not that large a portion of their codebase so they could fairly easily write OpenGL and Direct3D versions of their engines with minimal effort.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by LoRdTAW ( 99712 )

        Do you have any more specific information on the talk he gave? Is there an online translation, audio or video version of the talk? OpenGL has certainly not fallen into disuse, in fact it is the standard 3D API for the PS3, Apple OSX and I believe the Nintendo Wii (correction?). And add to that list any non MS operating system. Direct 3D is Microsoft only so you are limited to the Xbox or Windows. Also consider the fact that OpenGL is not only geared toward hardware acceleration but can also be rendered in s

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by mdwh2 ( 535323 )

          OpenGL has certainly not fallen into disuse, in fact it is the standard 3D API for the PS3, Apple OSX and I believe the Nintendo Wii (correction?). And add to that list any non MS operating system. Direct 3D is Microsoft only so you are limited to the Xbox or Windows.

          I think it's fair to say it's fallen behind. I say this as someone who used (and still uses) OpenGL for years. OpenGL is still being developed, but features seem to be coming available on DirectX first, and driver support is more likely to be p

      • Ya if people want developers to keep using OpenGL, then GL has to get its shit together. Graphics technology moves FAST and you need to keep up. OpenGL seems to futz around and say "Oh well just support that through extensions." That is problematic since it means multiple code paths for different cards, and since there are fundamental architecture changes that doesn't work well for. You'll see some OpenGL developers deride GL 3 as "OpenGL 1.6" because it was not the truly new redesign promised, but rather s

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )

          That is problematic since it means multiple code paths for different cards

          As opposed to DirectX where you have capability bits and have to test whether a card supports a given capability, and have multiple code paths for the cases where it doesn't? Or with DirectX 10 where you have a feature set equivalent to OpenGL 3 but no support for cards that don't support all of this feature set and no way of supporting features on cards that aren't part of this?

          You'll see some OpenGL developers deride GL 3 as "OpenGL 1.6" because it was not the truly new redesign promised, but rather some stuff hacked on the old GL

          And, mostly, these developers are idiots. There is a subset of OpenGL 3 which is forward-compatible. This is a very modern API.

    • John Carmack is still in charge of development, so it seems likely that OpenGL will continue to be used. The game engines id makes are largely portable, and have good Linux support already, so there's no reason to discontinue the Linux ports.

  • Carmack revealed that the added resources of the new company will enable him to prevent repeats of the company's biggest flops, In other words, he can now keep overhyped wrestlers from ever being associated with id game titles.

  • Could this... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Darkness404 ( 1287218 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2009 @12:51PM (#28455555)
    Could this mean that ID is now going to become less OSS/Linux friendly?
    • Re:Could this... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by westlake ( 615356 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2009 @04:43PM (#28459297)

      Could this mean that ID is now going to become less OSS/Linux friendly?

      Carmack has said before that the Linux port did not make much sense from a business point of view.

      [The port to the Wii almost certainly does make sense. The cell phone. The portable media player.]

      He has waffled now and then on DX vs OGL.

      iD released game engines that were well past their commercial prime.

      Never the games themselves.

      The IP that makes a Commander Keen or Doom or Wolfenstein a unique and valuable property.

      Bethesda's focus is on the sale of its games - and not on the sale of its game engines.

      I can't see any very compelling reason for it to open source anything.

      • by IICV ( 652597 )
        Oh man. You just made me realize how awesome Commander Keen could be in a Bethesda style open world.
  • No FPS competition? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Viewsonic ( 584922 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2009 @12:53PM (#28455601)
    Terminator: Future Shock and Skynet would like to have a word with you! Two of my favorite FPSs that most games still can't compare to. They paved a lot of the way for vehicles in a FPS, great depressing storylines, it was 100% pure awesomeness.

    I was kind of hoping a new one would come out with the arrival of the new movie.

