Doom 3 -- An Interview with id, Part 2
- March 04, 2004 08:07 AM PST
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More exclusive information on Doom 3, what the id team thinks of Halo 2 and how ESRB ratings come into play during development.
Everyone's heard of Texas tall tales, but when the crew at Mesquite-based id Software talks, it's rarely with exaggeration -- and people listen. id CEO Todd Hollenshead, Doom 3 Lead Designer Tim Willits, and id's Director of Business Development Marty Stratton were especially candid in our interviews for the April 2004 exclusive cover story. They didn't flinch when asked whether the company has changed in the wake of violent video game scrutiny, how they felt about John Romero's legacy, how Doom 3 will measure up to Halo 2, and why they were crazy enough to mess with one of the most beloved franchises in gaming history in the first place.The first half of the interview was full of inside information and the second half delivers more of the same. Read on!
GP: A lot of the media attention on game violence has fallen on id -- lawsuits were filed and dismissed and you've been in the crosshairs. Has all the media attention and blame changed anything about the way you guys do stuff here?
MS: No -- I would say not at all. Todd is very well versed in all of that. A significant part of his job during the lawsuits was working with our attorneys on that kind of stuff. We're members of the ESA, and we're very active in the ratings system -- Todd's on the ESA committee that works with the ESRB to perfect the ratings system, to make it better, to make it more effective. To that extent, we're as involved as any company in the industry as far as making responsible decisions about ratings and that kind of thing. But from a design perspective, we're a company that makes action games, and that's what our fans want. Our fans are young adults and adults, and just like any good action movie, you put yourself in the line of fire, and that's what games are all about. I don't think we've backed away or changed anything we do here on any of that. It's good entertainment, and we deal with things like the rating system as responsibly as anybody else.
TH: I don't know if we're lucky or what, but the current poster child for violent games isn't an id game -- it's probably Grand Theft Auto or Manhunt. So we've had some attention go off of us and onto these other titles. The media attention isn't quite what it was, but obviously with a game like Doom 3, the question is almost inevitable that it comes up. Our approach is that we're not making Doom 3 for small children. Video games as a medium of entertainment are not just for kids, and when you play games, it's to be entertained -- it's not to waste your time and things like that. Specifically with respect to the Xbox -- and not just the Xbox -- but the demographics skew to an older audience. Although amongst people who are 60 and 70 years old, many of whom sit up on Capitol Hill, still think of video games as child's play, a lot of the people who are in my age group, and in their 20s or even in their 40s, look at video games as something that people just do because they're fun, and it's a source of entertainment. The fact that we don't try to target young children as the potential buyer for our games -- I think we've always been very up-front about the content of our games. Going back to the old days, before there was even an ESRB ratings system, id was instrumental in the formation of the system that predated the ESRB ratings system -- the RSAC ratings system -- so we've been almost at an activist level in trying to communicate to consumers what it is that you're buying.
It's something that I pay attention to, and there may be some content issues that we may be more or less sensitive to. A lot of it doesn't have to do with the quote-unquote "violent" aspect of it, but in terms of, does it affect something that Tim wants to do or something that the artists want to do or something that the programmers want to put into the game, that is probably the last thing on the list of elements that may be checked off that would be given any consideration. It would probably be only given any weight if we thought it had some impact on whether we thought it would potentially be over the line for a retailer to take, and they would say "We're not going to carry your game because it has this sort of content in it," or that we think it could impact negatively the rating. Although we haven't submitted anything to the ESRB, I fully expect that Doom 3 will be an M-rated game, but obviously we would not be interested in having it be an AO-rated game. Fundamentally because if you have an AO-rated game, certain retailers are not going to carry your game because of the stigma is that it means it's pornography. That doesn't do us any good, doesn't do the people who want to play the game any good, and I don't think it's any good for the industry as a whole.
GP: Gamers love arguing about anything -- console versus console, game versus game. A lot of people are setting up this year as Doom 3 versus Halo 2, a heavyweight showdown. What's your perspective on that? Does that factor in? Do you care?
MS: I guess from a brand perspective, you can look at it as a heavyweight showdown, a big brand vs. a big brand thing. I think when you boil it down, Halo is synonymous with Xbox, and I think Doom is synonymous with PC, although through the success of Tides of War on the Xbox and the fact that we have come out pretty early in saying that Doom 3 is an Xbox title as well, I think we're turning some heads, definitely. And luckily for us in the industry, you can have a heavyweight brand showdown and there doesn't have to be just one winner. What you get is gamers winning, because they can go out and pick up two totally kick-ass games. And you hope that Halo 2 comes out to be a really tight game, and we're going to deliver the best game on the platform as well. I think they're going to be different games -- I think ours is going to look better, definitely. They're going to do things a little differently, we're going to do things a little differently, but in the end, hopefully both games come out and are really good and very successful. That's only good for the industry and it's only good for gamers. And good for us, too, because that means there's that many more people playing games, that many more people buying games, that many more people playing first-person games on the console, which is always going to be a bit of id's bread and butter. Hopefully it's a win-win situation.
It's kind of a funny question. It's like the summer blockbuster movies-you don't look at the lineup of trailers that are coming out for the big summer movies and say "Well, I guess I gotta see X-Men 2 and I can't see this." You don't look at it like that -- it's like "God, I've got Halo 2 coming out, I've got Doom 3 coming out...it's gonna be a fun year. I'm going to have a good time this year playing games."
