Total Quake

This year's Quakecon will return to the Gaylord Texan hotel, just North of Dallas, and the site of the largest previous Quakecon's in 2004 and 2005. Quakecon is a BYOC LAN and exhibit showcase hosted annually by id Software that was previously scheduled for the Hilton Anatole, also in Dallas.

QuakeCon is hosted at the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine, TX. The event is from August 13 to August 16, with the first day of the volunteer effort on Monday, August 10, 2009.

For directions to the hotel, or to see an area map, refer to the directions and transportation page on the Gaylord website.

Attendees who made reservations at the Hilton Anatole Hotel will have their reservation at the Anatole automatically cancelled and will be required to make a new reservation at the Gaylord Texan at an equal or lesser rate.

id Software and the Gaylord Texan are in the process of finalizing the transition of venue, and the hotel will begin taking room reservations for QuakeCon 2009 very shortly. Please continue to check here for more information on when and how to make reservations.

Check back with Total Gaming Network for all of your Quakecon 2009 news and updates.

Posted over on the official Wolfenstein forums, id's Peter Sokal has revealed the minimum specs to run the PC version of Wolfenstein. Check them out:

SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS:
Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP or Windows Vista(R) (Windows 95/98/ME/2000 are unsupported)
Microsoft DirectX(R) 9.0c (included & required for Windows XP & Vista)

HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS:
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 3.2 GHz or AMD Athlon(TM) 64 3400+ processor
RAM: 1GB RAM
Video Card: 256MB NVIDIA(R) Geforce(R) 6800 GT or ATI Radeon(TM) X800
Sound Card: 100% DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card
HDD Space: 8GB (Plus an additional 800MB for Windows swap file)
Media: 100% Microsoft Windows compatible DVD-ROM drive
Internet: Broadband connection and service required for multiplayer

Wolfenstein is set for a three system release for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on August 4th.

Gaming blog Joystiq reports that id Software now plans to keep future game developments more in house. Check it out:

When Raven Software's long-in-development Wolfenstein (remember when it was an Xbox 360 timed exclusive back in 2005?) finally hits store shelves this August, it'll mark the end of an era ...

... oh no! Not of Wolfenstein games – there are plenty more of those coming – but of outside developers working on id Software's hallowed franchises. John Carmack told Joystiq today that bringing external development back in-house at id is "exactly what's going to be happening." Carmack says that while id's had some hits (Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory springs to mind) and some misses (Enemy Territory: Quake Wars springs to mind) the externally developed titles haven't "had the same record that our internally developed titles have." We'd have to agree with him there.

With the lead team cranking on Rage for EA Partners, they created a second development team to work on Doom 4, with a still-formative third team currently toiling away on Quake Live. "We'll have three teams," Carmack told us. "We'll have Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, and Rage and one of them will be taking a vacation each cycle and that will depend on what we want to be doing each time." So don't worry, you'll have plenty of all of the above to go around.

Check back to Total id for more news.

Gaming Blog Kotaku analyzes Bethesda's and id Software's big move and interview some of the main people involved. Check it out:

When Oblivion and Doom meet, the Fallout is bound to yield surprises; and perhaps offer some insight into the future of the video game industry.

Earlier this week the company behind post-apocalyptic video game hit Fallout 3 bought the developers of famed shooter Doom putting two of the most respected talent pools in the industry, id Software and Bethesda Softworks, under one umbrella: ZeniMax Media.

The result, analysts and ZeniMax says, will be studios that can spend more time on the creative process and less cutting deals with outside publishers. It also will mean the blending of the technological prowess and creative artistry of two of the most respected game makers in the industry.

The deal, though, is likely the sign of the times says Game Changer Research analyst Billy Pidgeon.

"Those stuck between small independent studios and mega publishers are very vulnerable," he said. "A good strategy is to look at where a developer can win."

That means focusing more on niches and, when necessary, buddying up with another niche developer. In the case of id Software and Bethesda, the two are each masters of a certain type of game: first-person shooters and role-playing games respectively.

"It is possible to narrow to a niche and then dominate in that space, so you can compete better," he said. "A lot of people are going to be disappointed that id didn't remain independent, but it's tough to be independent and these mini-consolidations are better than, say, being swallowed up by Ubisoft."

