Why Doesn't id Develop Their Other Games Themselves Anymore?

[A Nobody]

Remember when they made their games? Wolfenstein, Commander Keen, and Quake. Now they have other devs do it, and all they make now is Doom. What happened? Machine Games makes the Wolfenstein games now. Zenimax made the new Commander Keen game. Mad Dog Games handled Quake Champions. Rage is done by a different team. All id Software does is make Doom. Sure they check on their other series', but they don't seem to care. It doesn't matter to them if Wolfenstein fails. They want to make sure Doom is successful. Oh and remember Heretic, Hexen, and Strife Quest For The Sigil? They ignore those.

[Nevander]

The short answer I would say is: money and efficiency.

 

The long answer: Making games these days is no doubt a huge undertaking. The standards are so high that it takes a very long time and a big team to even make one game. If only one team had to make every new game in every franchise the company owns, the time it would take to get new entries in the other franchises would be much, much longer. Many games are being worked on simultaneously by all the different teams. With more teams, they don't have to work on one and wait to finish it before starting another.

 

I don't know how id Software pulled it off back in the day. I suppose they were all very talented and the games were simple by comparison.

[Biodegradable]

3 hours ago, Nevander said:

I don't know how id Software pulled it off back in the day. I suppose they were all very talented and the games were simple by comparison.

 

Very much so. Games, while always a challenge to create, were a fair bit simpler back in the 90s. It probably also helped OG id that they were a powerhouse of talented dudes who could combine their passions together and create some truly unique and industry-defining games and technology. But the days of small studios doing everything themselves is a thing of the past, at least where the mainstream AAA side of the games industry is concerned. Nowadays, they need to make games to be giant, sprawling adventures using massive game-worlds with seemingly infinite amounts of content to suck you dry. Mind you, the growing indie game scene has seen the growth of small-time development teams and solo developers, so the spirit of what OG id was made of lives on. 

Edited July 1, 2020 by Biodegradable

[Gez]

1 hour ago, The Strife Commando said:

Oh and remember Heretic, Hexen, and Strife Quest For The Sigil? They ignore those.

Heretic, Hexen: Raven Software

Strife: Rogue+Velocity

[seed]

2 hours ago, The Strife Commando said:

Oh and remember Heretic, Hexen, and Strife Quest For The Sigil? They ignore those.

 

Not like they could do much with them even if they wanted, apparently not even Raven itself can. They're also Doom engine games, not id Software products, Hexetic is Raven and Strife is Rogue/Velocity.

 

As for the question, likely because game development is now much more difficult and complex, taking a lot more resources and time to complete, and a company has finite resources, especially since triple-A games need to be so... big nowadays to be worth a damn I suppose. Granted the tools available nowadays are also vastly superior to the primitive stuff available back in the '90s which eases the process a bit, but the other issues still remains. They'd have to focus on one game at a time, and if anything id Software seems to want to do more things at once, so they decided to allow others to give the remaining IPs a spin while they do their own thing.

[Mr. Freeze]

Farming games out is the only reason id is able to make games more than once or twice a decade. Doom 4 started development in 2007. Wolfenstein 2009 started development in 2001. If id did all work in-house, we would have never have gotten Wolfenstein The New Order, much less Doom Eternal. 

[smeghammer]

Don't forget iD Software are no longer independent - they are owned by Zenimax, parent company of Bethesda, and have been for more than 10 years. Therefore, they likely have less control over what they can do - at least nowhere near as much as they did prior to them being acquired:

 

• https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/zenimax-acquires-id-software
• https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/115127/Bethesda_Parent_ZeniMax_Acquires_id_Software.php
• https://venturebeat.com/2009/06/24/zenimax-media-buys-id-software-legendary-maker-of-doom/

It's a shame, but that's economic reality. The name was likely kept because it was/is well known in the FPS world.

 

Edited July 1, 2020 by smeghammer

[magicsofa]

Because graphics.

[Maes]

9 minutes ago, magicsofa said:

Because graphics.

It'd be interesting to see what percentage of a modern game's dev resources goes to the actual engine, gameplay etc. and how much goes to art assets, cutscenes, 3D models, voice acting, lip syncing etc.

[cybdmn]

4 hours ago, The Strife Commando said:

Remember when they made their games? Wolfenstein, Commander Keen, and Quake. Now they have other devs do it, and all they make now is Doom.

 

 

Do YOU remember? Because since more than 15 years id Software let others do (some of) their games.

 

Examples:

Return to Castle Wolfenstein (2001) Nerve/Gray Matter

Quake 4 (2005) Raven

ET: Quake Wars (2007) Splash Damage

Wolfenstein (2009) Raven

 

And these are only some full games, if you take AddOns into account, that reaches back to the mid-nineties, starting with the Quake Mission Packs.

[Doomkid]

5 minutes ago, cybdmn said:

 

 

Do YOU remember? Because since more than 15 years id Software let others do (some of) their games.

 

Examples:

Return to Castle Wolfenstein (2001) Nerve/Gray Matter

Quake 4 (2005) Raven

ET: Quake Wars (2007) Splash Damage

Wolfenstein (2009) Raven

 

And these are only some full games, if you take AddOns into account, that reaches back to the mid-nineties, starting with the Quake Mission Packs.

