Dear John Carmack.
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Dear John Carmack.
1–10 of 98 posts
Re: Dear John Carmack.
#2Marathon was the first game with mouse-look, not Doom.
Re: Dear John Carmack.
#3Off-topic: I could not click back in Firefox - I was redirected to the current page. While I felt the points in the article were well stated and poignant, the 'forcible no BACK' feature left a sour taste in my mouth. I won't be returning.
Re: Dear John Carmack.
#4Off-topic: I could not click back in Firefox - I was redirected to the current page. While I felt the points in the article were well stated and poignant, the 'forcible no BACK' feature left a sour taste in my mouth. I won't be returning.
To be fair, it's firefox only. The Back button is broken but I don't think that was intentional.
Re: Dear John Carmack.
#5An interesting perspective. The industry needs some people to blaze new trails and other people to pave the successful trails into roads. A really successful person like Carmack could do either if he chose to; it seems like he's happy with his current role of engine development. Would he be more effective designing new game mechanics? It's not clear.
Re: Dear John Carmack.
#6So poorly written, I find it hard to take seriously.
tl;dr Make fun games, not pretty ones.
The problem is that it is never obvious when mechanics make a game great, and when art direction does. See Bioshock for the latter. See something like Everquest for the former (and which was later eclipsed by a game with better mechanics AND art direction). Great games are rare. You need both of the above, and more.
Re: Dear John Carmack.
#7Carmack needs to be paired up with a real gameplay/product/market counterpart. His Steve Jobs so to speak. But if he is happy doing it his way then he should continue. I just hope Bethesda won't punish him for Rage's commercial disappointment.
Re: Dear John Carmack.
#8The RAGE tech and artistry is great, but my opinion of the game is cooling as I play it. The character seems to essentially be a dogsbody courier who sometimes gets to shoot things.
Edit: Good snippet from the Ars review:
> The sense that gamers are being trolled extends to many of the missions. Some of them go so far as to force you to drive to a location, hit a button, and then drive back to tell someone you hit a button.
Re: Dear John Carmack.
#9This article definitely puts the random thoughts I was having tonight after seeing Rage into words.
In the as-close-to-an-id-biography-as-you'll-get Masters of Doom, Carmack's preference for avoiding story and focusing on industry-busting gameplay and technology is stressed many times, yet something does seem to have changed in this regard since Doom 3. In terms of blowing the competition's efforts away, Rage isn't a Doom, Quake, Commander Keen or even a Quake 2.
Re: Dear John Carmack.
#10This article is so full of incendiary bullshit, I'm surprised it even got on the front page.
Some of the most critically acclaimed games, as well as highest selling games, have stories.
For example: Grand Theft Auto 3. Final Fantasy VII. Ico. Metal Gear Solid. Arkham Asylum. Mass Effect. Dragon Age. Dark Souls. Demon Souls. Starcraft. Starcraft II. Modern Warfare. World of Warcraft.
Do you know what else made these games stand out? Art direction.
Give me a break.