Read the rest of the article at Kotaku.

With Wolfenstein and Doom having already made their way to Apple's handheld platforms it is no surprise that id Software plans to bring more of their classic games to the Apple products. Check it out:

In an interview with Joystiq, id's John Carmack stated that he is "pretty passionate about the benefits of the iPhone" and plans to continue supporting the platform. "I've got a slate of iPhone titles, I expect to have an iPhone release every two or three months for the next year," said Carmack, noting that id will likely continue to plow through its classic titles (hope you like Doom!) before moving on to titles like Doom RPG and Wolfenstein RPG and eventually something based on id's upcoming title Rage.

Carmack stated that iPhone projects don't require much of id's focus, saying, "These are things that get a few people put on them for a little while, are fun for everybody involved."

"So far it looks like they're making pretty good money," said Carmack, "but they're not the blockbuster titles that they go do $100 million dollars."

Read the entire interview with John Carmack and Zenimax CEO Robert Altman right here.

Gaming Blog Joystiq talked with Robert Altman the CEO of ZeniMax and John Carmack of id Software about the recent acquisition of id Software by ZeniMax. Check it out:

Joystiq: How long has the acquisition process been in development?

Robert Altman: I had my first meeting with [id Software CEO] Todd Hollenshead at E3 a year ago. We had a general discussion about how our two companies might explore matters of mutual interest and the conversations then took place over the ensuing months. So it's been almost a year, on and off, that we've been having these conversations.

And how long has Bethesda – or ZeniMax in this case– been looking to expand that studio range outside of just Bethesda and Vir2L,etc.?

RA: Well it has been a part of our strategic plan for a long time to be expanding the numbers of titles that we will be releasing. Part of that is done through external development. At E3, for example, this year we announced that we are going to be publishing a game called Brink from Splash Damage. We're gonna be doing a game called Wet from A2M. So we have been expanding beyond just the titles that Bethesda has created internally. And we are also increasing the internal capabilities at Bethesda. But beyond that we are looking at other studios that might join together with us and at the top of our list, the most prized and most desired from our perspective, was id Software, for all the obvious reasons.

John, how about from id's perspective, as one of the most successful independent developers of all time? How long have you guys been seriously considering a buy-out?

John Carmack: Well, we've had offers since before Wolfenstein was even published. The original one. And over the years we've just always thought that we placed a lot of value on our complete independence. It's nice to be able to, you know, for me to be able to personally do whatever the heck I feel like, whether I think that I can justify it exactly in business concerns or not. But the landscape's changed a lot over 15 or 20 years and the stakes are so high now, when it costs tens of millions of dollars to make a game, and then the marketing budgets are tens of millions of dollars more. And the game's [development] take place over the space of 4 years. We knew that were gonna have to start making some changes and we had started the process of building up a second team so we could pipeline and share resources a little bit better and cover up over any mistakes.

It's been great that every title that we've done internally has been a huge success, but when you've got 50 or 100 people on there, all their families and everyone counting on you there, the idea of "What if you screw up once?" or "What if the market changes?" Some of the things that can be completely outside of your control, that can turn something from a major hit to just an also-ran on there, and the dynamics of the successes in the markets and all these things on there at least made us somewhat more concerned about things. So we were expanding the scope of our business. We weren't just the one title at a time, every four years or whatever. We had staffed up to do Doom 4 internally in parallel with Rage. We also had our mobile and Quake Live departments. We were taking a lot of steps to kind of provide a little bit more scope and protection for ourselves. And we certainly were listening to offers from all the majors about acquisition.

But we did think that there would be some significant costs to, kind of, our core culture and whatnot if we were acquired as another studio for Activision or EA. And the big deal with Activision or EA is that: they're huge, they've got lots of studios, they have lots of studios that do very similar things to what we do, and if we became a part of one of those companies we would be just another studio. And in fact we would be the new kid on the block there, and we would have to be in a situation where we would have to fight for the attention and resources inside the publisher to do a good job with everything. And yeah, it was always possible that an offer could be laid that would have been good enough that would have made us consider wanting to do that. There was always some level of trade-off that we were looking at there.

