Carmack takes aim at "snooty" indies

By Fred Dutton Published 18 July, 2011

Condemns Call of Duty bashing.

id Software co-founder John Carmack has attacked "snooty" independent developers who criticise FPS developers for being too conservative.

Speaking in an interview with IndustryGamers, Carmack argued that a developer's job is to make games that people love and are willing to open their wallets for, not games that push boundaries.

"I'm actually happy Rage is a little bit different in terms of feeling and tone. It's not just, 'Here's your squad mates'," he explained before saying his piece.

"But that's still a proven formula that people like, and it's a mistake to [discount that]. As long as people are buying it, it means they're enjoying it. If they buy the next Call of Duty, it's because they loved the last one and they want more of it.

"So I am pretty down on people who take the sort of creative auteurs' perspective," he continued. "It's like 'Oh, we"re not being creative.' But we're creating value for people - that's our job!

"It's not to do something that nobody's ever seen before. It's to do something that people love so much they're willing to give us money for.

"So I do get pretty down on people that - you see some of the indie developers that really take a snooty attitude about this. It's almost as if it's popular, it's not good. And that's just not true."

Rage, id's latest effort and its first new IP since Quake launched in 1996, is due out on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in October.

Picture of Fred.

About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (67) Latest comment 10 months ago

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  • Jazzy_Geoff #1 10 months ago

    gaming snobs are the worst bed-wetting nonce-victims on the planet

    having your self-esteem tied up with your preference for one contemporary military-themed FPS over another, more successful one is just too pathetic for words

  • wez_316 #2 10 months ago

    The thing that Carmack does not get is that a lot of the people who hate on Call of Duty are not frustrated with the people who make the game. They are only doing the smart thing by cashing in on what the people want.

    This issue most people have with COD and CODalikes is that it is all the people want. So many undernourished gamers out there playing one game brings a tear to my eye.

    I've had my fair share of COD myself but it isn't the only thing out there!

  • darkmorgado #3 10 months ago

    It's not to do something that nobody's ever seen before. It's to do something that people love so much they're willing to give us money for.

    So, in other words, you're happy to just push out any old shit as long as you can make a profit?

    Yeah, that's some real artistic integrity RIGHT THERE Mr Carmack.

  • WinterSnowblind #4 10 months ago

    I agree about the snooty indy gamers. I see a lot of comments these days from people praising indie or artsy titles but then immediately switching sides when they become more popular or mainstream. Like Flower over something like Saints Row doesn't make you a more intelligent or better person.

    But Call of Duty deserves all the hate it's getting.

  • ParamedicFoetus #5 10 months ago

    I'd agree with him. There are a lot of people who really enjoy call of duty and will continue to do so, this really shouldn't bother people so much.
    Also So, in other words, you're happy to just push out any old shit as long as you can make a profit?
    that's not what he's saying. The point is that if so many people get so much enjoyment out of what is an entertainment product whose to say its shit. It might not be to your tastes but that doesn't matter to the people enjoying it.

  • Kappow #6 10 months ago

    Imagine Kotick or Riccitiello saying this

  • Machiavellian #7 10 months ago

    wez_316 Said
    The thing that Carmack does not get is that a lot of the people who hate on Call of Duty are not frustrated with the people who make the game. They are only doing the smart thing by cashing in on what the people want.

    Can you tell me whats wrong with that. Probably one of the hardest thing for a developers is to introduce something new to people who do not want new. If you "Innovate" to much which means change the formula, you risk loosing your customer base. COD has a huge community. The reason the game sells so much is that the community do not want a lot of change and the developer would be stupid to do it.

    darkmorgado Said
    So, in other words, you're happy to just push out any old shit as long as you can make a profit?

    Yeah, that's some real artistic integrity RIGHT THERE Mr Carmack.

    Lets be honest, those are your words not Carmack. You interpret his words to fit your agenda which is incorrect. Lets get things straight, making games is a business. If you do not make games that people love and willing to pay you for, then you will not get paid, pretty simple. Just because you interpret a game to be crap doesn't mean the millions who love it think the same way you do. One mans crap game is another person greatest adventure. The problem with people like you is that you feel your opinion is all the worth anyone else needs to know.
    Edited by Machiavellian at 19/07/11 @ 00:12

  • Koozer #8 10 months ago

    That's like saying the impressionists were snooty for doing something different instead of sticking with the realistic style everyone still enjoyed.

