On the Subject of id

Christina Hendricks

So id Software has been bought by some big company bla bla boring shite. The news was met with a mixture of predictable end-of-the-world hand-wringing, but also with a fair amount of "yeah, whatever", shrugs.

Personally, I don't think id has done anything worth celebrating since Doom. Doom 1, that is, before the endless "Ultimate Doom", "Final Doom", "Doom 2" or especially "Doom 3" dead horse-beating. I'm just about willing to allow Quake 2 on the grounds that although I never played it, it tends to be fairly highly regarded. And it can't be much worse than Quake 1.
Essentially id have built a business around releasing engine tech demos poorly-disguised as games. Every big new release tends to accompany a new "id Tech" release, and then the various franchises are farmed out for some in-between filler games like Quake 4. The problem seems to be that while co-founder John Carmack is one of the undisputed legends of game engine development, id don't seem to have anyone working on the design side who operates at anywhere near the same level. I was especially amused to read the reports of John Romero's comments regarding the recent buy-out. Romero, who was notoriously drunk on his own ego when he quit id, and who went on to do nothing even remotely noteworthy. Unless you include projects that were noteworthy for being a big pile of shit, that is. Bit bitter are we, Johnny boy?

Doom 3 was the last big id release, and that's nearly 5 years old now. And it was tedious, repetitive, scripted, monster-closet-filled, pitch-black, no-flashlight-while-your-gun's-drawn, crap AI wank. The id fans loved it because it was called Doom and had the id logo on the box. Everyone else thought it was shit, but shit rendered by a nice engine.

The biggest issue I've had with id games, and it goes way back to the original Dooms, is their stuck-up, holier-than-thou attitude. They have an annoying habit of believing that only they know how to make good shooters, that only they make "serious" games for "serious" gamers, that everything else is just trivial nonsense and that if you disagree, the problem is with you, not their games. id games are Serious Business.
In fact while they've been innovative and influencial when it comes to engine technology and online gaming in particular, id games tend to suffer from a severe lack of creative inspiration. Their response to such criticism was basically Quake 3, which doesn't require creativity, or atmosphere, or a story, or characters, or immersive environments, because it's simply designed as a theatre in which Serious Gamers can waggle their cocks at each other to determine who has the biggest. Or least small, at any rate.

So what's on the horizon? Naturally the fans are salivating over the forthcoming Doom 4, because it's called Doom and has the id logo on the box. It will of course be shit. Yet another iteration of the same old, same old. More space marine fighting through hellish demons. So that will be exciting. But if the hundreth sequel of a series which didn't have the staying power to justify any at all isn't enough, they've actually summoned up the energy to create a whole new property. Unfortunately Rage looks, if anything, even more derivative and bland and boring than Doom. Mad Max meets Dune, or some shit like that. It'll be tiresome corridor shooting broken up by some pointless driving sequences. But it'll have the id logo on the box.
Not to mention both Doom 4 and Rage, by way of id Tech 5, will be multi-platform releases which means they will inevitably suffer from the usual compromises to pacing and AI that always accompany console shooters. It will be interesting to see how the fans react to that, probably they will just claim that since it's id, this is how shooters are supposed to play and if you disagree you just don't "get it".
But they utilise megatexturing, and that has "mega" in it, so it must be good.