October 26, 2009 6:00 AM

Bethesda Blog has posted an interview with id Software's Quake Live Executive Producer Marty Stratton about the web based first person shooter. The developer discussed the creation of Quake Live as well as plans to add premium services in the future. An adaptation of the Quake III engine, the game challenges players to master their shooting and dodging skills as they battle with other gamers.
During his keynote at QuakeCon this year, John [Carmack] mentioned that we were going to start investigating some premium services for Quake Live, could you touch on these a little bit and give players an idea of what they can expect from them?
Were toying with a number of ideas for features, functionality, and even content that will translate well and represent a real value for players wanting an affordably-priced premium service. One of the most requested features in QUAKE LIVE and something that I think would be at the core of any premium service, would be the ability to very easily and quickly start a private match (that only you and the players you invite can join). Right now, all of our matches are open to the public and started by our back end systems. So, what were looking at creating is a totally integrated and very easy to use method for starting and running a personalized private match.

Its a similar concept to players in other games renting their own server, but our approach would be to allow them more of a private match on demand. Making this type of system available through the same site you are playing the game on, allows us much more flexibility in making the interface easy to use and more integrated with things like your friends list.

The team has been heavily involved with the community on this project, how has that impacted the development of the game?
Weve definitely engaged in a dialog with the community and our active players more in QUAKE LIVE than any of our more recent titles. First, QUAKE LIVE started with a game (QUAKE III Arena) that had been out, successful, modified, used in competitions, and generally battle tested for almost eight years. There was already an outstanding community of people that had meaningful feedback and years of insight on the title, so it was important to listen. Also, the game had been modified for years to work well in competition settings and tailored to fit popular play styles. So again, it has been important for us to look at that stuff, listen to the players and continually look at how that feedback can fit with our goals for the game.

Another area where weve had tremendous community support has been in testing the game. As Ive mentioned, were a small team and havent had a QA team. We started from the very beginning of the project with a very small closed beta group which we grew over the course of a year to over 200,000 0 all exposed to the product at one point or another, and some that helped us throughout the course of the project. Its been a unique experience, but I dont think we could have done it without the support of the community and in particular those that really stuck with us and provided meaningful feedback throughout the closed beta period. If you see someone with the Crash Dummy award, youll know they helped make QUAKE LIVE what it is.
To read more click over to the link below.


Bethesday Blog: Quake Live Q&A
id Software
Quake Live




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