  • Triggerhappytel #9 10 months ago

    I try to play a fair mixture of game types; the artsy Flowers, Machinariums and Braids as well as the more mainstream stuff like AssCreed, God of War and Dead Space. I like what I like; I don't feel bad about it and don't feel the need to apologise to anyone for it.

    I appreciate Carmark's sentiment here - after all, what's the point in trying to run a business if profit doesn't come first? - but I'm also glad there are developers out there like Playdead, Thatgamecompany and Quantic Dream. Gaming would be very boring indeed if every developer made FPSs because they're popular and more likely to turn a profit than some other genres.

  • riceNpea #10 10 months ago

    spot on. it's all too fashionable to 'hate' Activision and the Call of Duty series but whatever you may think of the game and the business model behind it the only, and it is the only, reason it is so profitable is because it has hit upon a formula that is hugely popular with gamers and consequently sells a humongous amount of units.

    we the consumer are fuelling the COD phenomenon and as long as it sells in the kind of numbers that it does Activision would be crazy to do anything radically different with the series.

    how can anyone complain? we all have a choice and year on year we chose to buy the COD updates in ever increasing numbers. sure Activision take advantage of this with their pricing, and i think the DLC is unreasonably expensive, but they can only get away with what we are willing to put up with. if enough people are willing to pay premium prices for the game and DLC then why would Activision want to lower them?

    Ultimately it is one of the most successful franchises ever created and that is down to us consumers loving the product, so much so that we are willing to pay a substantial amount for it. considering the huge amount of hours most people who own it play it, most obviously consider it value for money.

    it may turn out that in the long run Activision kill their golden goose with their aggressive pricing but as long as they supply the kind of game we seem to be craving and paying whatever price they deem fit then being snobby about it really is churlish.



  • Aradiel #11 10 months ago

    He is right in some cases, but I haven't really encountered many people like he's describing.

    But he is also missing the point in another way.
    Yes, Call of Duty is popular, it sells, and the company makes a massive profit. Well done.

    But some of us aren't into that. It's not because it's popular and we are trying to rebel, it's because it's boring, the same stuff over and over again, without any innovation.
    Snooty as it may sound, I like to be challenged intellectually by my games, and Call of Duty, Modern Warfare etc don't do that for me.
    I like to have different experiences, but these games are repetitive to me. Maybe there are subtle differences that I can't tell, but so what?
    I'm not a professional wine-taster, I can't tell the differences apart from on a very shallow level. Other people like wine, and that's fine. It sells well, that's fine. But I want beer, and I sure as hell don't want to live in a world which no longer produces beer, and instead only produces wine because it makes the most money.

    Metaphor over.

  • Mister-Wario #12 10 months ago

    "Speaking in an interview with IndustryGamers, Carmack argued that a developer's job is to make games that people love and are willing to open their wallets for, not games that push boundaries".

    You make it sound as if these two qualities are mutually exclusive, but they really don't have to be. Case in point: Portal, Bioshock. Titles like Call of Duty are doing something right if they're selling in the quantities that they are. But that doesn't make them the be all and end all of games. If games don't push boundaries, why should we keep playing these games in ten years time if not much has changed? Some people- a minority, perhaps- want more than this, and again games like Portal can be interesting and unusual as well as successful.


    Edited by Mister-Wario at 19/07/11 @ 00:19

  • Ikaros_O #13 10 months ago

    I've played every single CoD game and I'm just sick of it now, it needs to change but it isn't it's just getting too stale for my to play. That's why I bash CoD.
    Although I am interested in BF3, probably because it looks like a fresher and more up-to-date version of CoD, with BC destructible environments, seems like a good thing to me.

  • Matthew_Hornet #14 10 months ago

    John Carmack is not an artist, he's a programmer. Now, he is a coding legend, and if he tells me that, say, latency on the PCIe bus means core physics could never be efficiently implemented on the GPU, as far as I'm concerned that's God talking. Holy writ.

    But his thoughts on art aren't worth shit. Like Roger Ebert, who is a brilliant movie critic but doesn't know shit about video games. He's still a brilliant critic. Just his thoughts on video games are useless.

    Whatever I might think about CoD, and however genius Carmack might be, I'm not gonna be taking art game advice from him.