With ZeniMax, it was an interesting situation, where, at the beginning, I hadn't even heard of ZeniMax. It was only when they mentioned Bethesda that things clicked into place on there. At first blush, it seems like a strange thing. When people heard id Software's being acquired, everybody just assumed it would be Activision or EA. Why would we even consider going with a publisher that wasn't of that same size? And the primary reason is that, again, Activision/EA are huge while ZeniMax here, we've got Bethesda doing top notch, triple A titles – best of breed stuff but in the RPG space – with exactly zero overlap with what we do in the FPS space. And while I think there's probably a lot of fans who are mutual fans of both games, both titles, and are going to think this is the greatest thing in the world, from a market standpoint and publisher focus, there is not going to be any hint of a conflict of interest. When we produce our titles, and ZeniMax goes out to go sell the titles, they'll say, "Here's the best RPG in the world and here's the best FPS in the world. You want a whole bunch of both of them."

Read the full interview with Joystiq here.

The MTV Multiplayer Blog took a look at the upcoming Wolfenstein and found some interesting facts regarding the stats in the game. Check it out:

id Software and Activision came to New York this week to show off “Wolfenstein,” and I came away much more excited than I was going in. It was my first time really playing it and the vibe I got was of a much gorier “Call of Duty,” but with super powers.

It also lets you kill a lot of Nazis, which is always fun. Just how many Nazis you kill is tracked in the menus, right down to the different ways you’ve killed them (from electrocutions to dismemberments). I asked to take a photo of the menu screen which tallied up the deaths, but since it was only from the one-level demo they were showing, the numbers were pretty paltry. Thankfully Activision just sent over a shot of the menu from 36% into the game, and here’s what things were looking like.

After a little grade-school math (cross-multiply and divide, baby!) I was able to determine that, upon reaching 100% completion, you’ll have killed exactly 1,638.4 Nazis in a variety of ways. Granted this doesn’t factor in replaying missions (which is almost certainly required to get to 100% completion) but hey, math isn’t an exact science!

That's a lot of Nazis.

Gaming blog Kotaku got their hands on Raven Software and id Software's upcoming Wolfenstein. Check it out:

We previewed id and Raven's return to Wolfenstein in the spring. Yesterday, we saw it again. Our re-preview commences.

The basic facts haven't changed even if the business circumstances have quaked. Wolfenstein returns to consoles on August 4, developed primarily by Raven Software, with supervision by id. That's id, the company that just sold to Bethesda parent ZeniMax and told Kotaku that letting outside developers work on its intellectual property has resulted in a "step down in quality."

That's right. On Thursday morning, id's own CEO gave us reason to doubt Wolfenstein would be that good. And then, in the afternoon, id and Activision reps in New York City showed of the game. Kinda awkward.

What Is It?
Wolfenstein is a one-man first-person war (no vehicles!) against Nazis set in World War II and amplified by the supernatural powers of something called The Veil. It's a follow-up to the shooters that, along with Doom and Quake, defined id.

What We Saw
I played the game's hospital mission in the Xbox 360 build of the game. It occurs about a third of the way into the game. I had undying mode on, which allowed me to see the effects of taking damage without dying.

How Far Along Is It?
Wolfenstein is out on August 4. The build I played was a beta.

What Needs Improvement?
Clarity of Veil: So our hero, B.J. Blazkowicz, has more than machine guns and disintegration guns that spit out energy like fire hoses. He can find and activate four Veil powers. Until a meter depletes, these allow for the ability to slow time, see hidden passages and obscured enemies, don a shield or shoot bullets through walls. Nothing wrong with that. But activating and stacking the powers via the d-pad becomes confusing. The problem was that the visual cues distinguishing one power from the next were not as pronounced as a first-time player like me would have liked. Perhaps this is remedied in the main game, which doles the powers out individually. But I got confused as to which powers I had on or off.

Lack of Mecha-Hitler: Yes, Hitler will be in paintings hung on walls in the game. But he's not in the game. Not being a player of past Wolfensteins, I don't mind. But I suspect others will.

Read the rest of Kotaku's Wolfenstein preview here.

The news that legendary development studio id Software has been acquired by ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, won't affect the development of id games at EA and Activision, according to those publishers. IGN Reports:

id is currently working with Activision on Wolfenstein, the follow-up in the seminal first-person shooter franchise. The original Wolfenstein 3D was originally released as shareware in 1992, and this latest version is being developed by Activision subsidiary Raven Software in cooperation with id.

