KwadDamyj said:

Well, clogmuffins. To quote the Doom comic, "This can't be good!"

Uhmmm...Gee, as a relative iD newcomer, I can't think of much to say about this. I feel unimportant. :(

I will say that if iD goes one has to wonder who will go next. It's not like Bungie or Miyamotard are doing insanely brilliant jobs of convincing me that their lame sequels, whored franchises and INNOVATIVE YET CHEESY GAME MECHANICS are the way of the future.

Shigeru Miyamoto? as in Mario and Zelda? very respectable.

Bungie? ok, they made one populat FPS with the doom guy as the hero. don't give me crap about that, the Halo guy is Doom guy, whatever you say! yeah, don't compare Bungie to Miyamoto, or at least don't compate Halo to Mario and Zelda. blasphemy. especially throwing id into the mix :-p

anyway, game copmanies come and go. to see a game company live more than 5 to 10 years is a great feat. Looking Glass made some great games, ION Storm made some great games (at least the Austin branch, Romero just fucked everything). Junction Point Studios will take over where ION Storm left off, with Warren Spector leading them. Game companies die, but the people who really enjoy making them, and are GOOD at making them, stay around and join other development companies. If John Carmack goes, the company is doomed (no pun intended), an John Carmack is going to go anyway. unless they find another John Carmack after the release of their next game, our beloved id will be no more.

anyway, my point is this: its going to happen, we know that's inevitable. and if best comes to best, its because John Carmack leaves to pursue rocket science.

sorry for double posting.

Numbermind said:

You're telling me that this is the formula for long-term success?

No. But that's what the suits believe. And the suits are the ones with the money so they have do decide. Computer games aren't what they were 10 or 15 years ago. It's going the same way as the movie business, i.e. big corporations with little innovation resulting in the same shit being released several times with different names. And of course the devlopment costs will rise to heights where independent developers won't have a chance.

I guess I'm getting too old for this shit... :(

gemini09 said:

John fired his own brother?

Adrian is in no way related to John.

Anyways, I find this quite disenheartening, seeing as id is one of the few companies I truely respect and enjoy the product of, plot and continuity notwithstanding.
I will be among the first to admit that id is becoming less of a game company and more of a tech company, outsourcing the actual game work to such companies as splash damage.

With Adrian gone (a great artist whose talents and unique work accounted for a good portion of the games imo) this system will undoubtedly take a stronger hold.

to those who want plot: I love plot. Good plots rock... but there are very few fps' i will play for the plot. It's about the same as rpgs. Every time the action stops, you have to go, "okay, what happened in the last cutscene?". Quite boring.

Integration of plot into gameplay is important to me. Some fps' did a good job of this (ss2, xiii, etc.)

Games like Doom, Q\q2, and d3 did a wonderful job of foregoing massive amounts of plot and instead appealing to the primal fears of human beings. ONE of the reasons for a plot is to evoke emotion from the audiance. I dunno about the rest of you, but crawling down dark, stroby corridors with a couple shells and a shred of health with the panting demonic sounds of god-knows-what all around me does a DAMN good job of evoking emotion.

udderdude said:

That was the lamest bit of flamebait I've ever seen. He's responsible for some of the best, most well-designed console games ever made.

As for this news .. it's good that iD decided to ditch Adrian instead of selling out to Activision. But bad that they had to ditch Adrian. Why didn't he just change his mind? Maybe he really wanted to quit after all? :P

Maybe I phrased it wrong, or at least too harshly. I'm just personally peeved at him because I have some plans for entering the gaming biz, and I find his games both a little odd and slightly childish, though I loved them when I was younger. Meh. Maybe I'm just irrationally peeved over Star Fox Assault. Or maybe I'm just growing up and/or a grouch these days. Either way, I apologize for coming off so harshly.

And to Dethtoll: You have very good points IMHO.

...On a random note, I actually like Quake III. :/ Beats Halo, I'll tell ya that.

Apologies for doublepost.

Zeroth said:

Shigeru Miyamoto? as in Mario and Zelda? very respectable.

