Id Software’s Carmack rides Apple ‘rollercoaster’

Speaking with Kotaku, Id Software co-founder and chief technologist John Carmack calls working with Apple “a rollercoaster ride,” referring to the company’s on again, off again relationship with game developers like him.

Id Software is the legendary developer of the Doom and Quake first person shooter series. Many of Id’s games have come to the Macintosh, and the company has recently begun publishing titles for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Carmack famously used NeXTSTEP to develop Doom (though the game was released first for Windows); Mac OS X can trace its ancestry to NeXTSTEP (Steve Jobs returned to Apple after Apple acquired NeXT, which he founded). Carmack has been featured on stage at Apple keynotes alongside Steve Jobs at Macworld Expos in the past, but that doesn’t mean he always has unfettered access to what’s going on in Cupertino.

“I’ll be invited up on stage for a keynote one month and then I’ll say something they don’t like and I can be blacklisted for six months,” he said.

Carmack noted that he now has “real man on the inside” at Apple these days in the form of Graeme Devine, who now works for Apple as an iPhone developer. Devine’s credits include The 7th Guest and its sequel The 11th Hour, two early graphical adventure CD-ROM successes. He went on to work at Id Software on Quake III Arena and Quake III Team Arena, where he became known to Mac enthusiasts as a booster of the platform. He went on to work at Ensemble Studios, makers of the Age of Empires series.

Carmack doesn’t think that Apple’s continued success with the iPhone OS as a mobile game platform has changed the company’s opinion of games in general. “At the highest level of Apple, in their heart of hearts they’re not proud of the iPhone being a game machine, they wish it was something else,” he said.

Torstein A.

With its billions of cash reserves, I’d say that it might be smart for Apple to just buy out Carmack and Id software. As an Apple employee, Carmack would be in a position to act as consultant to Apple in an official way. And then leverage the buyout by creating a position for Carmack as Apple Game Czar, who is responsible for growing the Mac and iPhone gaming industry to stratospheric levels. Certainly it did not hurt Microsoft when they bought out Bungie Software. It looked like a big gamble at first. But in the long run, it turned out that Microsoft’s gaming division was very successful in the end (sales of xBox being solid these days, thanks to years of Bungie-spearheaded titles).

http://www.loopinsight.com Peter Cohen

Torstein:

Id Software *was* just bought out, by Zenimax. They’re the company that owns Bethesda Softworks, makers of Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

the Cappy

Buying out id wouldn’t be a useful answer. For one thing, Carmack’s opinions are already being freely given (and they’re often extremely detailed about precisely what he feels should be done differently). So having him as an employee wouldn’t increase your access to his insights. For another, though, he wouldn’t go. Why would he? He’s got plenty of money already. More is obviously more, no doubt. But he seems to be doing what he does to build games and see them in people’s hands. If he joined Apple–let’s be honest here–he’d disappear from the gaming landscape.

If Apple wants to take his advice and improve the platform, they already know how Carmack recommends they do it. Whether that’s the right thing to do or not, I don’t know. But buying id would simply cause the best talent to leave.
Torstein A.

Ahh thanks for that update Peter. I never heard of parent company Zenimax. Although I know about Bethesda, certainly a long time game developer.