"PCG: How much say do you have in what goes into an id game?
JC: Internally, Quake III was viewed as my game. It was a game I wanted to play. It was the id game that I probably spent the most time playing and enjoyed the most, but it was actually one of our less successful titles. The focused minimalism is appealing for me, but probably isn’t the best direction for a top-flight commercial game company.
So I don’t have much say any more. Post Quake III, I’ve stepped back a bit from the design side on the PC space because I’m really not representative of what most of our market is now. I did realize that my very simplified game-design ethic isn’t really what the market is demanding. I’m no longer in there vetoing things being added to the game design. That’s probably one of the reasons why [Doom 3] may have taken longer to ship, but was a richer game for it."
Who is the market he is talking about, does that market have competitors which are more successful/ingrained already, and will id ever match the success of Q1/2/3 if they abandon the admittadly niche market of the hardcore FPS player?
It has to be accepted by now that straight up DM, even in TDM/FFA modes is not as popular as other types of game modes. The UT series has seen this and while including the standards, have also moved on to keep the casual pub player interested with things like onslaught and such.
Has id completely missed the boat? Is Carmack stepping back from design really the death of hardcore gameplay with its simple weapon set and refined movement?
id needs to add to their basic offering, it needs to include a CA/RA mode, Instagib, it needs to attempt to reach the hardcores who still play Q1 with something like CPMA, because tbh I dont think they are going to beat UT07 on their own. Single Player drives sales, no doubt about it, will the Quake type MP die as a result?