Competition always breeds better product. You certainly wouldn't want Sony out there with the only console, because they're not going to be advancing as fast as they do unless you've got Microsoft right on their heels with whatever's next for them. You're going to end up with better products the more competition there is on the market. The same is true for games. We know there's competition out there and we want our game to be the best experience that gamers have, so that they're talking about that all year -- just like other developers do. But people can go out and buy both products and be perfectly happy.
TW: For us as developers, we're more proud when someone comes up and says "Hey, Tim, you know, I played Doom 3 and I had a really fun time. It was really scary, and I jumped..." and they tell me some funny story about how a demon jumped up behind them. I mean, cool. And that's actually better than someone saying, "Dude, man, your game was so much better than Game X." That doesn't tell me anything, you know what I'm saying? I don't really care. But if they tell me that they had a fun time playing, that's all I'm happy about.
GP: You've said in the past that everybody in the company was a big Doom fan and it was the "holy grail" product, where everybody gets to work on this legendary thing. Doesn't that make you guys nervous at all? To a certain extent, you're dealing with "The Doom Legacy."
TW: Yeah, it's sorta like George Lucas working on The Phantom Menace. Hopefully, we'll do a better job. [laughs]
MS: It would be one thing if Doom or Doom II had released two years ago or whatever, but they're so far removed from each other. People have a warm fuzzy feeling from Doom, I guess -- or maybe a terrifying feeling -- but they have a good memory of Doom, and I think what we have to do is not necessarily try to copy that or make something exactly the same from a feeling perspective, but give them a new experience that is reminiscent of Doom -- they know that's an Arch-Vile or an Imp or whatever. But if you look at the Imp now from the Imp then...you ask somebody who didn't know: "Is that the same character?" No, of course not. They're so far removed from each other that if we really provide people with a scary, terrifying experience that is Doom 3, they're going to be happy and they're going to say, "That's a great experience. Maybe it's not that good as what I remember Doom to be," and it probably won't be, just because they're so far removed from each other.
TW: Everybody has a memory of Doom that's different -- even here at id. You go up to someone: "What was your memory of Doom?" "Oh, it was scary." "What was your memory of Doom?" "It was action-packed." "The greatest weapons." "Multiplayer." So yeah, we have to live up to a lot of people's expectations, and a lot of people's expectations are different. But going back to something that I said earlier, if we try to focus on making the game that we think is fun, get that done, that is the best way for us to succeed. Don't try to appease this group of people, but try to appease us -- make all the guys at id think, "Oh, this is fun to play" And then I think we'll be successful, and that's what we're going to try to focus on.
TH: To the extent that there's sort of a hall of fame of PC gaming, I think Doom is going to be at or near the top of anybody's list. Now we're going to be ten years from the release of Doom II and over 11 years from the release of the original Doom as shareware...the status as a revered title, to go back and play with that franchise again, is a risk. But from our standpoint, number one, Doom is id's title, and so we sort of have the moral right; if the company wants to do something with it, it's our prerogative. But when John started to look at what he was going to do next from a rendering standpoint, he came across the paradigm that is the underlying philosophy for the Doom 3 technology, and he thought that would be a great marriage for what type of game he originally had in his mind when he came up with the idea for Doom.
It's sort of unknown lore that the whole idea behind Doom was originally John's. John came to the guys -- it was before I was at id --and said, "Why don't we do a game like this?" and it was like, "Yeah!" and then Adrian came up with the monsters, Romero did a lot of the level design, Tom Hall, Sandy Peterson did some stuff as well. But he was sort of in one of those nerdy game designer moments: "Oh, now I could actually realize my vision, the game that was in my imagination when I thought about this 10 years ago." So you take that and the complement of the team members here, as you said, it's a lot of people that sort of remember the first time they played Doom or Doom II, and a lot of people have very romanticized notions about what it was like to play it, and their finest moment in PC gaming goes back to those days.
A lot of the guys here got their jobs in the industry or got their introduction to PC gaming by playing Doom as well. So to be able to work on something that you almost idolized as a game fan, it's kind of like the opportunity of a lifetime -- "Oh, it would be my fantasy to be able to work on another Doom game." The combination -- the marriage of the technology with the game philosophy, and also just being something that everybody here was completely charged up and enthused about working on really made it a project that while there are always some risks of disappointing people and that Doom 3 isn't going to be what an old Doom fan may have expected because of their notions of what are the critical elements of the game, for us it was a good decision to make, to pursue that direction.
We've kind of had some similar considerations with Return to Castle Wolfenstein, going back to quote-unquote "grandfather of FPS games." Wolf 3D was one of the first PC games I played -- my girlfriend got me introduced to it and I would play it until I was literally so motion sick that I would have to lay down on the bed and it would wipe me out for an afternoon. Is it something that you let shine in the trophy case or do you dust it off and try to bring it to the next level and make a game that people in today's consumer audience on today's platforms are going to enjoy? Especially if they played the first one, but even if they didn't?
I think the content that is being created speaks to the enthusiasm that everybody has here to work and make Doom 3 a game that will be viewed favorably alongside, arguably, a couple of the best games of all time. I don't say that lightly, because I think there's a lot of history with id that even I as a fan, before I came to work at the company, can appreciate.
