id Software maintains 'games first, licenses second' approach with idTech 5
by Jem Alexander 
{ May 12th 2009 at 5:30PM }
In terms of licensing the engine out to developers id Software has been focusing on "targeting developers" and "working with them on an individual basis," rather than offering it out to anyone with a devkit. Hollenshead says the company's "philosophy on that has been that we'd rather have a small number of good-fit, high-quality developer licensees than a bunch that aren't really good fits." Makes perfect sense to us, and could save id Software some legal heartache in the long run.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Erluti @ May 12th 2009 5:39PM
What's that? Is that the sound of Denis Dyack yelling "O RLY?!"
Latin_Trident @ May 12th 2009 5:39PM
Anybody know why those guys are wearing masks?
Hyams @ May 12th 2009 6:14PM
Because there is acid in the air. Luckily, though, they've evolved so that their nipples are as hard as rock, and so immune to it.
Fernando Rocker @ May 12th 2009 5:41PM
id Software and John Carmack > Epic and Mark Rein
cuteSAVAGE @ May 12th 2009 5:58PM
John Carmack is to Tim Sweeney as Mark Rein is to Todd Hollenshead.
Manly Mcbeefington (Mr. ESC) @ May 12th 2009 6:39PM
Savage I love how you make references to people I have to look up in wikipedia.
I respect ID because it was a huge part of my childhood as a lil PC gamer but after 200X well just look the new Wolfenstein trailer it seems they are having a hard time re-inventing the FPS wheel.
Epic well they are good but other than Gears of War (And a bunch of games they did back when they were Epic Mega games) I think ID is more known but Epic is catching up very fast.
NoughtSoClever @ May 12th 2009 7:15PM
Raven is making the newest Wolfenstein. Id just helps them out and licenses the engine. Rage and Doom 4 are Id's primary IPs currently.
WiredKnight @ May 12th 2009 9:33PM
Epic's veteran members cry every time someone cites Gears of War as the source of their success instead of Unreal Tournament.
BlackDove @ May 12th 2009 5:41PM
Shame they're not whoring it out like Epic, because this one is superior to the UE3 one.
Robert @ May 12th 2009 5:57PM
their approach sounds right to me, let build a game out of it, them we will see if it is good to be licensed, this way you know you are selling a proved engine
Doug @ May 12th 2009 6:07PM
iD software is living in the past. Stop bragging about your next-gen engine AT LEAST until we get to play something on it. Doom 3 was a chore... sorry.
Wes @ May 12th 2009 6:27PM
Agreed but Doom 3 on max settings today on a top of the line machine looks better than most shooters out there for the PC and its like 6 years old or more. So it may have been a chore to get through, but thats a gameplay/game designer issue. The engine itself still performs well and when put to the max, produced beautiful graphics.
iD knows their engines, period. The doom engines, quake engines and most iD tech engines have always been a cut head of the competitors when they launched and for a little while afterwards pretty much. They also have proven reasoanble versatile too like the Star Trek Voyager: Elite Forces game made from the Q3 engine. That game is still sweet and we need more like it! The recreationg of Voyager by RavenStudios was so realistic and detailed that it is almost uncanny.
Most other shooters have not been so kind with that kind of age like Metal of Honor: Rising Sun for example looks like crap after 6 years compared to modern shooters. MoH:RS happned to have crappy gameplay and a crappy engine. I think that's why you can find it in a bargin bin for $4.99 with a big red clearance sticker on it.
Jon2309 @ May 12th 2009 7:10PM
http://www.methodonline.com/temp/meth_test.htm
Look at those screenshots and tell me that id don't make good engines.
NoughtSoClever @ May 12th 2009 7:19PM
Besides, didn't Carmack practically pioneer the normal mapping technique used by every single modern 3d engine that allows geometry to look very like million polycounts when it is only thousands?
WiredKnight @ May 12th 2009 9:41PM
If they don't talk about it now, by the time something is publicly playable no one would know about it.
@Nought
No, I don't think so. He came up with several innovative solutions for various aspects of computer graphics, but normal mapping wasn't one of them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_carmack
alu @ May 14th 2009 2:49PM
another point that often gets overlooked is they've always supported OpenGL approach which has often rivaled or surpassed the proprietary DirectX.
this is how they're able to support all the different platforms with up to 90% of the same code.
Wes @ May 12th 2009 6:29PM
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/&menu=browser&image_id=873167&article_id=655298&page=1&show=original
DaRabidDuckie @ May 12th 2009 6:35PM
Good on id Software, but doesn't Activision publish most (if not all) of their games? I wonder how they feel about that. Eat that, Kotick.
Shadsy @ May 12th 2009 7:25PM
id does publishers on a game-by-game basis. EA, for example, is publishing Rage.
t_m @ May 12th 2009 11:34PM
Artistic integrity is all well and good,
but this doesn't seem like very good business sense. ID used to rule the engine market... so many games were made on the Quake3 engine... but since doom3 its been all UnrealEngine.
tonovision @ May 13th 2009 2:54AM
His name is Todd, not Tedd FYI.
Weclock @ May 17th 2009 1:33PM
seriously, these screens look like crap. I'd rather be playing the original Quake 3 than use anything built in this middle of the line engine.