![]() ![]() They jump in, they're trained a little bit, they're taught what goes on in the game. You might like it." We want people to be able to go to the Web site, and things just automatically happen. So in many ways it's better for the hardcore people, but most of the focus has been on making sure that, if somebody-since it's free, you want the scenario to be, "Hey, go check this out. We've taken all the suggestions that the people that have been playing the game for the last nine years-the diehard, competitive crowd-the things that they like about it, and the rule changes that they've liked, and so on. And so much of the effort that's gone into this has been about turning it from something that was very much a hardcore game, into something that is approachable by everybody. I think that bodes very well for the possibility of getting in the multiple millions of regular users. And I was really quite heartened when we opened the beta registration process and we have had over 100,000 people sign up, with really no significant promotion or anything around it. I mean, I could see credible arguments that people could make for any of those numbers and anything in between. ![]() My first earliest fears have already been resolved where, when this idea was first floated out, we really didn't know if when we launched, if we would get 50,000, 500,000, or 5 million people playing it. We'll know whether things are playing out fairly early. But the big question about how this will do as a business model should be answered within six months. And it turned into, one, a more ambitious project, and two, as we should have expected going in, we really didn't know how to make Web sites and manage databases and all that stuff with the people that we already had in house.Īnd there's been a big learning experience on it, and here we are, almost a year later, and it is rolling into beta now, and we're pretty happy with how it looks on everything. The initial thought was that this might be a six-month development, where we take the old title and we wrap a Web interface around it and kind of push it out there and see what it does. Now, it's definitely already been significantly longer than we thought it would take to launch. So some speculators or squatters wound up sitting on the domain, and we decided that since it was still the early days, to go ahead and just change the title of the game, rather than pay them off.Īnd it's been Quake Live since very shortly after that. John Carmack:: So the process was, I had this rough idea to try this shortly before QuakeCon last year, and we announced it there, but we didn't wind up tying up all the domain names that we should have when we were calling it Quake Zero. When did it become Quake Live, and what has been going on with the game since then? GameSpot:: Quake Live was initially announced as Quake Zero at last year's QuakeCon, and you all said it would be an experiment in advertising-supported gaming. It may be a nine-year-old game, but Quake Live will have a modern Web interface. The gaming execs discussed what Quake Live brings to the table, how the ad-supported gaming fit in with id's mobile and top-tier development strategy, what PCs still have over consoles, and how the PC is the "junior partner" in id's cross-platform strategy for Rage and its latest-and-greatest game engine, Tech 5. With id expecting to flip the switch on as soon as next month, GameSpot sat down with id Software founder and technical director John Carmack as well as executive producer Marty Stratton. ![]() Nearly a year on and a partnership with in-game advertising kingpins IGA Worldwide later, id is preparing to open the floodgates on, the platform that will host the free-to-play, browser-based Quake III Arena. However, forgoing the traditional brick-and-mortar distribution channel, and outright leapfrogging the fledgling digital download market, id revealed the game would be streamed as a native application through an everyday Web browser. Since then, the developer has maintained its position as a technological innovator, thanks in no small part to programming wunderkind John Carmack.Īt last year's QuakeCon, the notable studio first teased its next ambitious effort in the gaming industry, announcing a free-to-play, ad-supported version of Quake III Arena. After all, the Mesquite, Texas-based outfit dramatically revolutionized the gaming industry in 1993 with the groundbreaking first-person shooter Doom. It isn't at all unusual to hear the words "pioneer" and "id Software" uttered within the space of a breath. ![]()
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