    • Yeah, I loved those as well, even though the multiplayer in Skynet never really "felt" right to me. We seemed to get a strange kind of spurt of well-made intelligent games based on dormant movie licences in the mid-90s, primarily around the Star Wars franchise (X-Wing, Dark Forces, Jedi Knight, TIE Fighter and so on), but those two Terminator games are also good examples.

      I remember finding Future Shock deeply frustrating for the first few hours and nearly taking it back to the shop because I just couldn't s

  • Chris Weaver (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2009 @12:57PM (#28455685) Journal

    So after reading about Zenimax on wikipedia, it said that Dr. Chris Weaver was forced out of the company. (Dual Doctorates at MIT). And zenimax didn't pay its 1.2 million severance in the contract.

    Kinda interesting, Weaver broke into Zenimax's email server and used the copies in court. So the appeals court dismissed his case due prejudice. The other interesting thing is the CEO of Zenimax was in a banking fraud scandal and banned from banking industry by the feds.

    Doesnt sound like a great team heading it up. I bet this comes back to bite Carmack in the ass down the road.

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      That donkey down the road is a really unlucky fellow.

    • Re:Chris Weaver (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24, 2009 @01:33PM (#28456285)

      I bet this comes back to bite Carmack in the ass down the road.

      As one of id's owners, Carmack has just become a very rich man at a point in time where id's flagship titles are fading from the limelight. Doom 3 is largely considered a disappointment.

      He's been tinkering on rocketry and iPhone development rather than pushing the state of the art (megatexture?)

      Despite the press release stating that all the key players have signed long term contracts, I suspect Carmack is angling to retire from the games biz in the next few years.

      Posting anonymously because I am still a big fan but see the writing on the wall.

    • Re:Chris Weaver (Score:5, Insightful)

      by verbalcontract ( 909922 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2009 @04:11PM (#28458783)

      First, let me just say that I love John Carmack.

      The reason I love him is because in the TFA he explains why they did this:

      "We're really getting kind of tired competing with our own publishers in terms of how our titles will be featured... They are triple A, top-of-the-line in what they do in the RPGs. And they have no overlap with all the things we do in the FPSes."

      They didn't sell because of Zenimax's leadership. They sold so they don't have to worry about the publishing end of the business. Zenimax now distributes id and Bethesda games, and since they don't compete in the market, id doesn't have to worry about Zenimax giving them the shaft. Meanwhile, id stays independent and keeps doing what its doing.

      Sound familiar? [wikipedia.org]

  • No Overlap? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Hatta ( 162192 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2009 @12:58PM (#28455705) Journal

    They are triple A, top-of-the-line in what they do in the RPGs. And they have no overlap with all the things we do in the FPSes.'

    What about Fallout 3?

    • They are triple A, top-of-the-line in what they do in the RPGs. And they have no overlap with all the things we do in the FPSes.'

      What about Fallout 3?

      Last I checked, Fallout 3 was an RPG. I don't know I could be mutated to believe anything.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        Reconsider with an emphasis on "top-of-the-line" part, not the "RPGs" part.
      • Fallout (and somewhat of Oblivion) seems to be more of a FPS/RPG combo and I can really see them using FPS technologies in first-person action-RPGs.
        • But the thousand dollar question: Will Rage be refashioned/re-written as a Fallout game, er- Fallout, with cars?

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by DavidTC ( 10147 )

          Seriously, Bethesda has been doing FPS/RPGs with both Oblivion and Fallout 3, which use the same engine.

          I don't have any idea how relevant that is to the Quake engine, but to pretend it's totally irrelevant is a bit silly.

          Considering that the Bethesda engine is somewhat buggy, what with people falling through to the void and glitching through walls, what would be nice is if future Bethesda FPS/RPGs used the Quake engine for their graphics and rendering.

          If I understand correctly, the Quake engine is alrea

          • It seems like the Quake engines are mostly optimized for indoors rendering, and anything in a Bethesda-style RPG would need to be optimized for large outdoor spaces, with trees, times of day/night, weather, etc.
            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by maglor_83 ( 856254 )

              iD Tech 5 is is supposed to be able to do large outdoor spaces just fine.

