John Carmack is de grote man bij id Software, de ontwikkelaar van RAGE. De nieuwe First Person Shooter is al zeven jaar in ontwikkeling en dat doet Carmack niet veel goeds. Hij betreurt het dan ook dat de game zo lang in ontwikkeling is.

Hij wijt dit ‘probleem’ aan het feit dat id Software gewoon de beste tech en tools wilt gebruiken tijdens de ontwikkeling van RAGE. Bekijk hier het volledige interview met John Carmack.

“That’s the biggest thing when we look back on this generation. We had, at one point or another, seven years of work that went into it. It’s a foregone conclusion that we’re never going to throw out that much of the code base ever again. If we have eight times the resources on a next gen console, we can’t spend a decade writing the optimal technology for that. We need to be able to be at a point where we rewriter sections that matter and have an impact, and reuse as much as we can.

A lot of the things we do nowadays, with the AI and the animation, is really good enough. Every aspect of Rage could be made better if we wanted to spend another two years on it, but it’s not the optimal use of [our] resources. I’d be happier if we produced two games in that time. And that’s actually my personal marching orders for technology development going forward.

I made the conscious choice that we can do something that looks arguably best of breed here [with Rage] and still run at 60 frame per second, and saying ‘I foregone all of these graphics algorithms in favour of a game that’s going to be more responsive’. You can look at that as the turning point where we no longer think that building the prettiest pictures is the best way to deliver value in games.”