Bungie? ok, they made one populat FPS with the doom guy as the hero. don't give me crap about that, the Halo guy is Doom guy, whatever you say! yeah, don't compare Bungie to Miyamoto, or at least don't compate Halo to Mario and Zelda. blasphemy. especially throwing id into the mix :-p

anyway, game copmanies come and go. to see a game company live more than 5 to 10 years is a great feat. Looking Glass made some great games, ION Storm made some great games (at least the Austin branch, Romero just fucked everything). Junction Point Studios will take over where ION Storm left off, with Warren Spector leading them. Game companies die, but the people who really enjoy making them, and are GOOD at making them, stay around and join other development companies. If John Carmack goes, the company is doomed (no pun intended), an John Carmack is going to go anyway. unless they find another John Carmack after the release of their next game, our beloved id will be no more.

anyway, my point is this: its going to happen, we know that's inevitable. and if best comes to best, its because John Carmack leaves to pursue rocket science.

sorry for double posting.

Hey, Bungie made good stuff back before they joined Microshaft. Pathways into Darkness? Marathon?

And I do respect Miyamoto, to some extent. But many of his games, such as Pikmin, don't immediately scream out I AM SO AWESOME to me. Too childish and lightweight for my liking. Not to mention often slow-paced. And based on what I know of him he seems a bit wacko. That and his damn Mario spinoffs are clogging the market in all likelihood and therefore making my secure future in the industry that much harder to realize.

Zeroth said:

Game companies die, but the people who really enjoy making them, and are GOOD at making them, stay around and join other development companies. If John Carmack goes, the company is doomed (no pun intended), an John Carmack is going to go anyway. unless they find another John Carmack after the release of their next game, our beloved id will be no more.

anyway, my point is this: its going to happen, we know that's inevitable. and if best comes to best, its because John Carmack leaves to pursue rocket science.

as much as i hate to say it, seeing as i spent the 2nd half of my growing up playing id (and apogee for that matter) game, i have to agree. there isn't a lot of respect for id anymore- they just make pretty engines with a game tacked on. john carmack is like "lol new engine" and everyone's all ZOMG about it, but it's later games from other developers using the engine that really shine. (some of the more enjoyable games i've played were on the q3 engine.) while i disagree with adrian opposing doom 3 (i mean, honestly, it couldn't be a proper rehash seeing as there was 10 years of innovation, expansion, and just a plain sense of design aesthetics between classic doom and doom 3) i can totally see where he's coming from in this latest situation. it's kind of sad, really, how id has taken on this whole hollywood attitude about something: "lol if it works don't change it"

id needs a good dose of humility.

I cant see $105 mil anymore than i can concieve they only recieved 3.5 mil a year (98-03) even after all that licensing out to the console makers in the past. sounds like the guys are afraid theyll lose the company if adrian has his way. i dont blame them if they wanted to buy out his shares and avoid selling out to activision. adrian wants out and is ticked off that the rest of them didnt want to sell because if they did sell the numbers would add up to 43 million for himself (adrian) how convenient for him. (just an opinion, other factors may be involved i know)

KwadDamyj said:

Apologies for doublepost.



Hey, Bungie made good stuff back before they joined Microshaft. Pathways into Darkness? Marathon?

And I do respect Miyamoto, to some extent.

Sorry, never heard of thoes games :-)

and the only think I know about Miyamoto is that he made Zelda and Mario. Zelda...mmmmm Zelda...

I've seen very little from Id in recent years that makes me really care about whether they get bought over or not. They (or rather J Carmack) produce good engines, other people make good games with them. I play the games. I buy into the creative side of things. I don't care about what went on to make the engine and all the maths behind it. I don't care who makes the engine. I don't care who owns the rights to the engine. It's the end product I like. Carmack is a genius, no question. Will he be any less so if working for someone else? Is he really going to walk into a deal where he is restricted by the company he works for? If he does, more fool him. Sooner or later he will give up and retire anyway. There are other geniuses out there.

Id do not make good, rounded games anymore IMO. Perhaps a buyout by someone who does would be no bad thing. Seeing as how id don't produce the goods themselves anymore, it's no big loss to me either way because I don't really like their end product. I just like the component part that they contribute to other people's end products.

