oday at QuakeCon 2005 we had the distinct opportunity to chat with Todd Hollenshead, CEO of id Software to discuss the history of QuakeCon, the upcoming Doom movie, console development, and their next project. Frag on!
Game Informer: What’s it like seeing people travel from all over the place to come to QuakeCon?
Todd Hollenshead: You do have a lot of local people show up, but people are trekking from about 52 countries. People that come in from those places get here on Wednesday or even before to get their jump on the line and get their preferred spot in the BYOC area. But you have more local traffic now whereas people don’t have to work on Saturdays, or they come in Friday night. So this is where we now will see our peak attendance, so people will bring there computers in this morning, stay for the party, and then pack in tomorrow for departure.
GI: Well, once I found out I was coming to QuakeCon, I had to bring my rig. And it’s been really fun to play in the BYOC area with all the folks.
TH: I like to hear that, because I think to really experience the event you really have to participate in it. It’s kind of like a rock concert where if you interview people as you stand out front and ask them, “Well, what’s the show like?� Or it’s like going to Woodstock and you’re staying at a hotel. (laughs)
You really don’t get a feel for the flavor with everything that goes on with the event. One of the things that we’ve really gone to back this year is a focus on more of the general attendees. For a while we put sort of an emphasis on bigger purses for the tournaments and shifting more of the focus on the tournament aspect, but we made a conscious effort this year, by saying, “Look, we think we’ve made the purses big enough to attract the top talent.� We’ll have the top guys playing in the tournaments, and they’ll be playing in the finals if form holds. But with NVidia, Intel, Creative, Activision and other sponsors really trying to do more stuff for the attendees that come out.
Universal coming out for the Doom movie presentation yesterday, is obviously all about the fans. The midnight breakfasts, and NVidia having the kickoff party giving away all of the video cards for the frickin’ crazy stuff people were doing. To me, one of the first things they started it off was the topper. Those chicks shaving their heads – I couldn’t believe it! Shave your head for a $200 video card! There was some craziness going on even beyond that.
GI: Looking at the first QuakeCon, how’d id get involved?
TH: The first QuakeCon id’s involvement was completely after the fact. It was literally completely spontaneous. A group of fans of Quake got together and wanted to celebrate the release of the game, and went out and got rooms at a hotel that was sort of across from where our old offices were that had some meeting room space. And they were like, “Maybe if we get this meeting room space right across from id maybe we can get John Carmack to come over to talk to us.
So they e-mailed him and Carmack was like, “Yeah, I’ll come over and talk to them.� So literally the inaugural QuakeCon keynote was a bunch of dudes sitting on the sidewalk in August in Texas in a parking lot in 100 plus degree sweltering heat and John giving a little technology speech. In the by-the-way-can-you-talk-to-us e-mail was, “We don’t have enough money to pay the hotel bill, meeting room, and power…can you pay us some cash?� So John comes over, gives the speech, and a pocket full of cash so they can get out of hock with the hotel – and QuakeCon is launched.
We got more involved as time went on. We moved it from sort of a nomad event at its home in Mesquite, but eventually the event totally outgrew that event space. Of course now we’re at one of the biggest hotel and convention centers in Dallas, which has a lot of conference space. There are other conventions going on at the hotel, but the hotel is completely booked up to the eyes, and a lot of that is people coming in for QuakeCon. To go from a few dozen people to now several thousand and the growth that we have had through the years to now the tenth is sort of a testament to the fans. The sponsors have obviously supported it. Id has supported it as well.
Not enough is said about the fact that the people who originally started the event was this is what they wanted to do. They took their own time off to do it. 90% of the event organization is done by volunteers. I think that retains the flavor of exactly what this event is – which is a party for the fans. Id doesn’t make any money off of it. We like to show off our stuff and we feel like we have a good avenue to do that. Obviously we like to get the press coverage because that’s what keeps the sponsors coming, and lets people know about the event so the event can grow. But we’re not just growing for growths sake – we want to grow it organically. We like it that it’s the fans that come out.
