ZeniMax, which of course now owns iD software, filed the DMCA complaint with Google. Developer L!TH!UM told the site Android and Me that Doom for Android, offered for free, was built with open source code but "My mistake was allowing the download of the Plutonia and TNT WADs, at least that is what I suspect."

"Although I may not be able to distribute the application through the Market, the APK can still be downloaded and installed through the web," the dev said.

Other ports pulled include: Ultimate Doom; Quake Platinum; Doom II; Wolf 3D: Spear of Destiny (two versions); Wolfenstein 3D; Quake GL; Wolfenstein 3D Lite (Beta 2) and Doom Soundboard.

iD Software frags Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein ports for Android [Android and Me via Game Politics]

I make it hard for video games to be unpredictable.

Not that I make games. I play them. And by playing them, I try to examine them and test their resilience, as if tapping their fender and poking the tires, slamming the doors a few times to make sure they don't stick and assessing that, okay this thing is sturdy, before I've ever driven it.

I am, while doing this, hoping for a surprise.

I want to know everything about a game before I play it but also be caught off guard by it as it unfolds, and I don't want anyone calling that a paradox.

I want to know the scale of the thing and its scope. I check menu screens and Trophy lists to determine how many levels the game has. I start a game, just barely, and I check what percentage the game says I've completed, to determine how much more I've got. I check level lists. All in-game, of course. Consulting outside sources would be cheating. Through these means I determine that New Super Mario Bros. Wii has at least eight worlds and that Assassin's Creed II employs a rarely-seen level-counting trick.

This is, I believe, the psychology of the experienced gamer: he or she who can size up a game before having started it. It is, I propose, part of the act of playing a game. You will agree if you recognize playing a game as playing with the systems a game developer has created, and if you consider a key part of playing with systems the act of understanding them, testing them, looking for shortcuts or exploitable faults.

But that's not entirely fair, because it may be out of bounds. Few would deny that prodding at a gameplay system is the good sport. It is the act of getting better at playing a game and exposing faulty, porous game design. But prodding the level-numbering system of a game may be nothing more than an elaborate way of turning to the last page of a book, if not to read how it ends, but at least to size up the novel by measuring it, crudely, by a count of its pieces of paper.

This is a reflex that might best be turned off, because there is little gained but disappointment to know just when a game will end or how many hidden items it has tucked away in its corners. Therefore, you must understand how I can desire to know the whole thing and yet still hope to be surprised.

I can't turn this instinct off. But, like a good advocacy group, I can lay the blame for this part of my behavior on video games.

It was the draws-itself-as-you-go map of Super Metroid that teased to me the idea that a game knows how big it is before it will tell you. And it was the inventory screens of the Nintendo 64 Zeldas that taunted with a framework that showed me how much menu space there was to contain all that I could discover in the game, inviting me to guess at the items that would fill it and forcing me to recognize when I had reached a quarter, then halfway, then sadly, near-completion (already?) of a wonderful adventure. If only, I began to hope, I was being tricked and a new, empty menu would appear at the last minute, to reveal that this game still offered more.

(Main item screen of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, as seen at the beginning of the game)

(Main item screen of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, further into the game. PIC)

So we're at Wolfenstein, a first-person-shooter from August for which I had negligible expectations, a game I was certainly not studying in advance to know its scale and its scope nor one that I expected to, finally, thankfully, surprise me.

I played the game because it was out in slow August. I played it because a first-person-shooter with super-powers feels worth trying though, for me, seldom worth finishing. I tried it because it was being made by major studios, Raven and id, but oddly being disowned by the latter party and maybe neglected by its publisher. Such is the drama that makes a game more interesting.

I played it and enjoyed it and dared to tell people that I preferred its campaign to that of Killzone 2 and F.E.A.R. 2 and the rest of the 2009 first-person-shooters I had played by then, leaving a caveat for Modern Warfare 2, though I'm not sure I needed to.

And if I had to explain why I liked it so much — me not being someone with an endless need to virtually kill supernatural Nazis and me having no affinity for earlier Wolfenstein games because I never played them — I'd have to say it's because I had tried, early, to size this game up, and better than anything else I played this year, it tricked me and surprised me.

I praise Wolfenstein because it fooled me.

