Yep, I've secured another exclusive interview with Id founder John Carmack. Last year, I spoke to him about the development of excellent mobile title, DoomRPG. Since then he has worked with Fountainhead Entertainment on the award-winning old skool RPG, Orcs and Elves, and is now coding several projects, including a DS port of Orcs. He talks about all of them here.
Importantly, Carmack's games have formed the centrepiece of EA's resolute assault on the mobile sector. The company's conversion of Tetris was the best-selling mobile title of 2006, while recently released console conversion, Fight Night Round 3, is already attracting plaudits.
So, here's what John said...
DoomRPG was one of the most well-received mobile titles of last year. Were you expecting that, and what do you think most contributed toward the critical success? I was fairly confident that DoomRPG would be well received, but we really didn't have a good idea if the market of mid- to high-end phones would be large enough to justify this type of game development. When I first talked publicly about mobile development, I remember reading some comments on message boards from existing cell phone developers about how the low-end market was too important to ignore. Fortunately, it looks like our decisions panned out.
The most important thing we did was embrace the device form factor, and build a gameplay style that dodges the weaknesses completely, rather than trying to fight against them. I cringe when I see developers trying to hammer first-person shooters or side scrolling games onto mobile platforms, where the control schemes just don't work. The one-thumb playability of DoomRPG and Orcs & Elves doesn't make you feel pissed off at your phone. Qualcomm has some exciting prototype phones with really great controls that would open up new worlds for mobile gaming, but I have doubts about their ability to gain enough market penetration to matter. For the time being, good mobile games are probably going to remain of a visibly different design than any other platform.
In what ways do you feel Orcs & Elves builds on the DoomRPG blueprint? The raw technology is nearly the same, but the design, polish and finesse that went into O&E is much, much greater. With DoomRPG completed, Anna took stock of what worked well and what didn't, and with that experience, shaped the new design with a brand new Universe in mind. DoomRPG rode largely on things that I brought to the table: technical flash, novel game play, an established name, and an established fan base. Orcs & Elves differentiates itself with the strong design and meticulous attention to detail that Anna [Kang, CEO and founder of Fountainhead] brings. Orcs had to prove itself and stand on its own by being a much better game.
The game seems self-consciously 'retro' - everything from the simple title to the controls feels like formative RPG titles such as Dungeon Master. Was this a conscious design decision? The Bard's Tale, one of my personal early favourites, was the type of game that I had in mind when I was describing the feel of DoomRPG and later O&E to Anna. She had no idea what I was talking about :-) What she was able to do is take what she liked about playing D&D and put that experience onto the cellphone. The core of good games seem to be universal since she was able to reproduce that element of classic RPG design without ever having played one.
The story of the title is amusing - we were discussing where we wanted to go with the mobile games at Id, and I said something like "Well, obviously someone should take DoomRPG and do a sort of 'orcs and elves' fantasy game with it." Todd Hollenshead said, "you know, that's not a bad name for a game." I was just reaching for a vague classification for a broad genre, but if you aren't a jaded old hand disdainful of the cliché, I think it works out just fine. The line between "classic" and "cliché" will vary from person to person, but I find it to be good, wholesome fun to go whack orcs with a flaming sword.
Mobile game publishers are keen to get us all playing 3D titles. Do you think true 3D is really important on this platform? We have been in discussions with the various vendors about doing a specialty product to showcase mobile 3D acceleration, but nothing has come of it yet. I am quite confident that we could do something wonderful if we designed it from scratch, but it isn't clear that the market can support a good development effort.
What are your ambitions for Id's mobile work? Are you planning to extend the Orc and Elves series or do you have other cellphone projects in mind? It is a bit ironic in a way - when I first decided to look at mobile gaming, I came up with a half dozen different ideas that I thought would play well on the platform. However, it seems that we hit a good direction the first time out, and we may almost be trapped in the style, almost like Id is "trapped" in the first person shooter genre. There are certainly worse fates. :-)
Orcs & Elves 2 is complete and it is really great, even better than the original. Lots of new play elements, great design, and a new skill level option that provides replayability. Anna has many more ideas for expanding the O&E world, so there may be more yet to come but we also have several other game ideas that we'd like to try out.
Have you thought about working on other handheld platforms like the DS and PSP? We are working on a DS version of Orcs & Elves right now. I laid the groundwork for the 3D engine last month, and the Fountainhead team is hard at work. I had a great time doing the initial programming on it, since it has the same "small system" feel that you get with mobile development, but you have complete low level control of the system, instead of having to work through an API or Java.
What about online multiplayer. Away from casual games, is anyone delivering a compelling multiplayer experience on mobile yet? The network latencies are such that twitch action online games aren't really viable, although close proximity Bluetooth gaming is. I think that EA is doing some good things with alternate game designs that are more latency tolerant, but I haven't seen a breakout app yet.
Are you looking to try out online multiplayer with future mobile releases? From a purely technical standpoint I would enjoy seeing what can be done with it, and I have some ideas about virtual locality that I think could be promising. An online game is certainly a possibility for our next mobile game, but no decisions have been made yet.
Are there any advances in mobile technology that have caught your eye this year? Anything you think will make the next Orcs & Elves that much better - either to look at or play? The biggest thing we need is just a larger maximum memory size for the applications, and this is mostly in the hands of the service providers instead of the hardware vendors. The next issue is just better control of the hardware that is already there. For a device whose primary purpose is the input and output of audio, I find the state of game audio on cell phones pretty pathetic.
After DoomRPG, can we expect to see any other famous Id series' making it onto mobile/handheld? We have talked about doing some Wolfenstein or Quake themed games, and that is a possibility for the next title, but again, no decisions have been made yet.
Can you tell us what else you're working on at the moment? You always seem to have several projects on the go? There are a bunch of exciting things going on at Id, but almost all of them are still secret at the moment. Sorry.