A lot of people make a pilgrimage to get here. They come from all up and down from the east and the west coast. Literally, they’ll be like, “Hey is the QuakeCon caravan coming through? Can I get a ride with you guys to and from?� We’ve heard stories where on the way down people’s cars will fall apart, and they’ll be stranded on the road for days to try to make it to QuakeCon.
GI: Is it crazy looking back on all of it?
TH: We only do it once a year. We always come out. I think sometimes it’s hard to realize what the event means to some people until you get here and talk to them and see them face to face. And maybe we even lose the appreciation for it as another year goes by until we get to QuakeCon because we’re so focused on what the number is we’re going to get in the BYOC, how are we going to manage the space, how do we keep security for the vendor areas, how are the tournaments going to work, we’ve got to figure out where the schedule is, what parties are we going to have. We get focused on all these details.
I think even if we didn’t have all that people would still come out because that really makes the event and that really caps it all off. Even in that respect that’s not what the event is really all about, which is people who are friends online, getting together, and playing the games that they love. In that sense, events like QuakeCon really totally break the stereotype of people who are game fans being hidden away in their parents basement, totally reclusive. Here, this is the complete opposite. Because here they come to play the games and socialize with their friends who also like to play the games too.
GI: Id Software has always been close to the community, not just with QuakeCon but with the mod community in general. That’s very different from a lot of companies. But other companies have learned from you as well with mod tools. Why is it that you guys do that more?
TH: You know, John Carmack, who is the co-founder of the company and the technical director, he looks to how he got his start in the industry, which he was a hacker and a game fan and got an opportunity to make games. He looks at guys in the mod community not as a threat. Which a lot of companies look at potential piracy, thinking about opening the content of their games and, “what are people going to do?� The fact that they can’t control what the mod community does is very scary to sort of all minds of intellectual property.
But John doesn’t give a s*** about that in all frankness. And sometimes, you know, I’m the CEO and I’m the guy that has to come in and go,�…and here’s the worries.� But given the choice of openness and giving to the community and concerns over restrictions on content, John always errs on the side of openness and I buy into that philosophy as well. I understand the concerns and it causes us some pain and piracy, but at the end of the day I think it is so worth it because there are people who love to play the games, and there are people who also love to work with the tools so that’s just another avenue for them to enjoy the games. And the stuff that they make, people play, and that extends the life of the product. So I think that’s it a great feedback loop.
We’ve benefited from the mod community in a number of ways. Our design lead and our art lead at the company came out of the mod community. They’re in leadership positions at id because we hired them because they were making excellent Doom wad files way way back in the day. That’s how they got their start in the industry.
GI: Are you happy with the success of Doom 3?
TH: Oh yeah. We’re at like three million units now between the PC and the Xbox. Whenever you’re talking about multiple millions of units of a game that’s sold from a company that has two dozen employees that 21-22 people was basically the Doom development staff – yeah, it’s an enormous success. Especially considering that we created our own technology, and we’ll be benefiting from this technology as time goes on. Doom 3 tech powers Quake 4, and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, and we have other licensees as well. For example Prey is built on Doom 3 technology.
I know that John really is hardened that we do our own thing at id, and we do our own games at id and we have our own flavor that is a bit consistent. Our games are a bit on the dark side, in general. Raven has done a different style of games in the past, although they’ve definitely come over to the dark side with Quake 4, but the Humanhead guys have a different style (Prey) . But it’s really interesting when you take a completely different mindset with what you can do differently with technology.
GI: You obviously worked with the Madison, Wisconsin folks of Raven Software quite a bit in the past. What was it like to give them your baby with Quake 4?
TH: You have to have a lot of trust there. But we’ve worked with Raven long enough where that wasn’t really a concern, because we know the Raven guys and we know they’ve got the talent. Really it was, “Are they going to approach it with the same level of enthusiasm that we would?� They were completely gung-ho about the project. The thing is about the Raven guys is they’re a completely unique company. There’s not a huge development business up in Wisconsin.