  • Machiavellian #15 10 months ago

    Koozer said
    at's like saying the impressionists were snooty for doing something different instead of sticking with the realistic style everyone still enjoyed.

    Actually it's not. It's like all the impressionists called what the other artist were doing crap because they were not taking the artform to something different. This is what Carmack is saying. Stop belittling someone else work because what they do is popular. Stop calling people who like what they like chavs or other names to make you feel like you are above them because you like something different. I see this crap on EG all the time.

  • inutaihanyou #16 10 months ago

    I understand where Mr.Carmack is coming from and to an extent i agree with him. What he's saying is not specifically attributed to COD, but any franchise who seem to only polish their formula game after game instead of going for big bombastic changes after every iteration, when success follows.

    My beef with COD and Acti has only lasted as long as Treyarch and the resignation of West and Zampella and the exodus of the 50+ members of IW.

    Those are unique conditions of principle that IMO have nothing to do with the popularity of the franchise or its fanbase.

  • Dizzy #17 10 months ago

    Guy who makes only FPS games, thinks they are great.
    Edited by Dizzy at 19/07/11 @ 00:24

  • Matthew_Hornet #18 10 months ago

    Also, to anyone who's read Masters of Doom this would have been obvious. Carmack never really cared about the games; he cared mostly about the engines. He would be happy remaking Doom forever, in ever more graphically impressive versions, because that's what challenges him. Game design was always something other people did, he wasn't interested in that part.

    Five years of exactly identical Call of Duty games wouldn't bother him at all. But five years of Call of Duty games with a bad texturing implementation would likely drive him insane.

  • Spekingur #19 10 months ago

    Oi, Carpark, make a game. Any game, you choose! Oh, wow, you decide to make a shooter. Now, that's... safe.

    If all developers had decided to not "push boundaries", as Carmack suggests, then we wouldn't have had innovation of any form in any genre.

  • Kami #20 10 months ago

    I sort of agree with Carmack, but he does make a very poor case for it.

    There is nothing wrong with giving your consumers what they want - let's be honest here, we have Activision-Blizzard as prime examples of this in the industry. Give them what they want - more WoW, more CoD - and the money pours in.

    The issue comes in this idea you can't somehow innovate in the process. Consumers are a fickle species at the best of times and eventually, they will get bored - and then you've spent years turning out the same old same old and suddenly you've got a problem. You give yourself a reputation by being happy to be "okay" - when it works, it's great. When it doesn't, you've got issues.

    But indie devs need to also cut some slack on the bigger houses too because they are so often in no position to criticise when it comes to quality vs quantity. Both sides live in glass houses so neither one can hope to take any moral high-ground.

    Truthfully, I prefer a varied diet. I prefer to have a mix of roughage one day and comfort food the next, Fallout one evening then perhaps a bit of Terraria the next, then I'll play some Dungeons of Dredmor and mix it with a little Alpha Protocol. Or perhaps one evening I'll start off with some VVVVVV, before jumping into some L4D2 and finishing it all off with some Batman.

    And as snooty as it may make me sound, I genuinely feel sorry for people who get stuck into a gaming rut. Because there's so much variety and choice out there... why stick with chips every day?

  • CRG199 #21 10 months ago

    There is this thing that does annoy me a little is that I feel that people are expected something new from every game however. I also feel people exagerate their hatred of the Call of Duty as the game seems to have not changed that much. I am sick of seeing a new Call of Duty every year and it is becoming tedious and boring. Carmack is correct that there are some snooty indie develepors out there who thinks that popular games like Call of Duty are beneath them. What it comes down to is that we play games to have fun. I praise indie developers for creating different games to have fun with but I also like to have fun with games that uses, as Carmack said, a proven formula that I like. I'm not one for Call of Duty but I like Halo and I am still for some more Halo I just don't want the gap to wait for the next one to be so close to each other.

    I disagree with Carmack in his creeative perspective. Developers should be still breaking that formula and try and find new formula's we love. I don't think "to do something that people love so much they're willing to give us money for." can be defined as creative. It is a very greedy way to describe creativity.

  • Genji #22 10 months ago

    I agree to an extent, but he's terrible at arguing a point.

    "It's almost as if it's popular, it's not good. And that's just not true."

    This is a strawman, and a ridiculous thing to say.