What about their legendary care and concern for their fanbase? I don't really buy into that bit of id fandom. I agree they are enthusiasts and love what they do and have striven to retain their independence. I admire that. I'm also aware that the small size of the company has often been listed as something that has restricted, limited or exposed them in some way too. However, I've bought their games for over 12 years now. A large proportion of the games on my shelf have "id" written on the cover. I see no great loyalty bonuses for that. They make a game that costs the same as the other games sitting beside it on the shelves. I don't see them making me better deals, I don't see them producing less buggy games than other big names and I don't see them being quicker or better at releasing patches than other companies do for the other games I play. I've seen id say they care about their fanbase. I've seen fans say it too, but I've seen precious little to demonstrate that they do. I don't really expect it BTW, I'm just fed up of people telling me how much they rock because they care. Don't confuse knowing the names of the handful of people running the company rather than them just being a faceless corporation as them somehow caring. What personal experience of that "care" have you seen?

Crying over 11 mil, versus 40 mil versus 20 mil? Remind me to give a shit. Just redirect one of those lousy million in my direction and see how much difference it makes to my life.


Hmmm, that came out as far more of a rant than I expected. I don't feel as strongly as perhaps that indicates. It's just that the game, the thing I play, is what matters and the state of id is pretty immaterial to me. Especially as these days they no longer produce the really fun stuff themselves. If their position as a small, independent game company made their games better and more fun, then them being bought over would be a loss. But it doesn't (anymore) so it doesn't matter to me what they do.

KwadDamyj said:

Hey, Bungie made good stuff back before they joined Microshaft. Pathways into Darkness? Marathon?

bungie has never made a good game. marathon in particular is a silly knockoff of system shock.

dethtoll said:

bungie has never made a good game. marathon in particular is a silly knockoff of system shock.

Marathon and System Shock were both released in 1994. Are you saying Bungee somehow ripped off System Shock as it was being developed? :P

udderdude said:

Marathon and System Shock were both released in 1994. Are you saying Bungee somehow ripped off System Shock as it was being developed? :P

All I know is that System Shock 2 was a great freakin game, and System Shock 1 is freeware now. Check out the Looking Glass Clasics freeware page: http://lgclassics.freylia.net/dl.html

yeah, I really do not like Bungie anyhow. I hate Halo with all of my little black heart.

Enjay said:

Crying over 11 mil, versus 40 mil versus 20 mil? Remind me to give a shit. Just redirect one of those lousy million in my direction and see how much difference it makes to my life.

Just to digress, if I were entitled to $40 million I would stab people to make sure I got it, I think he's got beef. I know $11 mil is a lot, but $40 sounds so much better.

udderdude said:

Marathon and System Shock were both released in 1994. Are you saying Bungee somehow ripped off System Shock as it was being developed? :P

okay, maybe a bit of an exaggeration there. maybe not: system shock came out on march 26th, 1994, and marathon came out in december (not sure on exact date, don't really care)

development time back then, mind, was a hell of a lot shorter than it is now...

NO!! Don't let iD get bought out... Too bad for carmack I guess.

At least we still have all the doom games... I wonder if after this iD will be able to continue their legacy as pioneers in the gaming industry. I mean, Quake again?
Hopefully they will release some cool new stuff that doesn't rely on the success of their old popular franchises. Not that any of that stuff is bad, or that their new games will NEED the reputation of their other games, just saying. It would be cool to see iD start something really new and gameplay-wise extremely innovative.

ATTN MORONS: ID IS NOT GETTING BOUGHT OUT, PLEASE ACQUIRE SOME READING COMPREHENSION SKILLS, STAT

Nick Perrin said:

It would be cool to see iD start something really new and gameplay-wise extremely innovative.

Funny thing about innovation that I have observed, at least when it comes to some people on Internet forums. They whine constantly about a lack of innovation and originality, and then when they get it they bitch and moan some more about how the new thing is too different from the old one.

The original Unreal is a classic example. Reviewers about that time constantly bitched about how FPS weapons were all pistol, shotgun, machine gun and so forth with little to no variation. Unreal shows up with a set of mostly highly original weapons and gets panned for it. The same goes for music. A band I like who gets slagged off for always doing the same kind of music released an album full of tracks absolutely nothing like what they normally do, and people bitched about how different it was.

Let's face it, the FPS genre doesn't have a whole hell of a lot of room for flexibility. Your job is to control the character with a view from their eyes, and kill bad guys. It's not like you're gonna stop and discuss the finer points of Dryden's translation of the Aeneid with them. The basic formula hasn't changed since Wolfenstein 3D. And that's fine by me. So long as developers keep making them look and sound better, and give me new worlds to explore, I'm happy.

gemini09 said:

John fired his own brother?