In a statement released Wednesday afternoon, Activision said that Wolfenstein was still on schedule for release this summer. The company added, "Activision and id Software have enjoyed a valued and long-standing history together. We are excited to continue our partnership this summer with the launch of id Software's Wolfenstein. We congratulate id and wish them well on their new endeavors."

Activision and id's history together stretches back to 1997's Quake II. The two companies later teamed up for Quake III Arena in 1999 and Doom 3 in 2004. An Activision spokesperson told us that Activision and id have always operated on a game-by-game basis.

Last year, id signed a publishing deal with EA Partners, the third-party publishing arm of EA, for Rage, which is currently in development. When the deal was revealed at the 2008 E3 trade show, both id and EA Partners executives were clear that this was a one-game deal. According to an EA spokesperson, the id and ZeniMax deal does not affect Rage and the situation for Rage remains "business as usual."

Indeed, in announcing the deal today, ZeniMax stated that "Bethesda Softworks will publish the titles of id Software other than upcoming releases previously committed to other publishers." So while Activision will still publish Wolfenstein and EA will publish Rage, it's looking like every id game made after that will bear the Bethesda label.

While Rage and Wolfenstien will be published by EA and Activision there is no word yet on what the first game will be from Bethesda.

In an interview with Kotaku, id's John Carmack and Todd Hollenshead explained how changing circumstances with Activision and other studios spurred id's sale to Bethesda parent ZeniMax.

id Software is still a development studio that commands respect, but it's one that had found itself not quite fitting in of late, its principals told us during a phone interview tied to the announcement of the company's sale to ZeniMax.

One of the problems lately, Carmack told Kotaku, is that id just wasn't a good fit with big publishers these days. "As we were shopping Rage and Doom and upcoming stuff, talking about all of that, we were getting a pretty consistent line from all the publishers," he said. "They were willing to continue to fund our working with partner companies for all of these but pretty much ever publisher said, ‘Well, it would be worth much more to us if you would grow your studio and do more of your own work internally. That's why we already started to staff up to do Doom 4 internally. So things were already moving in that direction."

Carmack spoke specifically of Activision, where id's games such as the upcoming Wolfenstein (developed in partnership with Raven), would be published under the same label as works from Activision's internal studios, like Call of Duty and Modern Warfare studios Treyarch and Infinity Ward. "Going back to a much earlier time," Carmack said, "We were just Activision's shooter shop. We did the FPSes there. There was no conflict, and that was great. But they brought on their own internal studios and there's a very real conflict there between whether they want to put resources behind something they own the IP for and derive all the profit for versus something where they don't own the IP and they might feel like any effort they're putting into it isn't going into their value but somebody else's. That problem has grown over the years as budgets have increased."

Hollenshead told Kotaku that he found ZeniMax to have the closest match with id in terms of a philosophy on how to best make and sell games. It was a better fit, he said, than the studio's recent publishing partners Activision and EA.

What comes out of the deal is a stronger id, the men say. "Things aren't really going to be different in terms of what's going on at id," Hollenshead said. "We're not going to change the kinds of games we make…. It allows us to accelerate the growth of our internal studios, so we can focus on making all of our internal games as opposed to working with external partners where there has been a step down in quality… There will be more, better games from id. So if you're a fan of the company, then it is all upside and all things to look forward to."

Carmack's high on id even now, of course. He said the company just did a "first-look" event for upcoming EA-published, id-developed racing-FPS Rage last week and that it "went spectacularly."

Doom 4 will be published by ZeniMax/Bethesda. The Wolfenstein and Rage games being made under Activision and EA's publishing labels, respectively, will continue as such. But any sequels will be ZeniMax games.

And will there be any Bethesda-id crossover coming out of this? "The teams are very much separate," Carmack said. "There is a lot of mutual respect there. There's going to be a lot of communication and cross-pollination. I doubt there's going to be any technology shifts between the two companies, but there's certainly going to be cooperation. And I wouldn't be shocked to see some hints of different things crossing over in different ways. That's just the kind of stuff when you have lots of people who think everybody is working on cool stuff together."

Terms of today's deal were not disclosed. ZeniMax and id are private companies.

Do you think id Software made the right move to sell to ZeniMax?