John Carmack Q&A

Carmack frees Quake on GamesRadar is a Q&A with the id Software Technical
Director about Quake Live, the upcoming free first-person shooter formerly known
as Quake Zero. Along the way he calls this an effort at speaking to the future
of PC gaming: I would say that there is this sense of trying to figure
out what to do with PC gaming. Historically, id Software has been a PC gaming
company, with consoles a secondary business that happened later. And even though
the PC doesn’t get the focus that it used to, in many ways our hearts are still
there, and we’d like to do things where the PC is the appropriate platform.
[We’d like to] do something that really speaks to the future of where the PC can
be superior to consoles.

Obviously, we have examples like World of Warcraft that show how the PC can be
viable and vibrant in its own way. But in terms of first-person shooters, if you
look at something like Crysis and say that’s the height of what the PC market
can manage, I don’t think that’s necessarily that exciting of a direction for
the PC to be going in the future. With Quake Live, we hope that there’s an
opportunity for people who’ve never played shooters to give this a try, and with
that, the potential of actually growing the PC gaming market. I still have a lot
of a faith in simple gameplay formulas - it might not be the game that everyone
plays for three hours a day to be the best at, but it’s something that offices,
dorms, and schools across America can have fun with.


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