Published , by Brittany Vincent
Published , by Brittany Vincent
Joe Rogan took some time out to interview id Software's John Carmack on a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, which made for an intriguing discussion.
This time around, it looks like Joe sits back and lets Carmack talk to his heart's content, about topics ranging from what went wrong with the original Rage, his thoughts on the future of gaming, and other ideas you'd probably be interested in tuning in to if you're a fan of Carmack's work and his views.
Having never actually seen an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, I'm not sure if this is the norm or not, but the host seems to be pretty quiet because the CTO of Oculus and father of Doom and Quake has a lot to say. One particular note of interest was Carmack speaking on the state of games today, noting that he's "optimistic," but has reservations. He believes gaming as a whole used to have a more "distinct" flavor, and there was a lack of the constant focus group testing we see these days with newer titles. This could explain his thoughts on why some titles are "focus-grouped to death," as he calls it.
"One of the interesting things as we look at game design today versus the old days is a lot of people fall into a nostalgia trap about saying, ‘Well, the games I grew up with were the greatest games ever,’ and you see it with music and movies and everything,” he said. "I tend to be more optimistic about the state of things today."
The pair also spoke briefly about how much work developers have to do on a regular basis to bring games to life. Carmack spoke on how the landscape of video games is quite unforgiving as a whole.
"You look at the game industry; it doesn’t pay as well, there is less job security, and they work you a lot harder. There is the problem of the fact that when you have an industry, and this has been the way of artists forever, where if you’ve got something that people are passionate about and want to be involved in, supply and demand works its way and you wind up in a situation where they don’t have to be paid as much."
Check out the episode in its entirety above for plenty of intriguing tidbits on what Carmack has to say on work ethic, the state of the modern gaming industry, and the future of games as we know it.