They are not relatives ;)

BackToTopic(TM):
I give a shit about Adrian, as long as JC makes good engines.

Anmd for that engine selling thingy, i hope someone at EA(tshit) makes up his mind and will produce a new SysShock with the D3 Engine ^-^
But i doubt as they only sell shitty mainstream crap nowadays. Gone the days of the 8-bit BardsTale glory.......

BTW:
The "invention" of Q3 cant be that bad, it brought me Alice and with that many hours of fun ^.^ (Yeah!!! DIE EVIL CARD DIE!!!)

JoelMurdoch said:

The basic formula hasn't changed since Wolfenstein 3D.

i hardly like to think of deus ex as following anything so mundane as a "basic formula." or hell, thief. on thief's expert difficulty level, you fail the mission if you kill someone.

Bastet Furry said:

produce a new SysShock with the D3 Engine ^-^

Nah, they're making BioShock instead. Not usin the D3 engine either. :p

dethtoll said:

i hardly like to think of deus ex as following anything so mundane as a "basic formula." or hell, thief. on thief's expert difficulty level, you fail the mission if you kill someone.

You're right. Most of the major FPS hits since Doom have all done something to give them a sense of identity in their own right, Deus Ex and Thief being two good examples. But the bottom line is, they are still FPSs, albeit with better than normal spins and additions to the formula.

JoelMurdoch said:

Funny thing about innovation that I have observed, at least when it comes to some people on Internet forums. They whine constantly about a lack of innovation and originality, and then when they get it they bitch and moan some more about how the new thing is too different from the old one.

The original Unreal is a classic example. Reviewers about that time constantly bitched about how FPS weapons were all pistol, shotgun, machine gun and so forth with little to no variation. Unreal shows up with a set of mostly highly original weapons and gets panned for it. The same goes for music. A band I like who gets slagged off for always doing the same kind of music released an album full of tracks absolutely nothing like what they normally do, and people bitched about how different it was.

Let's face it, the FPS genre doesn't have a whole hell of a lot of room for flexibility. Your job is to control the character with a view from their eyes, and kill bad guys. It's not like you're gonna stop and discuss the finer points of Dryden's translation of the Aeneid with them. The basic formula hasn't changed since Wolfenstein 3D. And that's fine by me. So long as developers keep making them look and sound better, and give me new worlds to explore, I'm happy.

People dislike having to change radically fast. Sad, really.

Sometimes I wonder why people can't just play the games. Is it because we're always striving for a new and greater high?

KwadDamyj said:

People dislike having to change radically fast. Sad, really.

Sometimes I wonder why people can't just play the games. Is it because we're always striving for a new and greater high?

I think they're just getting too old for games and don't enjoy them as much anymore. They desperately look for the same high they got playing NES games as a kid, only to find .. surprise, it's not there anymore :P

Some of them bitch just because they want to look cool .. which is pretty sad, really.

JoelMurdoch said:

They whine constantly about a lack of innovation and originality, and then when they get it they bitch and moan some more about how the new thing is too different from the old one.

That's easily explained. Most of these groups of fans are split into the ones who want change and the ones who don't. The former will complain when things remain redundant and the latter will complain when they don't. Remember that nobody ever says anything unless it's about something bugging them, and that should solve any befuddlement (although it's equally irritating regardless of the reasoning behind it).

JoelMurdoch said:

Funny thing about innovation that I have observed, at least when it comes to some people on Internet forums. They whine constantly about a lack of innovation and originality, and then when they get it they bitch and moan some more about how the new thing is too different from the old one.

The original Unreal is a classic example. Reviewers about that time constantly bitched about how FPS weapons were all pistol, shotgun, machine gun and so forth with little to no variation. Unreal shows up with a set of mostly highly original weapons and gets panned for it. The same goes for music. A band I like who gets slagged off for always doing the same kind of music released an album full of tracks absolutely nothing like what they normally do, and people bitched about how different it was.

Let's face it, the FPS genre doesn't have a whole hell of a lot of room for flexibility. Your job is to control the character with a view from their eyes, and kill bad guys. It's not like you're gonna stop and discuss the finer points of Dryden's translation of the Aeneid with them. The basic formula hasn't changed since Wolfenstein 3D. And that's fine by me. So long as developers keep making them look and sound better, and give me new worlds to explore, I'm happy.

