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I used to organize LAN parties (up to 30 people); Quake 3 and other id Software titles were the most stable titles we played. They ran on a wide variety of hardware configurations without crashes or glitches. We'd often try playing a new game, spend 45 minutes trying to get it to work, and throw our hands in the air saying "Well, let's play Q3A because we know it works on everyone's computer." Half-Life and mods were in the same category, but Half-Life was developed using the Quake engine as a starting point.

Okay, yes, Blizzard games are nice and stable and polished too. But have you been reading the Starcraft development articles recently? They've been talking about how much of a nightmare the entire experience was, with major bugs until just before launch. From what I gather, one of the senior developers was running around fixing bugs across the entire code base, and personally reviewed and fixed up an astonishingly large percentage of Starcraft code.

One can wonder: if they were using static analysis, could they have shipped the same game earlier?

My point wasn't that ID Software made buggy games. My point is I think that they don't know since a while what a trully successful video game is made of.

"Quake wasn't a commercial success, Quake2, Quake3, Doom3 and Rage neither (that's why ID software has been bought)"

Do you have actual sales numbers to back that up or is this based on anecdotal evidence, or is it just because you didn't like the games as much :)? Publicly available internet numbers show that Doom 3 sold 3.5 million, and even Rage sold 2.31 million, making Doom 3 extremely profitable and probably putting Rage a little higher than break even given the long development time and much larger team size.

Two of the Quake games are listed on wikipedia's top selling PC games and sold 1.7 and 1 million. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_video_g...)

Although none of these numbers are 100% accurate unless they are wildly off I wouldn't call any of id's games except Rage unsuccessful.

Don't forget licensing. On the top-selling games are other games which are based on the Quake/id Tech source code: 3 Half-Life games, 2 Counter-Strike games, and American McGee's Alice. I'm sure only a small percentage of Half-Life 2 code can still be traced to its Quake roots, but it's still some impressive technology. (Alice is a little more obviously derived from Q3A.)

You forget the Call of Duty engine which is, if I'm not wrong, still made of Quake engine code... Sure, others made trully successful games with their technology. Others, like Valve, actually did the video games history since the 2000's. ID not. I'm sorry for that, but it seems to be true.

You seem to be arguing that id Software's games since around 2000 haven't been very good... but I'm not sure why, since nobody here is really disagreeing with you on that point.

The argument here is that lots of successful games are buggy, and id Software's games aren't buggy. Trying to run BioShock on my computer is a nightmare (you have to mess with compatibility settings, and even then you get no sound at all). When I played Fallout 3 it crashed about once every few hours of play time, and that was late 2012 with no add-ons -- 4 years after the game's release you'd expect patches to address things. Bethesda has a kind of reputation for releasing buggy games, it seems.

Do you have actual sales numbers to back that up or is this based on anecdotal evidence, or is it just because you didn't like the games as much :)?

Oh I've always liked ID Software and I still do. But anecdotal evidence show that it's been a very long time that they haven't made a trully hugely successful and highly regarded title.

Doom 3 sold 3.5 million, Rage sold 2.31 million, Two of the Quake games are listed on wikipedia's top selling PC games and sold 1.7 and 1 million

Even if these numbers were real, they wouldn't correspond to trully hugely successful and highly regarded title. For example: Minecraft[1] sold 7 millions of java copies. The Call of Duty series sold more than 50 millions copies. The startcraft series sold more than 10-15 millions copies.

A hit today is 5-10 millions copies per platform. Compared to the 2 millions of Rage, there is a huge gap.

[1] http://www.minecraft.net/

You're comparing them to a handful of the most successful games of all time. Yes id hasn't produced the best selling games of all time, but overall their games have been successful. Even comparing Minecraft's 7 million copies to Quake's 1.7, you need to consider that Quake sold most of those copies at a much higher price point. Mojang (at this point) is also larger than id was up until Doom 3.

I'd not arguing that id is still a dominant force in the industry (they aren't), but calling all of their games after Doom commercially unsuccessful is a little extreme.

Your definition of a hit being 5-10 million copies per platform means the only hit game is Call of Duty. If an average AAA title sells 5-10 million total it is wildly successful, and 2-3 million is usually still profitable or at least breaking even.

What, in your opinion, constitutes a commercial success?

Quake was/is one of the best games of it's genre, ever. It sold 1.7 million copies, as a shareware release.

Doom 3 sold 3.5 million copies. It wasn't a commercial success?

Not to mention the games that were built on top of id technology, games like Half Life, Call of Duty, et al

Be sure that those games are in my heart too. But these numbers doesn't correspond to trully highly succesful games. That's why ID has been sold for only $100M. For a comparaison, Riot Games has been sold for $400M with only one game (League of Legend) [1].

Also, Minecraft[2] sold 7+ millions of java copies. It's more than x2 copies than Doom3 on "one platform".

[1] http://www.develop-online.net/news/36960/Tencent-pays-400m-f...

[2] http://www.minecraft.net/

> Anyway, nobody here, is still playing one of these games - starcraft for example, is a game still played.

Well, I wouldn't say nobody. I, for one, play/watch Quakeworld and Quakelive on a regular basis.

Ok you're right. I've deleted that. I say right because we could discuss hours about what nobody means. Oh just a question, so did you bought quake?

I bought them and won them on tournaments so I own few of those :)