Bethesda Softworks PR and marketing head Pete Hines has claimed that upcoming franchise reboot Doom was only shown at this month’s QuakeCon event to allay fears that id Software was having trouble with the game’s development.
He also confirmed that id and Bethesda won’t be ready for a ”formal announcement” to the public until next year.
Speaking to PC Gamer, Hines said that it wasn’t ready to show off the game in full, but that he wanted to avoid negative rumours by showing QuakeCon attendees at least something that proves Doom is in good hands.
”We’re working with them (id) to say, ’˜How does this work? What do we want to show?’,” Hines explains, ”And they’re like, ’˜Look, we don’t want a stream to go up for a game that isn’t at the point where we would formally show it to the world, and now that thing is getting picked apart, and digested, and gone through frame-by-frame and getting nitpicked to death, when normally we wouldn’t be showing this to anybody at all.”
The decision to show off the game was in part driven by continuing speculation that the Doom reboot project was in trouble, something that ”bothered the hell out of” Hines.
“I really wanted to put something out there that, in a strong way, said, ’˜id is working on something that we think is really cool,’” he continues. “And we wanted … to show something to (id Software fans) that gives them the confidence that it is still a viable studio that’s doing really cool stuff, that is making a game you want to play, and is treating Doom with the care and respect that you want.”
So essentially, if you didn’t get to see Doom at QuakeCon don’t worry too much. The game’s not really ready to be shown off yet anyway. For the real deal we’ll have to wait until 2015. “Next year is normally when I think we would’ve started,” confirms Hines.
