id On RAGE "Cluster!@#$" and Lead Platforms

[Oct 07, 2011, 9:33 pm ET] - Share - Viewing Comments

Kotaku asks the musical question "Why Was The PC Launch of Rage Such A "Cluster!@#$"?," getting answers from id on the topic, who express frustration with problems that were largely caused by driver issues. Along the way they also address how the game being designed for consoles holds back the PC edition. "You can choose to design a game around the specs of a high-end PC and make console versions that fail to hit the design point, or design around the specs of the consoles and have a high-end PC provide incremental quality improvements," John Carmack tells them. "We chose the latter." He also bluntly addresses why this makes sense for id (emphasis Kotaku's):

"We do not see the PC as the leading platform for games," Carmack added. "That statement will enrage some people, but it is hard to characterize it otherwise; both console versions will have larger audiences than the PC version. A high end PC is nearly 10 times as powerful as a console, and we could unquestionably provide a better experience if we chose that as our design point and we were able to expend the same amount of resources on it. Nowadays most of the quality of a game comes from the development effort put into it, not the technology it runs on. A game built with a tenth the resources on a platform 10 times as powerful would be an inferior product in almost all cases."

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10.

Re: id On RAGE

Oct 7, 2011, 22:04

zincthallinide

Doom and Quake were the only really great games id ever made, and even then they seemed better years ago when I didn't care as much about actual story or depth. AND even then D & Q were mainly a big deal because they pushed first-person computer gaming so far beyond where it had been before. With Quake 2 and Quake 3 they at least added some more color back into their games but they seem to have given up on that. Doom is still their most fun game for me, it's not really focused on 'realism' (whatever that means in a fictional computer game world anyway), so you run around at 60 mph, carry 7 weapons at once, fight 300 things at a time, the levels don't really make any 'sense', etc. etc. etc. Quake was true 3D but too brown and NIN-y, Quake 2 was okay but the levels generally somehow felt tiny, Quake 3 was fun for a little while, Doom 3 was plastic-y and dark and tried too hard to be scary, Rage, I dunno, I doubt I'll ever try it, I've already played Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, other post-apocalyptic zombie/mutant games that I can't remember

Re: id On RAGE "Cluster!@#$" and Lead Platforms

Oct 7, 2011, 22:02

Creston

So his bullshit of a few months back where he said, and I quote "When we started on the game six years ago, I looked at the consoles and said ‘These are as good as the PCs that we're on here’, and our development strategy was set up such that we basically developed live on all the platforms there. And now when we’re looking at PCs that have ten times the horsepower of the consoles... I’m making a large change in my direction, just saying ‘We should be focusing on building things efficiently on the PC and [then] deploying on to consoles.’ And we didn’t make that as crisp of a distinction as we should have." was exactly just that: FUCKING BULLSHIT. Creston

Re: id On RAGE

Oct 7, 2011, 22:01

Draugr

Witcher 2 was PC exclusive and it managed to have the quality one can expect from any other AAA title.

Re: id On RAGE "Cluster!@#$" and Lead Platforms

Oct 7, 2011, 21:59

Pankin

As others here have said, Carmack's not wrong. Having paid attention to the warning signs (starting with Doom3), it makes me happy that I chose not to purchase Rage.

Re: id On RAGE

Oct 7, 2011, 21:51

Dades

Good enough to put money in John's wallet apparently. If it's a good enough platform to release a product that you charge people money for then you should treat it as such and support it, end of fucking story.

Re: Sucks

Oct 7, 2011, 21:46

PropheT

Quboid wrote on Oct 7, 2011, 21:40: It's all about making money. I fear designing with consoles in mind is the way to do that best I think most reasonable people understand that already, the issue comes with the difficulty in explaining why a game like Deus Ex can give a good PC experience with all the bells and whistles you'd expect but RAGE can't. Leading with another platform doesn't, or shouldn't, mean that what you wind up with on the PC is just a straight port with no consideration for the platform. The effort put into the development for the PC version is exactly the problem in the first place, not which technology it runs on.

Re: id On RAGE

Oct 7, 2011, 21:45

Mashiki Amiketo

Shataan wrote on Oct 7, 2011, 21:42:
The real funny thing is..... the game was developed ON the freaking PC. Well, all the spin in the world is not gonna deflect the fact that the PC end was infact a clusterfux. Hopefully, the developer will patch up the PC version to at least acceptable condition.

Oh don't worry. You just need to shovel the crap to the consoles and then polish the turd a bit, and they'll be happy with terrible UI's and no customization.




-- "For every human problem, there is a neat, simple solution; and it is always wrong." --H.L. Mencken

Re: id On RAGE

Oct 7, 2011, 21:42

Shataan

The real funny thing is..... the game was developed ON the freaking PC. Well, all the spin in the world is not gonna deflect the fact that the PC end was infact a clusterfux. Hopefully, the developer will patch up the PC version to at least acceptable condition.

Sucks

Oct 7, 2011, 21:40

Quboid

This sucks, but as angry as I want to be, I know it's true. I still believe doing a good PC version will help make money, but evidently they didn't see it that way when they designed Rage.

It's all about making money. I fear designing with consoles in mind is the way to do that best




- Quboid

Re: id On RAGE "Cluster!@#$" and Lead Platforms

Oct 7, 2011, 21:39

Wallshadows

Nowadays most of the quality of a game comes from the development effort put into it, not the technology it runs on Rage is a far cry from quality...

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