Anger Management

Tim Willits, creative director of id, discusses Rage, motion control and why everyone needs a Carmack

Feature by Dan Pearson Contributor

Published on Oct. 18, 2010

GamesIndustry.bizSo do you think that the projected lifespan for id Tech 5 will be similar to previous iterations?

Tim Willits

No. John has said, publicly, that he feels that id Tech 5 will last a while. Because it's very scalable. He's scaled it down to the iPhone, he feels you can scale it the other way. He doesn't know anything about the next generation of consoles, but he feels that it will be awesome on the next generation of consoles.

GamesIndustry.bizYou're very much a multi-platform developer now. Does that really penetrate to the core of the company or would you actually prefer to be working on pure PC tech?

Tim Willits

The problem is that the PC market is smaller and piracy is out of control still. Those are the two things that have really moved all developers to be cross platform. Otherwise you're looking at a client-server architecture type game, always online.

People say, the PC market's dead. It's not dying, it's changing. The social aspect of PC gaming is still the richest, but yeah, the user base is small and piracy is out of control.

GamesIndustry.bizDo you think Onlive, Gaikai, that sort of tech, will change things much? Do you see, as some people are predicting, the death of platforms, replaced by a single streaming tech?

Tim Willits

That would be nice. Transfer speed is still not there, mass market. Heck, where I live I don't even have DSL. But yeah, that would be nice.

I don't know anything about the next generation of consoles, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was no optical disc. I think that would make sense. And that cuts the whole piracy issue too.

GamesIndustry.bizYou seem like one of the few developers who are still unashamedly core. You've said you'll not enter the casual market. What is it about that market that puts you off?

Tim Willits

Resources. That's the reason. To be honest, we don't have enough people. The focus of the company is to make the best, triple-A, big titles for the big platforms. Heck, I don't think we'd even do the iPhone game if it weren't for John. He likes working with smaller platforms, experimenting with stuff. It doesn't take too much of his time.

It really isn't our focus, we want to stick to what we do. We're bigger now and it's scary, we don't need to get too much bigger. We just want to make great games.