Review (PC)

Quake 3 epitomizes what's right and what's wrong with id software. The following is a refrain familiar to anyone who's been an FPS aficionado from the beginning: id is a technology company, not a game design company.

The extent to which id has been marginalized within the FPS community is, on the one hand, sad, and on the other encouraging. Though the industry remains infatuated with graphics as a metric of game quality, there are some signs that gamers are maturing, and slowly dragging the utterly dysfunctional industry with it. Id's decline is itself perhaps one of the strongest signs.

But none of this really speaks directly about Quake 3. Honestly, though, I have neither the energy nor the inclination to say much about Quake 3. I'm not quite sure why I jumped into it the other night and gave it the 2+ hours it took to play through the single player ladder, which was at least the fourth time for me over the years. I think it's likely that I was just suffering from a bout of introspection caused by the recent release of the Quake 3 source code. In that regard (source code), despite whatever else anyone might say about id and Carmack, they are inarguably the good guys. From a purely philanthropic viewpoint, id has been at the vanguard. Carmack's generational engine donations to the independent and hobbyist development community are as much as any of us have a right to expect. That id has had such a financially strong history in parallel with their source code philanthropy helps debunk the chronic corporate propaganda that profit and open source software are mutually exclusive.

Indeed, I actually see a very strong correlation between id's source code charity and its business model. It's worth noting here that, with the exception of the original two DooM games, each of id's releases has been more noteworthy as a technology base upon which better games have been developed, than for the game itself. Id games, more than anything else, showcase id's engine technology. They subsequently make a *lot* of money from licensing their engine to other developers. Which isn't to say that they're not making a *lot* of money on their retail releases. Id has the very enviable luxury of being able to call their own shots with whomever has the fortune of being their retail publisher, so I'm sure they're making well above and beyond what the average developer nets on SKU sales. At any rate, by regularly throwing a bone over the OSS wall, id is able to maintain a (legitimate) image as an advocate of independent development, and simultaneously keep the market for their engine licensing business healthy. If the mod community has the previous generation id engine in their hands to do with as they please, then there is market pressure for conventional developers to pony up the cash to use the latest engine for their new games. Yes, that's how good the mod community is: they produce pressure on mainstream developers to scale the technology ladder.

Really the only advantage that the mainstream developers have anymore is a large enough budget to procure (either via licensing or extended internal development) a next generation engine and a stable of dozens of artists and modelers. Thus, even though their games won't play better than the mods, they'll enjoy a 6-12 month window where they at least look better. Furthermore, id isn't really jeopardizing anything since they're compelled to iterate their tech anyway, even if they weren't releasing source for the previous generation. Their reputation, both for their franchise games and for their engine licensing, is based squarely and nearly exclusively on the fact that their engines are at the proverbial bleeding edge of technology.

But here I have to stop and apologize. As I set out writing this, I intended to set the stage to claim that Quake 3 (remember, the topic of this review) was the first real admission on id's part that they're an engine company and not a game company. I was going to use the above context as the backdrop against which to state that id had, with Quake 3, finally cast off the pretense of developing honest-to-god games intended to stand on their own. Instead, I planned to claim, they're finally resigning themselves to the fact that what they really do is wait for Carmack to say he's done researching the new renderer, at which point they go through the motions of generating a bunch of maps and models so they can box it up, sell it for $50, and point to it when negotiating licensing deals.

That's what I was going to do. However, in the course of writing this little treatise on id's business model, the part of my brain that thinks about games instead of money got bored and came to the conclusion that, ironically, Quake 3 is actually a better game than any previous id release since the original DooMs. What?

Yes. And I'll skip right to the cause of this conundrum: a double standard. I've been holding up Quake 3 against other shooters. That doesn't sound unfair, does it? On the one hand, no, it can't be unfair because Quake 3 is a shooter. Hell, id defined the genre. On the other hand, what I'd done was assume that Quake 3 was being cut from the same mold as not just id's previous shooters, but from the stereotypical shooter. Except the stereotypical shooter has changed a lot since Quake 2 was released. And what it's changed into is the kind of game that, quite frankly, id doesn't make. Can't make, won't make, I don't know and it doesn't matter. There's a reason that id made Quake 2 and Valve made Half-Life. I think id must have recognized that as well, and instead of veering awkwardly from their raison d'être in an effort to stay with the pack of other developers, all of whom are pursuing their own fame, id focused even more intently than ever on what they're good at. Forget epic narrative. Forget interactive environments. Forget RPG elements. Forget real-world weapons and tactics. Forget hyper-realistic hit-modeling, leaning, mantling, and sneaking. Make an arcade game around wickedly fast, simple, shooting, blood sport.