  • kingz #23 10 months ago

    My beef is with Activision, not the brand. I hate that cod is being churned out every year and people buy it and only play it and then move on to the next iteration leaving great games that should have been a financial success or (bigger one) e .g Blur, Enslaved, The Witcher 2 etc...

    Each iteration just gets worse and worse. I mean the issues like overpriced dlc, little to no mod support(so people will buy the dlc) no dedicated servers and now this "Elite" that is already given to games for FREE like Halo and Starcraft II. Also the game has a mostly terrible community of people who believe quickscoping is the only "pro" thing to do including a lot of abusive 12 year olds.

    [Edit] Also Activison have a publishing philosophy to churn games out as much as possible, powered by money, and from this see games that have less and less passion put in to the game which leads to great studios closing down (RedOctane and Bizarre Creations). Whereas, indie devs pour their heart and soul into making their're game.
    Edited by kingz at 19/07/11 @ 01:45

  • stryker1121 #24 10 months ago

    Carmack does not address the fact that CoD games don't exist in a bubble. Their massive sales have a ripple effect on the industry and result in games like Dead Space and BioShock adding multiplayer, and more egregiously, a potentially great franchise like Mass Effect turning into a fairly pedestrian TPS. Activision can make all the CoD they want, but if its template starts to bleed into games the rest of us like, damn right we're gonna raise a stink.

  • Chibi-Kibou #25 10 months ago

    .. When was the last time an indie-developer said anything like that?

    You're all going after the gamers and the critics that bash Call of Duty and co and praise the indies, and some of your arguments are all well and true. But this guy's specifically targeting the indie developers with his comments. Seriously, I've never once heard anyone from that crowd bash AAA studios o.o Some may have once passed comment, I even heard one or two call out the worse elements of the AAA titles' audience (ThatGameCompany on XBL vulgarity) but most all seem too busy getting all excited talking about their new projects or just quietly pottering about to bother bashing other developers..

    If anything, this guy ragging on the indies is the first time I've seen any nasty comments exchanged between the mainstream and independent development communities. I've seen mainstream devs bash each other plenty of times before, but...
    Edited by Chibi-Kibou at 19/07/11 @ 02:04

  • The-Jack-Burton #26 10 months ago

    Activision is to McDonalds what COD is to the BigMac.

    I'll eat a $4 BigMac every now and then just as I will a nice $40 steak.

    Activision is selling $40 BigMacs, based on the premise that both meals contain beef.

    None of this has anything to do with the developer (or the cow)



    Edited by The-Jack-Burton at 19/07/11 @ 02:22

  • smelly #27 10 months ago

    Surely it's not snooty to be THOROUGHLY bored with playing endless fps games - which all look and play the same, just have a different plot?

    If that's true - then i guess it's snooty to say that im bored of playing mini-game fests on the wii?

  • 32768Colours #28 10 months ago

    'Oh, we"re not being creative.' But we're creating value for people - that's our job!

    "It's not to do something that nobody's ever seen before. It's to do something that people love so much they're willing to give us money for."

    There's so many things I dislike about this statement. Its sad that all creative industries seem to develop this bizarre class-like hierarchy. Is being massively popular a bad thing? Of course not. Its being arty and innovative always crucial? Well, not if the experience is entertaining regardless.

    In that sense, I'd argue that whilst there may well be snobbery from the odd indie developer, its impact on the quality and variety of gaming is probably no worse than the jaded commodity-driven viewpoint expressed in Carmack's statement.

    Of course games development is a business, and you want to sell your product to as many people as you can. For the businesses - and the people who buy nothing but COD - this system works fine. But for gaming enthusiasts, there comes a point where the essence of what made these franchises so great eventually gives way to antipathy or even total resentment.

    The thing is, since day one gaming has been littered with genre copy cats. Everything from Pong, Space Invaders, Street Fighter, Doom, Mario; if you think of a game you can almost always think of at least another 10 that tried to do the same thing. Flavour of the month this generation is military shooters. What it'll be in 10 years time, who knows?

    The point is, there'll always be developers chasing that flavour of the month, just as there'll always be those that forge their own path. Fewer still, will be those that define fresh concepts for the rest of the pack to follow. Ultimately though, it doesn't really matter whether its been designed by committee or laboured over by one guy in his basement for 4 years, if the end result is an entertaining and maybe even memorable experience, then surely everyone's a winner?
    Edited by 32768Colours at 19/07/11 @ 03:12

  • HeNiCiDe1988 #29 10 months ago

    sigh very businessy view just because something sells doesnt mean people enjoy it (people trade stuff back) or more should be made. Look at Transformers 3 such a horrendous movie.

