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

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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46.

Re: id On RAGE "Cluster!@#$" and Lead Platforms
Oct 7, 2011, 23:55

theyarecomingforyou

46.

Re: id On RAGE "Cluster!@#$" and Lead Platforms Oct 7, 2011, 23:55

Oct 7, 2011, 23:55

theyarecomingforyou

The idea that the AMD drivers that id Software were testing the game with were fine is just silly. The release date was well known by both parties and the issues with the public drivers were well known, so surely there should have been some coordination? It makes absolutely no sense for this situation, as both RAGE and AMD are tarnished by it. And the Crossfire drivers are still a week away, when most games ship with them.

Anyway, the technical issues have actually done id a favour, as otherwise they'd be talking about the terrible design decisions:
1) Invisible walls everywhere
2) Can't pick up weapons from dead people - they fade away
3) Dozens of inviting doors but maybe 1% can actually be opened
4) Accepting a mission skips character dialogue, breaking immersion
5) Terrible auto-save system
6) In game text pop-ups telling you stuff, even telling you to save regularly
7) Enemies using the same animations, to the point where they die on top of each other in the same pose
8) Horrible vehicle physics (Borderlands was much better)

More annoying is that just months ago Carmack was interviewed and stated that they should have put more of an emphasis on the PC version and that they'd be changing their design process to accommodate that. Now that all the initial sales have died down he reveals the truth. Surprise, surprise.

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."