User blog:Le Rottweiler/A little more rambling

I’ve noticed a trend amongst designers related to the Quake series: they eventually go under. It seems that most of the companies who create add‐ons or ports for the Quake series eventually kick the bucket. I’ve counted six companies so far:


 * HeadGames Publishing: dead since 1998.
 * Lobotomy Software/Lobotomy Studios: dead since 1998
 * Rogue Entertainment: dead since 2001.
 * Xatrix Entertainment/Gray Matter Interactive Studios: dead since 2005.
 * Hipnotic Software/Ritual Entertainment: dead since 2007.
 * Midway Games: dead since 2009.

Of course id Software, as a company, still exists, but it has mutated substantially over the years. Probably only two old‐school employés still occupy id: Tim Willits and Kevin Cloud. Everybody else has since gone elsewhere. Romero seems to be working on low budget games, McGee has his own studio in China, and Petersen is working on traditional games instead of video games. As for Willits, I’m not exactly sure what he’s doing now, but I think that he still labours for id, but in which position, I know not.

It will be interesting to see if a company can still fabricate a faithful sequel to Quake sans any of the original employés, but I myself am not highly confident. Still, I’ve been getting the perception that modern companies are now mining the past for success; I don’t recall seeing so many HD editions or other such updates back when I was a youth. It reminds me of the modern film industry.