Keith Stuart over at The Guardian's Gamesblog did a short email Q&A with John Carmack that just went up on the site. The interview hits a lot of interesting ground for just seven questions. They discuss Doom RPG, gaming on cell phones, the future of the PC market, Carmack's next big thing and the state of indie development. Here's a taste:

I interviewed Peter Molyneux recently and he argued that the videogame industry is too cautious and brand-obsessed these days - he theorised that if things had been the same when Id started out, Doom might never have been published - at least not through traditional retail channels. Do you agree? Has the 'two guys in a garage inventing the next big thing' dream really been killed off by the big publishers?

Well, Doom wasn t originally published through traditional retail channels, it was shareware. The tremendous success there led to the retail release of Doom 2. A similar thing could certainly still happen today, but probably not with a media rich triple-A game title that takes tens of millions of dollars to develop. An independent breakout needs to be clever and cost effective.

I think Stuart did an admirable job, email Q&As are always a pain in the ass because you have to anticipate a lot and can't ask follow-up questions.

A brief John Carmack Interview [Gamesblog]

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