What's the most you would spend on a game for your iPhone? Not a port, mind you, but a brand new game based on a classic franchise, developed specifically with the iPhone's control system in mind -- $5? $7? How about $10? Try as I might, while playing id Software's latest Doom iteration -- Doom Resurrection -- it was near impossible to shake the uneasy feeling that $10 is just a bit too much money for the experience.

Truth be told, the game is "big" -- Doom Resurrection could easily be ported to gaming-specific handhelds -- though it weighs in under 100 MB. The problem with the scope of the game, however, is the resultant long load times and an occasionally choppy framerate -- the length of time it takes to jump into the game make it something I don't want to play on my way here or there (full disclosure: I'm using an iPhone 3G and it may run significantly better on the 3GS).

While speaking with id Software's John Carmack and Escalation Studios' Tom Mustaine yesterday, we only briefly broached the subject of iPhone game pricing. Doom Resurrection's lofty (by App Store standards) $10 price tag puts it in a particularly prickly situation, with Carmack telling us that "convincing people who've been spending $1 on games to spend $10 is a real problem." We can imagine!

He's not entirely without hope, however, as he looks at Resurrection as a value proposition, trading higher production values for higher costs. In fact, Carmack's hoping to set a precedent with DR that will allow for "bigger iPhone games" in the future -- something he says he'd like to see a lot more of. "There's only so much you can do with games that cost two or three dollars -- there's only so much production value you can put into that," he told us. The clear answer: Make Doom-based alien flatulence apps.

Though he didn't exactly spell out what it's going to be or when it's going to be hitting digital shelves, id Software's John Carmack told us his newest iPhone game will be getting DLC. He let slip yesterday morning during an interview about recently released Doom Resurrection that the game would be getting DLC "sometime soon" -- downloadable content just became an option for iPhone games, with the launch of OS 3.0.

When we pressed him on whether we'd see downloadable anything for the upcoming flood of id Software games coming to the iPhone, he kept his cards a bit closer to his chest, saying it's technically "possible" but nothing's set in stone yet. He also revealed that Resurrection will be getting multiplayer add-ons in the upcoming weeks, so for those of you who already took the $10 plunge, you may want to ask your best buddy to do so as well.

Update: We got some clarification on the DLC from id Software's John Carmack just now, saying, "There won't be any DLC until we have moved the projects to requiring 3.0, and we aren't sure exactly when that will be. Pretty much all of the titles are being set up for DLC in the future. We are prepping the "Spear of Destiny" levels for Wolfenstein 3D classic, and all the various classic games have sequels and mission packs that we can offer. For Resurrection, new content will have to be created from scratch. I expect we will know within a few weeks if the reception to the game is good enough to justify it."

We already knew that recently bought by Bethesda company id Software are looking at a hefty lineup of upcoming iPhone games, but after speaking with company co-founder John Carmack this morning, we found out a little bit more about the potential for more classic reboots, like Doom Resurrection, in the future. "It really depends on how this one is received by consumers before we can make any plans, but I'm very interested in the prospect," Carmack told Joystiq.

Apparently, he's most interested in seeing this treatment for Quake, though he also noted that Quake 3 Arena is still "possible" on Apple's handheld. Why not Quake Live on Apple's OS X, Mr. Carmack? Unfortunately, we ran out of time before we could ask. It is high on his "high priority" list though, right? So we've got something then? John? Hello?

Please?

Speaking with id Software's John Carmack earlier today, we got the sense that the man has a hunk of burnin' love for Apple's iPhone. Aside from bringing a metric ton of classic id titles to the device, the legendary developer let us know that the Wii game once being talked about around the hallowed halls at the company is what eventually became Doom Resurrection.

"We like to think of it as a more guided experience than an on-rails game," Carmack told Joystiq this morning, referring to the game's character control system. "Originally, I was pitched the title as a Wii game -- I dropped some hints about this earlier in the year but nothing substantial, in case the game didn't work out or it wasn't fun or something like that," he continued. Considering the $9.99 asking price of Resurrection versus the $50 a Wii title could have cost, we (and our wallets) are more than happy with Mr. Carmack's choice.

When Raven Software's long-in-development Wolfenstein (remember when it was an Xbox 360 timed exclusive back in 2005?) finally hits store shelves this August, it'll mark the end of an era ...

... oh no! Not of Wolfenstein games – there are plenty more of those coming – but of outside developers working on id Software's hallowed franchises. John Carmack told Joystiq today that bringing external development back in-house at id is "exactly what's going to be happening." Carmack says that while id's had some hits (Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory springs to mind) and some misses (Enemy Territory: Quake Wars springs to mind) the externally developed titles haven't "had the same record that our internally developed titles have." We'd have to agree with him there.

