Vol.
2, Issue 6
December 15, 1999
Game,
Set, Match!
King of the World
(this
world, anyway)
by
Stephanie "Bobbi"
Bergman
hen
people talk about online competitive gaming, 9 times out of 10,
theyre talking about one of the versions of Quake.
id Software has never publicly discussed how they feel about this,
or why is it that Quake is being used in all of these high-stakes
matches. loonygames figured it was about time someone talked to
id about Quake and online gaming, so we went right to the source,
Todd Hollenshead, Chief Executive Officer of id Software.
Quake
and Quake II have become standout games, not only because they're
fun to play, but because they are truly the first games a gamer
can make a large amount of money playing. Is this something id
predicted? Could you personally have seen this coming?
Playing
games for a living is still a tough thing to accomplish, but the
fact that a few people can do it isn't all that surprising to
me. No one is getting rich off of that quite yet (at least that
I'm aware of). But once competitions started being held, the next
logical step is to start giving away prizes. Bigger prizes attract
the best competitors, which attracts more attention and it just
starts to feed off of itself.
How
does id feel about Quake being used in this way?
Honestly,
it's an honor that Quake/Quake II/Quake III Arena have become
the defacto standard action game for these competitions.
Both
Frank Cabanski of i2e2 and Angel Munoz of the CPL have stated
that they do not wish to make money off of gamers. Yet their for-profit
organizations exist to run tournaments for gamers, mainly with
cash prizes. How does id deal with other companies using their
software?
They want
to make money (everyone does - no crime in that), just maybe not
off of gamers themselves. We just have to make sure and protect
our intellectual property rights. Running a professional league
isn't something that we have much interest in; we make games.
And those games are the best action games in the world because
we focus on that one thing and nothing else.
QuakeCon
'99 was another tournament with significantly large prizes, yet
run by id. Do you see yourself as being in competition with the
CPL and similar companies?
We view
QuakeCon as an event where we give something back to the fans.
We get sponsors to help us pay for it, but it's not about the
money. And that's not what our business is, which, as I stated
before, is making killer games.
There
has, fortunately, been very little cheating in these large scale,
high-cash tournaments. In the event that someone does cheat, and
they do so using an exploit in the software, where does id stand?
Theoretically, is there a liability?
You should
probably ask an attorney. It's difficult to speculate about hypothetical
situations, however.
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