    He should be more understanding of why indie developers are annoyed about the COD effect becuz their games get rejected for COD copies, he doesnt seem to grasp that and he's fine to say that because he hasnt got any trouble making it into the business because ID been in it for so long and never really done standout stuff (granted first FPS they made would of but they still kinda never go far out of the pool of creativity)

    Its rational but a bit of depressing view and a very rockafella view.Considering a game is another means for art to be expressed, But I suppose ID have always been mainstream, but quality should always stand above everything but that doesnt correlate with if something is straightforward or artistic.

    But its true the games got to be enjoyable to sell thats pretty damn obvious fact, but that also is the same for indie and straightforward stuff. Crap games wont sell.
    Edited by HeNiCiDe1988 at 19/07/11 @ 05:27

  • smithdown #30 10 months ago

    Unfotunately succeeding CoDs have ridden the coat-tails of CoD4's success. The subsequent installments have been far weaker, but many of the people buying them are unaware of the true diversity in gaming because they don't visit sites like this and are only educated about gaming through TV ads, and perhaps what their mates are playing. They are then caught. in a loop that means they all feel the need to move to the next annual update just because that is what their friends are doing. This situation isn't anyone's fault, but developers could be working to push boundaries within this rigid framework rather than just pumping out the same old thing every year. I think that is what most of us are bemoaning about CoD.

  • altitude2k #31 10 months ago

    I'm not happy with CoD because I didn't feel I got a game anywhere near worth £45 after all the hype for MW2.

  • Scimarad #32 10 months ago

    Also, it's easy to try something different and take some chances when there isn't an immense budget being chucked at it.

  • Paul_cz #33 10 months ago

    I am down on people that like Call of Duty, but that's just me.

  • King_Edward #34 10 months ago

    Spot on Carmack.

  • Subdominator #35 10 months ago

    "I've played every single CoD game and I'm just sick of it now, it needs to change but it isn't it's just getting too stale for my to play. That's why I bash CoD. "

    Or you could just, you know, IGNORE the game. Just because you are sick of it doesn't mean the game has to change. Especially when 30 million people are still not sick of it. It isn't that hard to just walk away from an IP and STFU about it. Constant bashing and complaining is simply annoying, or do you really think the more you and others complain, the more likely it becomes that the developers change the working formula? That's not gonna change until sales will tell them to do so.

    Or do you think that you can change people's minds with these annoying bashes? Like someone that enjoys CoD the way it is will listen to you and your staccato of non-arguments and say "Oh wow, I loved CoD but now that I read his opinion I feel so stupid. I hate CoD."?

    If 30 million people buy a game and 10.000 hate it for what it is - chances are that it's you that has a problem and not the game.
    Edited by Subdominator at 19/07/11 @ 09:40

  • bf #36 10 months ago

    Interesting comment from a man who more or less removed his company from the lime light by not keeping to the formula. Or maybe its time now with Rage nearing release for hard lessons learned from Doom3. It must have stung having Painkiller from a small unknown polish developer get picked for tournament play when you where the one who once defined the genre.

  • Murton #37 10 months ago

    I kinda want to agree with him because he's right, but the idealist in me has to ask. If none of the established developers who already have strong publisher support are willing to take creative risks and create games that advance the medium, how the hell does he expect progress to happen at all?

    Carmack is one of a rare breed in this industry who could pitch literally anything he wants and a publishers will sign, his name as a creator carries that much weight. He's in the perfect position to push bars and raise envelopes but doesn't seem interested anymore. Such a shame as the man cut his teeth doing just that when he dreamed up Doom and Quake so many years ago.

  • aphex187 #38 10 months ago

    You know i've been one of those guys that have dismissed CoD yet i still buy the bloody thing to feed my FPS craving! But i have to say Car is right about giving the public the same thing year in year out. Put it like this, you have your favourite Band/Artist on any genre of music and say he makes Electronica, you would be pissed say after many releases he decides to turn Metal and throw all that work that you know and loved out of the window because he's suddenly not into that music any more.

