John Romero of id Software fame is an opinionated guy, and in a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, that fact was handily reiterated.
The interview spanned a range of topics, from the console vs. PC battle to where virtual reality will fit into the future of gaming, and Romero’s stance in both cases may not be what you expect. When it comes to the former, not only does he believe that PC is the clear victor, but he also feels free-to-play titles will ultimately come out on top.
With PC you have free-to-play and Steam games for five bucks. The PC is decimating console, just through price. Free-to-play has killed a hundred AAA studios.
It’s a different form of monetization than Doom or Wolfenstein or Quake where that’s free-to-play [as shareware]. Our entire first episode was free – give us no money, play the whole thing. If you like it and want to play more, then you finally pay us. To me that felt like the ultimate fair [model]. I’m not nickel-and-diming you. I didn’t cripple the game in any design way.
Everybody is getting better at free-to-play design, the freemium design, and it’s going to lose its stigma at some point. People will settle into [the mindset] that there is a really fair way of doing it, and the other way is the dirty way. Hopefully that other way is easily noticeable by people and the quality design of freemium rises and becomes a standard. That’s what everybody is working hard on. People are spending a lot of time trying to design this the right way. They want people to want to give them money, not have to. If you have to give money, you’re doing it wrong… For game designers, that’s the holy grail.
Free-to-play titles, particularly on mobile platforms, have earned somewhat of a poor reputation among certain gamers, so Romero’s brazen embrace of the model is especially interesting. Still, he does fall into a group of developers who have provided a free-to-play experience of considerable value — it’s just a matter of getting money-grabbing mobile examples to follow suit.
Related: Top 10 Games We’d Love to Play in Virtual Reality
When asked about virtual reality as a technology driving gaming’s future, Romero was not so optimistic. Despite being “blown away” by the ability of Oculus Rift to place you in a virtual environment, he feels the technology is a passing fad at best.
VR is going away from the way games are being developed and pushed as they go back into multiplayer and social stuff. VR is kind of a step back, it’s a fad.
Even though I’m excited about VR and how cool games look, I can’t see it becoming the way people always play games… If you’re inside of a cockpit, that’s cool, but if you’re supposed to be running around a world and you can’t physically run but you can look around, it’s a weird disconnect and it doesn’t feel right.
VR may very well end up like motion controls, but with Oculus Rift (now owned and backed by Facebook) and Sony’s Moprheus in the ring, it certainly won’t be going down without a fight.
