todd-hollenshead
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id Software president departs after 17 years of service
id Software president and former CEO Todd Hollenshead has left the company, Bethesda confirmed with IGN today. "After many years with the studio, Todd Hollenshead decided to leave id Software to pursue other personal interests," Bethesda's Pete Hines said. "While Todd was not part of the development teams, he was an integral part of id Software's success as the business head of the studio and we wish him the very best in his future endeavors." Hollenshead joined id in 1996 as CEO, then served as the company's president following id's acquisition by ZeniMax in 2009. Hollenshead additionally hosted the annual QuakeCon gaming convention. Development of id Software's current project Doom 4 has been reportedly troubled, as anonymous sources alleged that the game suffered at least one complete reboot following RAGE's mixed reception in 2011. These sources also claim that a proposed RAGE sequel was canceled in order to focus development efforts on Doom 4.
id Software looking to shorten dev cycles, stop building new engines for every game
id Tech 1: Doom(1993), Doom 2 (1994) id Tech 2: Quake (1996), Quake 2 (1997) id Tech 3: Quake 3 Arena (1999) id Tech 4: Doom 3 (2004) id Tech 5: Rage (2011) Notice a trend? With the exception of the earliest id shooters, which evolved very quickly, id has been in the business of developing one game per technology platform for the last eleven years. Sure, they licensed that technology to other developers to create other id titles like Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory to Quake 4 but when strictly talking about the work being done internally at id, technology and game development have gone hand in hand. But id's Todd Hollenshead knows that has to change. "We need to get to shorter cycles," Hollenshead told VG247. "And I think part of that is that we can't be doing a revolutionary technology with every game we develop." To that end, the studio's upcoming Doom 4 will use – you guessed it – id tech 5! "We have to go to a bit more of an iterative technology approach," he admitted, adding, "I think it's a completely doable thing, but I don't think it just happens without putting some effort into it." Luckily, with Bethesda's deep pockets backing the studio now, id is able to work on two games in parallel, without risking everything. "The capital required to put both those games in production – the means and size to do them at a triple-A level – would have been a literal "bet the company" sort of thing," Hollenshead explained. So, after Rage ships does that mean id can finally get to work on that Commander Keen reboot we've been waiting for all these years?
id's Todd Hollenshead: 3D gaming will probably have to wait
So there we were at the wedding last weekend -- our cousin Video Gaming and his fiancée 3D were all set to tie the knot, when Uncle Todd stood up at the rehearsal dinner table and said what most of us were thinking. "Maybe we're getting to the point," he said loudly while spilling a little champagne, "where the people who have been pushing 3D, or are pushing 3D now, have figured out a way to make it cool and not so nerdy that nobody wants to do it." The rest of the room gasped, gaming looked really confused, and 3D ran out the back door, her eyes filling with tears. Hollenshead had a point, though -- it's been a really quick romance, and while gaming's certainly attracted to 3D (who wouldn't be -- Avatar made her look super hot), the couple's definitely been pushed together by the two families. But maybe Uncle Todd was right when he said that the relationship "has to be more pervasive and more widely adopted before it makes sense for videogame development companies to invest." We talked it over with Video Gaming, and he agreed that maybe they should take it a little slower -- spend some more development time together, sell a few more solid titles and then we'd talk about an actual marriage. 3D was kind of bummed out by the whole thing, but everyone agreed that as much it would cost to lose the deposit on the reception hall, the cost of going through with a troubled marriage would be even worse. As Uncle Todd put it, "the TVs are f***ing expensive. Is there enough content to justify?"
