Doom 4 in trouble, ID could be closed

[Tanakh]

-snip-

I don't think I have told you lately how much I love you. Writing what I would have but with better humor and syntax, I save time and read my thoughts in a more congruent presentation! Win-win.

 

[Stryc9]

I'm conflicted. "Call of Doom" sounds awful and I'm glad that's been knocked on the head. On the other hand I really want to see a good next-gen Doom, though I'm not sure if the things I love about the originals - giant levels, tons of enemies, freedom to explore - could be replicated with modern visuals without it making my pc explode.

Which is where id comes in. id was never about making games with a great story all that, id was always about building great engines and making a mediocre game to show it off with. If anyone can make a modern FPS engine that will do the kinds of things the original Doom games could it's id.

There's really no FPS I can think of that delivers a real Doom-like experience. Serious Sam gets mentioned a lot but that's really all about circle strafing waves of enemies in an arena-like environment, as was Painkiller. Not really the same thing.

I see nothing in the quoted bits that implicitly says id could be shut down. Anywhere. All I saw was that they canceled Rage 2 and scaled back the DLC for the first game because let's face it, it was crap and probably didn't sell enough to really warrant a sequel.

They also scrapped the original plans for Doom 4, but that doesn't mean they're pulling a Duke Nukem Forever and porting the game over to a whole new engine, which happened to DNF multiple times. Rather they're just taking the story back to the drawing board and starting over from there, which considering how bland Doom 3's story was might not be a bad thing.

I didn't really see anything in there to really get all that worked up about, I know that LucasArts got closed down today and there's been shakeups at EA and SquareEnix but it's really not the end of the world. I doubt id is going anywhere anytime soon unless Doom 4 ends up being total shit.

 

[Techno Squidgy]

even on a 56k modem.

God I am so glad I didn't get into multiplayer/PC gaming until long after broadband was introduced.

OT:
It'd be a shame to see id go, but they're not really relevant any more. Doom 4 is pretty much their last chance. They better hit this one for six.

 

[Kenneth Spaziani]

iD just needs to do what they do best; id Tech 5.5 as its being called will need to be mind blowing for the release of Doom 4 and iD said tha Quake 5 was to follow with the original Quake 1 "Cthulu" Theme back.
- I say Make Doom 4 a gorgeous gorgeous innovative game in terms of graphic engine (an engine that will sell) and add on a more of Quake 3 (or quake live) type of Multi-Player; expanisve and big in the E-sports market rather than how Doom 3's Multiplayer is / was. Single Player has many many options being "Hell on earth"; Carmack has never failed me yet and I hope these are mostly out of panic type of speculations.

I really dug RAGE. - Raven did a pretty darn good job with Quake 4; and an alright job with new Wolfenstein. Splash Damage did a WONDERFUL job with ET:QW in 07' but really blew it with Brink. (now they are on their own with Dirty Bomb; thus far an amazing game via alpha testing - but this is a Compet. MP only game).

Doom 4 needs to have various ways to approach situations; hell I'd be happy with Doom 2 with iD Tech 5.5 and some innovations in exactly "What" you can do. - Basically throw some story along with being able to approach situations as you want, have Carmack's brilliance make it all work together as an engine and gameplay mechanics.. - I still say The best focus for iD right now is Multiplayer; E-Sports is exploding and they created FPS MP, FPS CTF, FPS Dedicated Servers, They made my favorite Shooter of all time with Quake 3... (quake live I play competitively still); so Deliver a B+ or A- Single Player maybe even a solid "B-" SP story and campaign etc; but Deliver a A+++ 12/10 rated Multi-player. with a 10/10 iD Tech 5.5 Engine overhaul which I heard was being over-hauled and would blow us away.

I don't want to believe any of this; but if its true... As a fan since playing Doom 1 and Doom 2 as a kid *Played Doom 1 before Wolf 3D as a kid, then Quake 1 blew me away.. Quake 2 with VOODOO GPU.. then Quake 3 -droooools-* I will Lend my aid for free; I'm a sound engineer, Musician, and I'm an "idea man" style game designer for some indie titles - I would do anything to aid iD Software's Doom 4 project... so that it can be successful and that Quake 5 can come out; and perhaps a Rage 2 or a new IP. I believe iD needs to get a faster development cycle for games that are not the legendary games (Doom and Quake) Wolf can have another sequel for example MP orientied like W:ET was (even though that was not the initial Mp and it was Splash Damage...) along with 2 or 3 new IP ideas and atleast 1-2 becoming reality; and perhaps being released a year after Doom 4; just to show that iD is still competing - it can have similiar tech as Doom 4 but completely different innovations and gameplay style / themes - and then be a set-up for the Quake V launch a year later etc or if it needs 2 years after new IP release a new Wolfenstein game keep the money churning iD; You guys are LEGENDS. FN LEGENDS. I will not accept The greatest FPS studio in history go under.

 

[Zetatrain]

Games are just getting way to expensive to make these days.

I wouldn't say that, how much did Minecraft or Bastion cost?

When you get a bunch of people together to make a piece of media/art and they all want to do their own thing, including many individuals who will end up having no interaction with the finished product, shits proberly going to go tits up.

Ah yes, my bad. I didn't made it clear.
I'm talking about those big budget triple A titles.

It's like hearing stuff like Dead Space 3 needs to sell 5 million copies to be successful and how 3.4 million in a month for Tomb Raider still below their expectation.

Well may be if EA spent less on marketing and didn't set unreasonable goals like trying to turn every game into the next big hit they wouldn't be in the position they are now.

