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ZeniMax Buys id Software - a gamers perspective
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"Can't you see that they are geeks in love..."
So it came across the wire today that ZeniMax - whom you out there in Readerworld may know better as the financial force behind Bethesda Softworks - just snagged ownership of id Software. This move may be weird to some, who think of id as "the house that Doom built" and home only to first-person shooters, but I would be remiss if I didn't point out not only Doom RPG and Orcs & Elves, but the fact that the founders of id have been RPG fans since way back (read Masters of Doom if you don't believe me, and when you reach the part about Quake starting out as a fantasy game about a cursed sword, imagine me laughing a smug laugh). So I think it's an interesting choice.
I say "interesting" here because I'm sort of a pessimist, and while I'm certain most are like whee oh man this is going to be like chocolate and peanut butter and unicorn giggles I'm far more guarded. One, I tend to see any acquisitions these days like circling the wagons - although this is kind of silly as id is solid financially, unlike say, a smaller 3rd-party developer without a slew of hits to their name. Two, while I imagine id's "it's done when it's done" philosophy is only going to be strengethened by this new financial influx, I'm curious what ZeniMax's plan is. For quite a while, id didn't seem like the type of developer who had to really be beholden to anyone in particular - although a recent interview with Todd Hollinshead and John Carmack, shows that there were issues with this, as id tended to like to work with multiple studios for different assets.
"Going back to a much earlier time," Carmack said, "We were just Activision's shooter shop. We did the FPSes there. There was no conflict, and that was great. But they brought on their own internal studios and there's a very real conflict there between whether they want to put resources behind something they own the IP for and derive all the profit for versus something where they don't own the IP and they might feel like any effort they're putting into it isn't going into their value but somebody else's. That problem has grown over the years as budgets have increased."
So we see evidence there of an outright resistance to publishers letting developers own their own Intellectual Property and work on them with other development studios (such as Raven's work on Quake 4 and Splash Damage's Quake Wars), a desire to keep things within an internal system of owned studios. Instead of a cadre of developer-owned studios - such as the struggling Foundation 9 and Elevation Partners - there seems to be a far stronger push for publishers to absorb developers, and to be able to bounce around their IPs to other devs within their ownership. This has already happened with the Call of Duty series, although high sales have not translated to much happiness with the initial IP creator, Infinity Ward, who is reportedly rather snarky regarding the other studios that have worked on the titles. Even Crackdown creators Realtime Worlds have seemed a little upset at not being allowed by their publisher to do the sequel, and having it handed off to a start-up company. While I imagine id will have a great deal more control over what happens to their titles than other development studios, I'm a little sad that companies like Raven and Splash Damage (which started out as an enthusiastic team of modders that got their break as a studio thanks to id) won't get a chance to work on their ips after this next round of titles. Not that I have no faith in Bethesda, just - I'm wary is all. And a little sad, I suppose.
Finally, there's this: Bethesda put out Fallout 3. id's working on Rage - another post-apocalyptic title. Not that I think the market isn't more than big enough for both, I'm just a little curious how the bigwigs at ZeniMax might approach this similarity. Although in fairness, Rage was probably discussed in the bargaining room, and things were probably said to the effect of "you no touchy," so yeah.
I'd really like to think about all this as a good thing - but this along with the same-day announcement of Mythic and BioWare being absorbed into a single entity makes me think of bad things. A friend of mine who was at E3 overheard a group of Activision higher-ups talking, and said that it actually made him sick: that it was just money-money-money, and how they spoke like they were going to own the whole of the game industry in just a few years. Publishers have always existed in a healthy competition, and now it tends to feel more like a war's brewing. In situations like that, I know nobody wins.
That's my pessimism for you. If it suits, ignore my fearful babble, and feel free to hope for the best results. It's a bit better option than hiding under a table waiting for the sky to fall - but I have coffee here and I like the dark, so, well.
- R. Dobbs
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