    Be it films to music and also to games, if you like something then why change it to alienate your fans?

  • superflyninja #39 10 months ago

    I agree with tom and what he said about the sex toys.

  • IronCladChicken #40 10 months ago

    I thought it's mainly gamers who complain about COD rather than indie developers?
    If they are - isnt it like an indie film maker complaining about the new Transformers movie?

    & isn't Carmak just complaining to publicise Rage?
    Edited by IronCladChicken at 19/07/11 @ 09:11

  • Bennicus #41 10 months ago

    "creating value" ~ugh~

  • DrStrangelove #42 10 months ago

    He has a point, but the problem is that the FPS genre has for a large part become just a CoD cloning factory. I don't like CoD and I'm annoyed by all the clones.

    But I'm looking forward to Carmack's Borderlands clone.

  • Subdominator #43 10 months ago

    "Interesting comment from a man who more or less removed his company from the lime light by not keeping to the formula. Or maybe its time now with Rage nearing release for hard lessons learned from Doom3. It must have stung having Painkiller from a small unknown polish developer get picked for tournament play when you where the one who once defined the genre."

    LOL. Doom 3 was and is the best-selling game id Software ever released.

  • homerramone #44 10 months ago

    Surely without games that pushed boundaries there would have been no doom ?

  • homerramone #45 10 months ago

    Surely without games that pushed boundaries there would have been no doom ?

  • kinky_mong #46 10 months ago

    Reading between the lines, Rage is going to be a 5 hour whack-a-mole adventure where you're constantly told by a grumpy superior to do all the legwork.

  • Ginola14 #47 10 months ago

    Wow that must dent the ego's of half the losers on this site who complain day in day out about people who buy call of duty games.

  • Spekingur #48 10 months ago

    @Kami: Spot on.

    Carmack is not doing himself any favours with comments like these against indie developers. He actually sounds like a snooty developer himself with such a comment.

  • benfresh76 #49 10 months ago

    This is an entertainment medium, not a supermarket...That kind of talk might win over publishers, but for me it expresses exactly what is wrong with this industry and is precisely the reason our video game culture is becoming ever more homogenised, predictable and, dare I say, boring.

    I might be jaded, but I'm glad I'm not that cynical

  • Eraysor #50 10 months ago

    Man creating generic shooter complains about people complaining about generic shooters? Hmm...

  • arcam #51 10 months ago

    This is a new one. Criticising people for *not* selling out.

    "So I am pretty down on people who take the sort of creative auteurs' perspective," he continued. "It's like 'Oh, we"re not being creative.' But we're creating value for people - that's our job!

    This is one of the most ridiculous quotes I've ever read from someone like Carmack. Maybe some people actually see themselves as artists, creators, storytellers? Maybe not everyone sees their job as creating value for people? Somehow I doubt that's how JC would have described his role when writing Doom.

  • Mono_X #52 10 months ago

    If you don't like COD (and I'm no particular fan of it), that's fine. But complaining is utterly pointless. Activision are just supplying a demand, if they don't do it - then somebody else will.

    And complaining about about the lack of innovation is pointless too. If innovation is so important to you then go and buy a innovative game and just ignore COD and leave it alone.

  • AceGrace #53 10 months ago

    I am pretty down on people who create single player campaigns of 4-6 hours then try and charge me full price.

  • Deckard1 #54 10 months ago

    COD is kind of shit though to be fair.

  • Geordiemp #55 10 months ago

    COD does innovate in a way, each installment sort of adds new stuff to some game modes.

    MW2 added spec ops coop but went overboard on killstreaks and explosive / launcher gameplay...

    Black ops introduced theatre mode, recording and playback of games. It also introduced combat training multiplayer with friends against bots - its been done before but they made an effort. They changed the reliance on stacking killsteaks and brought gun skill into the game. The zombies was expanded upon as well.

    So, although succesful franchises give people what they want, they tend to add features and modes

  • wizbob #56 10 months ago

    I'm sick of him lording it over the proper shoot'em ups and fighting games I love with his pretentious 3d twaddle. Nobody asked for polygons, etc. Where does he get off,

    yours disgustedly

  • Paulie_P #57 10 months ago

    'Or you could just, you know, IGNORE the game.'

    But you can't ignore it, not when its shoved in your face by countless non-articles about the game from sites like Eurogamer.

