CVG Reminisces With id’s Hollenshead & Hooper

CVG recently scored an interview with id software’s CEO Todd Hollenshead and lead level designer Matt Hooper. The interview is a bit strange as it barely touches any details regarding id’s next game, Rage. Instead, the interview focuses more on how a typical working day is at id. We’re treated to a fair bit of reminiscing from Hollenshead (who acts half-drunk). Needless to say, Rage (& effectively Hooper) takes a back seat half-way into the interview where Hollenshead completely takes over.

When the topic is actually focused on Rage, Hollenshead & Hooper (who barely chimes in) advocate that the [major] consoles out right now are just as important as PCs (this coming from a historically PC-centric company). In fact, id is developing Rage on several platforms concurrently (PC, 360, PS3, & even Mac). To id, not having a product branded as a port is pretty important these days. Given id’s reputation (and its most prized possession, ‘The Carmack’), you can pretty much expect Rage to run optimally on your platform of choice – whenever that is.

Hollenshead goes on to pimp Quake III as “still the most popular [pure deathmatch] game”. He mentions a thing or two about Quake Zero and how anxious id are at getting Quake III onto XBLA. (Mooooo….. Apparently you 360 owners were all over Doom.)

The most interesting part of the interview (other than the backyard fornication comment) was Hollenshead’s note that the art staff for id right now is larger than the entire development team behind Quake 2. A sign of the times, indeed. Keep in mind that id is still a small company by today’s standards (a staff of 35 is tiny). When reminiscing about the lax id days of old, Hollenshead spouted:

“Like before we had no vacation policy; it was like, if you take off too much time you got your a** kicked out. Where as now we have approved vacations, somebody tracks all this stuff and there’s a lot more administration stuff.”

Was that a poke at a certain former id employee? You bad boy, Todd. *chuckle*

The interview is an entertaining read, to say the least. Hollenshead is a real goofball here. He had me laughing all the way through. It’s also good to see id is alive & kicking (and anything but bored), albeit a bit under the radar compared to the id of yesteryear. Perhaps low media exposure is what they’ve been needing all along.

Bring on the Rrrrrage!

Via CVG