3+ Hours of discussion later...

The beginning of QuakeCon is always started by several hours of John Carmack talking about very technical things.  This two hour keynote typically runs into the three to four hour range, and it was no different this time.  John certainly has the gift of gab when it comes to his projects, but unlike others his gab is chock full of useful information, often quite beyond the understanding of those in the audience.

The first topic of discussion was that of last year’s Rage launch.  John was quite apologetic about how it went, especially in terms of PC support.  For a good portion of users out there, it simply would not work due to driver issues on the AMD side.  The amount of lessons they learned from Rage were tremendous.  iD simply cannot afford to release two games in one decade.  Rage took some six plus years of development.  Consider that Doom 3 was released in 2004, and we did not see Rage until Fall 2011.  The technology in Rage is a big step up due to the use of iD Tech 5, and the art assets of the title are very impressive.

iD also made some big mistakes in how they have marketed the title.  Many people were assuming that it would be a title more in line with Bethesda’s Fallout 3 with a lot of RPG type missions and storyline.  Instead of a 80 hour title that one would expect, it was a 10+ hour action title.  So marketing needs to create a better representation of what the game entails.  They also need to stay a bit more focused on what they will be delivering, and be able to do so in a timely manner.

Read the rest of John's Keynote by clicking here.