The guy we all love to hate on id, John Carmack and game/level design

Interesting video, I'll have to finish it later on when I have more time (and maybe a Wi-Fi connection, heh)

Thanks for sharing this Mar

Marnetmar said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHAlkDdro6s

cool

lol his rant on PC Piracy. I don't know the numbers and how it truly harms triple A games but I'm sure you always put it as a factor. My family was huge into piracy, I played most of my first games via piracy copies. The mass exposure raised me to be a heavy gamer who spends quite a bit in games of quality.

Treat your fans well, be ethical, produce good games and don't try squeeze us for too much money and you got yourself loyal fans and buyers imo.

Chezza said:

lol his rant on PC Piracy. I don't know the numbers and how it truly harms triple A games but I'm sure you always put it has a factor. My family was huge into piracy, I played most of my first games via piracy copies. The mass exposure raised me to be a heavy gamer who spends quite a bit in games of quality.

Treat your fans well, be ethical, produce good games and don't try squeeze us for too much money and you got yourself loyal fans and buyers imo.

Is he honestly still beating that bandwagon? I wish he'd fuck off.

Meanwhile there are single player games cracked on day 1, like Bethesda's games, that are raking in the cash, easily!

Actually, you'd be hard pressed to find a SP game that cannot be pirated, 99% get cracked, things are this way for many years. I don't see PC gaming dying, on the contrary the new funding methods, crowdfunding and early access have guaranteed an unstoppable stream of games.

Big publishers just get annoyed that their crappy uninspired games sometimes don't sell well and blame piracy.

This guy is the Rick Berman of id software.

I guess I'm a little out of the loop. Why does everyone hate Tim Willits? Is it because of his anti-piracy rants, or other things?

He had nothing to do with the development of the original two doom games (co-authoring some maps for a retail rerelease doesn't amount to anything with respect to the creation of Doom)

It is my understanding he gradually took over iD as the quality went downhill and the company was unproductive and lost the lead in FPS games. So he has some responsibility for that.

He also isn't cool lkke the other guys and he has said some annoying shit. He isn't a pioneer.

Technician said:

This guy is the Rick Berman of id software.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq8O7i4gI3k

VGA said:

He had nothing to do with the development of the original two doom games (co-authoring some maps for a retail rerelease doesn't amount to anything with respect to the creation of Doom)

It is my understanding he gradually took over iD as the quality went downhill and the company was unproductive and lost the lead in FPS games. So he has some responsibility for that.

He also isn't cool lkke the other guys and he has said some annoying shit. He isn't a pioneer.

Does that mean he's basically the uncreative force behind modern Id after all the good members left?

VGA said:

He had nothing to do with the development of the original two doom games (co-authoring some maps for a retail rerelease doesn't amount to anything with respect to the creation of Doom)

It is my understanding he gradually took over iD as the quality went downhill and the company was unproductive and lost the lead in FPS games. So he has some responsibility for that.

He also isn't cool lkke the other guys and he has said some annoying shit. He isn't a pioneer.

Disagree completely, I think he's a pretty cool guy, and Quake 2 is also my second favorite id game, which he had quite a hand in.

Quasar said:

Is he honestly still beating that bandwagon? I wish he'd fuck off.

Well, I dunno. But this video is from before Quake Live was even named Quake Live. So it's old.

Chezza said:

lol his rant on PC Piracy. I don't know the numbers and how it truly harms triple A games but I'm sure you always put it as a factor. My family was huge into piracy, I played most of my first games via piracy copies. The mass exposure raised me to be a heavy gamer who spends quite a bit in games of quality.

Treat your fans well, be ethical, produce good games and don't try squeeze us for too much money and you got yourself loyal fans and buyers imo.

Honestly, this is about as smart as the film or music industry attacking piracy problems. Despite all the websites and programs that allow you to easily download all this shit for free, exactly none of these industries are suffering to any appreciable degree. The Internet age is slowly ushering us into an era of free content, where you no longer own the rights to something when it's released to the public. The gaming/film/music sectors are just gonna have to fucking deal with it! Hell, we all will, any one of us who creates content has to submit to public consumption once it's released.

So do we all hate Tim Willits nowadays then? I must have missed the memo.

fraggle said:

So do we all hate Tim Willits nowadays then? I must have missed the memo.

He has been booed off stage at some events. Quite a feat for a mere game designer type.

fraggle said:

So do we all hate Tim Willits nowadays then? I must have missed the memo.

Where have you been?

Technician said:

This guy is the Rick Berman of id software.

I don't get the analogy? Roddenberry was of course a visionary in his day, but his ideas later on were wacky. If Berman didn't have as much control as he did to steer the franchise more toward sanity, I doubt you'd have seen more than two seasons of The Next Generation before it got canceled. Personally I thought Deep Space Nine was good for the most part, Voyager was where it really went off the rails (for me anyway - it had some good episodes but mostly I didn't like it). I'm not sure how much you can blame that on Berman though. Star Trek became a cash cow and Paramount of course wanted to milk that for all it was worth. They did 21 seasons of 3 different 1-hour shows for 14 years non-stop, and a lot of that they were running 2 shows at once. Then they started yet another show soon after that which ran for 4 seasons. They were bound to run out of good ideas at some point. If your comparison was to iD's downfall, I'm thinking most television franchises wish they had a Rick Berman to run them into the ground in such a profitable manner.

