Is id Software slowly dying off?

[Thorgrim103]

(Before anyone assumes I have the ability to play the games I am about to talk about I don't the rant is more or less taken from what I've seen of internet articles reviews and how much people talk about it online. I do not own a ps3 or 360 or a pc powerul enough to run things like Rage or Deus ex:Hr I don't play many if at all new brand new pc games)

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It's come to my attention over the past few years that I personally and slowly resent id Software.

In it's hayday it was extremely successful with doom heretic hexen and most of all Quake. (Though I cannot say as I have not played any of the quake games)

id is like a sister company to you could say Valve or Valve was the next id. It innovated and did what it did best. Hell it was Gabe Newell who pushed to have Doom on Windows.

Though these two companies parallel black and white. Valve is extremely successful. id is just THERE. Every few years releasing a new game maybe a pack of all the doom games. Yet id software just seems to hang there we like it but it's just collecting dust like a knick nack.

id has released around 3 games that were prominent in the past 5 years maybe or 4.

There's Quake Live, Wolfenstien , Rage, and Doom BFG.

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Quake live was fairly successful it seems. I haven't checked it out in a long while, but interesting concept.

Wolfenstein: Who played that anyone no not me, it was different. I didn't really like the look of it. Was said to be fun, but flew under most off the radar.

Rage:In my opinion I disliked the fact they made Rage. They should of worked on Doom 4 and gotten it done first then moved onto Rage. When I heard about rage I was upset I wanted Doom 4. Now Rage is interesting but all I've ever heard about it is it's technical difficulties and problems. I am surprised id is making new content for it. I haven't played it at all, maybe it's fun. Yet I don't ever see anyone talking about it anymore.

Doom 3 BFG: rehash as they would call it. I assumed this was graphical upgraded. Nope it's just a compilation with minor changes. I don't hate id for trying to raise funds. Yet I feel this was just for the money.
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So yeah id seems to be doing good they hold quakecon each year. A con where nothing happens doom wise or quake wise or anything.

My main issue with id is that I am worried they're going to become
3D Realms and Doom 4 will become vaporware due to id not having any money. They never give us a single update on hows it going or if they are even developing the damn game. It makes me feel like id Software is just dicking around not doing anything. It makes me feel uneasy.

It's like the Love hate of George Lucas. I love your movies, but I think you're an idiot sometimes. Please do better.

id Software is the same way. Valve is slow, but id software is slower.
Valve has compilations of games. We don't see a Quake compilation or any sort of classic commander keen pack. id has money to be made and I assume it needs.

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Maybe I am just butthurt I have no Doom 4. I just fear that it will be in development for so long it will disappear. Hl3 we kinda know valve is working on it, but we don't see anything of it.

Doom 4 Well no news no oh and were working on it. Just Rage and rehashes of Doom over and over and over.

Give us a new Commander Keen make a platformer. Make a new catacombs. Do something that will raise funds so you can possibly get this stuff done.

Sorry, if you dislike my opinion I might be missing some news or something. Please what do you think of the state of id.
do you think they're doing enough

Or is it the stale donut that has nice icing but for some reason is a little hard.

I love id software, but their icing has been licked and we need new content.

[Gez]

I don't think Id Software is financially in danger, since they have ZeniMax behind them.



On innovation: Id ceased to be a pioneer a long while ago. Quake 3 Arena was their last groundbreaking game; and even then Quake 3 was merely an incremental update on the Quake engine rather than a revolution like previous engines were. The lighting system in Doom 3 (its main selling point, tech-wise) mostly resulted in everything being pitch dark so that the hardware of the time could handle what few lit pixels there were to compute. The megatexture stuff in Rage served mostly to show the complete disregard that chipset vendors had cultivated towards OpenGL over the last decade.

Id's pioneering days were firmly in the twentieth century. It's old. It's gone. It's prehistory. It dates back from before the Afghan War. Internet was still something that worked with screechy modems and was mostly found in universities; rather than something ubiquitous which replaced everything else except physical goods and transportation.



Note that Valve isn't much for pioneering either. Valve is wildly successful because it has managed to turn Steam into an attractive platform; but if you look at them purely as a game company, what have they done since Half-Life? Pretty much nothing. Valve's most popular titles (Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2, Portal, Left 4 Dead...) were only Valve's because they hired the entire teams behind these titles. That's flair for headhunting rather than innovation.



