ZeniMax/id Software Acquisition Interviews
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First up is Gamasutra:
How have your respective workforces reacted to the news? What do they think of the acquisition?
JC: We made a simultaneous announcement at Bethesda and at id. The first reaction was that everyone was a little bit shocked. The rumor mill wasn't terribly effective at informing anyone like this was going on, so many were caught flat-footed. ... After the announcement, I just heard from people over and over about how Fallout 3 was incredible and their favorite game of all time. And [Bethesda executive producer] Todd Howard told us of all the big id fans they have there at Bethesda. ...
Pete Hines: From Bethesda's side, there were a lot of jaws hitting the floor, a lot of "Holy shit". Everybody at our company views id the same. These guys are at the top of the industry in terms of what they have accomplished, and the amount of respect they've earned over the years.
...[id] has agreed to come up and show Rage next week to everybody at Bethesda, so everybody there can see it firsthand, because we heard amazing things about it. It's been a great meshing of cultures and personalities.
JC: We're going to take every opportunity to share our knowledge, hard-won wisdom of recent product cycles, anything we can share technology-wise, Bethesda is welcome to cherry pick. We already have slated our plans years ahead, so there aren't going to be any massive changes. We're not going to splice id Tech5 into anything Bethesda is doing. But anything they want to cherry pick, they're more than welcome to.
Then we have IGN:
IGN: Some gamers are intrigued and other are disturbed by the possibility of cross-pollenization of franchises. What are the chances we'll see a Doom RPG or a Fallout FPS? Anything like that in the works?Didn't we already get a Fallout FPS?
John Carmack: Not in terms of major titles. I would expect that, now that it's legal for us to do so, there will be little homages that are tossed back and forth between the franchise -- just things to make people smile. Game development is a multi-year timeline now and this acquisition does not change any of those multi-year plans already in motion.
