All things considered, the interview was progressing normally. id CEO Todd Hollenshead and I were sitting across from each other in the QuakeCon Press Lounge. I had just asked when id's next game, Rage, was coming out. I didn't expect a straight answer.

Nor did I get one, but that's beyond the point. Because, as Todd was explaining why id is so reluctant to provide a date--"we don't work to a time, we work to a quality level"--fate intervened in the form of an extremely inquisitive mystery woman. She wanted to know what kind of press would cover video games. And if we were from Game Informer.

The result? An interview that I, and most likely Todd, won't forget any time soon.

Shack: To start off with, the tale that id technical director John Carmack told about a pharmaceutical conference forcing QuakeCon out of its original venue this year...

Todd Hollenshead: Yeah, that'd be one way to put it. Basically, John had all the facts correct. It was really the hotel that really ratted us around. It wasn't necessarily the pharmaceutical people. John's attitude on it was pretty much similar to what I would say about it.

Shack: The press conference came and went without much on the iPhone release of Doom Classic, despite the press release promising more details there.

Todd Hollenshead: That's my fault. I actually meant to say something about it and missed it and thought for sure that John was gonna talk about it. I think he remembered, when we spoke before the conference, that I was gonna talk about it. We didn't have a prompt for it and just forgot what I was supposed to be talking about.

That [Doom Classic] will be our next iPhone App. We're actually starting work on that now. John's been doing some stuff on it.

Shack: Just starting? During his keynote, John said the game was finished and id was holding off on its release since the Wolfenstein RPG just came out.

Todd Hollenshead: The engine may be done--there's a lot more [to be done] before it's ready to go to the App Store. We wouldn't want to release it right on top of the stuff we have going on now.

Shack: Yeah, John mentioned that as well, along with his uncertainty as to if it's better to space things out or release them whenever.

Todd Hollenshead: It creates some confusion, people, if they want to buy Doom and there's a Doom Resurrection or something.

I think there's still...I mean, we haven't gone into testing with it [Doom Classic] or anything like that. I don't think it would be fair to say that it's done to that point.

Shack: Sorry this is all "John, John, John, John" so far, but you know how he can get going...

Todd Hollenshead: And now, because he doesn't have the pinpoint focus of all the programming stuff, he does shotgun a few things, and sometimes they're a little bit from the hip, and so we have....the next day, we're like, "whoa!" [laughter]

Shack: He also mentioned that the iPhone edition of Wolfenstein 3D will soon support custom levels.

Todd Hollenshead: John likes the idea, just like with the new stuff, just like with the old stuff, of releasing the editor, letting the community make content, having that be part of the game.

I mean this in a complimentary way--John is basically a nerd at heart. I think he has some nerdy concepts that he clings on to. I think they're cool and all that, I think that maybe this consortium of Wolfenstein 3D iPhone developers that's out there across the world isn't as large as John might like to believe.

It is kinda cool, the idea that you give these people these tools and they'll make all this content and they have fun making it and it enhances the user experience for the people that buy it and it makes the game more popular, which sort of turns back around to result in more sales of the game.

Now, in theory, that's great, but I don't know it it actually works as well in practice.

Shack: It's similar to the open source debate.

Todd Hollenshead: Yes. They post on your site all the time, or they used to anyway: "Pokey the Penguin says Linux is free if your time is worthless." [laughs] That was one of my favorite quotes. To a large extent, I think some of that stuff is, you get what you pay for.

Shack: Any idea as to when that Wolf 3D update will hit, or is that more of a John thing?

Todd Hollenshead: I think that's more of a John thing. To be honest, it's not really his focus right now, which is the id Tech 5 stuff and Rage and all that.

Obviously, coming up before the show, we were working on the [Rage] presentation. Literally, we were doing code on that until last week. We may have even been working on it this week too, because we do try to get everything we can into [it].

It is really going to be cool for the fans, I think. The original plan was we'd basically do the same thing we did for Game Informer, wouldn't need any extra work or whatever, but the guys, that would never be sort of "just enough," so they've got some new stuff in the presentation.

Keep reading for more on Rage and Doom 4.