  • trip919 #58 10 months ago

    "Speaking in an interview with IndustryGamers, Carmack argued that a developer's job is to make games that people love and are willing to open their wallets for, not games that push boundaries".

    Fucking hell. Let's not push boundaries or try anything even remotely creative, just churn out the same shit time and time again.

    The developers will just know when to alter the template when the public stop screaming: 'moar, moar' when Doom 435 is released.

  • geeza2020 #59 10 months ago

    tjtj - but Sonic is a 2d platformer built around speed which can be picked up nowadays for a pittance. CoD is supposed to entertain you for an amount of time that you feel is worthy of their ridiculous asking price. Which it doesnt in mine and many other peoples opinions.

  • Rack #60 10 months ago

    As long as people are going to buy Call of Duty 40 in the same numbers they bought Call of Duty 30 he's right. But we'd be seeing if people were as likely to buy Mario Clone 90 as they were Mario Clone 80 if everyone followed his example.

  • Zomeguy #61 10 months ago

    We need less Ke$ha and more Tool (hopefully still in 2011), I thought that was pretty obvious.

  • Deinsleaf #62 10 months ago

    John Carmack has spoken!

  • Butr0sButr0s #63 10 months ago

    A lot of developers and gamers dislike call of duty for far more than lack of innovation. Off the top of my head I can think of:
    -not patching known bugs, even years after release
    -not patching known exploits in multiplayer
    -releasing a dearth of DLC without taking care of 1 and 2 above
    -little community interaction and feedback
    -overpriced map packs

  • mortiz666 #64 10 months ago

    The creative and cutting-edge stuff is always going to come from the indie sector, and that's good because they're not rolled up in thinking about profit margins and are more willing to experiment. What people shouldn't do though is berate companies should be for not attempting to innovate, like Carmack says, they're providing an entertainment service. People seem to think that the success of a game like COD weakens the industry because it seeds the idea that you need to be derivative to succeed, and thus we get fewer 'new' games. However, it's a fallacy to think that if Call of Duty didn't exist that all the people who play it would be out there buying indie and experimental games, fact is most of them probably wouldn't be playing games at all or at least something else that was equally as derivative.

    Innovation is far less now than it was early in the industry's life, certain genres have died off almost completely and the number of genres we see at the top of the charts has decreased substantially. It's like Darwinism, certain types of games seem to capture people's attention more than others and thus live on to spawn sequels and copy-cats, that's not to say that they're better games, it's just that they're better suited at bringing in a large audience. That's just the way things are, you can't blame the games themselves for that.
    Edited by mortiz666 at 19/07/11 @ 13:53

  • Chrasomatic #65 10 months ago

    wez_316 has hit the nail on the head - I've had quite a few people friend me through Call of Duty, but that's ALL THEY PLAY! There's no variety for those guys! Having said that Carmack is right - go with what sells, but I gotta tell ya - another company already did Rage years ago it was called Borderlands.

  • Machiavellian #66 10 months ago

    Surely it's not snooty to be THOROUGHLY bored with playing endless fps games - which all look and play the same, just have a different plot?

    Really can people actually read what Carmack said. He is not talking about you the gamer but the attitude of indie developers and review critics. What he said was that just because a game caters to it's audience doesn't make it a bad game. The snooty part is the attitude. Make your great new FPS but do not look down on the working mans job to keep their audience happy.

  • Machiavellian #67 10 months ago

    'Oh, we"re not being creative.' But we're creating value for people - that's our job!

    "It's not to do something that nobody's ever seen before. It's to do something that people love so much they're willing to give us money for."

    There's so many things I dislike about this statement. Its sad that all creative industries seem to develop this bizarre class-like hierarchy. Is being massively popular a bad thing? Of course not. Its being arty and innovative always crucial? Well, not if the experience is entertaining regardless.

    Let's think about the statement a bit more. It you are trying to be arty or innovative, what is the purpose as a game developer. Being innovative without considering if what you are doing will be fun for the gamer and they are willing to pay you for it is a waste of time unless you can afford to go that route not expecting huge sales. Carmack is probably not the best person to express this point but I understand what he is saying.

    There is a lot of games that have tried to be different, new, innovative and a lot of them missed the most important point of a game; the fun factor. If the art and innovation doesn't add to the enjoyment of the game, then I am sure most of you would be calling it crap and letting everyone know your feelings.