About Rage and Doom 4: I think it was for the good of Doom 4 that Rage happened first. It allowed to test the waters for the new technologies they wanted to use in Doom 4, and forced the chipset vendors to wake up and fix their support of the latest OpenGL specs. ATI and Intel, in particular, desperately needed that kick in the butt. Still need it, in fact. Remember the disastrous launch of Rage, with everyone posting screenshots and footage of grotesque glitches? Think about what this would have done to the Doom franchise if this had happened for Doom 4 instead... When Doom 4 finally happens, it should get a much smoother launch than poor Rage.

[Thorgrim103]

Wow, that is great to know. I typed this up purely out of the unwavering fear of not knowing if anything was really going on.

I didn't even know about the chipset thing and rage. Or the fact that Doom 4 might use texturing like that too. I appreciate the information I don't feel so weary now.

I mention Valve mainly due to the fact both were pinoneers with the FPS games they made.

I don't know much about Zenimax. Didn't they work on new vegas. I really liked that and Zenimax and obsidean really went back to the far more classic Fallout 1 and 2 world in some regards.

Yet is Zenimax just a publisher or do they develop games too?

[Gez]

ZeniMax itself is purely a holding company. Bethesda made Fallout 3, and Obsidian made New Vegas based on the FO3 engine and assets, but without direct involvement of Bethesda in the game's development.

[_bruce_]

Great observation, but nothing lasts forever.
id has been a pioneer and a world class athlete for a long time, in tech years, and now the magic is gone.
Times, and the world as a whole, have been undergoing drastic changes and many things have lost their value/meaning.
It's a game world issue you're talking about but it also bears some overall resemblance with the globe in general.

[wildweasel]

2009's Wolfenstein does kick a lot of ass, but it's a shame that Raven Software is now relegated to CoD map packs and maybe the odd X-Men game.

[Captain Ventris]

Now, Rescue Rover? Definitely the golden era of iD, am I right, guys?

[Gez]

When I was a kid and only knew about this game by its title, I thought it was a game where you piloted a robot to grab stranded astronauts and bring them back to safety. A rover used for rescue. Heh.

[Caffeine Freak]

Gez said:

About Rage and Doom 4: I think it was for the good of Doom 4 that Rage happened first. It allowed to test the waters for the new technologies they wanted to use in Doom 4, and forced the chipset vendors to wake up and fix their support of the latest OpenGL specs. ATI and Intel, in particular, desperately needed that kick in the butt. Still need it, in fact. Remember the disastrous launch of Rage, with everyone posting screenshots and footage of grotesque glitches? Think about what this would have done to the Doom franchise if this had happened for Doom 4 instead... When Doom 4 finally happens, it should get a much smoother launch than poor Rage.

I agree. I'm frustrated by the lack of updates on Doom 4, but I'm glad they're not showcasing the hell out of it years before it gets released, which was a bad mistake they made with Rage and Doom 3. This, in addition to the act that Carmack acknowledged some of Rage's more glaring errors at Quakecon 2012, makes me hopeful that they're learning from their mistakes.

[Sharessa]

Id Software is fine financially and will continue on as long as Zenimax does. Let's just hope that TESO doesn't become the next SWOTR like it looks like it's heading. Look what that did to EA, and think what it could do to a smaller corporation.

As for their games, yeah, I think we're all in agreement that they've been getting gradually less interesting as time goes on. Quake 2 was their last truly captivating game for me, though a lot of people liked Quake 3 a lot. Doom 3 was...okay, but it had an amazingly innovative engine for its time. Rage has proven that Id is no longer innovative in either gameplay or technology anymore, though.

[Necros20]

I was actually thinking about posting something like this myself. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if Carmack calls it quits, disbands id software, and scraps Doom 4 entirely. If I remember correctly Doom 4 was confirmed in 2008 and yet since then almost nothing has been revealed about it.
With Rage they attempted to create a new IP but it didn't seem to work out so well. Makes me wonder if they just ran out of ideas. I also recall Carmack saying that he was now more interested in his rocketry projects than in developing games.

[Mr. Freeze]

Danarchy said:

Id Software is fine financially and will continue on as long as Zenimax does. Let's just hope that TESO doesn't become the next SWOTR like it looks like it's heading. Look what that did to EA, and think what it could do to a smaller corporation.

Don't get your hopes, that game will be DOA. P2P just doesn't work in this financial climate, and not even fucken Star Wars could get around it.

[printz]

What do TESO, SWOTR, DOA and P2P mean?