The game isn't simply a first-person shooter. It is a shooter linked with a hubworld, an oddly unusual design for a game in the genre. It's built less like a Call of Duty — broken into levels you play in order — and more like Super Mario 64, with the Nazi-controlled city of Isenstadt taking the place of Princess Peach's castle. Doorways in that city to new shooter levels substitute for the paintings in Peach's castle through which Mario could leap to enter his platform-jumping levels. In Peach's castle and in Isenstadt you have some choice as to which level you'd explore next and you could have some fun just exploring the hub geography that connects them.

You'd think this would be a game structure a veteran gamer could accurately size up. It would feel all the more knowable if you saw in Wolfenstein's mini-map the implementation of a poor-man's Grand Theft Auto. Little icons appear on the lines denoting Isenstadt's streets and alleys, identifying locations where new major missions might be assigned or begun. As side goals emerge as well, the GTA scheme seems apparent: There will be essential main things to do and unessential though possibly fun tributaries to explore.

That's what I thought. That's why I was wrong.

There is something games could do but seldom do, and that is confound a gamer's level-size expectations. I played a few missions in Wolfenstein and assumed I had the measure of them, that I recognized the number of minutes and Nazis involved in each. Then I reached a level set at a farm, which I guessed to be an average-sized level and which, as it was unfolding, appeared to consist of a battle near a barn, a fight down a road, and a one-man breach of a farmhouse that would culminate in a stated goal to reach a basement. I even had to shoot a rushing horde of enemies from a second story window, which is often the sign that a level has reached its climax. But in that basement of destiny, which I fought hard to reach, was an elevator. And down that elevator was a vast military complex and the level's second half. I was radically off in my sense of how big this level would be. I'd been fooled and was happy for it.

(Concept art for Wolfenstein. PIC)

As I played more of Wolfenstein I realized that the game offered few clues with which I could guess the scale of its levels. I might as well have been predicting earthquake magnitudes. Some of my missions might have been side missions, others main, but I couldn't distinguish even when they were about to begin.

Down one street of Isenstadt I found a door to a building. Entering it started a new level, called the Officer's House. Having fought through that massive farm, gone through some other large levels set in a hospital and an archeological dig site, I guessed (wrong again!) that this level would be big. You play a level in a game based on an "officer's house" and you just assume you're going to be fighting through, maybe, a 25-room house? Or taking the battle out of the house across rooftops? Or up in a blimp? Or into the sewers? Anything to make it bigger than the terrain you'd cover just fighting in one officer's house. Except that's all it was. Just a short level. A short shooting mission in this guy's house. Just a couple of stories tall, nothing big, nothing that lasted too long. I was fooled again.

I don't think the Wolfenstein development team could have gotten away with sizing their levels so differently from each other had their game been structured like a Call of Duty or a GoldenEye or many of the other major first-person shooters. It'd seem like one level designer was lazier than the other or something.

But this game, dare I uncork some over-praise, could do this because its hub-city structure allowed it to unfold with the pace of a life.

When I wake up on a November day in my apartment I don't know where and when the major missions of my day will begin. The subway steps of Brooklyn may lead me to a brief trip to work or an odyssey involving crazy beggars, mechanical difficulties, and a painful stumble on the stairs. The door to the bank could lead to a quick withdrawal or a sudden inward-turning mental scramble to calculate credits and debits. Even that trip to bed and the drift to sleep might lead to a level of unknown size and scale, maybe a brisk dream or a restless night.

These are the rhythms and surprises of our days that games, no matter how realistic they supposedly have become, so rarely recreate.

Wolfenstein could well be a game whose parts are not as good as its whole. I can't tell. I can't see those parts as separate from the delight I took in being tricked by them. I've become confident that I can see a game from across the horizon and know what it'll be when it gallops to me, that I'll at least know how tall it stands. But not this time. And I was happy for it.

Maybe, after all, this is a valid way to play a game on top of the other ways you're playing it. Maybe it is part of the game to poke around the game to see how big it is and to think you've got it figured out before it has even begun.

That is all legitimate, if the designers play back. That is all fair if the designers recognize that innate zeal among gamers to know, understand and master — and if the designers assert that just when we think we have it all figured out, they have something new to throw us off.

I'd rather not be able to know a game in advance, despite my best reflexes to try. I yearn to be tricked.

Laz, the creator, says the game is a "tribute", but as fans of the little Cheesehead will instantly recognise, this is no tribute. It's a remake in the vein of Bionic Commando Rearmed, and that is a good, good thing.