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by therufus ( 677843 )

              It seems like the Quake engines are mostly optimized for indoors rendering, and anything in a Bethesda-style RPG would need to be optimized for large outdoor spaces, with trees, times of day/night, weather, etc.

              The first Bethesda game I ever played was The Elder Scrolls - Chapter 1: The Arena [wikipedia.org]. "Arena" was built on the iD Wolfenstein 3D game engine, however they did adapt that engine to include all kinds of really cool, ahead-of-its-time features. Reflective puddles, fog and rain effects, outdoors that synced night/dawn/day/dusk skymaps with lighting conditions, perspective rolling when being damaged, a 400+ city world. All this on the Wolf3D engine!!!!

              I find it ironic that Bethesda's biggest cumulative game (The E

          • "OTOH, the Bethesda people have gotten Obsidian (Of KOTOR and NWN2 fame) to do Fallout 3: New Vegas, so apparently they don't want to do RPGs either!"

            Fallout 3 did well and people have been gobbling up the DLC, so it seems like they have a good thing. Getting Obsidian in on it only means that they want to produce more.

      • Hmm.... yes, but then combat is typical FPS action. It's an FPS RPG.. if that makes sense.

      • Fallout 3 is primarily an RPG, albeit one with heavy fps elements. However, the Operation Anchorage downloadable content is almost a pure action fps. It even makes a few typically wry nods to the conventions of the fps genre, such as the remarks you can find in there on the linearity on some of the levels (the content takes place within a simulator and hence is a video game within a video game), which stands in stark contrast to the generally open-ended nature of the rest of the game.

  • by Anonymous Coward
    Doctor Carmack's condition is irreversible. Because Carmack's condition is that... he sold out.
  • by SixGame ( 1565287 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2009 @01:14PM (#28456009)
    Their situation was very similar to Valve's before Steam became a viable platform. (ie: struggles with EA/Sierra) But the two roads diverged: We see that Valve's initially puzzling move of developing their own distribution channels has lead to a period of unbridled growth and creativity. iD's decision to innovate only on their core competencies (graphics,graphics,graphics) has lead to the events of today.
    • by dunezone ( 899268 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2009 @01:48PM (#28456493) Journal
      Wasn't the core income of iD software from developing game engines and licensing them to other companies?

      I might be wrong but the last major engine they built and sold was the one for Doom 3, and I don't remember many games that used that engine after that except Quake 4? And that title was repackaged garbage.

      Valve on the other hand...well they haven't made a many mistakes, they built a complete distribution system that is the best around by far, they release amazing development tools for their games, and they still release new content for older games like Team Fortress 2 and that was released back in October of 2007, might I add they just released the source files for their official TF2 maps allowing anyone to view how they made them.

      iD software has gone stale, they stuck with what worked for them, being the leading developer of game engines and graphics, and that worked when they were the only competitor back in 1993(Doom), 1996(Quake), 1997(Quake 2), and 1999(Quake 3), no game engines could compete with those. The biggest competitor between 1997 and 1999 was the Lithtech engine or the original Unreal, and post 1999, Lithtech didn't power much, and the Unreal was just beginning to shape up to what it has turned into today.

      Now in 2009 we have the Unreal Engines which are cross platform compatible and easy to develop for, the Source Engine which anyone can mod with the help of the Valve SDK's, multiple open-source engines, and enough tools, online knowledge, and resources for a company to develop their own engine if they want to go down that path. The Doom 3 Engine is not as appealing, iD was the leader because there was no one else to go to for a quick pre-built game engine, today that isnt true.

