ID Software to ‘drip-feed’ information to gamers – Video Games Update
The creators of Rage and Doom have appreciated the secrecy of game development studios like Bethesda and Valve and will opt for a similar approach with their upcoming games.
Tim Willits stated in an interview with Penny Arcade that one of the reasons why Rage’s performance was so underwhelming in the market was because the developer had announced the project to the public ‘too soon’. Willits believes that the delay between the
announcement and the first reveal of Rage and the time is came out was enough for gamers to lose complete interest in the game.
Rage was first revealed at the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference in June 2007 and was officially announced two months later in August. At the time of the reveal, Rage looked to be miles ahead of the graphical technology used in games back then.
Gamers thought that the game looked too good to be true and were convinced that it would be a PC exclusive shooter as consoles in 2007 did not boast anything that looked as good. Strangely enough, Rage was announced for all three major platforms (Xbox 360,
PlayStation 3 and the PC).
John Carmack, the founder of ID Software, has mentioned that the team was having a hard time developing for the two consoles. The Xbox 360 had the problem with the limited disc space which caused the team to compress a lot of data to make it work where as
the PlayStation 3 version was just hard to code for and ID was having a tough time keeping it on par with the PC version.
The long development time between the announcement and the launch in 2011 was one of the reasons why all the hype for Rage had died down. It may have been the best looking thing in 2007, but by 2011, everyone else had caught up and now Rage just looked like
any other shooter. The fact that the PC version was a console port and had lots of bugs didn’t help either.
"One thing we did learn with Rage, one of the things that changed was going from no publisher to working with EA to working with Bethesda, we learned that we showed stuff too d**n early. You know, everyone knows that Valve is working on Half-Life 3, and
I think it's fine. It will be cool when people see it, and they'll be excited. When we're ready to show stuff, we'll have a plan," stated Willits.
Even though it’s disappointing that ID Software won’t be revealing information as often as they used to, fans can take solace in the fact that the team is in fact working on Doom 4.
Tags: