During a chat with Shacknews during
QuakeCon this week,
id Software's co-founder
John Carmack revealed that id had actually been working on a major new game called
Darkness. The title, which would have been considered a survival horror game, sounds a lot like the TV movie Lost with players fighting off creatures on an island after a plane crash.
However id decided to stop work on
Darkness after 18 months on production to move onto their current original game
Rage. Why? Carmack stated that they felt that the game was repeating aspects of their last major game
Doom III that they didn't want to repeat, namely the dark enviroments and "contrived nature of monsters hiding in closets". The generally poor sales of survival horror games also factored into the decision.
This isn't the first time id has stopped production on a game to move onto another title. After
Quake III Arena was completed they started working on a game called
Quest which would have been a fantasy multiplayer oriented team title. After about six months of development they cancelled the project to work on
Doom III.