John Carmack Confirms Doom 4

[Gahars]

id Software has certainly seen better days. The Doom IP isn't so revered anymore, and the studio's last project (the rage inducing, uh, Rage) wasn't received very warmly.

Taking to the stage at Quakecon, John Carmack had something of an apologetic tone.

During his speech, Carmack acknowledged that the buggy game has generated ill feelings within the PC community, and that it had a lackluster ending. He also noted that the game's world itself was rather shell-like, offering very little in regards to virtual population. The lack of driver support was also "problematic," calling it "really, really poorly handled" and a lesson the studio learned for future titles.

...Carmack also admitted that he was disappointed with the marketing aspect for Rage, saying that it led customers to believe the mutant-filled FPS was more like similarly-themed RPGs on the market. "People expected it to be more like Fallout or Borderlands but that was never our intention,” Carmack said. "That hurt us in that the single-player was long for a shooter but very short for people expecting an RPG. The messaging on Rage wasn’t all it should have been."

He then went on to confirm that the studio was still hard at work on Doom 4, and that all of their resources are now focused on getting the project done (in fact, this was why relatively few fixes have been released for Rage).

"We did make the decision to close up our mobile development, which saddens me a lot, in that I love doing the mobile work -- taking that time, spending a month, a year or something working on a mobile project," Carmack explained, "but we had some developers on there that we wanted to bring onto the Doom 4 project.

"It was looked at as something that; yes, this is fun, this is fun for the company and its entertaining and it makes money, but it's not a grand slam sort of thing on there. The Bethesda family really is about swinging for the fences. I hope we get back to mobile in various ways in the future, but the big real aim is blockbuster, AAA titles, and for id that means Doom 4, it means that we get the whole company behind that after we get Doom 3: BFG Edition out the door, essentially everybody will be focused on Doom 4 as a project."

...As for when Doom 4 would be complete, Carmack wouldn't specify. "Every decade there will be a Doom," Carmack said, "but hopefully we can do better than that."

Tom's Hardware

For those interested, here's Carmack's speech in (abbreviated) video form...

Spoiler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j--tixvta_g

 

[Hadrian]

I'm hoping the next Doom will keep the style of the first two titles, some good old fashioned gore and some great gothic art. The style of Doom 3 was too bland for me but then it matched the gameplay as well.

As for Rage, I didn't think it was that bad (once the patch got released). It played well but it got really samey and the level design was very dated.

 

[EyeZ]

I really enjoyed all the Doom releases except for Doom3, so as long as Doom 4 doesn't follow the same theme as Doom 3 then i'll be happy.

 

[Crimsonclaw111]

Doom with Rage gunplay would be amazing.

 

[Gahars]

As for Rage, I didn't think it was that bad (once the patch got released). It played well but it got really samey and the level design was very dated.

One of my friends had played it. He said he generally enjoyed it until the final level, which he felt was just a complete joke. From what I've seen, it didn't look awful, but I could understand people being disappointed.

 

[The Milkman]

Now give me Quake Arena 2 instead of that Quake Live shit and ill believe in IDSoftware again!

 

[retKHAAAN]

Rage was not nearly the failure everyone made it out to be. I enjoyed every minute of it. Marketing was really the only issue, but the people who were pissed off are also the people who believe everything they read... The final level seemed to me like the point was to go in and mow down everyone in your way and that's exactly what you did. Nightmare difficulty really should have been the normal difficulty though...

 

[Izzy011]

What was so bad with Rage? I considered getting it at Amazon for $10

I didn't even know there was a Doom 3

 

[Kioku]

Doom 4 was 'confirmed' a while ago. I remember watching something that confirmed its life before RAGE was released. So, this doesn't surprise me, but it's about damn time they release an official announcement.

 

[thegame07]

I loved rage, The racing aspect of the game was great too, Heck the racing aspect of the game was high enough quality to be a game itself, imo.

 

[DSGamer64]

I liked Rage a fair bit, but it's release was a giant clusterfuck. Graphics drivers made the game nearly unplayable for a lot of users for the first week or so, but after updates were finally released, it ran great. That said, something Carmack needs to understand is that like many other companies, PC games need to feel like PC games, not to mention look like they were designed for the PC. Rage had such horrible texturing because they had to reduce the data size in order to make it downloadable on Steam as well as playable on consoles. Some of us bought the hard copy so I don't see why they didn't include the game with all textures in the hard copy package and make it free downloadable content for Steam buyers.

I hope that Doom 4 returns to the traditional style but in a more realistic environment. Doom 2 is still loads of fun, but it suffers the lack of realism that today's games have, and Doom 3 as a whole was just a complete piece of garbage in terms of both visual presentation and gameplay.