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iPhone It In: Doom Resurrection
What's the most you would spend on a game for your iPhone? Not a port, mind you, but a brand new game based on a classic franchise, developed specifically with the iPhone's control system in mind -- $5? $7? How about $10? Try as I might, while playing id Software's latest Doom iteration -- Doom Resurrection -- it was near impossible to shake the uneasy feeling that $10 is just a bit too much money for the experience.Truth be told, the game is "big" -- Doom Resurrection could easily be ported to gaming-specific handhelds -- though it weighs in under 100 MB. The problem with the scope of the game, however, is the resultant long load times and an occasionally choppy framerate -- the length of time it takes to jump into the game make it something I don't want to play on my way here or there (full disclosure: I'm using an iPhone 3G and it may run significantly better on the 3GS). %Gallery-67049%
Carmack hopes Doom will kick off 'bigger' iPhone games in future
While speaking with id Software's John Carmack and Escalation Studios' Tom Mustaine yesterday, we only briefly broached the subject of iPhone game pricing. Doom Resurrection's lofty (by App Store standards) $10 price tag puts it in a particularly prickly situation, with Carmack telling us that "convincing people who've been spending $1 on games to spend $10 is a real problem." We can imagine! He's not entirely without hope, however, as he looks at Resurrection as a value proposition, trading higher production values for higher costs. In fact, Carmack's hoping to set a precedent with DR that will allow for "bigger iPhone games" in the future -- something he says he'd like to see a lot more of. "There's only so much you can do with games that cost two or three dollars -- there's only so much production value you can put into that," he told us. The clear answer: Make Doom-based alien flatulence apps.
