quakecon-2009 posts

On Friday during QuakeCon 2009, Bethesda Softworks' design director Todd Howard presented a speech about their ideas about game development and then took some questions. We reported on the event, which included his response to an audience question about plans for a new Elder Scrolls game. While we did not give Howard's direct quote (for which we apologize) we did state quite correctly that folks should not expect a new game in the series in the near future.

Unfortunately many have interpreted our article to mean that Bethesda has turned its back on the Elder Scrolls series and will never create a new game in the franchise. Now Pete Hines, the PR head of Bethesda, has posted a note on their blog site that puts that to rest. He states, "At his QuakeCon talk he was asked when TESV is coming out and Todd replied, 'Don't look for a new Elder Scrolls game in the near future.' He also went on to say how much the franchise means to us and that it definitely will continue. He just wasn't going to provide any timeframe on "when.'"

Ultimately Hines said the Elder Scrolls franchise is safe, saying, "Both Todd and I have said repeatedly that, of course, we're going to do another Elder Scrolls game. The last one was enormously popular. So was the one before that. You get the idea. So do we."

QuakeCon 2009 is now officially over and id Software's annual free LAN event-game convention reached new attendance records this year. Perhaps it was the promise of the first public demos of id's next game Rage or perhaps the last minute move to the larger Gaylord Texan hotel and convention center caused more people to show up. Regardless, id's Todd Hollenshead revealed to the crowd that QuakeCon 2009 had over 7,000 attendees this year.

The final event of the night was the QuakeCon tournament finals. The Evil Geniuses team won the $12,000 Quake Live CTF final match while "Flysher" won the first Quake Live Open Tournament (where anyone could enter) and picked up $1,500. The Quake Live Masters Championship was a truly epic event as "Rapha" came back from losing the first two matches to win the final three over "Spart1e". "Rapha" picked up $14,000 for his first place win.

We have some pictures taken during the final day of QuakeCon including shots of the QuakeCon tournament winners picking up their "big checks". Plans for QuakeCon 2010 are still to be determined as id has not yet secured a location for the event.

QuakeCon 2009 served as a place where a few PC hardware companies revealed some new products to the public and even one secret reveal to a few attendees. One was Dell's Alienware unit who recently expanded from making gaming PCs into also making some peripherals as well. Alienware has already released their own monitor and headset but at QuakeCon they debuted two upcoming items that are not scheduled to be sold until the end of the month.

The Alienware Tactics Keyboard and The Alienware Tactics PC Mouse are both designed to be on the high end of market. The keyboard has features such as media controls on top. The mouse features programmable buttons and up to 5000 dpi sensitivity. Both the mouse and keyboard products will be priced at $99 each when they are released. During a QuakeCon Alienware presentation it was hinted that the company will also have some big announcements coming in about four weeks.

Meanwhile AMD invited a few PC hardware specific web sites to get a sneak peak at their upcoming ATI DirectX11 graphics card, currently code named "Evergreen". AMD was very secretive about the whole affair; according to Legit Reviews the company didn't even show the card itself. It was running in a PC card that had a side window but even that was shrouded in spray adhesive. AMD showed a few DirectX11 SDK demos as well as the Wolfenstein demo (which is DirectX9 based) but the presentation was mainly to show that their DirectX11 card is indeed up and running. It's likely it will be released around the same time as Windows 7's shipment to stores in late October.

The PC Perspective QuakeCon event showed off a brief and so far unreleased trailer for DiRT 2, the upcoming racing game from Codemasters. DiRT 2 is so far the only upcoming PC game confirmed to be running under DirectX11 and the video showed off how the PC version of the game, due out in December, looks while under DirectX11. The brief video showed off some very impressive and realistic looking graphics; in fact they looked almost pre-rendered. We will likely be hearing more about DirectX11 and game support in the coming weeks.

On the show floor at QuakeCon 2009 various hardware exhibitors like Alienware, Intel and AMD were showing off Wolfenstein, the Raven Software developed next game in the long running shooter series begun by id Software. The full game comes out for the PC next week; however the version that was playable at QuakeCon wasn't the full game; it was a previously unannounced demo.

The demo, which gives gamers about 10 minutes of gameplay, allowed folks to play a small portion of the single player game as B.J. Blazkowicz and some AI controlled WWII resistance buddies take on the Nazis in a train station. You will get to sample the game's extra-dimensional "Veil" powers in the demo, especially when you have to face off against one of the more super powered Nazis with a particle cannon. Unfortunately we didn't get any info on when the Wolfenstein demo will be released publicly.

While Big Download is a PC gaming site first and foremost, two upcoming games from the Xbox 360's Xbox Live Arcade might be of interest to PC gamers as well. The exhibit floor at QuakeCon 2009 had not one but two games based on previous id Software PC titles in playable form.

One is Quake Arena Arcade, the XBLA version of id's 1999 multiplayer shooter Quake III Arena. id actually announced plans for such a game at QuakeCon in 2007 but it's finally looking like it will be coming out fairly soon (although no release date has been announced). The game itself is being ported by Pi Studios and on the show floor it looks terrific. We were told that the game actually has some slightly higher polygon counts for the levels and characters than the original Quake III Arena so purists will have little issue with the game's looks.