Quake 3 is comparable to a good console fighting game. Observed from afar, it doesn't look like it offers much. A handful of maps, a handful of character models. Those are incidental. What Quake 3 really is, what it was meticulously designed to provide, is a very specific and excruciatingly honed competitive combat game. Like a Tekken or a Virtua Fighter, Quake 3 offers an opportunity to test yourself in a game environment that measures reflexes and precision hand-eye coordination, to the near exclusion of everything else.

Here's where that double standard kicked in. Let's stick with the console fighting game analogy. Do the Tekken, DOA, Virtua Fighter, etc. games have to explain themselves for the absence of a "compelling single-player experience", or the absence of more multiplayer options? No. Should they? That's an argument for another day. The point is that they are taken at face value. They're pure fighting games, and they are judged on how well they implement and present that pure fighting experience. Of course, there are subtleties and intimate design details that get debated by the hardcore aficionados, but the average gamer isn't warned to avoid purchasing these games on the grounds that they don't bring more to the table. But then here comes Quake 3, and instead of taking it at face value, I compare it to what I assume to be its nearest neighbors in the gaming spectrum -- shooters. Single player shooters, RPG-hybrid shooters, sneaking shooters. But none of these are truly peers of Quake 3. To compare them directly is an injustice to all. Apples and Oranges. What isn't immediately obvious (or at least, it wasn't to me) is that Quake 3 isn't trying to be what those other shooters are. It isn't really trying to be like anything that id had done before. It has the frenetic pace of parts of the original DooM games, but none of the atmosphere of anxiety, fear, and horror. It has the precision crafted deathmatch with the robust network code to support it that we've seen id perfect over Quake and Quake 2, only this time id didn't bother with the lukewarm single-player campaign. What Quake 3 has that was missing in every prior id game is first class bot AI that actually makes it possible to enjoy the kind of gameplay that the game is championing without having to get online and play with humans. Human opponents are recommended but not required, and that's not something that id has ever been able to accomplish.

So kudos to id for recognizing the potential of their core competency and being confident enough in it that they would devote an entire game solely to it. Honestly, aside from the UT games, I don't know of any other competitor to Quake 3's pure shooter experience. And that probably explains why it's remained on my harddrive over the years, and why I have the occasional urge to just jump in and frag. Quake 3's gameplay is nearly unequaled in its visceral, frenetic, laser precise implementation.

Summary

Does that mean that Quake 3 is off the hook, that id just gets a pat on the back for making a pure shooter, without any fat? Yes, and no. I'm relucant to fault id for narrowing their design focus and delivering a game that does one thing and does it *very* well. The industry needs more of that, to be sure. And I'm a big advocate for developers making games that they believe in and that they want. A passionately developed game is generally a good game. Is it disappointing, on some level, that id isn't more ambitious? Yes, if that's even a fair criticism to level against them. It's difficult not to look at id's situation, where they've got what feels like a blank check for their budget and an open-ended schedule, and not wish for them to use it to do something huge. But that's unfair. The simple truth is that id is a very small company that excels at a particular marriage of game and technology and their success stems from that. Expecting anything else is a recipe for disappointment. Furthermore, id doesn't 'owe' us, as gamers, anything more than a good game. Shame on us for calling them underachievers when they deliver a good game, just because it doesn't seem 'epic' enough, or have enough content, or push the game design envelope. That doesn't mean I can totally suppress my urge to begrudge them some of their success, when other developers are giving me the proverbial 'more' for the same $50. Like all good things in the game industry, if it's well-designed and well-implemented, then I'm glad it exists since the opportunities to indulge my hobby are the better for it.