      I don't think iD software is in financial trouble but they definitely don't have the income like they used to have.
      • by SixGame ( 1565287 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2009 @02:40PM (#28457279)
        I agree. They can't compete in their traditional market due to capital. Look at the kind of money Activison can put behind a Call of Duty production, let alone the marketing. iD, being a fairly independent developer and thus capable of paying for their own development, doesn't really stand a chance when it's competing against a publisher funded project where the publishers have a vested financial interest in the title's success. iD didn't leverage their projects enough so competing with the likes of Inifinity Ward, who used the traditional "publisher funded" approach, just isn't possible. Their publishers simply didn't make enough money off iD's "niche" titles and self-funded approach. iD's previous organic growth provided immense stability and financial independence, but it severely limited how quickly they could expand and thus compete in a rapidly changing marketplace.
        • Look at the kind of money Activison can put behind a Call of Duty production

          A game powered by id's engine. Every time someone buys CoD, id gets a piece. So id ain't complaining when Activision spends Activision's money promoting a game that makes id money.

          Trivia: from 1998-2000, id made more money out of Half-Life than Valve did.

      • by Ant P. ( 974313 )

        Now in 2009 we have the Unreal Engines which are cross platform compatible and easy to develop for

        Having to reboot into Windows to use the UE editor - or UT3 at all - is not "easy to develop for", nor is it cross platform.

        • Unreal Engine runs on PC(Windows), PS3, and Xbox 360.

          Reboot into Windows...are you kidding me? You use what you have to use to get the job done.
      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Blakey Rat ( 99501 )

        Valve on the other hand...well they haven't made a many mistakes, they built a complete distribution system that is the best around by far

        Which is really sad, considering how crap Steam is.

        • Also putting all your DRM eggs in one convenient basket makes a nice big juicy target for piracy. While this is a continuously moving target, the tools I've seen lately are getting fairly good [cs.rin.ru].
        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Valve on the other hand...well they haven't made a many mistakes, they built a complete distribution system that is the best around by far

          Which is really sad, considering how crap Steam is.

          Sorry, what?

          Having a copy of all my games online, whenever I need them, is an absolute godsend.
          And they were one of the first ones to do it! (online content distribution which actually worked)

          They've already said that they would release all the games if they ever went out of business (from DRM).

          The application doesn't take up much RAM, each game starts up within seconds, and hell, it has a built in instant messenger too?

          It's still possible to crack all their games that they release fairly easily.

          They are ha

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Blakey Rat ( 99501 )

            Where to begin. The UI sucks, with unreadable text in many places. It constantly tells me my video card drivers are out of date when they aren't. Ditto with DirectX versions (it's upgraded my DirectX three times this week alone!) Half the time when you start it up, it just shows a blank white screen and you have to close and restart it to see your games list. The pricing in the store is frequently wrong, and they don't respond to tickets when you ask to buy a product at it's advertised price. In fact, suppo

      • I suspect open source game engines are going to cut into their profits a lot in the future. Some of the ones I've seen recently have been very visually impressive. Maybe not up to the standard of the top-of-the-line commercial ones, but given the cost of licensing they are good enough to make game companies consider them. Even the GPL only applies to the game code, not to the artwork, so you can ship a GPL'd game, based on a GPL'd engine with proprietary levels, models, and textures. The total cost for
        • There are problems
          *Copy Protection/DRM, it's hard to protect your artwork without some level of anti-piracy tool, it's hard to include one in a gpl engine.
          *Consoles, its hard to release code for anything that your release on a console (see the recent atari fiasco).
          *Always lag behind, for many reasons opensource game engines always seam to lag behind even old game engines (when ID release their old engines, its very welcome and they get used by many open-source projects over the constantly in development alt

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      id has made nothing except tech demos for years and years. Valve has made actual full good games. Being owned by a publisher is not likely to improve Id's games much.

      Valve build on what 3d realms did with duke3d, and just went from there, making more and more fleshed out worlds, and encounters, more and more interactive environments. Id just remade Doom 2/quake 1 over and over with better graphics. They don't oven make the best engines anymore (CryEngine 3).