Edit: I forgot 4 movies.

Ahh, pro-piracy arguments... Always a blast to adapt them to other mediums and see how they hold up.

"what do you mean, concussions? i hit my head as a kid and i turned out fine, so that must be bullshit because i'm clearly the center of the world and nobody could possibly have a different experience"
"all those road signs are so pointless. people will get into traffic accidents no matter what, whether it's 10 people or 100,000. if you can't make it 100% safe then it's not worth doing anything, duh"
"um, no, crime doesn't hurt the grocery store industry. don't you see walmart is doing fine? mom&pop shops clearly aren't working hard enough, they should just fucking deal with it. in unrelated reasons i hate how everything is into the hands of a few conglomerates now; HOW DID THAT EVER HAPPEN"

Phml said:

HOW DID THAT EVER HAPPEN

Petty thieves?

I'm sorry to ask, I actually don't know.

i, too, enjoy the positive effects of anti-piracy concepts as applied to the beloved mediums of head injury, traffic controlling, and uh grocery store related crimes

Impie said:

Does that mean he's basically the uncreative force behind modern Id after all the good members left?

Only if you consider Quake 1, 2 and 3 and Doom 3 to be "uncreative"

He also took Romero's job because Carmack though his levels were better, same way he thought Romero's levels were better than Tom Hall's.

Phml said:

Ahh, pro-piracy arguments... Always a blast to adapt them to other mediums and see how they hold up.

Like you, I don't really sympathize with people who download or "share" things that have price tags elsewhere either. However, as far as I'm concerned, I do have to agree with the majority that overactive anti-piracy measures that conflict with the interests of paying customers isn't the best way to go.

I think when you buy a game you deserve to keep the game. Not a digital copy that can be disabled under circumstances out of your control.

Marnetmar said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHAlkDdro6s

Thanks for sharing this, I enjoyed it.

Impie said:

I guess I'm a little out of the loop. Why does everyone hate Tim Willits? Is it because of his anti-piracy rants, or other things?

My only complaint about Mr. Willits, is the idea of 'Always-On DRM', adjacent to what Xbox One's original direction before Microsoft upset a lot of gamers. I honestly can't blame people for arguing against such a system or ideal. People still have to live with a crappy connection were the speeds are compared to a dial-up connection (28.8k), and some people might not a stable connection at all -- too were you have more downtime than uptime. Then of course, you have those individuals that simply have no access to an internet connection, such as those in the military and deployed.

You wouldn't download a car!

Quasar said:

You wouldn't download a car!

Actually, with the advent of 3D printing for the masses, you could very easily download a car, print all the parts, then drive it.

GhostlyDeath said:

Actually, with the advent of 3D printing for the masses, you could very easily download a car, print all the parts, then drive it.

Is it possible to 3D print with materials strong enough to withstand constant combustion and high compression? Of course all necessary fluids, electronics and maybe even rubber would have to be sourced else where.

I don't think you can easily download a car and 3D print it into a working thing. Easily, definitely no.

Chezza said:

Is it possible to 3D print with materials strong enough to withstand constant combustion and high compression? Of course all necessary fluids, electronics and maybe even rubber would have to be sourced else where.

I don't think you can easily download a car and 3D print it into a working thing. Easily, definitely no.

Yes. They 3D print airplane engine parts these days and people themselves can have high quality 3D printed metal bits if they cannot do it themselves.

Technician said:

Where have you been?

If someone could summarize why he's unpopular, that would be nice.

DooM_RO said:

He also took Romero's job because Carmack though his levels were better, same way he thought Romero's levels were better than Tom Hall's.

I think that's a gross over simplification of why Romero left.

This interview was published in 2013 on youtube but it had to be recorded sometime in 2007, because he refers to Quake Live as "Quake Zero" which is its development title.

Going by what Tim Willits says in this interview, he is more or less a businessman than a creative visionary. He states early in the interview that he was originally in the university of minnesota majoring in business finance/management/something. It wasn't until he played E1M1 of Doom and opened the first door in his dorm room in college that turned his career path into video game design. (His story of experiencing doom for the first time sounds pretty invigorating btw)

When you listen to John Romero and Tom Hall talk about games, they say things like "We do this and that because this a more fun and engaging experience for the player" and when you listen to Tim Willits talk he says things like "We do this but not that because thats where the profits are" or something to that effect. Respectfully, id software is still a business but it doesnt seem like he does what he does to maximize fun for the player as much as he's trying to capitalize on the industry.

I don't know how much weight that carries because thats only how he sounds like to me when he talks. He is pretty positive when he speaks about Sandy Petersen and John Romero, which is cool, and I'd say he knows a good bit about multiplayer FFA, though.