They’re sort of out of the limelight, but that’s their approach – they’re very workman like. Cause those guys could work on their own property, obviously. They don’t have to take directions from us on Quake, but not only have they been willing to accept our input on Quake but they’ve eagerly solicited it. They really want to do a great job for us, and of course for the fans as well. And those guys check their ego at the door on stuff like this. The fact that they’ve been able to do the job that they’ve been able to do, and at no point has there been any friction or raised voices or anything like that, because you know you get passionate about this especially because you spend years of your life working on things like this.
I have an enormous amount of respect for everything they do, and I like Brian Raffel, who’s the head of the studio there, and I don’t think you’ll find a nicer guy in the videogame business.
GI: Going back to Doom, what’s it been like working on the Doom movie project?
TH: Well lately it’s been great, but before that it was sort of hit and miss. I started at id in 1996. About a year before that a deal was signed originally to do the movie. The focus of the company had changed to Quake, and then it was Quake 2, Quake 3. The movie was floating around in purgatory for a while and we couldn’t really get a good script at all. I don’t think there was a lot of motivation with the people who had the ability to actually get the project together.
Then when we came to E3 2002, I think we absolutely hit a home run with the presentation that we did for Doom 3, Hollywood took notice, and it was like Doom was back. At that time we had linked up with CAA as an agent who had real influence within Hollywood and had the contacts to get us in with the right people, and also had some interesting ideas about how to filter who was really interested in making a movie which was going to be a cool movie that was something that wouldn’t be an embarrassment to us, which is a big risk with movies based on videogames.
Also partnering with John Wells which is the last thing he needs to do is release a bad movie. He’s done West Wing and E.R. and probably moves money around like I move dirt. They don’t just want to make a great movie but they want to make a movie that’s true to what Doom meant to fans. They felt the key piece of making that is getting us involved. We had certain contractual rights, like we had meaningful consultation and those sorts of things. But on paper that’s not worth a s*** if people on the project don’t want the input. But they actually wanted our input.
I went through 30 different scripts. The effects people worked closely with our art department. We sent them a lot of content from the game so they could get the characters and the demons and the sets right. I was over at the set in Prague a couple of times and I knew they nailed it before I met anyone, because I went to a set where they weren’t filming and they let me horse around and check out what they’d done and it was literally like stepping out of Prague and stepping into Doom 3. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is so cool!�
I can’t say that I’m a super hardcore fan of The Rock like some of his fans are, but obviously I knew who the guy was and I liked his work in movies. I’m not a huge professional wrestling fan but if you’re not a fan you know who The Rock is, but he’s Dwayne Johnson to me. He’s super enthusiastic and he’s a super nice guy.
Carl Urban is a great actor and a star in a different capacity. Carl is more of a low key guy. Both of those guys have been super cool with us, and interested, and asking, “When you’re making a game what do you think about this?� It kind of drove the point home with me when I got to the set for the first time and saw that they were making our movie. You didn’t want to touch anything for fear that you’d wake up from the dream, almost. I was like, “Hey, can I take a picture?� and the guy said, “Man this is your movie, you can do whatever you want to! We’re all out here because you guys made this videogame� (laughs)
GI: In college, the first game that I bought online before even web browsers existed was Doom, on floppies. Is it kind of crazy that it all came from there?
TH: You know, it is. I even think at id that sometimes we don’t appreciate the history of where the company came from and where it is today. Our company has always been focused on what’s next, and what is there for the future. We don’t sort of rest on our laurels and past successes at all. At some point saying what we’ve done is something better we could do a better job at. I think about it and PC games, in a large respect owe their parity with the consoles to Christmas of 1994 when Doom 2 and Myst hit the shelves at the same time.
There was a bit of Christmas magic or something that got sprinkled over the retailers. Wal-Mart was working with Good Times Interactive Software which was a break off of Good Times Video who sold these crappy broken video cassettes, but happened to have the lock on the video shelf at Wal-Mart. They got the rights from us to distribute Doom 2. It flew off the shelves the same time Myst is doing bucket loads of software. And everyone else was like, “I thought the only thing legitimate about videogames was console stuff.�
It completely changed and it was a watershed for PC games. It really changed from the fact that you went from a mom and pop shop, probably not too bigger in space than this room that we’re sitting in right now, and you had your choice of your Mac or PC software – and games were also sold there. And now, boom, it’s just huge!