[traversd]

The game industry has grown so much since doom. With every new release from Id the industry has gotten bigger and (thankfully) stood on the shoulders of innovators like carmack to push gaming further ahead yet again.

I think sometimes there is confusion between innovation and just being very smart on the part of John c. He is very smart, but the industry is now also so much smarter/ knowledgable overall that the feats he produced early on are now the basis/starting point for a lot of other very smart people in the industry.

Instead of lamenting the fact that I'd isn't really at any particular innovative forefront I'm just so thankful of their past contributions. And also they are still involved in the community in some ways with quake con etc (but tbh I could see that event winding up or morphing into something else eventually).

If I'd ceases to be it will be sad but not the first time past leaders of an industry have done so. It would make all the source releases much more valuable too I think.

[Caffeine Freak]

printz said:

What do TESO, SWOTR, DOA and P2P mean?

DOA = Dead on arrival. P2P = Peer to peer. The other two aren't ringing any bells for me, currently.



I actually had the chance to speak one on one with Carmack at Quakecon 2010. We didn't talk very long, but I remember him saying something along the lines of this:

"And you know, people are always asking me stuff like 'Are you just gonna quit eventually and go fly rockets?', and really, I can't imagine myself quitting now. And I mean, I am so excited about all the things there are ahead, that I could honestly say I am at least as excited about it all as I was twenty years ago."

[DoomUK]

Danarchy said:

Doom 3 was...okay, but it had an amazingly innovative engine for its time.

I don't think I've ever been so impressed by a game's technology as I was when I first saw the Doom 3 tech demo from Macworld. I swear I wasn't influenced by the fact it was a new Doom game.

Sadly, by the time the game was released Far Cry had stolen a lot of it's thunder in the visuals department. And that wasn't an endless succession of gloomy interiors, either.

printz said:

What do TESO, SWOTR, DOA and P2P mean?

The Elder Scrolls Online, Star Wars The Old Republic, dead on arrival, Pay to Play.

[Gez]

Caffeine Freak said:

P2P = Peer to peer.

I think Mr Freeze used P2P as "pay to play", by opposition to F2P, "free to play".

TESO is this.

SWOTR is a typo for SWTOR.

Damn ninjas.

[printz]

DoomUK said:

Sadly, by the time the game was released Far Cry had stolen a lot of it's thunder in the visuals department. And that wasn't an endless succession of gloomy interiors, either.

Man I was pissed off when reviewers, upon Doom 3's arrival, instead of being impressed by it, were praising something called Far Cry instead. I hate when I'm rooting for something and have to look at something else instead.

dead on arrival

What a typical modern first-person shooter name.

WildWeasel said:

2009's Wolfenstein does kick a lot of ass, but it's a shame that Raven Software is now relegated to CoD map packs and maybe the odd X-Men game.

I'm glad they're relegated, otherwise I get tasteless games like Hexen 2, Quake 4.

[DoomUK]

printz said:

What a typical modern first-person shooter name.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_on_arrival

[printz]

I know, it just sounds like something with a guy or gal in a spandex suit with a pistol shooting people from the bushes.

[Caffeine Freak]

DoomUK said:

Sadly, by the time the game was released Far Cry had stolen a lot of it's thunder in the visuals department. And that wasn't an endless succession of gloomy interiors, either.

Maybe it's just me, but looking at screenshots of Far Cry, I don't think it looks as impressive as Doom 3. Sure, it has wide open environments, but as far as things like texture work and lighting are concerned, I don't think it quite matches up to id Tech 4.

[Clonehunter]

WildWeasel said:

2009's Wolfenstein does kick a lot of ass, but it's a shame that Raven Software is now relegated to CoD map packs and maybe the odd X-Men game.

The fall of Raven, now that is something to look into for sure. I mean, now they have some games under their belt. Soldier of Fortune, Elite Forces, and Jedi Outcast come to mind first, and of course the Hexen/Heretic series, Quake IV wasn't a total loss, and I personally liked Wolfenstein. And they have plenty more I believe, mostly a lot of titles that didn't go much anywhere though like Necrodome.

[Caffeine Freak]

When I think of Raven, I think of Hexen/Heretic, Wolfenstein 2009, Singularity and Quake 4.

The one thing I DON'T think of is MW3.

[DoomUK]

Caffeine Freak said:

Maybe it's just me, but looking at screenshots of Far Cry, I don't think it looks as impressive as Doom 3. Sure, it has wide open environments, but as far as things like texture work and lighting are concerned, I don't think it quite matches up to id Tech 4.

