Carmack: We've Had an 'Endless Stream of Buyout Offers'

Ripples were sent throughout the industry yesterday when it was announced that Bethsoft parent company ZeniMax would acquire id Software.  Minds overflowing with questions, we got John Carmack and Todd Hollenshead from id software and Robert Altman and Pete Hines from ZeniMax on a conference call, though Carmack did a majority of the speaking. 

IndustryGamers: As I'm sure you know, id has a lot of passionate followers.  Why don't you start off by telling me why your fans should not freak out about this move?

John Carmack: Nothing's changing on the software side of things.  No structural changes here at id, no switching around of the top guys.  We have our teams still plugging away on the Doom 4, Quake Live and Rage.  Down the road, what this means is that all the future titles will have more publisher resources and we can build out a third team to work on id properties. 

IG: ZeniMax, why do you see this as a home run for your company?

Robert Altman: Because it's id software!  These guys are among the best in the world, they invented the FPS genre.  They have the smartest guy in the industry working at the company, which is a big plus.  For our part, we'll provide the resources to help those guys to expand and make AAA games.

IG: So were there any other players for id software, or was ZeniMax the only serious bidder?

JC: Throughout our entire history, we've had an endless stream of buyout offers, none of which we followed up on for a variety of reasons.  We did have a long term plan for expanding out, but the ZeniMax deal came a long and we decided this is what we wanted to do to boost our plan in the short term.

We had all of these tentative steps to growth in building a third team.  We were a profitably private company, but we were growing cautiously and certainly not at the rate of some of the larger studios out there.  With Zenimax, we can grow out more aggressively.  We have two teams now and we'll develop out a third team in relatively short order. We think that three studios is the maximum; we can keep a handle on that number.  We don't want to potentially get four and five studios and get unmanageably large.

IG: Does Bethsoft have any interest in working with things like id Tech 5?

JC: The two teams are big and well-established, so we don't expect there to be any serious ditching of software, but there will be cross-pollination.  What we can cherry pick, we will.  However, the Beth team stays the Beth team and the id team stays the id team; they will retain their own technology and there will be no company-mandated engine.

IG: Would there ever be something like a Quake RPG, or will the teams keep their IP mostly separate?

JC: We've got our plates pretty full right now.  There might be some interesting opportunities down the road, but there's nothing slated at the moment.  We really liked Fallout 3, though, and the success of that definitely had an impact on ZeniMax's ability to make this acquisition.

IG: John Romero seemed somewhat shocked over the news at first, but now he wishes you all the best.  You still talk to John on occasion or does he just do his own thing?

JC: I get an email every now and then and will see him at conferences on occasion, but we don't have a close working relationship.  Like most of the people in this industry, I wish him the best.

IG: Final question, what can we expect from id Software in the short or medium-long term?

JC: Nothing changes for id in the short or medium-long term.  Doom 4 and Quake Live are underway and rolling strong.  Instead of the question of "who's going to publish Doom 4?" we know it'll be ZeniMax.  It really should just be positive things resulting from this, and the less I have to deal with business stuff and the more I can get back to coding, the better!

IG: Guys, thank you for your time.