During an interview with Industry Gamers about id Software’s upcoming game, Rage, Carmack described it as a game that is ”not just, ‘Here’s your squadmates.’ But that’s still a proven formula that people like, and it’s a mistake to (discount that). As long as people are buying it, it means they’re enjoying it. If they buy the next Call of Duty, it’s because they loved the last one and they want more of it.”
This opened the door for his disdain for people intimating that shooters lack creativity, ”So I am pretty down on people who take the sort of creative auteurs’ perspective. It’s like ‘Oh, we’re not being creative.’ But we’re creating value for people – that’s our job! It’s not to do something that nobody’s ever seen before. It’s to do something that people love so much they’re willing to give us money for.”
”So I do get pretty down on people that – you see some of the indie developers that really take a snooty attitude about this,” Carmack added, ”It’s almost as if it’s popular, it’s not good. And that’s just not true.”
Part of the current backlash is due to the enormous cash cow that Call of Duty has become, but there has been plenty of evidence that shooters can be creative and artistic, as Ken Levine’s upcoming BioShock Infinite proves.
Not that Carmack cares, who states bluntly ,”As long as people are buying it, it means they’re enjoying it.”
