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id's Tim Willits

The co-owner and lead designer on iPhone, Romero, Carmack, Zenimax and Rage

GamesIndustry.bizSo you're on a new IP with this one, your first in a long, long time. How worried are you, given we're in a marketplace where non-established names such as Alan Wake and Singularity have seemed to struggle, and a handful of big franchises seem to dominate sales?
Tim Willits

Yeah, it is definitely a risk. But I do think that we're in a good position. Enough people know about id, y'know. It's important to get in front of the new people as much as we can, but… Yup. It is risky, but I think if there is any company that can do it, we can do it. There are a handful of companies that can do it – Valve can do it, Epic can do it, id can do it… Hope it'll work.

GamesIndustry.bizAre you prepared for it not to, would you stick with it anyway? It can be that everything's different if you can convince publishers to let you make a sequel, as at least the name's known. I think that's what Activision is doing with Blur, even though the first one supposedly sold badly.
Tim Willits

You have to give those guys credit for that… we're gonna establish a franchise. We know that the first one's going to struggle, but you have to stick to it. That's a good mentality, because a lot of publishers are like "well, F that." Yeah, it's dangerous when you don't have two titles that are successful. One is… you don't know what the future of one is.

GamesIndustry.bizEspecially, I guess, when you're staying resolutely in core games in a time when half the world's claiming that stuff's doomed and social games are the future?
Tim Willits

It's a very sad state of affairs when more people are playing FarmVille than Call of Duty, alright. It's hurtful.

GamesIndustry.bizWe're not going to have 'click here to adopt an Imp" in Doom 4, then?
Tim Willits

John would definitely put himself in a rocket and shoot himself into space. The last thing you'd see from John is this [rude gesture] as he goes into space.

GamesIndustry.bizThat said, what about the iPhone stuff he's doing? Is that an important business model for id going forwards, or more of a personal project for Carmack, given that he made the QuakeCon Rage demo in a couple of weeks?
Tim Willits

No, a lot of it's John driving it. Which is one of the great things about him – only John Carmack could whip out a game in his spare time. We have a digital group at id which we've created, which is another good thing so it doesn't upset the balance – we have dedicated artists, dedicated designers. And what our strategy for Rage and the digital platforms is to not be you can play the iPhone version or Rage, but they can both be additive to the experience. Because the Rage universe is more robust and more fleshed out than any other game that we've created in the past.

So we can use other platforms to do prequels, or you can play other characters or you may have a whole game that revolves around racing, or a whole game that revolves around Mutant Bash TV. Because the world is so rich, it's like Star Wars. We can imagine a million different Star Wars iPad games – that's what we're trying to do with Rage.

GamesIndustry.bizDoes the back catalogue, both in terms of re-releases and iPhone remakes, still bring in a lot of business for you?
Tim Willits

That's a Todd Hollenshead question, I have no idea. But we do surprisingly well, and I know the Steam sales on the weekends, we always do well in those. And again, the focus of id is make great games that sell a lot. Licensing was always nice, but nothing ever compares to making a game that sells 10 million copies. That's where our bread and butter is.

Tim Willits is co-owner of and lead designer at id Software. Interview by Alec Meer.

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Alec Meer

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A 10-year veteran of scribbling about video games, Alec primarily writes for Rock, Paper, Shotgun, but given any opportunity he will escape his keyboard and mouse ghetto to write about any and all formats.

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