Best Buy, Circuit City, obviously all the big retailers. To think that the industry sort of got its leg up from one of our titles is a bit humbling I think. John mentioned this yesterday but, sometimes you don’t have an appreciation of the history. People are like, "What’s the numbers, and how much is the revenue now?" and I’ll always be at a loss to give out those numbers but I guess that sounds bad because I’m the CEO but I’m always worried about what’s coming next. But not what we’ve done in the past. But we went and looked in the past at what Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3, and all of our titles, and licensed titles, and what they’ve done from a revenue standpoint across the industry at retail, and this is an estimated number, but we’re completely confident that it is over one billion dollars that is based off of Quake and it’s sort of children of engines, and to think that a company that, when I started at id it was 12 guys. A billion. That’s like 9 frickin’ zeroes.
GI: Looking throughout the years, Doom and Quake have been on a plethora of different consoles. Now you’re getting back into the console space again. You just did Doom 3 on Xbox. What is it like getting more hardcore in the console space?
TH: There are some interesting trends in the industry. Whenever the next generation consoles come out they predict the demise of the PC gaming industry. They do it every single time it comes around. I don’t think we’re at all there. While the console market continues to grow, the PC market over the last three years has been down. You still have the hit titles that sell lots of copies. But really the middle and the bottom of the market have fallen off. So we’ve got double digit percentage decline in the PC market year after year, so far 2005 over 2004, and 2004 over 2003. We’ve taken note of that, as well.
We start looking at the difficulty of combating piracy, and how much more of an issue it is on the PC versus on the console, and the fact that game development budgets are so much bigger now than they were 10 years ago, that even if you’re a PC-centric developer you have to take a more serious look and approach to how you’re going to do on the consoles. For a long time consoles weren’t thought of as the right way to play first person shooters, and people struggled with how the control was going to work. But now with the dual analog sticks on the controllers, and the fact that Halo has sold a ton – you’re still not going to have the precision of a mouse and a keyboard, but first person shooters sell great and have huge fans on the consoles.
Doom 3 was the first time we had development on the PC and the console on an internal id project. Quake 4 is actually in simultaneous development at Raven – I don’t know if we’ll hit simultaneous release but the assets are the same. So that means the team is the same. With the next project that we’re working on at id, like Carmack said yesterday, is that we’re already focused on 360, and we’ve got PS3 dev kits, and this will be the first game for id that all three console versions will be worked on internally at the company.
Quake 4 is a little bit different because it’s external to id, but this is the first game that we’re going to get the consoles up and running in sync with the PC stuff.
GI: Based on John Carmack’s speech yesterday, he seemed not very hot on the whole multi-processor situation.
TH: No, no he’s not. He gave a keynote at GDC two years ago where he basically said that his philosophy was, "Make the most powerful processor and the most powerful GPU." And that would give him the best ability to make the game look great.
GI: The one thing that I kind of got out of it yesterday was that he seemed happier with Microsoft, and not too thrilled with Sony and the Cell technology. Do you think that’s accurate?
TH: I think that’s accurate. I’m not really one to put words in John’s mouth but what I do know is we’ve had 360 stuff for a while and it was relatively easy to bring our internal project onto 360. We just got the PS3 stuff recently and it was relatively more difficult to bring that up on the PS3. So John’s first impressions are, “360 great, PS3 – pain in my ass.�
I think the more we work with it - I don’t know if John himself will be doing the primary PS3 work or not - but we’ll have to see about that stuff. Also, 360 is further along in their process as well. They have more final hardware, and they have better drivers, and the SDK has been more refined and revised. I think the PS3 stuff, in all fairness to Sony is a little bit more raw. I think we’ll have to wait and see, but I don’t think that’s going to ultimately change the way we’re going to approach developing on PS3. He knows from a technology horsepower standpoint that it’ll do everything that we want it to do, so we’re committed to it.
GI: You’re working on a new intellectual property. Is it exciting working on something new or is it a little scary?