Carmack and Hollenshead reflect on id sale
Six months after the acquisition deal that brought id Software under the wing of Bethesda parent-company ZeniMax, id Software co-founder John Carmack has again weighed in on the move and why he feels it made sense for the studio. Speaking with Edge Online, Carmack cited a waning interest from publishing partners -- specifically, Activision's decision to focus on internal development -- as a major contributing factor in the sale of the nearly 20-year-old company. When the deal was first announced, games media focused on the sale of a long-time independent developer; however, id president Todd Hollenshead views the situation from a different angle. "I think it's just as true that we acquired an internal publishing capacity," he said. According to Hollenshead, ZeniMax values development "for its own sake," rather than "trying to put something in a box and relying on marketing for sales." In the modern games industry where "the business is so much about either having a hit or being totally irrelevant," Hollenshead says a strong publishing partner is increasingly important to the survival of a development studio. Truthfully, we're happy for id Software. If the Activision partnership had continued, it would have been just a matter of time before the house that Doom built was tapped for some kind of peripheral-related disaster.
id's Hollenshead: Piracy 'hidden benefit' for PC manufacturers
Oh, those sly PC hardware manufacturers. As if it wasn't bad enough that they keep building better, more powerful rigs every six seconds, id Software's Todd Hollenshead believes they also secretly benefit from software piracy. No stranger to the public flogging of the illicit C:\ scourge, the CEO candidly told GamesIndustry.biz that manufacturers typically "line up on the wrong side of the argument." "They have lots of reasons as to why they do that," he said, "but I think that there's been this dirty little secret among hardware manufacturers, which is that the perception of free content - even if you're supposed to pay for it on PCs - is some sort hidden benefit that you get when you buy a PC, like a right to download music for free or a right to download pirated movies and games." Hollenshead believes that this is what motivates manufacturers to stick up for the law-abiding minority when it comes to issues like peer-to-peer sharing."I think that if you went in and could see what's going on in their minds, though they may never say that stuff and I'm not saying there's some conspiracy or something like that - but I think the thing is they realise that trading content, copyrighted or not, is an expected benefit of owning a computer." Heck, the only reason we got one was to steal quotes from Tom Bramwell's interviews.
Wolfenstein movie still in the works
Although we'd think Roger Avary's work would have been put on hold in light of his recent legal issues, he is still apparently hard at work on the script for a big-screen Wolfenstein film.id's Todd Hollenshead told Eurogamer that, though the recent writer's strike slowed things down, progress on the feature is being made, "I've recently been in contact with Roger and he's actually working on the script right now." Hollenshead did state progress is going slower than they'd like, but then again we don't think Avary would like to be implicated in a manslaughter case either. So, who wins that argument?
id's Hollenshead: Apple "has not followed through" on gaming
id software's CEO Todd Hollenshead met up with Kikizo for an interview recently, and the conversation turned, as often seems to do with id nowadays, to gaming on the Mac. Hollenshead was confronted with what his peers Gabe Newell (of Valve), and id's John Carmack had previously said about Apple, and he agreed that while "the Apple guys would probably frown to hear me" say so, it's true: Apple has stepped up on gaming before, and never "followed through" with their support.He doesn't paint an extremely dark picture -- he says that Apple did send engineers this time to promise their support for the future, and that developing on Intel architecture makes things much easier than dealing with the "weird PowerPC" setup. And in Apple's defense, we've seen more support for gaming out of them, both on the Mac and on the iPhone and iPod, than ever before.But so far, it's all talk on Apple's part, and we have yet to see indie games on the App Store and working day 0 releases from id and EA. Hopefully, Apple's following through this time, and those things are right around the corner.[via IMG]
id Software poised for a comeback, says id Software
It's been a long time since id Software defined the first-person shooter with Wolfenstein 3D, and later took it to a new level of insanity with Doom. The company got rich not only off their own revolutionary games, but also by farming out their powerful engines to other developers.In recent years, id has fallen from prominence. Doom 3 and Quake 4 were mere shadows of their predecessors. id began to lose FPS market share as other people's engines got more play. Even id founder/visionary John Carmack seemed to be losing interest in the genre he created, and spent his time building rockets and cell phone games.But in a new interview with Next Generation, id CEO Todd Hollenshead makes it clear that his company has a few tricks up its sleeve, the most exciting of which is Carmack's "brand new shooter that is not based on any previous IP." While Hollenshead refuses to reveal much about this mysterious new game, he does say that "[Carmack's] approach allows us to do some things visually that we haven't ever been able to do before. He is really unfettering the ability of artists to go absolutely nuts."Do you hear that, video game artists? Are you tired of those fetters on your ability to go absolutely nuts? Get a job at id.
