14 DAY TRIAL // As the video game industry evolves, both fans and analysts have decried the lack of innovation coming from big developers and publishers
John Carmack, who is one of the founders of id Software and is now the lead engineer at the company, has told IndustryGamers that, “I am pretty down on people who take the sort of creative auteurs’ perspective. It’s like ‘Oh, we’re not being creative.’ But we’re creating value for people – that’s our job!”
Carmack says that innovation should not be the only focus of developers and that the true test of the popularity of a video game is whether a sizable number of people is ready to pay money in order to play it.
Using a formula that has already powered a hit game is not a bad idea for developers and gamers should be focused on judging quality and not just innovation in the experiences they pay for.
In the coming months, id Software is set to launch RAGE, their first new intellectual property in quite a long time and the first video game powered by the new and impressive id Tech 5 engine.
But Carmack says that for a time he actually believed that the first-person shooter genre was going to drop in popularity and that the market was going to be dominated by the third-person perspective.
This was before the great success enjoyed by Call of Duty and its mix between bits of action and cinematic moments.
Carmck says, “Seeing the huge success of that, it has been great to see it swing back towards people really seeing the advantages of first person perspective, the immersion that you get in the game – that you may be watching a kick ass movie in the third person view, but you’re in the kick ass movie with first person.”
RAGE is set to appear on October 4 on home console and on the PC.