 

[Kenneth Spaziani]

When you make DOOM and Quake, I'm kinda of the opinion that you can not make anything relevant the rest of your career, money still shouldn't be an issue. When was the last time the Rolling Stones had a relevant album? Yet there they are, millionaires every last one of them, and still selling out stadiums around the world.

The reason the Stones keep making boatloads of money is because people keep buying their old songs and albums and paying insane prices to see them play live. Plus they get royalties any time someone uses their music in a movie or plays it on the radio or whatever. Also sure, Mick and Keef are almost certainly still loaded, but on the flipside Ronnie Wood has gone from being a millionaire to broke more than once, despite being a member of the Stones for over 30 years. Having loads of money doesn't stop you doing stupid things with it.

And that's the difference between id and the Stones. id may still garner a ton of respect from basically inventing the FPS genre and coming out with titles like Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake, but those games aren't actually making them any money these days. And they don't play stadiums. And respect alone doesn't pay the bills.

They're not like Blizzard, which has the luxury of taking its sweet time developing games because ever since 2004 it's had WOW subscriptions paying the bills. They're not like Valve either, which has the profits from Steam keeping it afloat and in no hurry to release HL3. At best, id have had engine licensing and as others have discussed, they're not exactly the flavour of the month any more.

Quite simply, I don't see how they could possibly afford to take 10 years to develop a game. It'd be like the Stones giving up all their back catalog income, and trying to live off just the one stadium show every decade or something.

iD Tech 5 was really really impressive in its developed state; it was not "ready" to be released to our hardware especially not the console hardware; I believe by the time Doom 4 comes out it will be at that "5.5" stage; and will really shine and blow people away. I wish I could find the link but someone who uses SLI 680 GTX's like myself, has an upload of RAGE Gameplay driving near the end of the game and combat, shadows and lighting etc; textures looking amazing on the "Original" quality above 1080P option as he unlocked the games Texture scale to be ?64x64? which is huge as the game launched 4x4 if I remember correctly on PC; and trying to get it 6x6 or 8x8 would result is overheats and crashes etc. But that video is mindblowing in its own right.

The art tool-set iD Tech 5's engine at a core allows is pure artistic vision brought to life at a more ease driven pace; it really allows the artists to create a game world which every detail of the world is different and unique; without having to hassle over it - that alone is brilliant.

 

[Zeh Don]

Part of the problem is that "Doom" represents a very old type of FPS that, frankly, has been done to death. They tried to evolve it with Doom 3, and while I adored that game to no end, it wasn't for everyone and it was significantly different from it's predecessors.

The question I have to ask is: what is Doom 4?
A 'Call of Doom' kind of game automatically gets dismissed because, frankly, it's terrible and no one would buy it. If they went back to the previous style of games, meaning Doom and Doom 2, than we're back to mindless slaughter that no one would buy. If they do a proper sequel to Doom 3, how many people would buy it? I would, but again, a lot of other people felt let down by Doom 3.
I feel it's fairly obvious that a 'Doom 4' into today's market doesn't really make a lot of sense.

Personally, if they're gonna go old school, go OLD SCHOOL. The only way to do an honest to go old school homage would be to go over the top. Waaaaaay over the top. Over the top, wall to wall blood and gore depicted with the greatest graphics technology available to man. Absolute end-of-the-world levels of extreme, non-stop carnage.
Anything else is, frankly, not going to do enough to get people talking, playing and paying.

 

[Dfskelleton]

I want this to be good. I really do. I have waited so long for the second coming of Doom...
Please... It's hard to keep citing Id as one of my favorite developers when they haven't done anything in such a long time. Games like the original Doom don't get made any more, and I'd rather have the game never come out than have it released as a pile of crap.

 

[AD-Stu]

The art tool-set iD Tech 5's engine at a core allows is pure artistic vision brought to life at a more ease driven pace; it really allows the artists to create a game world which every detail of the world is different and unique; without having to hassle over it - that alone is brilliant.

That's great, but it's not a question of how well their engines work - it's a question of how well their engines sell.

Correct me if Wikipedia is wrong here, but Rage is the only game to date to have used the iD Tech 5 engine. There have only been six games (Doom 3, Quake 4, Prey, Wolfenstein, Brink and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars) released to date that used the iD Tech 4 engine, with two more yet to be released (Prey 2 and Quadrilatteral Cowboy). That's seven games that have been released using an iD engine since iD Tech 4 was released in 2004. Ouch.

Compare that to the number of games that use, say, the Unreal engine (hint: just the games beginning with "A" on the Unreal list are more than double iD's entire count) and the numbers start to look pretty sad. Their engines can be technical marvels, but if they're not being widely used then I don't see how they can afford to take 10 years to make a game.

 

[J Tyran]

I dare you to find me a large scale game company that's not Activision or Nintendo which isn't currently posting losses, cutting staff or generally trying to weather through shitty economics.

Microsoft game studios.

The software division has made continual profits and has not been cutting jobs for economic reasons. They went through a round of sacking in 2009 when they dropped a studio but at the same time they where mass hiring for other studios. The hardware division, which is separate posted losses. The huge profits that Microsoft game studios made where enough to nullify that and put the entire Microsoft Entertainment and Devices division into profit.

I should add that I do not disagree with you about a possible gaming crash, I too believe that the current market is unsustainable. I think developers are realizing this too, even in the headlines we can see the Just Cause devs remarking about the AAA industry battening down the hatches.

Indie devs will do just fine though, if the industry does collapse we will just see the whole European home computer industry thing again. With Windows to a lesser extent with Android and Mobile type OS this time instead of Sinclair and Commodore etc.