Now, bear in mind this is just one guy. Working alone, without the support/blessing of id. So even if it's not shut down by the rightful owners of the IP, it may/will probably never see the light of day in playable form.

But hey, even if it doesn't, be thankful for this awesome art, and for the daydreams it's inspired of what could be.

Below are some early, early clips. They're early! So be kind.

Commander Keen - 2D Platformer with an extra D thrown in [NZCGI]

Armadillo's Scorpius craft is the first in a field of entrants to successfully complete the requirements laid out by NASA, which involved ascending 164 feet, flying to a spot 164 feet away, landing, taking off then flying back to where it started. If neither of the two competing craft can satisfy the requirements by October 31, Armadillo will scoop the prize by default, which stands at a cool $1 million.

And after the cash? Next stop, space.

"Since the Lunar Lander Challenge is quite demanding in terms of performance, with a few tweaks our Scorpius vehicle actually has the capability to travel all the way to space," says Carmack.

"We'll be moving quickly to do higher-altitude tests, and we can go up to about 6000 feet here at our home base in Texas before we'll have to head to New Mexico where we can really push the envelope. We already have scientific payloads from universities lined up to fly as well, so this will be an exciting next few months for commercial spaceflight."

John Carmack's Armadillo Finally Wins Lunar Landing Challenge [Gizmodo]

I learned about this key Rage feature a couple of weeks ago in Texas, as I was wrapping up a chat with three of the principals behind the new game from the makers of Doom and Quake. I'd learned why the developers had combined driving with shooting and was teased about a twist to the game not evident in the Rage demos being held for the press. But that was not enough and I asked for more.

"You might want to say that there are a lot of 12s in it," Matt Hooper, the game's design lead told me.

Tim Willits, Rage's creative director laughed.

I'm sure I looked puzzled, so they relieved me of my confusion.

Hooper said he'd once been in a meeting with game industry executives. He was discussing a game and they wanted to know what the 12 moments in the game were. They didn't mean "12" as a number of moments, but "12" as the level of quality of the game's moments. Any moments that could be merely rated a quality of 10/10 weren't enough. Even Spinal Tap level-11 moments would not suffice. No, the game would have to have moments that could be rated a 12.

So, yeah, Rage will have 12s.

(UPDATE: To those in the comments section for whom I did not write this story clearly enough, Hooper was joking. He does not take the "12" talk seriously.)

Rage also does has driving, shooting and sparing use of monster closets, plus a similarity to Fallout 3, the last big game made by the company that just bought id.

The most striking novelty of Rage is the meshing of trademark id first-person shooting with driving gameplay, all set in a wasteland future of Earth. But while the combination is the critical element of the Rage's gameplay design, Willits said its presence was part of an evolving creative process, not a master plan.

Willits recalled that the Rage development team, which is only about 40 people strong, small by the standards of today's major game development efforts, began by considering the graphical possibilities of the company's new id Tech 5. They recognized they could create beautiful and extensive landscape. And they had a problem.

"We're like, 'We don't want to spend all this time making this really cool environment and having people auto-travel or just magically jump to the next level that they would play in,'" Willits said. They wanted gamers to see the sights — and like it. "We wanted the journey to be as much fun as the [action] when you get there. That led to: 'OK, well we need cars. We're going to want to have badass cars with guns.' That led to this kind of muscle car feel with the kind of buggy formats as well. And then, once we had that, that was a natural jump to the racing. And if you win races, you have to reward the player. If you reward them they can buy cool stuff for these cars." (Read about how all that is coming together in my Rage demo impressions from QuakeCon.)

Some part of that racing-shooting development evolution must have generated a 12. But there comes a risk, when making a game, that your 12s might be the same as someone else's 12s. Say… the 12s of Bethesda, makers of their own (car-less) post-apocalyptic game that stars a character who also begins his or her adventure leaving a survival vault to discover a wasteland over-run by ragged people and mutants.

Don't worry, the id guys said. Rage's post-apocalypse won't feel that much like Fallout 3. "I can guarantee you that our little interpretation of it — and the fundamentals and the core mechanics — are going to be different enough and feel a little different," Hooper said. "It's this action movie that you're living through… we're not trying to be an RPG. I think that's why it's going to end up being different."

