Gaming John Carmack interview

[CockroachMan]

Kotaku has a nice video interview with John Carmack (head of iD software, creator of Doom, Quake and one of my personal gods XP)

He talks about iD's relation with EA, PS3 and Mac development and their new IP: "RAGE":

http://kotaku.com/5025229/carmack-talks-fr...ps3-programming

 

[Commander]

I no longer care for Carmac's opinion on the state of the PC since he joined the slew of moaning PC developers that wonder why their games don't sell or don't sell enough. It sold a million copies Crytek now shut up.

No one cares about Quake Live. Why are the consoles the more important platform? PC is the largest gaming market, does id Software even know how many online PC gamers alone there is. Around 250 million.
I really hate that game developers have somehow deemed the PC as a dieing platform, its still thriving its out lived every console and will continue to, yes piracy has hurt it a little but why worry most of the people who download the game clearly didn't deem it was good enough to pay for, look at the Orange Box is sold extremely well on the PC for one simple reason: Its GOOD, very good in fact, your getting 5 triple A titles for next to nothing.
I said this on another forum once: PC games sell alot but because the PC market is so large those numbers are spread pretty thin, compare this with consoles they sell more of one game because there are less games to play. PC doesn't work like that it sells more in total due to the large library of games but less of individual titles.

Edit: It will be the turn of consoles soon, them being the platform that is "dieing."

End of rant.

I am not sure about the EA move but EA really has pulled their finger out and has published some really good PC titles over the last couple of years seems like their the only major publisher that still push the PC, also Valve is partnering with EA so it can't be that bad.
Anyway, I will more then likely try RAGE. And Doom 4 when they finally release it its been in development for a while now.

 

[Trolly]

Quake Live was pretty rubbish IMO, so it wouldn't've sold anyway. In any case, from the little we've seen of Rage, it looks awesome. I reccommend people check the trailer out if they haven't already.

And, yeah, Valve's the only company I've bought a PC game from in like the last year. I really feel bad about pirating all these games though, as it does seem to be killing the PC. If I had the money I would, but yeah, gaming's too expensive as a hobby to buy everything. Especially in the UK.

 

[Commander]

Quake Live was pretty rubbish IMO, so it wouldn't've sold anyway. In any case, from the little we've seen of Rage, it looks awesome. I reccommend people check the trailer out if they haven't already.

And, yeah, Valve's the only company I've bought a PC game from in like the last year. I really feel bad about pirating all these games though, as it does seem to be killing the PC. If I had the money I would, but yeah, gaming's too expensive as a hobby to buy everything. Especially in the UK.

I have to disagree with you on the piracy killing the PC. Because of the recent game developer complaints people are now under the illusion that piracy is hurting the platform. Look at Valve and what can be done by supporting your game, each time Valve released a "Meet the..." trailer retail box sales of their games increase, on top of that their free to play weekends increase sales of the retail version Day of Defeat Source a game that is nearly 4 years old and is still being updated. Counter Strike Source has been moved to the HL2 Episode 1 version of the Source Engine and Day of Defeat is now running on the Orange Box version of the source engine just a few examples of what a good developer can do. I'd like to see a console game last as long and be updated for that many years, the console itself will be out of date after a year let alone 5.

Really good article about Valves opinion on the PC "dilemma": http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?artic...0866&page=1

 

[Trolly]

Valve are smart though, and have Steam. If all new games came out on Steam, their piracy problems would be less so. However, the abundant piracy on PC (and I'm not preaching to you, I do it a lot) IS causing companies to avoid the system. Even Microsoft are barely doing a thing, and it's their own platform.

To be fair, companies could stop moaning and actually do something about the problem with something like Steam, but it's still more hassle for them. And so piracy is killing the system because less and less companies are willing to publish their games for it. No two ways about it, piracy is killing the PC video game market.
I'm not saying it's entirely piracy's fault, because developers do need to do something about it rather than moan, but it's still the reason the problem's around.

EDIT:
And yeah, Valve have it nailed when they say "it's becoming a service". One of the only reasons I legally downloaded The Orange Box (I was always going to get it legally anyway, because if any game deserves it, it's this one) is because I could get it almost instantly. It's the only way in the UK as well, seeing as Direct2Drive mostly rejects downloading outside of the US.
Steam = Win

 

[Commander]

Piracy has always existed on the PC, I still have copies of games on floppies sitting on my desk.
I think its more to do with who is pirating games, the annoying thing most of the pirated games are being downloaded by people who can genuinely afford the game so some who couldn't afford the game wouldn't have bought it in the first place so there isn't a loss there. But when people who can by the game don't thats when it effects sales.

If all games were released on Steam I would be more inclined to buy them, but instead of unifying under one digital distribution system like Steam which is already well established, companies are creating their own like EA, Direct2Drive, Stardock, Gametap etc.
This multitude of places to get games, PC is already one of the cheapest platforms to develop on, if publishes released the game on Steam or on of the the other systems they would be able to cut out the need for retail boxes.
I am sure good number of PC gamers don't buy retail boxes anymore, if the PC market removed the need for them entirely or limited them, the cost to sell the game would be decreased therefore greatly reducing the chance of making a loss.