With the lead team cranking on Rage for EA Partners, they created a second development team to work on Doom 4, with a still-formative third team currently toiling away on Quake Live. "We'll have three teams," Carmack told us. "We'll have Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, and Rage and one of them will be taking a vacation each cycle and that will depend on what we want to be doing each time." So don't worry, you'll have plenty of all of the above to go around.

Sure, the all-new iPhone 3G S was shown off to throngs of drooling consumers on Monday – wowing the geek-set with its newfound OpenGL ES 2.0 support (your lousy iPhone 3G only supports OpenGL ES 1.1!) – but don't expect id Software's just announced title, Doom Resurrection, to be a 3G S-exclusive. Id's John Carmack told VentureBeat that he's "happy with the faster iPhone 3G S" but "he is also focused on making sure that his games run on the widest number of iPhones." Translation: Doom Resurrection won't be 3G S-exclusive. (Speculation: id could make two versions of Resurrection: one 2.0-compatible and another 1.1-compatible).

But, where were we ... oh, yes! Doom Resurrection! This sure sounds like the "graphical tour de force" he promised to bring to the iPhone. Carmack & Co were able to reuse much of DOOM 3's assets (downsized for the iPhone's screen resolution, of course) and get the engine running at 30 frames per second on the latest iPod Touch. Wrapped around that fancy tech, they've built "eight full levels and about five hours of game play" – the future iPhone 3.0 OS release will also enable "peer-to-peer cooperative multiplayer" for some on-the-go Deathmatch.

One of the most notable takeaways from VB's interview: Carmack's assertion that the iPhone is "a real game platform, not a tiny little toy." He explains that "the iPhone should be better in performance than the Nintendo DS and the PlayStation Portable" in raw horsepower "but the truth is you can't exploit it all because of software inefficiencies." We imagine the newly Open GL ES 2.0-compliant iPhones (gallery below) will ameliorate much of Mr. Carmack's concerns. In the interim, check out how far he's gotten on today's hardware when Doom Resurrection shoots the AppStore in the face next week.

We wish all devs were as forthcoming as id's John Carmack. His update on the status of the iPhone version of Doom (or Doom Classic, as he's calling it) is exhaustive, but it's also rich with information and insight into porting an old-school classic onto new tech ... and doing it well.

We've dug up a few nuggets for you, like the fact that Carmack says he should be able to submit the game to the App Store by next month and that the game will use the original Doom sprites, but you should really take a few minutes to read the whole thing, it's really interesting stuff.

[Via Shacknews]

Hey, how's it going? Having a nice day? Got a busy schedule, huh? Lots of work to do, right? We're sorry to hear that -- see, here's how we see the next week or so playing out:

1. You'll fire up this recent, spot-on Flash port of Doom, Heretic and Hexen.
2. You'll play them until you're about to starve to death.
3. You'll eat.
4. You'll repeat steps 2 and 3 until, regrettably, you forget to do step 3.

Seriously, folks -- a Newgrounds Flash aficionado (simply named "Mike") has created one of the most accurate, free-est ports of three of id's gibbiest shooters (or wand-ers, in Heretic and Hexen's case). We highly suggest checking them out.

[Via Rock Paper Shotgun]

When it comes to digital distribution on consoles, American McGee feels that the model "still has some evolving to do." The game designer -- whose credits include Alice as well as Doom and Quake -- recently told Geek.com that while his ambitious 24-episode experiment Grimm could be ported over to such platforms as Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network, the process needs some work before that would happen.

"Porting this sort of stuff is straightforward," claimed McGee, who added that "the biggest issue" sits with the platforms' content approval and distribution model. XBLA's certification process has long proved a cumbersome hurdle for developers, with McGee noting,"When a single title might take months to get through review and approval (take Braid, as an example), pushing 24 episodes through would translate to years of approval process."

McGee is currently spinning his creative wheels on the recently announced sequel to Alice, a property that's also been mentioned in movie circles for some time. The rights currently sit with producer Scott Faye, who was responsible for 2008's big screen take on Max Payne, a film McGee lambasted, saying, "I wasn't able to sit through the entire thing ... I just couldn't connect to the film version." You, sir, were not alone.