Fallout 3's executive producer, Todd Howard, who I interviewed the same day as the Rage guys, let them off the hook. "They've had their own development path for a long time," he said. "I think they're obviously influenced by a lot of the same things that Fallout is influenced by. A lot of those are just post-apocalyptic things." Bethesda and id are now owned by the same parent company, ZeniMax Media.

Rage will be different from Fallout 3 and also different from Doom 3, id's last major game. There was one monster-closet joke that I saw in the demo of Rage that the id guys played for me. A dummy monster pops out of a closet for a mock scare. It's a harmless callback to the criticized attack surprises featured in Doom 3. Though, Willits said, those monster closets in the game were a throwback of their own to the first Doom. Lesson learned? I pointed out to Willits that Doom 3 was not as warmly received as the first Doom. "Doom 3 did outsell all the other Dooms," he said. "But Rage is so much different. It's brighter. It's more expansive. And there are no flashlights in Rage." You know what that means: A whole new set of 12s.

As expansive as the visual scope and the virtual terrain for Rage may be, the creators of id's new adventure talk about creating a streamlined game. "We don't want to make this overwhelming game that you get frustrated with," Hooper said. He wants that action movie pacing. Plus, he dropped this comment, whatever it suggests about how the game will evolve: "We want to the player to make meaningful choices."

Most of the 12s in Rage remain a mystery. What I saw of the game and described a couple of weeks ago remains the extent of what id is publicly discussing about the project — well, short of this tease from art director Stephan Martiniere. "What I can say is a storm is coming," he said. "From a bright blue sky where everything seems to be happy, suddenly clouds are starting to form. There's going to be something ominous in the land that's just going to start introducing itself."

Could that be a 13?

To those who may not know what they are, "monster closets" were areas of a map where an enemy would be "hidden", and only revealed when the player "triggered" them by opening a door, or walking to a certain point on the map. It was cheap, and quickly became a royal pain in the ass.

So for upcoming shooter Rage (which is looking quite interesting), monster closets are no more. id's Matt Hooper:

[In Rage] when you're going to the RC-Bomb base [from the demo] to deal with the Shrouded clan they're doing whatever they're supposed to be doing. If they're supposed to be defending against you coming there, they'll be doing that. If they're just tinkering or having a conversation they'll do that. You will never see [a monster closet.]

Good news.

Rage Designer Promises No Monster Closets [1UP]

Carmack made those comments on Thursday, during the id co-founder's QuakeCon 2009 keynote speech in Dallas (aka the event that spawned the Longest Liveblog In Kotaku History).

Early in his address, he admitted that Quake Live, the multiplayer in-browser web re-make of Quake III Arena that went into open beta early this year, was not up to id's standard yet. Leaderboards and more community functionality around the game need to be improved, he said. Later, he fielded a question from the audience about the future of the game.

Carmack said he did not think the game could survive on Internet advertising alone, the only revenue-generator currently in place. Instead, he believes it will be necessary for the financial well-being of the project to offer a premium version of the game, which might allow players to host games on their own servers. Web ads won't suffice.

The Quake Live project is grander than Carmack said he had envisioned, which may be as much a factor in spurring this need for player payment as a weak online ad market. But the game, at its base, will remain free, he noted.

Carmack said the "beta" tag will be removed from the game soon, as problems with leaderboards and other tech are resolved. Mac and Linux versions are planned to go live this coming week.

Early in his talk Carmack said that the next year would prove whether Quake Live is a success. Later, when answering that audience question, he said the game wouldn't be able to be deemed a failure for two years. He hopes such a pronouncement won't be necessary, of course.

He said the game has been popular, with half of those who register for it returning to play it at least once a month.

This experiment will continue, with some tinkering that users may need to pay for.

The official QuakeCon schedule is now available for public perusal and my personal calendar has been updated.

The event happens at the Gaylord Texan just next to the Dallas Fort Worth airport in Texas, from Thursday, August 13 - Saturday, August 15. Most people will attend to have LAN parties and shoot each other, virtually, to bits.

While part of the gaming world gets hyped for Madden during those days and some Kotaku colleagues will begin to calculate how many pairs of socks they'll need to pack for their trip to Germany next week, I'll be in Dallas. With thousands of gamers. And a batch of top developers who limit their names to three syllables.

Highlights for this QuakeCon include id co-founder John Carmack's keynote to the Doom/Quake/Rage faithful on Thursday.

