In a recent interview with Gamesindustry, id Software legend John Romero has given some of his thoughts on the recent state of gaming and the various free to play models that are currently being used. Romero is best known for his work on groundbreaking titles such as Doom, Wolfenstein 3D and Quake. Romero is often credited as being one of the men who pioneered the first person shooter genre. He is a notoriously larger than life figure, this is best evidenced with the fact that he put his own face in Doom as a hidden Easter Egg. Romero was interviewed at the Strong National Museum of Play where he was donating his old Apple II and some of his precious notebooks to the institution, as they are an important part of video gaming history. The notebooks contain lines upon lines of code as well as game maps, so are an inherent part of the story of early game development. Romero spoke about the differences between PC gaming then and now, commenting on the ease at which the independent development process can be pursued today as opposed to the 1980s. He further commented on the new trend of free to play games, saying “With PC you have free-to-play and Steam games for five bucks. The PC is decimating console, just through price. Free-to-play has killed a hundred AAA studios.”
This is the face of a man who knows what they’re talking aboutRomero also laments the loss of shareware, claiming it to be one of the fairest business models around, as most of his most famous titles allowed players to experience the first installment of the game for free. “Our entire first episode was free – give us no money, play the whole thing. If you like it and want to play more, then you finally pay us. To me that felt like the ultimate fair [model]. I’m not nickel-and-diming you. I didn’t cripple the game in any design way. That was a really fair way to market a game,” Romero continued. “When we put these games out on shareware, that changed the whole industry. Before shareware there were no CD-ROMs, there were no demos at all. If you wanted to buy Ultima, Secret of Monkey Island, any of those games, you had to look really hard at that box and decide to spend 50 bucks to get it.” He also hoped that the ‘dirty’ versions of the recently popular ‘freemium’ systems would die out, leaving the way open for more fair models. Consoles were the next target John Romero chose to fire upon. He said that consoles were being hurt not only by free to play systems becoming popular, but also by the closed nature that is inherent of their design. “The problem with console is that it takes a long time for a full cycle. With PCs, it’s a continually evolving platform.” Romero claims that because a PC can be constantly upgraded whilst also being fully backwards compatible meaning that the platform has a huge advantage over any console. PC’s also have the flexibility advantage in regards to peripheries like controllers, as multiple types of controllers can be used. Romero’s insight into the way free to play systems are developing is certainly interesting but if there is one thing to be taken away from this interview, it’s that John Romero still loves his computers.
