Quake Zero to be released for free as advergame

During today's Quake Con keynote the id folks announced that they have a team of developers working on a little pet project called Quake Zero.

QZ will be a free web-based version of Quake 3 multiplayer. Todd Hollenshead told me they decided to kick off this project for several reasons. First and foremost, id hated to see their game, once quite popular for online matches, losing its prominence in the online gaming scene, this will allow virtually anyone with a computer to play matches of their games.

Hollenshead said id also wanted to dip their toe in in-game advertising, and that this seemed like the best way to approach it. So expect ads to be running on the web page when you play Quake Zero,but free games for ads seem absolutely fine to me.

Quake Zero Announced

Talking about Quake Zero. Carmack's idea for how to start a second team at id, which has never existed before. "Even at id, we can't just snap our fingers and say, 25 of the best developers in the world, drop what you're doing and come work on this."

Brought in some new people to start staffing up, eventually will grow to team of 20-30 people working on Quake 3 Arena game powered by id Tech 5. For Quake Zero, will spiff up graphics slightly and allow people to play for free. Visuals have never been the key thing--people used to run with all graphics settings turned down. "The core gameplay goodness was there."

"Quake Arena was always my favorite game, my favorite id game." Not the company's biggest blockbuster, but "I have always liked the simple, straightforward and elegant game."

These days gamers like big intricate productions, which is why Carmack lets Willits head up design and he sticks to tech. Working with Apple to ensure Quake Zero will run on Mac.

id is a private company, so he can talk about unsigned projects; so while everything tonight is not guaranteed, it's stuff id is trying to do.

QuakeCon 07: Press Conference