3:30pm – Main Stage
id Software Press Conference
id Software welcomes thousands of attendees to QuakeCon 2009 and offers exclusive insight into the studio's latest development projects and exciting announcements.

4:00pm – Main Stage
John Carmack Keynote
John Carmack, technical director of id Software, offers his annual keynote address and audience Q&A, with topics ranging from the state of graphics hardware and the development of idTech5, to his ventures into rocket science.

Expect id's EA-published open-world shooter Rage to be a big part of the show. I expect to be checking it out.

And then on Friday, Splash Damage's Paul Wedgwood shows up to do a public demo of the Bethesda-published Brink, followed by Bethesda lead designer Todd Howard speaking for an hour about who-knows-what.

There's plenty more in the official schedule and some stuff marked on my calendar that I can't publicize yet (work-related, I promise).

Local Dallas developers, I/Kotaku will have a couple of hours of free time on Wednesday.

Sadly, I'll be en route to the airport on Friday late afternoon, when this happens:

4:00pm – 5:00pm – Exhibit Hall Event Stage
BAWLS Chugging Competition
If you think you have what it takes, be sure to join in on a QuakeCon tradition where daring attendees attempt to chug a can of Bawls as fast as possible. It's all about bragging rights and winning one of those coveted Ultimate Power Up tickets.

The latest entry in the Wolfenstein series features a sequence in which B.J. battles the supernatural side of the Third Reich inside of a giant zeppelin, one of those giant flying airships that everyone thought was a brilliant idea until the Hindenburg went belly up, caught on fire, and exploded. It looks like a great deal of fun, though I'm used to my airship battles being turn-based, so it might take a little getting used to.

And as part of their talk on "virtual texturing", the company presented some new Rage screenshots, which were dutifully picked up by Shacknews. And my oh my are they pretty. I won't try and sum up what virtual texturing actually means (it's something to do with very, very large textures), since it all seems a bit technical, but if that sounds like good reading to you a pdf of id's talk is at the link below.

Virtual Texturing [id, via Shacknews]

id Community Manager Pete Sokal says yes, they're aware of the leaks of Wolfenstein Multiplayer. It is "now being distributed illegally through breach of NDA and mirrors posted on the internet. I must warn anyone involved that Activision's legal department is taking this matter very seriously."

Ruh-roh. He continues:

Same applies here on the forums. If you mention that you have acquired this build, you are openly admitting to illegally obtaining the build and will be banned straight away. You have been warned.

With regards to any footage, screenshots and comments posted here and all over the internet, an important thing to keep in mind is that these were not created from a build of the game that was final or consumer ready. There's nothing we can do about it now except continue working on the game.

We often get questions asking if they bought a title from a retailer who broke a street date can get them banzored. If you have to ask that sort of question here, you probably shouldn't be in possession of this. In fact, you probably aren't even in possession of it.

Regarding the Wolfenstein MP Leak [Wolfenstein Community via VE3D]

Wolfenstein is, of course, another prequel to the game that started it all, Wolfenstein 3D. It may seem funny, this game being set before that relatively primitive example of 3D technology, but when you think about it it makes sense. Towards the end of World War 2, Germany had all but depleted their supply of polygons, and had to revert to pixels. True story.

In what's becoming a frustrating norm for PS3 owners, id's John Carmack has told Edge magazine that while the PC and 360 versions of Rage are running at a smooth 60 frames per second, the PS3 version is managing barely half that, clocking in at only 20-30 fps.

"The PS3 lags a little bit behind in terms of getting the performance out of it," Carmack explains. "The rasteriser is just a little bit slower - no two ways about that."

"The RSX is slower than what we have in the 360. The CPU is about the same, but the 360 makes it easier to split things off, and that's what a lot of the work has been, splitting it all into jobs on the PS3".

Shame. You'd think nearly three years into the console's lifespan, someone would have figured out a way around this by now. Unless, you know, there is no way around it.

Carmack: Rage runs faster on Xbox 360 [Edge, via CVG]

The open-world game, which has you both shooting and racing cars, introduces a number of mechanics new to major id games, like levelling up your gear, improving your car and earning money. So far, so RPG.

There'll also be a gladiatorial arena where you can compete for cash, Oblivion-style, an engineering system that lets you build your own items and even car-to-car combat during the races.

