June 27th, 2009

Paul Wedgwood of Splash Damage brings to our attention what seems to be common sense, but may not be. I’ve never considered, for example (and maybe I’m just out of touch here), that I can’t think of a single developer who has a history of making licensed games and/or ports that eventually went on to make a break-out hit. I’m sure there has to be some exception to the rule, but I can’t think of one.

Maybe I didn’t react as harshly as John Romero did, but I was definitely caught way off guard by the news of ZeniMax buying out id Software. Once my brain caught up with my gut, though, I decided it might not be such a bad thing for id to have some stability in a publisher. Reading this interview earlier today put me further at ease.

The only thing I’m left wondering about now is, how does Splash Damage and their collaboration with Bethesda on Brink fit into all of this? Did SD play matchmaker? Is an acquisition in their future as well? After all, the partnership was announced way back in May of 2008, well before the E3 meeting between id Software and ZeniMax.

Ah! News like this frightens me. Remember Westwood? What’s left of them are called EA LA now. Admittedly, this is a different EA than the one that acquired Westwood, but this development still gives me pause. For purely selfish reasons, I’m glad to see that BioWare seems to be The Top in the relationship.

April 11th, 2009

The big surprise of the week for me wasn’t Will Wright “leaving” EA or the surfacing of Assassin’s Creed 2. No, it was the announcement of a new Painkiller game. Though it isn’t being made by the original game’s developer People Can Fly (who are now owned by Epic Games), it’s hard to imagine that a team (albeit one with no trackrecord to speak of ) using the same tech and the same gameplay framework could go wrong. Add co-op to the mix, and I’m on board.

Here in this video is an invaluable look at what id Software was like in 1993. Doom development was wrapping up with sound creation and performance optimization. It’s surreal to watch this video with the knowledge of what the shotgun will really sound like while watching John Romero play with placeholder sounds from Wolf 3D SNES. They had no idea yet.