      Graphics hardly make a game good, and w

  • Perfect Marriage (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kenp2002 ( 545495 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2009 @01:23PM (#28456119) Homepage Journal

    Zenimax with Bethesda makes great games with crappy software.

    ID makes crappy games with great software.

    Either this is going to be GREAT GAMES WITH GREAT SOFTWARE or CRAPPY GAMES WITH CRAPPY SOFTWARE.

    I honestly can't think of a good ID game in the sense of a contemporary game. BRILLIANT technology. Great game engines, but the games themselves were always lack luster. In short: If it moves, it dies. That was it.

    Doom series was nearly devoid of any literary content. It was literally just shoot stuff. Fun mind you but nothing to write home about.

    Fallout 3 shows you can have an excellent game structured around bug ridden crap code.

    Imagine ID's team doing the coding with the BETTER half doing the rest. Pure magic.

    OR A COMPLETE DISASTER AS THEY BRING OUT THE WORST IN ONE ANOTHER.

    • by DavidTC ( 10147 )

      Yeah, me too. I hope that Bethesda starts using the Quake engine for their FPS/RPGs.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      In short: If it moves, it dies. That was it.

      Absolutely nothing wrong with that kind of game. Some of the best games have been exactly this. Doom, Duke Nukem, Quake, Unreal, Halo, Serious Sam, Far Cry, etc. were all "shoot anything that moves" games that only had the most superficial of stories. They are proof that games don't need strong storylines and can rely purely on gameplay.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Hatta ( 162192 )

      Great game engines, but the games themselves were always lack luster. In short: If it moves, it dies. That was it.

      What more do you want from a game?

      Doom series was nearly devoid of any literary content. It was literally just shoot stuff. Fun mind you but nothing to write home about.

      It's a game, the fun stuff is the point. Literary content is superfluous. If you want literary content, read a book. If you want to have fun and shoot stuff, play a game.

      • You must be one of those blokes who thinks that reading a good book is about as much fun as sticking needles under your fingernails. Seriously, some people enjoy a game with a good story and "kill everything that moves" just isn't enough to get them going.
        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by Pharmboy ( 216950 )

          You obviously have never played "Redneck Rampage". I am still disappointed that there isn't a current sequel out. There is something about using a crossbow, with a stick of TNT tied to the bolt, and blowing up a cow, that is entirely gratifying. The pigs that attack you if you pop them with bullet were pretty cool as well. And don't get me started on the bra machine guns...

          • I don't know how I feel about the way that game sounds but I'm not beyond enjoying a "kill everything that moves" game. Recently I've been enjoying Prototype which is more or less that kind of game, but with an interesting sci-fi story and some pretty wicked platform gaming action thrown in. I just like a little variety and I feel that there's room for literary and artistic elements in gaming. The plot of Planescape: Torment for example easily rivals the writing of any popular fantasy novel.
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Hatta ( 162192 )

          I love reading a good book. But all the books I'd describe as "good" are non-fiction. But that's beside the point. Looking to games for "literary content" is like looking to Saturday morning cartoons for great visual art.

          Personally, I love RPG and adventure games. Both genres with strong stories. There's nothing wrong with putting a story in a game, but the game mechanics are the point of playing, not the story. You can have a great game without any story at all. You can't have a great game without

    • Eh, not so much (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 )

      Personally, I've been real unimpressed with iD's engine offerings. When Doom 3 came out I was extremely underwhelmed. It was a great example of something that was maybe more technically correct, but didn't look as good. I felt UT2004 looked better, despite being an older engine. I mean the lighting in Doom 3 was a neat technology, but didn't work well in game. You ended up with extremely dark corners because the shadows were all hard and light bounced only once. Also it required some heavy hitting hardware

  • Hey, whatever. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FlyByPC ( 841016 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2009 @01:26PM (#28456181) Homepage
    As long as I get my next Elder Scrolls fix (and it's still single-player and anywhere near as good as Oblivion), Bethesda can do no wrong.