[Via 1UP]

The benefits of Amazon.com's new Xbox Live Arcade Store continue to reveal themselves, as the two bestselling titles are Doom ($2.97) and Pac-Man C.E. ($4.97), both currently featured with discounted prices -- and both no-brainers for anyone who has previously passed on these two gems. Clearly, the Amazon option provides the possibility of more of these sweet discounts, in addition to perks like offering exact purchasing of games (instead of buying Microsoft Points in bulk), bonus money through participating credit cards, and potential sales tax dodging. But, a word to the wise: Check Amazon's prices against those listed on Xbox.com (80 Points = $1.00) before you buy, because some stated "discounts" are simply misleading.

Currently, at #6 on Amazon's XBLA bestseller list is the original Geometry Wars, which claims to be priced at a 50 percent discount -- wrong! Five dollars is the actual price of the game on Xbox Marketplace, and the presumed "broader" demographic now shopping for XBLA games on Amazon should be careful, as one would be better served to double down and purchase the superior sequel (#16 on the list) for ten. Alas, we're preaching to the choir here -- you, dear reader, already know this. (Whaddya gonna do, ya know?) Just take note of the real discounts, as they're good ones, and forget about those "others" being misled by the fake ones.

[Thanks, Chad]

Fueled by the recent veto of his Utah game bill and the constant thirst for more, Jack Thompson made an appearance on Utah radio show "Utah Eagle Forum" recently to discuss the merits of the bill and, well, to be Jack Thompson. Claiming the Columbine school shooting occurred due to "training on Doom" and saying the recent school shooting in Germany occurred due to the shooter's predilection for Counterstrike and Far Cry 2, Thompson immediately built a case for the audience to be concerned "why this is so terribly serious, to their own safety."

As GamePolitics points out, at no point in the show does anyone make note of Thompson's lack of an actual license to practice law or of his disbarring. He is, in fact, introduced as "an attorney from Florida." An odd omission considering the theme of the show is "Truth in Advertising."

The following post was assembled using two documents (Carmack_iPhone_development.doc and readme_iWolf.txt) written by John Carmack and included in Wolf3D iPhone v1.0 Source. The documents are posted in their exhaustive entirety after the break.

Dear Diary,

I love my iPhone. Unfortunately, things have conspired against us being out early on the platform. I had a plan for an aggressive, iPhone specific project that we actually started putting some internal resources on, but the programmer tasked with it didn't work out and was let go. In an odd coincidence, an outside development team came to us with a proposal, and we decided to have them work on the iPhone project. We should be announcing this project soon, and it is cool.

After a little looking around, I found Wolf3D Redux at http://wolf3dredux.sourceforge.net/. The game was still fun to play after all these years, and I began to think that it might be worthwhile to actually make a product out of Wolfenstein on the iPhone. The simple episodic nature of the game would make it easy to split up into a $0.99 version with just the first episode. I was getting a little ahead of myself without a fun-to-play demonstration of feasibility on the iPhone, but the idea of moving the entire line of classic Id titles over -- Wolf, Doom, Quake, Quake 2, and Quake Arena, was starting to sound like a real good idea.

During a rather candid interview in the back seat of a car (we like to imagine they're going to Wendy's for some Frosties), Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson spoke his mind regarding the Doom movie and what it takes to turn a game into a film. "We are an example of trying and failing," The Rock said regarding Doom. "It always comes down to good writing and material. We're an example of what not to do." And, of course, no casual interview is complete without a Freudian slip involving the male reproductive organ.

While id Software recently partnered with EA's increasingly popular publishing imprint EA Partners for the upcoming Rage, John Carmack said that no such deal has been reached for the studio's other major project, the recently announced Doom 4. "Nobody's signed Doom yet," Carmack told Joystiq, "so Doom 4 will be the same process of going out and bringing [publishers] around." By that point, id will have "some scope of how the dealings of EA will have gone" and they'll "be able to get a better sense of how we think their doing, holding up their side of the bargain."

And when will that be? "We're taking Doom like we did with Rage, quite a way on our internal development funds," Carmack revealed. "It winds up getting us a better deal with the publishers who sign it but we do expect to be signing Doom deals later this year." So, in other words, after beating out other publishers on paper – including Activision, THQ, and Sega – to get the publishing rights for Rage, it's up to EA Partners to actually perform if they want a slice of that Doom 4 pie. With games like Rock Band, Rock Band 2, Left 4 Dead, Orange Box, Crysis, and unreleased games like Brütal Legend, and the as-yet-unnamed Epic / People Can Fly and Shinji Mikami / Suda51 games we think EA aims to please.

Check back later today for our full interview with id's John Carmack and Marty Stratton.