Id INTERVIEW
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One on one in the Wolf's lair

By WILL BARKER

A few of the guys from id Software made the trip to Melbourne, Australia, for the Game Developers Conference.

We were lucky enough to have an in-depth look at the stunning new game, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, as well as interview id CEO, Todd Hollenshead. We'll follow up this interview with gameplay impressions soon.

Will: How long did it take to make Return to Castle Wolfenstein?

Todd: We've been working on it about, er, a little over two years, at this point.

Will: There were two other development teams involved with this project. Who were they and what did they do?

Todd: Grey Matter is the primary development team and creative director Drew Markham designed the single player game, that's been their focus. And then the multiplayer aspect has been developed by Nerve Software, which is a team of guys - many who worked at Rogue before. They had a lot of experience.

Will: What aspect of the game do you like best, what are you most proud of?

Todd: Well, I think that the thing hits me as the coolest part of the game is that's there's so much variety. The way in which you experience that is basically through the story as it unfolds for the player.

So you start in Castle Wolfenstein and you know why you're there and your objective is to get out and once you do this, once you get out, you'll find this crypt and fight the undead and so on. It's not just "Oh, I'll do this level, then this," over and over, killing a bunch of guys.

Will: Will the German Shepherds be making a comeback in Wolfenstein?

Todd: No German Shepherds in this game (laughs).

Will: We've played the multiplayer test on the office LAN and everyone agrees that's it's plenty of fun in a Counter-Strike kind of way. Was it always going to be like this, as in team-based?

Todd: Well, when we started development on Return to Castle Wolfenstein, the emphasis and all the design effort was put into the single player piece of the game. We had always thought "Okay, we're definitely going to do multiplayer," but we really didn't have any firm ideas about it, other than the one thing that we didn't want to do, which was straight deathmatch, capture the flag sort of thing.

We wanted to do something uniquely Wolfenstein and so we put a lot of thought into it before we actually began development on the multiplayer piece of it and that basically, what you see in the MP Beach Test levels, is a sample, a taste, of what the result of that was.

Will: The Xbox - will you guys be creating content for the Microsoft system?

Todd: We're definitely looking into creating stuff for the Xbox. It probably won't be specifically for the Xbox, it would be more something we would do on the PC, that we'd also do on the Xbox - that sort of approach.

The Xbox is a very powerful system. I think that once it ships, assuming that Microsoft does everything it says it's going to do in terms of the technology in the box, it will be the most powerful console system available at the time.

Some people have brought up questions about how committed Microsoft is to console gaming and those sorts of things and I guess that just remains to be seen. But I think Microsoft believes heavily enough (in Xbox) and they're making a $500 million bet on it anyway.

Will: Do you guys have an XDK (Xbox Development Kit)

Todd: We don't have an XDK at Id yet, but we've been exposed to them. John Carmack been disclosed on all that stuff.

Will: Hypothetically, would Wolfenstein fit well on the system (Xbox)?

Todd: Yeah. I think it will and we're of course looking at that. There are some changes you have to make from a true PC game, like Return to Castle Wolfenstein is, when you start talking about taking it to the consoles, the user interface is different with the controllers.

Will: And the GameCube?

Todd: I don't know that much about the GameCube, we haven't really been disclosed on all of the technology there. I think John (Carmack) has a general idea about the processors and the scheme they're using, etc. But we don't have anything in the works as of this time. But I expect Nintendo will do a good job with it.

Will: Looking back, a lot of people said shareware wouldn't take off and now you're all driving around in Ferraris. Tell us about that.

Todd: Well, only one guy at Id has a Ferrari. That's one of biggest myths at Id - everyone drives Ferraris (laughs).

The shareware model was a great way for Id to get started as a company because the company was basically bootstrapped. The first Commander Keen game took like a month to develop, distribute, then we'd move to the next one. But Wolfenstein 3D, at the time, was a tremendous project because it took six whole months to develop it. Six months nowadays is spent on ironing out design kinks.

We worked with Apogee and Scott Miller, to distribute Wolfenstein 3D via shareware and of course it was one of the most popular and successful shareware programs of its time.

Will: Finally, would you agree that Wolfenstein was your 'springboard' to bigger and better things?

Todd: Absolutely. It started the first-person shooter genre and basically allowed the company to work on Doom and id distributed Doom via shareware and it was so successful too, that the demand was there to take Doom 2 to retail.

Prior to Christmas 1994, retail really didn't know what to think of PC games. But in a few months time you had Myst and Doom 2 that both came to retail and were phenomenally successful. It was a watershed event, the launch of those two titles for PC gaming.

Will: Thanks for your time Todd.