So, yes, it looks like Rage will be taking id's shooter heritage and blowing it out into something players of a game like Fallout may be more accustomed to.

Rage Details: Crafting System, Regenerating Health, Designed for Controllers, Car Upgrades [Rage]

The basic facts haven't changed even if the business circumstances have quaked. Wolfenstein returns to consoles on August 4, developed primarily by Raven Software, with supervision by id. That's id, the company that just sold to Bethesda parent ZeniMax and told Kotaku that letting outside developers work on its intellectual property has resulted in a "step down in quality."

That's right. On Thursday morning, id's own CEO gave us reason to doubt Wolfenstein would be that good. And then, in the afternoon, id and Activision reps in New York City showed of the game. Kinda awkward.

What Is It?
Wolfenstein is a one-man first-person war (no vehicles!) against Nazis set in World War II and amplified by the supernatural powers of something called The Veil. It's a follow-up to the shooters that, along with Doom and Quake, defined id.

What We Saw
I played the game's hospital mission in the Xbox 360 build of the game. It occurs about a third of the way into the game. I had undying mode on, which allowed me to see the effects of taking damage without dying.

How Far Along Is It?
Wolfenstein is out on August 4. The build I played was a beta.

What Needs Improvement?
Clarity of Veil: So our hero, B.J. Blazkowicz, has more than machine guns and disintegration guns that spit out energy like fire hoses. He can find and activate four Veil powers. Until a meter depletes, these allow for the ability to slow time, see hidden passages and obscured enemies, don a shield or shoot bullets through walls. Nothing wrong with that. But activating and stacking the powers via the d-pad becomes confusing. The problem was that the visual cues distinguishing one power from the next were not as pronounced as a first-time player like me would have liked. Perhaps this is remedied in the main game, which doles the powers out individually. But I got confused as to which powers I had on or off.

Lack of Mecha-Hitler: Yes, Hitler will be in paintings hung on walls in the game. But he's not in the game. Not being a player of past Wolfensteins, I don't mind. But I suspect others will.

What Should Stay The Same?
The Powers: Blowing up barrels of Veil energy make enemies float, flailing in the air. Using Veil powers makes B.J. sort of a super-hero and sort of the classic FPS griefer/cheater. Seeing through walls to shoot enemies with fully-powered Veil Sight and Veil Empower? Why not? Upgrades to the Shield power, I'm told, will cause bullets to bounce off B.J. and back at his enemies. Sounds good to me, especially if the Veil powers work as well in multiplayer.

Hub City: Conceptually the design of Wolfenstein seems smart. Here's hoping it is, even though I wasn't shown it. The game is partially set in the fictional German hub city of Eisenstadt. Resistance fighters, merchants (who sell items and power-ups for collected gold) and Nazis populate the city. So do non-player characters who will lead you to mission-activation points. It's a different way to organize an FPS rather than a linear progression of missions. You can explore the city, find treasure, and interact with all these people. Or go to missions. But the developers not showing any of this yesterday was a little worrisome. Let's hope it's shaped up well.

Final Thoughts
Despite some sudden concerns I have about non-id id games, Wolfenstein appears to have some solid, core ideas. It is fighting for attention amid a crowd of FPSes this year, but it has a fighting chance by getting an August release. If those Veil powers hold up, then this could be a fine summer vacation from all that going outside stuff people recommend.

Wolfenstein is set for release on the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. Players of the recently-released PSN and XBLA versions of Wolfenstein 3D can earn gold for the Wolfenstein by completing simply playing the download game.

And, for the record, id community manager Pete Sokal, who oversaw my session with the game, told me that "We feel confident with the product Raven has made. It feels like Wolfenstein."

id Software is still a development studio that commands respect, but it's one that had found itself not quite fitting in of late, its principals told us during a phone interview tied to the announcement of the company's sale to ZeniMax.

One of the problems lately, Carmack told Kotaku, is that id just wasn't a good fit with big publishers these days. "As we were shopping Rage and Doom and upcoming stuff, talking about all of that, we were getting a pretty consistent line from all the publishers," he said. "They were willing to continue to fund our working with partner companies for all of these but pretty much ever publisher said, ‘Well, it would be worth much more to us if you would grow your studio and do more of your own work internally. That's why we already started to staff up to do Doom 4 internally. So things were already moving in that direction."

