QuakeCon has come and gone this year. We got some new screenshots of RAGE, Fallout: New Vegas, Brink, and Hunted: The Demon’s Forge – essentially QuakeCon has turned in BethesdaCon. The big news of the event wasn’t the rumoured Doom 4 reveal; sadly, Doom 4 was a no-show. Instead, iD’s John Carmack showed off a version of RAGE on the iPhone, this version being designed specifically for this platform (and, for the sake of ease, I’ll refer to this version as iRAGE, since the iPhone/iPad version of RAGE and the PC/360/PS3 versions of RAGE are to be completely different), instead of talking of Doom 4. This was news that seemed to divide the fans – on one hand the tech demo was very impressive, but (on the other hand) we want more Doom! In the video (included at the bottom of this article) Carmack mentions that the game runs great on the original iPhone and even runs better than Doom Classic. All of this information got me thinking of the potential importance of this handheld version of RAGE.

It’s hard for a lot of people to remember what PC gaming was like before iD. I got into PC gaming with Quake 3: Arena and Unreal Tournament (and preferring Unreal Tournament). I was not yet four when Doom was originally released; I was five when Quake was released; I grew up on Commander Keen and SNES platformers. As a result, I don’t have first-hand knowledge on this subject. However, I do recall my brother, who is older than I, mentioning his initial thoughts to Doom and he was a bit happier about seeing RAGE on the iPhone – not so much for the game itself, but for the technology. I can’t help but feel that those who remember seeing the PC’s first smooth scrolling platformer (iD’s Commander Keen), first smash hit FPS (Doom), and one of the first polygonal 3D shooters (Quake) will be a bit more excited about this news. Gamespot’s review of Quake shows how important Quake was to the scene. In the review, Gamespot’s Trent Ward suggests players to use a mouse, instead of just the keyboard or a gamepad (as was common at the time), and recounts his first experience with one of Quake’s bigger monsters, in which he dropped his mouse and backed away from the computer (he urged his readers not to do the same). iD’s games were important to the PC as a platform because they showed that the PC can meet, and surpass, what consoles were capable of. We sometimes forget that Carmack is a bit of wizard when it comes to programming (you could say he’s the wizard of iD). iD’s impressive looking PC games have always been a benchmark and the iD games we see ported to consoles show us why: in the last generation the last show of the Xbox’s power was that it could run Doom 3 at low settings, neither the Playstation nor the N64 had versions of Quake II that looked as good as the PC original, and Doom needed a Playstation port to truly kick ass on the consoles (and even then it had some weird omissions; in return it had some new visual effects that the original could never had achieved).

Apple is in a situation where it knows it needs games on its platforms and companies are in a situation where they realize that Apple’s marketshare is not something that can easily be ignored – especially when it comes to their handheld devices. The problem, as I see it, is that the Apple’s handhelds haven’t had a big game come along to push the limits of the platform. I go to the Apple Store and the games I see that are pre-installed on the hardware to show off the capabilities are games like Nanosaur and Bugdom 2 – both good games, but I was playing both when I was in junior high on my school’s iMacs! iRAGE is what both Apple and publishers need. Both need to see good games that challenge our preconceptions as to what the hardware is capable of. Publishers need to see good looking games on the iPhone if they’re going to consider giving the developers that want to make games on Apple’s platforms the money they need – we already know the App Store can be a good source of income for publishers. Apple needs iRAGE because, let’s be honest, Apple has no idea how to target gamers. Apple has traditionally lacked the ability (and at times, the will) to appeal to this demographic and gamers tend to be a bit hostile towards Apple, but this is the just the demographic Apple needs; by nature gamers tend to not only have the means to purchase expensive hardware and software, but also the will to do so as well. If Apple wants to enter the gaming market through it’s existing handhelds, it needs something like iRAGE. iD was so important to PC gaming in the 1990s because their games were both fun and amazingly pretty (okay, maybe not pretty in the literal sense of the word). It’s not enough to have a tech demo, but you need to be able to do something entertaining with the technology.

This brings me to the lack of Doom 4. Why shouldn’t they show us screenshots and trailers? After all, this is the next instalment to one of iD’s big names and it’s another game that will be using the id Tech 5 engine, alongside RAGE. The problem with showing off Doom 4 is that is what would have been big news. Showing off Doom 4 would pit RAGE against Doom 4 and I suspect, despite being closer to release, that RAGE would lose. Doom was big – for years after the release of Doom, first person shooters were known as “Doom clones” – and I think everyone at iD and Bethesda know that RAGE could not share the spotlight with the next Doom title. Doom has the power of nostalgia on its side and we can’t underestimate the power of nostalgia. RAGE has suddenly turned into the game that the gaming press loves to talk about – I imagine RAGE’s similarities to Borderlands (especially before Gearbox completely changed its art style) caused the press to choose between RAGE and Borderlands. We don’t know much about Doom 4 other than the setting and that it will be closer to the style of the original Doom games than Doom 3. I wanted Doom 4 news as much as anyone, but even I know that if RAGE is going to be a success, it needs to be in the spotlight a bit longer. iRAGE is, in my view, iD’s acknowledgement that it can’t hope to recreate the power of the Quake and Doom experiences on the PC (or on the consoles), but they have a chance to do the same thing on the iPhone (we can only hope that people won’t drop their expensive iPhone’s when they finally fight a big ass monster).

iRAGE (I’ll admit, that name isn’t as catchy as I hoped) serves a dual purpose – it will build anticipation for RAGE and will help make iD relevant to a new demographic of gamers. iD’s previous exploits will not be enough to get sales from those that never played their earlier titles. Recreating the impact of Doom and Quake on the iPhone will make RAGE more relevant and, more importantly, it will provide a low-cost way for people to return to the roots of the first person shooter. RAGE seems to be exactly what we expect from the creators of Doom and Quake; it’s deeply rooted in the old design philosophy, it’s fast paced and has no pretensions of realism, it’s balls-to-the-walls action with mutants and huge creatures. This is not Call of Duty or Halo, nor is it the cover-based shooter that’s quickly becoming the standard, this is what we expect from the daddies of the FPS game (with about 100% more cars). Doom 4 would distract everyone from both versions of RAGE. As someone who has been wanting to see more of RAGE since it was announced, I’ll make do with the silence on Doom 4 if it means I get to see more RAGE.

RAGE is due in September of 2011 for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 and the version for iPhone and iPad will be out this year (Doom 4 will be out “when it’s done”).