In the midst of the doom and gloom surrounding the current state of DOOM: The Dark Ages developer id Software, lead software programmer Chris Hays has said that morale has been quite low at the studio. In an interview with Auf ein Bier, Hays said that the layoffs were “inhumane” and “demoralizing”, noting that “morale has never been lower.”
Hays went on to criticize the entire gaming industry, placing much of the blame on executives who often tend to make up the leadership of studios and publishers. He called them out for “fundamentally” not understanding the gaming industry as a whole, and noting that while they may understand “the numbers for marketing and for sales”, they are still largely divorced from the reality of “what makes a good game”.
“I think that even in companies that are exclusively making games, especially the larger publishers at the top, I think they fundamentally don’t understand what makes the business. They may understand the numbers for marketing and for sales, but the actual reality of what makes a good game a good game, how it gets done, they’re so disconnected from that they don’t understand what it takes to build a team, what it takes to maintain a team. Failures are important, too.”
As for id Software, Hays spoke about the public statements that have been made by the studio so far, and whether or not they accurately depict the studio’s current state. Acknowledging that he doesn’t quite know how the studio’s future will shape up, he admitted that “it’s hard to say”, and that “it’s hard to make a game that’s AAA like we’ve done before with half the people.” Ultimately, Hays argues that the current id Software is not the same studio that it was before the layoffs arrived.
“It’s hard to make a game when there are entire departments that are gutted that you need, entire disciplines that are gone. So, if they’ve got some kind of new plan for how this is going to work, that hasn’t been told. We don’t know what that is. So, the reassurances that we’re still the same id and we’re still going to do things, well […] we’re not the same id; we’re half the same id. Like, id was the people. What made us special was the people and the relationships we have. It’s not the IP. Our name doesn’t matter. It was the relationships that we built and the experience that we had together. So, are we the same id now? No. We’re not.”
In the meantime, rumors have indicated that the studio has kicked off the early stages of work on a new DOOM title. No real details about this project have been revealed, however. In its own statement, id Software said that it is “focused on supporting each other and the team members impacted” in light of the layoffs. “We’re going to keep building the great games and tech that have defined us for the past 35 years.”
Co-director Hugo Martin has also denied reports of the studio having been “nerfed into the ground and gutted” following the layoffs.