    In the meantime, howsabout an official version of Morroblivion [morroblivion.com]? I'd pay good money for that!
    • Wow, I never knew about that mod. I'll have to give that a whirl.
    • In the meantime, howsabout an official version of Morroblivion [morroblivion.com]? I'd pay good money for that!

      Oh god no... no! NOOOOOOOO! Brb, reinstalling

      • Meh, quests don't work and it barely looks any better since it uses the original textures. The only big improvement I saw was the grass.

        Hell, with the right texture mods you can make Morrowind look better than this in its original engine. Which raises another point: even if they got quests working and made higher-res textures, you probably still wouldn't be able to use any of the amazing mods that really bring the Morrowind world to life and increase its replay value enormously.

        If I can't have:
        - The libra

    • As long as I get my next Elder Scrolls fix (and it's still single-player and anywhere near as good as Morrowind), Bethesda can do no wrong.

      Fixed that for you.

  • Carmack's Plan (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nevhan ( 1422601 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2009 @01:32PM (#28456253)

    Sounds like Carmack may be setting things in motion to shift his attention to Armadillo Aerospace.

    Next thing we know, he'll be performing secret experiments with teleportation... we all know how that story turns out.

  • as long as ID software keeps doing what it's doing now (making high-quality games) that's good. If, however, they act out like bethesda and make Doom 4 and other upcoming titles rushed a la fallout 3, then they'll see their sales drop a lot.
  • by WiiVault ( 1039946 ) on Wednesday June 24, 2009 @05:31PM (#28459869)
    Perhaps this is OT, but I think it is likely the primary reason for this deal- What happened to iD's engine licensing? Before D3 it seemed 80% of games were iD based, the rest being Unreal. What happened to make iD's engines so unappealing today?
  • They're Raging on about how Tech 5 megatextures can render vast landscapes without compromising performance. I think an Elder Scrolls game would be a perfect showcase for this in action. *fingers crossed*
  • by Xest ( 935314 ) on Thursday June 25, 2009 @04:38AM (#28464325)

    Yes, I know the company is still there, but is the team really still relevant? The company that's there now just doesn't seem to have much in common the id we always knew and loved, largely because of talent drain.

    id lost a lot of it's best people years ago, Carmack is still there but hardly any of the greats from the Wolf/Doom/Quake days are still there. Romero? McGee? Petersen? Carmack (Adrian)? Steed?

    It seems they lost their key people in various areas, sure people like Romero became laughing stocks when they left because the guy clearly wasn't a CEO when it came to, that doesn't mean of course he wasn't a great designer and developer when working at id. McGee and Petersen - almost certainly their greatest level builders. Steed, their best 3D artist. Even people like David Kirsch who did the Quakeworld netcode that is still the foundation of the netcode in many modern FPS such as HL2.

    Carmack was always id's best programmer when it came to visualisation, but the loss of other key characters seems to sum up what id Software has become - a developer of games that are graphically impressive, but hollow beyond that. With the rise of the newer versions of the Unreal engine and developers like Crytek even Carmack's prowess in the graphics world seems to be lagging a bit.

    It's sad in a way, I'll always respect id for what they were, but I think the loss of so many key figures was a big deal. I don't mean to detract from the staff working there now, id still has some brilliant people but I think what id doesn't have anymore is a dream team which I think it did have back in the old Wolf/Doom/Quake days.

    I'd love to see that team reunite for one more game but that's little more than a dream.

  • This is a very sad day. If the suits have managed to successfully assimilate John Carmack, then it can very truly be said that nobody in the gaming industry is now safe.

    It's odd. Blizzard sold out just before the release of The Burning Crusade; I think subconsciously I always held out some naive, juvenile hope that id would somehow manage to remain themselves, and stay autonomous.

    It is also disturbing and upsetting to witness Carmack attempt to rationalise that he will be able to remain in control of the

  • Great, I look forward to seeing an extra ZeniMax screen every time I fire up an ID game.

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