Carmack Rages Over Devs' “Snooty Attitude” Toward Call of Duty, Other Modern Shooters

Posted 07/19/2011 at 9:55pm | by Nathan Grayson

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Call of Duty's a strange beast. It's all at once the gaming industry's calling card and whipping boy, with frequent angry words flying between sides like so many spammed grenades. If you keep your ear against the industry's pulse, though, Infinity Ward's infinitely sequelized cash cow that lays golden eggs is kind of a joke. It never changes. It's everything that's wrong with first-person shooters. Etc. Id Software mega-brain John Carmack, however, thinks it's high-time you come down from that high horse.

“If they buy the next Call of Duty, it’s because they loved the last one and they want more of it,” Carmack told IndustryGamers. “So I am pretty down on people who take the sort of creative auteurs' perspective. It's like 'Oh, we’re not being creative.' But we're creating value for people - that’s our job! It’s not to do something that nobody’s ever seen before. It’s to do something that people love so much they’re willing to give us money for."

"So I do get pretty down on people that - you see some of the indie developers that really take a snooty attitude about this. It’s almost as if it’s popular, it’s not good. And that’s just not true."

Of course, id's next cannon ball into the big-budget pond – RAGE – is in a similar boat, taking a tried-and-true sub-genre (post-apocalypse) and mixing it with equally tried-and-true gameplay mechanics. Some people call it comfort food. Others lable it as sloppy seconds.

But we don't really care about those people, because they're not here right now. (Which means they're probably unattractive. And prone to inexplicable bouts of racism.) But you, dear reader – we want to hear from you. So, what's your take? Are Call of Duty and 'splodey shooters of its ilk spawn camping creativity? Or is it just a matter of different strokes for different folks?