Unreal 1 is a great frikin game, I don't care what anyone says. Unreal is easily one of the best 10 Single Player FPS games of all time (although Doom was better ;-)

JoelMurdoch said:

Funny thing about innovation that I have observed, at least when it comes to some people on Internet forums. They whine constantly about a lack of innovation and originality, and then when they get it they bitch and moan some more about how the new thing is too different from the old one.

Uh no, not really. You see the internet is a means of communication for DIFFERENT PEOPLE. *SOME* of us want innovtion (most of us I would guess). But everyone has the right to critique certain gameplay aspects. This is a myth propagated by desginers and people who lack creativity, its called projection (ie i cant make or enjoy games that arent exactly like the last guys game so... uh... *people really dont even want originality!* yeah thats it!") CArmack is guitlty of this too.

The original Unreal is a classic example. Reviewers about that time constantly bitched about how FPS weapons were all pistol, shotgun, machine gun and so forth with little to no variation. Unreal shows up with a set of mostly highly original weapons and gets panned for it.

actually its a perfect example of the myth in action. Unreal was a very poorly designed game. The weapons were original concepts, but basically pea shooters that did little damage and annoyed the hell out of everyone who actuallly played the game and didnt just drool at the graphics

Once again, we all want originality, but we also want BALANCE. Theres no contradiction there, unorginal people USE that contradiction to say "ah - ha! you guys dont really want original ideas in your games do you?" What we want is new ideas done well.

JoelMurdoch said:

Let's face it, the FPS genre doesn't have a whole hell of a lot of room for flexibility. Your job is to control the character with a view from their eyes, and kill bad guys. It's not like you're gonna stop and discuss the finer points of Dryden's translation of the Aeneid with them. The basic formula hasn't changed since Wolfenstein 3D. And that's fine by me. So long as developers keep making them look and sound better, and give me new worlds to explore, I'm happy.

I really feel sorry for people like this, and that is by no means an insult or flame.

Its interesting that you can imagine nothing better or more complex than shooting down cliched bad guys other than discussing the finer points of literature. The best I can tell you is to check out System shock 2, (or system shock 1, or theif, or deus ex, etc... ) and get back with us. These are "original FPSes" in any sense of the term. Theyre perfect examples of where the genre shoudl be goin imo. The only way you can say these games are "modifications of a formula" is if you define the "formula" of FPSes so broadly that you render it useless for discussion.

No ones asking for games to be so crazy theyre outside the genre, were asking for better more origninal FPSes. I love the genre, and I still play all the id games despite my critisicm.

PS Bioshock looks great, check out the interview Ken Levine gives on that site

The news left me so depressed yesterday it was creepy.

Wobbo said:

Unreal was a very poorly designed game. The weapons were original concepts, but basically pea shooters that did little damage and annoyed the hell out of everyone who actuallly played the game and didnt just drool at the graphics

It may have been a little boring, but I think thats only because there was no dialog. I have, as well as many people I know, have beaten the game multiple times and love it to death. I don't find anything wrong with the weapons. little damage? would you rather see Rise of the Triad's weapons in it? the game was about story and intense combat sequences. Its not that people didn't like the weapons, its that people wanted deathmatch. People just want to shoot each other, and Unreal Tournament brought that. Unreal 1 deathmath wasn't very fun. I enjoyed it for a few days.

However, Quake 3 beat the shit out of Unreal Tournament.

Zeroth said:

It may have been a little boring, but I think thats only because there was no dialog. I have, as well as many people I know, have beaten the game multiple times and love it to death. I don't find anything wrong with the weapons. little damage? would you rather see Rise of the Triad's weapons in it? the game was about story and intense combat sequences. Its not that people didn't like the weapons, its that people wanted deathmatch. People just want to shoot each other, and Unreal Tournament brought that. Unreal 1 deathmath wasn't very fun. I enjoyed it for a few days.

However, Quake 3 beat the shit out of Unreal Tournament.

Edit: Agreed, the game may have lost focus as it progressed.

I'm waiting for Penny Arcade to make a comic about this, so I can paste it here. It'll be fun :)