Doom 3

Anyone who's been paying attention to the news lately is probably aware of a few important happenings down at John Carmack's House O'Quake (also known as id Software). The first is the announcement that Paul Steed was fired under dubious circumstances. I'm not going to talk about that here, as one man's issues with his superiors really has nothing to do with me.

The other announcement, however, does. The next game that id releases to the public will be a continuation of the Doom series. At the moment the announcement occured, thousands of fans wordlwide promptly began setting their expectations too high.

Making another Doom game is about the worst thing id Software could possibly do with their millions of dollars.

Why do I say this? I'll freely admit that I loved the original Doom, spent hours playing it, and still consider it to have some merits above and beyond even the most recent Quake game. Shouldn't I be excited at the prospect of a vastly updated version (whether Paul Steed's doing the models or not)?

No, I shouldn't, and I'll tell you why. Because everything that made Doom the magical catalyst for the first person shooter genre no longer applies. There are three main strikes against the game right from the outset, all of which are nearly insurmountable. It's not out of the realm of possibility that Doom 3 might be amazing, but it's highly unlikely.

Reason 1: Doom's Creators

Think about it. Who's left at id who actually had a significant hand in the making of Doom? John Romero's gone. American McGee's gone. Sandy Peterson is gone. Sean Green is gone. That's all (as in: 100%) of the level designers who contributed to Doom and Doom2 (Tim Willits made one map for "Ultimate Doom"). Sandy Peterson alone is responsible for nearly three quarters of the maps in Doom/Doom2. Tom Hall's gone. He and Romero were at least 50% of the game design behind Doom.

Who's left? The head coder, John Carmack who, while still at the head of his field is no longer leading the pack by all that much. The two artists, Kevin Cloud and Adrian Carmack, both of whom (according to Carmack's .plan update) not only aren't interested in making a sequel, but actively don't want to.

If the three owners of the company, and the last three people at id who worked on the game, can't agree with each other on what game they should be making, can we really expect the game to be any good?

Next: The other two reasons...