While he's best known for creating graphics engines that push systems to their limits, game designer John Carmack is spending a lot of time with mobile gaming these days.
The co-founder of id Software is considered one of the creators of the first-person shooter genre, and his technical influence has kept hardware companies rushing to keep up. So it's a bit surprising that he hasn't yet taken advantage of the most powerful mobile device on the market.
"We wanted to do something for the iPhone, but we just didn't have the scheduling or the resources available," he says. "I really regret not having something at launch."
While he continues to build the engines that power id's flagship games (such as the upcoming "Rage," "Wolfenstein" and "Doom 4"), Carmack currently seems to be having more fun on cellphones.
In the past two years, id Mobile has spun out three games (selling 2 million copies all together), with a fourth--"Wolfenstein RPG"--due out this fall. The iPhone, though, raises the stakes in mobile gaming, and Carmack is eager to jump in.
"We have a title we want to develop exclusively for iPhone," he says. "I'm not announcing anything specifically, but it would be a graphical tour de force."
Anna Kang, president of id Mobile, adds "it would not be a new IP," meaning the game would have roots in id's existing catalog, which includes the "Doom, "Quake" and "Wolfenstein" franchises.
One of the biggest appeals of the iPhone, says Carmack, is that it can handle big games that are 10 megabytes or more. By contrast, the sweet spot for traditional cellphone games was around 300 kilobytes. Carmack wiggled around those rules of thumb and has produced a 2.5 MB version of "Wolfenstein RPG."
That makes the iPhone look like a big open field. The hard part, Carmack concedes, will be reigning himself in.
"The iPhone, as a device, is in the same generation power-wise as the PS2 or Xbox," he says. "The graphics are a little lower but the RAM is a lot higher. … You could easily spend $10 million on an iPhone game, but the market just can't support that yet."
Carmack has had ambitious plans in the mobile space for a while. Two years ago, when we spoke, he mentioned that his "sneaky little plan" was to attempt to start a new franchise via a cellphone game, then transition it over to the larger consoles.
He hasn't had a lot of luck with that so far. "Orcs and Elves," his first mobile game, did make the transition to the Nintendo DS, but never found an audience.
He also mentioned the possibility of putting together a massively multiplayer game that was based on cellphone technology (rather than attempting to take on "World of Warcraft"-maker Blizzard Entertainment's dominance on the PC). He hasn't given up on those dreams but concedes he's moving more cautiously than he initially seemed to be.
"In many ways, I'm conservative there," he says. "I want to go step by step--where we do a multiplayer game, then multiplayer with some persistence, then maybe further. … We don't want to be in a bet-the-company situation at this moment."
Kang says she is confident the game could be made, but doing so now would be counter to id Mobile's ultimate goals.
"If we had an infinite amount of time and budget, we could make an awesome massively multiplayer game," she says. "But the whole idea [of id Mobile] is we can make something good, and we can make it quick."
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The co-founder of id Software is considered one of the creators of the first-person shooter genre, and his technical influence has kept hardware companies rushing to keep up. So it's a bit surprising that he hasn't yet taken advantage of the most powerful mobile device on the market.
"We wanted to do something for the iPhone, but we just didn't have the scheduling or the resources available," he says. "I really regret not having something at launch."
While he continues to build the engines that power id's flagship games (such as the upcoming "Rage," "Wolfenstein" and "Doom 4"), Carmack currently seems to be having more fun on cellphones.
In the past two years, id Mobile has spun out three games (selling 2 million copies all together), with a fourth--"Wolfenstein RPG"--due out this fall. The iPhone, though, raises the stakes in mobile gaming, and Carmack is eager to jump in.
"We have a title we want to develop exclusively for iPhone," he says. "I'm not announcing anything specifically, but it would be a graphical tour de force."
Anna Kang, president of id Mobile, adds "it would not be a new IP," meaning the game would have roots in id's existing catalog, which includes the "Doom, "Quake" and "Wolfenstein" franchises.
One of the biggest appeals of the iPhone, says Carmack, is that it can handle big games that are 10 megabytes or more. By contrast, the sweet spot for traditional cellphone games was around 300 kilobytes. Carmack wiggled around those rules of thumb and has produced a 2.5 MB version of "Wolfenstein RPG."
That makes the iPhone look like a big open field. The hard part, Carmack concedes, will be reigning himself in.
"The iPhone, as a device, is in the same generation power-wise as the PS2 or Xbox," he says. "The graphics are a little lower but the RAM is a lot higher. … You could easily spend $10 million on an iPhone game, but the market just can't support that yet."
Carmack has had ambitious plans in the mobile space for a while. Two years ago, when we spoke, he mentioned that his "sneaky little plan" was to attempt to start a new franchise via a cellphone game, then transition it over to the larger consoles.
He hasn't had a lot of luck with that so far. "Orcs and Elves," his first mobile game, did make the transition to the Nintendo DS, but never found an audience.
He also mentioned the possibility of putting together a massively multiplayer game that was based on cellphone technology (rather than attempting to take on "World of Warcraft"-maker Blizzard Entertainment's dominance on the PC). He hasn't given up on those dreams but concedes he's moving more cautiously than he initially seemed to be.
"In many ways, I'm conservative there," he says. "I want to go step by step--where we do a multiplayer game, then multiplayer with some persistence, then maybe further. … We don't want to be in a bet-the-company situation at this moment."
Kang says she is confident the game could be made, but doing so now would be counter to id Mobile's ultimate goals.
"If we had an infinite amount of time and budget, we could make an awesome massively multiplayer game," she says. "But the whole idea [of id Mobile] is we can make something good, and we can make it quick."
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