And another key lesson that PC game developers need to know is that: Make a good game it will sell.
We are bombarded with crappy games and terrible ports and they wonder why there game won't sell but of course they put it down to piracy.

Edit: Forgot to mention recently Crytek said that they had optimized fully the Crytek engine but they also added that they wouldn't be patching the Crysis with the new changes, seriously wtf was the point of Crysis then? A test run?

 

[Trolly]

We are bombarded with crappy games and terrible ports and they wonder why there game won't sell but of course they put it down to piracy.
Not always true, take CoD 4. They made it really expensive ($60 over Steam, almost twice the price of most games), and really easy to pirate. But it was still an awesome game. It truly deserved my money, but because of the steep price and the fact there was no kind of check for multiple users using one account meant I just borrowed it off my mate and ripped it.

And totally agreed with the retail packaging, most PC gamers are lazy arseholes lol (I know I am). Digital distribution is just miles easier, cheaper and quicker for everyone. The cheaper and easier it is for me to get a game, the more likely I'll get it (obviously it has to be a good game as well). It all comes down to that. (Y)

QUOTEForgot to mention recently Crytek said that they had optimized fully the Crytek engine but they also added that they wouldn't be patching the Crysis with the new changes, seriously wtf was the point of Crysis then? A test run?

Buh? Surely that requires hardly any effort at all on thier part? Especially if it's just an update to the engine. Meh, Crysis Warhead already looks a lot better anyway IMO, I know I'll play it more than the original Crysis. Which I thought was fairly average tbh, it just had amazing graphics, nice physics and those nanosuit powers. Quite lacking on the gameplay side though. Or maybe that's just me :\.

What defeats me is it's Microsoft's own platform, yet they stick to retail packaging. You would've thought by now they'd introduce their own download service. Because, let's face it, Games For Windows aren't going to start appearing on Steam, that'd be like Microsoft saying to Valve, "Here, you can run the PC platform now". Though that'd be nice lol, ain't gonna happen.
Let's see if they actually announce something useful next week then.

 

[Armadillo]

I'd rather everyone didn't go digital distribution , I like my retail stuff and really dislike steam. If a game is steam only , then it's guaranteed I'll get a pirate steamless version rather than use steam , can't stand the program.

As for the piracy issues , it's just a scapegoat these days , game doesn't sell well and it's omg piracy. Crisis doesn't sell as well as they thought , instantly piracy is the problem. Nothing to do with the fact that hardly anyone could run it decently and it was crap any way , all graphics , no gameplay.

Also maybe games would sell better , if the developers didn't insist on giving unoptimised console ports , that are full of bugs. Decent pc games sell , look at dawn of war , they don't even bother protecting it and it still sells fine. BF2 that sold fine ,good game , built for pc , rather than a shit port. BF3 will sell fine as well. Only people bitching about piracy are the companies doing the crap bug ridden ports.

Also it doesn't help that some of them seem to spit in the face of pc gamers , look at rockstar GTA was born on the pc , now they spit in our face and say no gta 4.

 

[Commander]

I'd rather everyone didn't go digital distribution , I like my retail stuff and really dislike steam. If a game is steam only , then it's guaranteed I'll get a pirate steamless version rather than use steam , can't stand the program.

As for the piracy issues , it's just a scapegoat these days , game doesn't sell well and it's omg piracy. Crisis doesn't sell as well as they thought , instantly piracy is the problem. Nothing to do with the fact that hardly anyone could run it decently and it was crap any way , all graphics , no gameplay.

Also maybe games would sell better , if the developers didn't insist on giving unoptimised console ports , that are full of bugs. Decent pc games sell , look at dawn of war , they don't even bother protecting it and it still sells fine. BF2 that sold fine ,good game , built for pc , rather than a shit port. BF3 will sell fine as well. Only people bitching about piracy are the companies doing the crap bug ridden ports.

Also it doesn't help that some of them seem to spit in the face of pc gamers , look at rockstar GTA was born on the pc , now they spit in our face and say no gta 4.

The only real annoyance I have with Steam is that you need to have an internet connection to play some of the games which I personally think is stupid, yesterday I had no internet for a good while meaning I couldn't even play Half Life 2 Episode 2. Otherwise I've never had an issue.

Most games were born on PC but due to recent piracy "scare" developers have been avoiding the platform. Piracy has been on the PC platform whether its a copy of friends Doom on a floppy or you got Crysis or a torrent, its always been there just because one developer points it it becomes some massive issue.

QUOTE($60 over Steam, almost twice the price of most games)

Its now $70 when I got retail copy for just £24 and put it on Steam, luckily Steams new overlay system works with every game I have played so far.