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Friday, 10 December 1999 - Hoony
Two Games in One
With Q3A, id Software have tried to do two things at once - and as a result have not done as well with the multiplayer game as they might have.
The two things are:
- Design a single-player game with a "tournament" storyline (using bots).
- Enable various forms of multiplayer death-match (involving humans) to be played using the game engine, maps, and player models available from (1).
The motive for (2) was of course the extraordinary success of multiplayer gaming after Quake. At the basest level, the id guys saw that their death-match maps got a hell of a lot more mileage than their single-player maps, so they decided to make a game consisting solely of death-match maps.
But more than that, it has become clear that with the evolution of networking and computer technology there is a massive revolution taking place. Multiplayer gaming is the future, and id Software need to embrace it.
So id Software sat down and asked what sort of multiplayer-game they should make. They decided to make a fast-flowing and fun death-match experience that would be accessible and appeal to as many casual computer gamers as possible. They succeeded, of course. Q3A is easy to play, and a lot of fun, and it will appeal to masses of computer gamers everywhere.
Along the way, id Software decided that their multiplayer game needed to have a single-player component. The primary rationale was to ensure that potential customers didn't think they needed other humans to play this game. It's like any other game, ok? It's just that you can also play it with other people. Cool!
The single-player component would also introduce "newbies" to the techniques of death-match. Even cooler! These days, all computer games have a "training" component.
So id Software thought about what would be cool and fun and came up with the same idea Epic had - the idea of the "tournament". They also decided that they needed to have some sort of "story" - people who buy computer games expect a "story".
And so was born the Tournament Idea.
The Tournament Idea - Next page please