Carmack spoke specifically of Activision, where id's games such as the upcoming Wolfenstein (developed in partnership with Raven), would be published under the same label as works from Activision's internal studios, like Call of Duty and Modern Warfare studios Treyarch and Infinity Ward. "Going back to a much earlier time," Carmack said, "We were just Activision's shooter shop. We did the FPSes there. There was no conflict, and that was great. But they brought on their own internal studios and there's a very real conflict there between whether they want to put resources behind something they own the IP for and derive all the profit for versus something where they don't own the IP and they might feel like any effort they're putting into it isn't going into their value but somebody else's. That problem has grown over the years as budgets have increased."

Hollenshead told Kotaku that he found ZeniMax to have the closest match with id in terms of a philosophy on how to best make and sell games. It was a better fit, he said, than the studio's recent publishing partners Activision and EA.

What comes out of the deal is a stronger id, the men say. "Things aren't really going to be different in terms of what's going on at id," Hollenshead said. "We're not going to change the kinds of games we make…. It allows us to accelerate the growth of our internal studios, so we can focus on making all of our internal games as opposed to working with external partners where there has been a step down in quality… There will be more, better games from id. So if you're a fan of the company, then it is all upside and all things to look forward to."

Carmack's high on id even now, of course. He said the company just did a "first-look" event for upcoming EA-published, id-developed racing-FPS Rage last week and that it "went spectacularly."

Doom 4 will be published by ZeniMax/Bethesda. The Wolfenstein and Rage games being made under Activision and EA's publishing labels, respectively, will continue as such. But any sequels will be ZeniMax games.

And will there be any Bethesda-id crossover coming out of this? "The teams are very much separate," Carmack said. "There is a lot of mutual respect there. There's going to be a lot of communication and cross-pollination. I doubt there's going to be any technology shifts between the two companies, but there's certainly going to be cooperation. And I wouldn't be shocked to see some hints of different things crossing over in different ways. That's just the kind of stuff when you have lots of people who think everybody is working on cool stuff together."

Terms of today's deal were not disclosed. ZeniMax and id are private companies.

Two of the most acclaimed game development studios of all time are joining forces. ZeniMax Media, parent company of Fallout 3 and Elder Scrolls development studio Bethesda Softworks, announced today that it is purchasing legendary Doom and Wolfenstein studio id.

In an interview with Kotaku, id co-founder John Carmack, id CEO Todd Hollenshead and ZeniMax CEO Robert Altman said the purchase will change none of the principles or principals of id and Bethesda but will allow id to grow like it never has before. The purchase does not affect plans for previously announced games from id that are slated for release through other publishers, including the Activision-backed Wolfenstein and the EA Partners-planned Rage.

Why did id sell?

"We're really getting kind of tired competing with our own publishers in terms of how our titles will be featured," Carmack said. "And we've really gotten more IPs than we've been able to take advantage of. And working with other companies hasn't been working out as spectacularly as it could. So the idea of actually becoming a publisher and merging Bethesda and ZeniMax on there [is ideal.] It would be hard to imagine a more complementary relationship. They are triple A, top-of-the-line in what they do in the RPGs. And they have no overlap with all the things we do in the FPSes."

Hollenshead said ZeniMax's acquisition will allow id to grow its internal teams, staffing up the groups working on the next Doom — which will now be a ZeniMax game — and the Quake Live team, for starters.

The goal, explained Carmack, is for id to handle all of its own IPs. "We can build the pipeline and have a regular pipeline of releases."

Altman described the deal as a "win for fans of id." He said the deal came about when Hollenshead approached him. ZeniMax had been looking to acquire developers and wanted id, but didn't know it was available until approached. The merger had been in the works for months, according to the men on the call today.

In a press release for today's news, Altman laid out a vision for a robust id: "We, along with many others, consider id Software to be among the finest game studios in the world, with extraordinary design, artistic and technical capabilities. They have demonstrated, repeatedly, that rare ability to create franchise properties that are critical and commercial successes. Our intention is to make sure id Software will continue to do what they do best – make AAA games. Our role will be to provide publisher support through Bethesda Softworks and give id Software the resources it needs to grow and expand."

No co-developed games are planned at this time. But, they joked, getting those Fallout bobbleheads into Rage would be fun.

Much like Dead Space on the Wii, the unexpected graphical fidelity comes at the expense of movement, with Doom: Resurrection to be an on-rails shooter rather than a true 3D title.