Perhaps you need to look at more of Far Cry's interior levels to make a better comparison.

Sure, Doom 3 had slightly better lighting - an aspect which had always been the engine's tour de force. It also had a larger palette of textures. But it just didn't feel as revolutionary as it could have been, had Far Cry not been released a few months previously. Not to mention Far Cry was much more enjoyable to play.

[Enjay]

id was an exiting, innovating, cutting edge company with real passion, drive and a heart.

Now it isn't.

[_bruce_]

Enjay said:

id was an exiting, innovating, cutting edge company with real passion, drive and a heart.

Now it isn't.

They aren't teenagers anymore and the wheel has been invented.

[Thorgrim103]

I appreciate all the replies.

I think on the topic of Far Cry. I think the newest on looks amazing.
I have never played many of these new games like Crysis or Far Cry.
Hell I haven't even played Doom 3.

I didn't know raven software was even around still.

I had JK:JO for a long time running on my 254 mb of Ram 1.1ghz Pc I've had ever since I was a kid. Oh and that has no opengl support.

Somehow though Doom was a safe haven for me I could play it and enjoy a progressive community.

I now have a laptop that's better but in no regard is a gaming pc.

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Now I really was excited for Wolfenstein when it came out. I just didn't know of anyone getting too pumped for it. I was excited yet I don't have the money to play all of these games.

On the topic of John Carmack I feel id Is very reclusive. To this day on the Id software site it says they're hiring.

Does this mean Id is low on man power?

Another great company that's gone to caputs is Monolith.

After Fear They lost their touch. My main gripe is I want another SHOGO: Mobile armor division. Though they don't focus on being as they were in the past. It's FEAR FEAR FEAR BATMAN

I look at it this way. In the end I don't dislike games for their hype. Hell I ave enjoyed playing CoD once or twice. I really loved playing through Halo. Fear I'd play it. Borderlands two looked amazing and refined the already interesting formula of DIABLO the FPS.

So what games are you looking forward to in this stagnating game era.

Nintendo I love them they're always trying their best. WiiU was ok. 3DS has some amazing titles coming out soon.

What are you looking forward to?

[188DarkRevived]

Why the hell would I ever be feeling butthurt over not having DOOM 4? I have the machine to run it, I just have no desire to see a worthless remake which has falsely been named with the title of a sequel, just like DOOM 3 several years before.
What I am butthurt about is ID's obsession with remaking things which have absolutely no public demand for being remade in the first place, and their obsession with misrepresenting the said remakes as sequels.
There needs to be some kind of law which either prohibits this or deters it from happening by forcing companies to pay penalties for releasing such misslabelled remakes. It's a crime on the hearts of real authentic fans who have been waiting for some true sequel! Seriously.
Wolfenstein has already been remade like friggin 3 times. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!!!! Stop warping the memories of my childhood and grinding them into dust!
Does the acquisition of new technology really degenerate a designer's creativity? Why should it be so? It's unacceptable! We're supposed to be moving forwards, not backwards.
They should look at Raven Software and take an example from them. Those guys never remade Heretic1 when they moved to using a new engine, they made an actual sequel, and the community was happier.
Hmph.
I'm not going to pay them a single penny until they change their ways and regain real creativity. If they want to become bums now, then it's their choice.

[DELETE-THIS-ACCOUNT]

188DarkRevived said:
Wolfenstein has already been remade like friggin 3 times. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!!!! Stop warping the memories of my childhood and grinding them into dust!
Does the acquisition of new technology really degenerate a designer's creativity? Why should it be so? It's unacceptable! We're supposed to be moving forwards, not backwards.
They should look at Raven Software and take an example from them. Those guys never remade Heretic1 when they moved to using a new engine, they made an actual sequel, and the community was happier.[/B]

Uh, Raven where the ones to remake Wolfenstein (Which was a kickass game BTW). Not to mention Raven is now stuck making CoD map packs, which I wouldn't exactly call the peak of creativity.

Heretic 2 was okay but wasn't very well received when it released. At least from what I remember. I would kill for a Heretic remake. There's nothing wrong with re-visioning classics on new technology. Raven themselves tweeted they'd love to Re-do both Heretic and Hexen. But their Activision overlords probably don't care.

[188DarkRevived]

Fuzzyfireball said:

Raven themselves tweeted they'd love to Re-do both Heretic and Hexen.

*gasp* So the Mayans were right. The world HAS ended. :/

P.S.: People still play Heretic 2 online. Come join us! We're always recruiting.