There’s plenty of ”cross-over interest” between studio fans with Skyrim performing extremely well at QuakeCon. They have ”better games as a result” of buyout.
”I mean, I don’t think there’s any intention for it to become BethesdaCon,” said id boss Todd Hollenshead. The studio has just wrapped up this year’s QuakeCon event, and while Bethesda has included some of their line-up it remains principally all about id.
”One of the things that we really felt about the acquisition is that it wasn’t an “either or” thing. We feel like we make the best shooters in the world, and Bethesda makes the best RPG games in the world.” Elder Scrolls: Skyrim was a hot presentation at QuakeCon.
”I think that there’s a lot of cross-over interest with our fans,” he continued.
Bethesda now own id Software but not much has changed at the developer. ”I think our plan has basically been pretty consistent since the acquisition. You know, focus on RAGE, get that done,” said Hollenshead. Some pressure has been taken off their shoulders.
”The capital required to put both those games in production – the means and size to do them at a triple-A level – would have been a literal “bet the company” sort of thing. We would have had all kinds of other weird pressures.”
”We’re obviously working on Doom 4. That’s not a secret, even though we’re not really talking about it.” Big shots from id, like John Carmack, have talked up their ‘not-so-secret’ Doom 4 project a few times, mainly teasing the size of the team it requires.
”One of the things I think it’s important for gamers to understand is that there are economic pressures and always have been on id, and there are release schedules and things like that now that we’ve been acquired.”
”These things don’t go away, and it’s not like they didn’t exist previously. But Zenimax’s philosophy is so consistent with ours. It’s “the game designers make the games at a higher level, and we get the best marketing and distribution we can,” added Hollenshead.
”We integrate these things, so development knows what sales is doing, sales knows what’s going on in development. Everybody is working together and rolling in the same direction across all the games that the company’s working on.”
The id big cheese also touches on the consoles and the future of graphics.
”Coming from id – and this is Carmack’s quote – graphics will always matter. And I agree with that 100 percent. I think that there’s a point where you get diminishing returns, obviously. You approach reality until the point that you get there,” he offered.
”And then, once you get there – which, we never will – but the curve gets so close that the differences are imperceptible to most consumers. I don’t think we’re anywhere near there yet. We’re still making graphical trade-offs and working within system constraints. If you gave us twice the horsepower, I guarantee we’d soak up every single bit of it.”
Check out the full interview between Todd Hollenshead and VG247.
