I mean, all the way up to our last major title, which was Doom 3, we were a PC company. While at id Software we're still certainly doing those types of AAA titles on, we have to look at it from a cross-platform product perspective on there, rather than being PC-focused like we used to be. Even if we look at something that had such a push like Crysis, it didn't really do all that well. the traditional AAA, media-heavy boxed game that sells for a bunch of money, and goes out on the PC for a single player experience-it's just not happening.

The combination of the dominance of the consoles, as far as market forces there, and piracy.

we can't go on making PC games like we used to. John Carmack: Yeah, I think that the PC definitely can't. Shack: Do you see the future of PC game development becoming focused on that challenge of streamlining the user experience? We're hoping that we get something that you could basically tell anybody, 'Hey, go check this out, you might enjoy it.' And if they're willing to spend 20 minutes to go through and play through the basic match, and get a look at it, that they might say, 'Hey, I do kind of like this style of game.' To have somebody who is not necessarily a first person shooter player, and would not go and spend 50 or 60 bucks on a brand new AAA title, or might not even own a console or something, but can just, from practically any computer in the country-if not the world-sit down, go to Quake Live, get the things on there, jump in, be led through a new style of play, and have everything catered around what they're capable of doing and what's going to be enjoyable for them. Because we have people that have been playing the game for nine years online, and somebody who just gets the game for the first time and says, 'Oh I'm gonna jump on here,' there's no way they would have a decent experience.īut so much of what we're trying to do here is to make that possible. John Carmack: Yes, and I'm so happy we're finally talking to somebody that's actually been on the beta and gone and looked at it so I don't have to explain everything from first principle.īut yeah, the idea is that we know that we had a good core gameplay experience there, but, for instance, if somebody was given a copy of Quake Arena right now and they wanted to go play the game and navigate online, they would have a wretched experience. I assume that was a primary goal in development? Shack: I had a chance to check out the Quake Live beta last night, and more than the technology or the price point, the thing that impressed me the most was how easy it was to get started and jump into a game.

Quake 3 john carmack player model