What about TNT and Plutonia? Those lazy bastards have been outsourcing development since the Doom era! Hack frauds if ever I've seen them. (inb4 Marphy sues me)

[cybdmn]

Wheren't the Master Levels released before Final Doom? And what's the deal with the Spear of Destiny mission packs by FormGen?

[FractalBeast]

1 hour ago, magicsofa said:

Because graphics.

Because graphics and associated topics, perhaps?

 

I imagine that it's not just graphics, but also compression, what with the 50+ gb installs these days.

[Gez]

And the Catacomb series? They made Catacomb 3D but then Catacomb Abyss, Catacomb Armageddon and Catacomb Apocalypse were all made by SoftDisk...

 

Just now, FractalBeast said:

I imagine that it's not just graphics, but also compression, what with the 50+ gb installs these days.

Animations can take a lot of space, especially if you have a lot of conversations in your game. (Speaking of: voice acting.)

 

 

This vid can serve as an overview of how much stuff goes into it.

[cu2]

It's also that most games are under a strict time constraint, thus requiring more people. It's insane how they can pump out games this often these days. It's so easy to mess up and then have little to no time to make things right.

[A Nobody]

2 hours ago, cybdmn said:

 

 

Do YOU remember? Because since more than 15 years id Software let others do (some of) their games.

 

Examples:

Return to Castle Wolfenstein (2001) Nerve/Gray Matter

Quake 4 (2005) Raven

ET: Quake Wars (2007) Splash Damage

Wolfenstein (2009) Raven

 

And these are only some full games, if you take AddOns into account, that reaches back to the mid-nineties, starting with the Quake Mission Packs.

I thought id made Return To Castle Wolfenstein themselves? Yes I know of the other ones. Those are part of the topic.

[Chip]

I think @Nevander's answer seems the most realistic. Not to get too off topic, but I feel like the new ID team (only a few, not the whole team) should take like just a few hours out of their day to make a WAD for DOOM to celebrate DOOM's birthday or something.

 

although, I never thought ID made that many games. If you search them up, it gives them like 50 credits to games, but most of them they just supervised projects by other developers. C'mon ID! EA releases like 10 crappy games a year! all you can do is create some of the best games of all time and actually take your time on it to make masterpieces!!! ^LoL

[A Nobody]

10 hours ago, Gez said:

Heretic, Hexen: Raven Software

Strife: Rogue+Velocity

Doesn't id own the rights for the games as well?

[Edward850]

18 minutes ago, The Strife Commando said:

Doesn't id own the rights for the games as well?

No. Especially with Strife which they didn't even publish themselves. 

Edited July 1, 2020 by Edward850

[Foebane72]

I remember Heretic coming out back in the day, then Hexen (a personal favourite) and then Hexen 2 (meh)...

 

...and for some reason, Heretic 2 came out, totally different premise, third-person, and not Raven (AFAIK) - WTAF!?

 

[Gez]

3 minutes ago, Foebane72 said:

and not Raven

Heretic II was definitely done in-house by Raven Software.

 

Just look at the game's credits.

https://www.heretichexen.com/heretic2/credits/

 

The Raffel bros, Brian Pelletier, Michael Raymond-Judy, Eric Biessman, Patrick Lipo, James Monroe... A lot of the same names you'll see on the Heretic and Hexen credits.

[Foebane72]

Just now, Gez said:

Heretic II was definitely done in-house by Raven Software.

 

Why did they do that? It wasn't even an id Tech, AFAIK (again). The idea was it was meant to be the Serpent Riders Trilogy, no more. It feels like breaking a contract with id Software, if you ask me.

 

[Gez]

Romero's idea was to make three games: Heretic, Hexen, Hecatomb; which would gradually move from Doom's simple action formula to traditional CRPG with branching paths. They did Heretic, then Hexen, then Romero was booted out of id Software after Quake was released, so they did their own thing. If there was an informal contract, it's id that broke it by firing the guy they were working with.

 

They made Hexen II with the Quake engine, largely keeping Hexen's formula instead of going deeper into RPG mechanics; and then they did Heretic II with a different plot because it was the sequel to the adventures of Heretic's protagonist, not a fourth opus in the Serpent Riders saga. Heretic II was done with the Quake II engine, by the way, so your second AFAIK is wrong again.

[Foebane72]

2 minutes ago, Gez said:

Romero's idea was to make three games: Heretic, Hexen, Hecatomb; which would gradually move from Doom's simple action formula to traditional CRPG with branching paths. They did Heretic, then Hexen, then Romero was booted out of id Software after Quake was released, so they did their own thing. If there was an informal contract, it's id that broke it by firing the guy they were working with.

 

They made Hexen II with the Quake engine, largely keeping Hexen's formula instead of going deeper into RPG mechanics; and then they did Heretic II with a different plot because it was the sequel to the adventures of Heretic's protagonist, not a fourth opus in the Serpent Riders saga. Heretic II was done with the Quake II engine, by the way, so your second AFAIK is wrong again.

 

Thanks for the explanation. Yes, with the AFAIKs, I was leaving myself open to welcome corrections, rather than assuming what I said was correct :)