id On RAGE "Cluster!@#$" and Lead Platforms [Oct 07, 2011, 8:33 pm ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
Kotaku asks the musical question "Why Was The PC Launch of Rage Such A "Cluster!@#$"?," 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."
Re: id On RAGE "Cluster!@#$" and Lead Platforms
Oct 8, 2011, 00:40
Oct 8, 2011, 00:40
Well it's nice and all for id to come out and say this stuff (ok, it's not all that nice at all), but the real question here is:
Will they fix the game? Should we expect patches, and to what extent? Are they still dedicated to the PC, or should we expect the same story for Doom 4?
All I've seen so far is them point fingers at the video drivers - How come other games have gotten along fine with those drivers? Did they never test the game on the PC? Why did they never talk with the driver makers (nvidia, ati) and get this stuff sorted out before hand? Did they give nvidia/ati a preview copy of Rage and work with them?
It's a pity; if Rage had a smooth launch, the video card manufacturers would've made more money (people buying new cards due to good game reviews), and obviously id would make more in sales. Simply saying "oh the PC isn't leading anymore" and then not trying anymore definitely guarantees the PC will stay in that state.
Why is Carmack talking about audiences anyway? Why does he care? He's a game designer; he enjoys making great games. It's obviously the upper management who gave him orders for the design direction, and he has to follow that. I'm not blaming Carmack for anything - he's just doing as ordered. The issue is obviously a lack of testing; it was the upper management who decided "yeah, this game was tested enough and is ready for release. No, we don't need to delay the PC release and put more resources into fixing it."
Will they fix the game? Should we expect patches, and to what extent? Are they still dedicated to the PC, or should we expect the same story for Doom 4?
All I've seen so far is them point fingers at the video drivers - How come other games have gotten along fine with those drivers? Did they never test the game on the PC? Why did they never talk with the driver makers (nvidia, ati) and get this stuff sorted out before hand? Did they give nvidia/ati a preview copy of Rage and work with them?
It's a pity; if Rage had a smooth launch, the video card manufacturers would've made more money (people buying new cards due to good game reviews), and obviously id would make more in sales. Simply saying "oh the PC isn't leading anymore" and then not trying anymore definitely guarantees the PC will stay in that state.
Why is Carmack talking about audiences anyway? Why does he care? He's a game designer; he enjoys making great games. It's obviously the upper management who gave him orders for the design direction, and he has to follow that. I'm not blaming Carmack for anything - he's just doing as ordered. The issue is obviously a lack of testing; it was the upper management who decided "yeah, this game was tested enough and is ready for release. No, we don't need to delay the PC release and put more resources into fixing it."
"If you like it, they will stop making it" - Herblock's Law
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