Carmack's Thoughts on 3D, Motion, Dedicated Servers, and Cloud Gaming

During John Carmack's QuakeCon 2010 keynote address and Q&A session, he expressed thoughts and analysis based upon various gaming trends and technologies.

id Software's Rage

On 3D displays: Carmack is not a fan of 3D displays for actual 3D. While he does see some technical benefits to higher refresh rates, he remains "dubious about the real value to the consumer on 3D."

On motion controls: "If you've got a game that's finely tuned for one input device, it's not going to be better with a different one - I'm not a big booster of the current crop of motion stuff. It's not to say they're without value, but they're not of value to id [Software]."

On PC dedicated servers: John Carmack is "puzzled" that it's as big of an issue to gamers as it appears to be, based upon reactions to Modern Warfare 2's lack of dedicated servers. Carmack assures gamers that "there's no evil plan against dedicated servers," and for id Software it isn't something id has decided on yet for Rage. As a feature, id isn't "bullet-pointing [dedicated servers] very high," but he "expects it will be possible [to run a dedicated server] for Rage."

On Cloud gaming services: "Cloud gaming is interesting. I haven't tested the products out there now, but it's not exactly clear when the market will sustain it. There's no question that eventually that will be the model a lot of people will play games with." Carmack is also optimistic that cloud gaming will solve alleviate problems like draconian DRM and cross-platform development. Linux, for example, might benefit greatly from cloud gaming since native Linux ports of a game would no longer be required.