TH: Both. It’s always exciting to start a project and finish a project for developers. When you start a project the world’s your oyster. There are no limitations, everything is new, and it’s like waking up to a new world for the first time. When you finish a project you’ve got the sense of completion, and if you’ve done a good job, and to be able to ship and get it out the door – those are all great times.
On a new IP, we’ve been working on it for a little while now. We’re still in the initial phases of it. but it is a little scary, because as you go more into the game development process, what you’re doing isn’t as clear as when, with something else, you can say, “Well this is what we had.� So you can sort of follow the same path. We can do different things along the way, but you have a vision on where you’re going to be at the end of the day. When you start on a new IP, where John’s doing all new technology too, you’ve got a couple of different factors where people on the team, and us too, can get a little apprehensive about "Man I hope this is all going to work out!" (laughs) But you got to have faith.
You got to know that probably 90% of game development is effort, focus, there’s a little luck that’s always involved, and there’s obviously some skill involved too. Or that Carmack can keep knocking people over with his technology year after year after year – technology after technology after technology. We believe that we have the talent at the company that put the effort in, we keep the focus on what we have to do, that we’re going to make great experiences and great games.
GI: Now I know you’re not going to say anything about the new game, but do you think we may see it next year at E3.
TH: Oh, I don’t know. It’s too hard to tell at this point. We’re at 2005-2006. I would hate to speculate at this point. We’re still at the proof of concept phase. Our philosophy about the timing of stuff is, we want the gameplay to dictate the timing, not the other way around. So, if we don’t feel like we’re in the reasonable time to ship the game, we won’t show it at E3 just to have something to show at E3. That can kind of be a dangerous thing.
I think probably though. With Doom 3 we showed it a year early at E3, if I was looking back in the rearview mirror. We’ll certainly take that into advisement with what we do going forward. Although I can’t complain about the reaction we got from the game when we first showed it.
GI: What would you like to see from QuakeCon in the future?
TH: We do a retrospective after every QuakeCon. Where were we great? Where were we less than where we wanted to be? I like the direction where we have with the event. I like where we are in sort of in the last 22 hours of the event right now. I like that whatever we wanted to do we’ve been able to achieve. Now we’ll see if we can get the tournaments finished on time. (laughs)
There’s always the big-pull-the-big-rabbit-out-of-my-hat-trick that I have to do every year. Attendance is up, that’s always a goal. Enthusiasm is up and I believe that’s always a goal. We wanted to have more for the people who come to the event that aren’t competing for the money in the tournaments, because we don’t feel that really shouldn’t be the focus. This is about the 7,400 people who show up to see what our sponsors have, and to play in the BYOC event. I think we’ll have to challenge ourselves again to figure out what we’re going to do that’s going to make the event better next year.
This year with the movie stuff was a unique thing. Having John Rosengrant out here was awesome. The man is a superstar in his field and what he does. I knew that the QuakeCon fans would appreciate it, probably more even than I appreciated it when I first met him. But I definitely appreciate it now -- NVidia and the contests that they’re having, and all of the other stuff that’s going on. We will have a challenge to do it better next year, but all that means is we’ve been successful in making it good this year. I’ll worry about that when we get there.
GI: Well I’m having a blast.
TH: Excellent! Well that’s what we want to hear from everyone. QuakeCon is so much judged for what people get out of it. It’s not about id. Obviously we want to have a good showing of Quake 4, we want people to get a kick out of the movie, but we want them to enjoy themselves, and to have a good time. We want the sponsors to feel like the fans are happy, and are really jazzed about it.
I tell you what. It really kicked ass when I walked down right before this interview and I was down on the floor out there and the way that we opened up the exhibitor area with the BYOC area, and got to mill the traffic through there – and seeing a lot of foot traffic – people playing Quake 4, people over in the BYOC, people watching what was going on – it’s really like, this just frickin’ worked. I think we’re going to have a tall order on our hands to make it better next year. But I know that we’re going to be up to the challenge and the sponsors are going to be as well. We had a volunteer dinner last night, and they were already saying QuakeCon 2006. So that’s great to hear.