So why get Quake Arena Arcade when you can play Quake Live (also based on Quake III Arena) for free on your web browser? Well, one reason is that this game is fully "M" rated; that means when players die on screen you see gibs and blood rather than the "disappearing in a flash of light" thing you see when you kill players in Quake Live. The other reason is that in addition to all of the levels in Quake III Arena, Pi Studios has created a whopping 12 all new levels unique to Quake Arena Arcade. Oh and did we mention that there are plans for even more downloadable content for the game after it's released?

Check out the other XLBA game based on an id Software classic after the jump:

A QuakeCon 2009 presentation presented by PC hardware web site PC Percepective was mostly about giving away prizes to frenzied fans willing to do pretty much anything for a free video card or motherboard. However, there was a very unique presentation that was held at the end of the show. PC graphics chip maker Nvidia gave out plastic 3D glasses to everyone at the the event and once all the prizes were given out they turned down the lights and turned on a projector to show something extremely cool; a quick playable demo of the upcoming super hero action game Batman: Arkham Asylum on a 60 foot screen in full 3D.

The demonstration, showing a section of the game that's not in the recently released PC demo, showcased the game's support of Nvidia's 3D Vision technology. Using a polarized video projector attached to a PC and then having the game's image thrown up on the massive screen had folks seeing The Dark Knight take out a bunch of enemies with that extra dimension that is usually seen in a state of the art 3D movie theater screen. Nvidia also showed part of the recentlly released Resident Evil 4 3D benchmark demo on the big screen.

Nvidia's 3D Vision tech can only be used by the home viewer if you have the supported monitor or video projector and the glasses. While you won't quite get the experience the people at QuakeCon got to see, the PC version of Batman Arkham Asylum (due on September 15 in stores) will fully support that technology.

The day after Big Download got to see the first playable demo for Rage (which attendees at QuakeCon 2009 will get to see later today) we got to sit down and chat with four members of the first person shooter's team at id Software; art director Stephan Martiniere, lead designer Matt Hooper, producer producer Jason Kim and creative director Tim Willits.

While Rage is still a first person shooter game it also incorporates all sorts of gameplay and features that have never been in a game created by id. Willits told us, "We knew that we didn't want to look like Quake or Wolfenstein." The actual idea behind Rage came as id's master programmer John Carmack checked out satellite data of the US. Willits told us that they thought it would be cool "if we could drive through that." From there they came up with setting the game in a post-apocalypse era and having drivable vehicles with guns.

As far as enemies, Willits said, "We were careful. We knew we didn't want to do Doom demons." While there are mutants to fight in Rage there are also plenty of actual humans to deal with and interact with in the game which is another first for id.

Check out more from the Rage chat after the jump:

The sun has set on day 2 of QuakeCon 2009 and we thought we would offer up yet another gallery of pictures from the massive (and free) event. There's been some wild competitions here at the show, and we are not talking about the LAN tournaments. Folks have going crazy over just getting a t-shirt. Today at a Nvidia hosted event folks were treated to having a man shave off his body hair just to win a motherboard. Some other gamers were in a contest to build a fully working PC in under an hour and using a Bawls drink can as part of the set-up.

Tomorrow, QuakeCon comes to an end but id will be showing off their Rage demo we got to see earlier this week to the public for the first time. The tournament finals for Quake Live will be held and someone will win a Ford Mustang. We will be here for all of that and more.

AMD has a huge booth at QuakeCon 2009 this year but the PC chip maker is also allowing anyone at the event's BYOC booth who has an ATI based PC to download the newest Catalyst 9.8 drivers. Officially the drivers wlll be released next week.

But that's not all. AMD's QuakeCon blog has let anyone else download the same drivers ahead of the official release. Naturally they come in Windows XP, Vista and 7 flavors (both 32-bit and 64-bit). The change list is over at the PC Perspective web site where they list a ton of performace improvesments for games like Battleforge, Crysis, Far Cry 2, Company of Heroes and more.

[Via Blue's News]

While John Carmack's speech at QuakeCon 2009 was super long, Todd Howard's speech today was under an hour but still highly informative and extremely funny. The executive director at Bethesda Softworks made his QuakeCon debut with a video and slide presentation that was very entertaining.

Howard pointed out that Bethesda and id were very similar; both were PC hardcore developers that slowly turned into multi-platform teams. Currently Bethesda has between 85 to 90 employees. To work at the company you have to have several qualities, according to Howard, including having a "low a**hole quotient".

Most of Howard's presentation went through some of the things they did while developing their last game, Fallout 3.They looked through not only the previous two Interplay made RPGs but also old reviews of the games to see what people responded to in the games.

Bethesda makes marketing part of the process of developing their games because marketing is how people are first introduced to the game before actually playing it. Even things like designing what the art will look like on the game disk is part of that process.

Check out more from Howard after the jump