In an interview with Wired, John Carmack talked about id Software’s Doom 4, including the number of issues the project has faced. Having recently departed the company that he helped found, Carmack believes that one of the biggest problems of all is identifying the essence of the franchise at this point.
“It’s been hard — one of the things that was a little bit surprising that you might not think so from the outside, but deciding exactly what the essence of Doom is, with this 20-year history, is a heck of a lot harder than you might think. You get multiple Doom fans that have different views of what the core essence of it is, and there’s been a design challenge through all of it.”
As for the long development cycle, which is beginning to mirror Duke Nukem Forever in more ways than one, Carmack stated that, “The worst aspect of the continuing pace of game development that we fell into was the longer and longer times between releases. If I could go back in time and change one thing along the trajectory of id Software, it would be, do more things more often.
“And that was id’s mantra for so long: ‘It’ll be done when it’s done.’ And I recant from that. I no longer think that is the appropriate way to build games. I mean, time matters, and as years go by — if it’s done when it’s done and you’re talking a month or two, fine. But if it’s a year or two, you need to be making a different game.”
Currently, Carmack is working with Oculus VR for the development of their Oculus Rift VR headset.