This year's epic QuakeCon event is imminent, but for your reading pleasure in the days leading up to id Software's annual bash we have an extensive interview with id Software's Kevin Cloud and Steve Nix. A member of id since 1992, creative director Cloud is a part owner of the company and heads up external development, including id's involvement with Splash Damage on the anticipated Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (PC, PS3, X360). Nix, who joined id late last year after serving as CEO of Ritual Entertainment, is id's director of business development and is at the forefront of the company's renewed emphasis on engine licensing.

Cloud and Nix shared their thoughts on the current tech licensing scene, multiplatform development, Quake Wars on consoles and its formidable AI, id's attitude towards its as yet unannounced new game, John Carmack's interest in mobile and DS development, and much more.

Shack: What thinking went into the recent Mac support announcement? Do you see the gaming market there increasing, or are you maybe hoping to help drive such an increase?

Steve Nix: Well, Apple has obviously been doing well. iPod sales have been strong, and that's driving a new audience of people who have never owned Macs before. There was that existing audience of people who have always been Mac users, but now you're getting new Mac users too. At the same time, with the new Intel architecture, it's really easy to get that code over there. Plus, we use OpenGL, and Macs use OpenGL, so the rendering path was already there. We've been very pleased with the performance results on Mac.

Kevin Cloud: And we've been supportive of the Mac platform for quite a while.

Steve Nix: Yeah, I mean if you go into the Mac store and look at the game aisle, a number of games are id games or are powered by id technology.

Shack: You guys are obviously stepping up to take more of an aggressive role again in engine licensing. What are you putting into that?

Steve Nix: Well, as you know we have a history of technology licensing. Some of the best games have been made using id technology. But for a while there, we didn't really have a focus on it. It was a tough spot. Doom was really PC-focused at a time when the industry was shifting to be more cross-platform. Later on, we caught up, and id Tech 4 we have cross-platform support, with Enemy Territory on PS3 and 360.

Really, it just came down to focusing organization and resources. Id's a very small company, and for a while there was really nobody there who could drive the licensing business. I was familiar with id's technology, being a licensee for a number of years, and when I came over one of the first things we talked about was getting more aggressive with the licensing program. Without even talking about it, they agreed. We have the strongest video game technology in the world, and we need to get it out in the nands of select licensees that can make great games with that technology.

Shack: Speaking of being a small company, id has been independent a long time, and these days a lot of small developers are shutting down or being acquired. Have you seen your role in the industry change at all, or the role of independent studios change?

Kevin Cloud: For id, it's been great, honestly. We love our position as an independent developer. It allows us a lot of freedom of choice in terms of our development cycles. We can choose to do what's right for the game. We have that "when it's done" philosophy, and we've kept to that to make sure that the games are the best possible games we can make.

As far as the whole landscape, it is just the nature of things for the publishers to want to bring developers under their roof and have more influence over them, but for id it's just one of the things we've been founded on. That's just not something we're likely to change. We're real excited about what the future technology will bring, we're excited about the console platforms and the opportunities for technology licensing we have in development.

For us, maintaining independence has been easier for us as time goes on. It's hard to know exactly what's going on in the rest of the industry.

Shack: I was speaking with Activision about release dates recently, and they said, "Well you know, id gets to say when it's done," and that extends to the separate developers you work with. We've seen 3D Realms take on a similar producer role with third-party studios, guiding them through the whole process. Are you going to continue doing that kind of thing? What led to that strategy?

Kevin Cloud: Well, one thing, with id titles like Doom and Wolfenstein, there are a lot of opportunities to get those games back into the open market and team up with some great development. We've got Wolfenstein in development with Raven. With something like Enemy Territory, it's a great chance to work with some guys who have a massive amount of enthusiasm for multiplayer games. Splash Damage really came out of community developers with a lot of passion.

It's something fun for us. Hell, these guys want to get a start in the business, and we had this idea for a cool game, and they liked the idea, so let's do it. It's something that a lot of developers don't have the opportunity to do. We do, because we're independent and we maintain control over our titles. For us, it's been a blast so we want to continue doing it.

Steve Nix: At the same time, there's a lot of pressure at publishers with both their internal and external titles trying to put down a set date, but for us quality is number one, especially with our brands. We can't have inferior products coming out with our brand, because ultimately that harms the value of the brand more over the long term than slipping a couple of months. We absolutely have to make sure first and foremost that games are good, and we don't plan to stop doing that with our internal titles or our partner titles.

Shack: What do you think has put Epic in such a strong position in the engine licensing game with its Unreal tech? How do you plan to compete with that?

Steve Nix: I'd say they had multiplatform--at least PC and 360--fairly early in this cycle, and they've gone out and talked to people about their technology. They got in front of publishers and developers, saying, "Hey, we have a solution." But at the same time, the competition has just fallen away, really, with Renderware getting purchased by EA, and the other rendering solutions out there are more specifically rendering solutions than full engine packages. So really I think it's that they were getting out there in front of people, and they were in a good position competitively--as there were not a lot of other competitors.

Shack: Epic is always sure to showcase their extensive developer tools, they show all that stuff every year at GDC, with the streamlined GUI systems and so on. Do you guys plan to compete full-on with that?

Steve Nix: Yeah. We're not talking about engine specifics just yet, but for sure you can expect we are looking hard at what a modern multiplatform game developer needs to create a successful title with a fairly small team and a reasonable amount of time, and we're addressing those concerns.

Shack: How about less nitty-gritty developer-side things? What can people expect out of the engine on the front end?

Steve Nix: Sure, I mean first and foremost it runs really well across the core platforms we're addressing--Mac, PC, Xbox 360, PS3. We're already at a high framerate on all those platforms with the exact same assets. There's no stepchild platform, it runs equally well across all of them.

We'll share more very soon, but it's also an extension of our MegaTexture solution, to where it's not just MegaTexture on the base terrain anymore. The MegaTexture extends to the entire world, including objects and characters. Really, you're completely eliminating texture constraints, and for console developers it's one of the major constraints they deal with. Everyone makes the game look really good at the beginning--they pile on textures, pile on textures--but then you make the game look worse and worse as you approach ship. You absolutely don't have that concern with id Tech 5. You can make the game look better and better--you can lock gameplay and just have artists go to town, with six artists working a map simultaneously with zero impact on performance or stability. That's a huge win.

Shack: So I imagine you'll release more details at QuakeCon?

Steve Nix: Yeah, as a matter of fact we're going to have a number of interesting announcements at QuakeCon.

Turn the page for thoughts on id's design process, Carmack's cell phone and DS development, and why gamers might not be shocked by id's new game.