When Doom Comes To Dallas

"Keyboard and mouse is still the best way to play a first person shooter," John Carmack said at one point during his desultory keynote chat at QuakeCon 2008. He wasn't fishing for approval, but the hall erupted into spontaneous applause anyway. These people probably felt betrayed that series like Call of Duty and Rainbow Six had jumped ship and gone over to console systems. They were probably bitter that Halo is doing so well. They probably shuddered to think of children growing up knowing only gamepads. It was an auditorium full of the old-school, in love with their PCs, and at QuakeCon to show it.

Ready To Play

QuakeCon is on its thirteenth year, having found a home at a hotel in Dallas about thirty minutes from the DFW airport, right along the freeway. It's billed as "the world's largest free LAN party", but it's also a gathering id fans. The company is a symbol of the golden yesteryear when games were made by geeks in garages instead of marketing dudes in office buildings. Doom and Quake came from a small out-of-the-way town in the middle of America instead of a huge campus in the Bay Area or an office building nestled against a movie studio in LA. Id is so 90s.

But id Software is changing. Their latest high-profile title, Rage, is being made for console systems and published by Electronic Arts. The developer has turned over development duties for Wolfenstein and Quake Wars to other companies. Meanwhile, they're aggressively cranking out mobile phone games based on their Doom and Wolfenstein license, and they're pinning their hopes to a free-to-play ad-supported online version of Quake III Arena called Quake Live. How much mileage will id get out of the past, and what the heck is the deal with Rage, which looks like a confused dune-buggy-driving/mutant-shooting/action RPG with destructible billboards?

Kinder gentler cuter Nazis

Fearsome Frauleins

QuakeCon is free because of sponsors. The most conspicuous game publisher at this year's QuakeCon was Activision. On the show floor, they'd hired booth babes dressed as Nazis and toting toy guns. The Nazi-ettes tried to look stern as they commanded onlookers to do push-ups in exchange for T-shirts. Someone seems to have confused Nazis with drill instructors.

"Give me ten push-ups," the brunette leader with the armful of T-shirts barked at some skinny onlooker. He obligingly dropped to the ground. She went to put her high-heeled boot lightly on his back, but misjudged her balance and toppled forward a bit, planting the boot in his ribs.

"Oh my gosh," she said, "I kicked you. I'm so sorry. I can't believe I did that." He gamely finished his push-ups before accepting his T-shirt from the girl, who continued to apologize. She would have made a terrible Nazi.

Elsewhere on the show floor were usual suspects, like specialty PC-maker Alienware, caffeinated beverage brewer Bawls, and Intel. There was a server rental company, a headphones company, and an expensive-looking booth hawking fans and lights that supposedly made games more immersive. Ventrillo was giving away a very blue 2008 Corvette that crouched in the middle of the show floor. There were sponsored tournaments played using Quake Live, Quake Wars (including a 4 vs. 4 tournament played on the Xbox 360 version), and even Guitar Hero III. Conspicuously missing was graphics chip giant Nvidia, who will be starting the Nvision convention in San Jose this August with its own BYOC (Bring Your Own Computer) section -- that will cost $40, incidentally, ensuring that QuakeCon remains the world's largest free LAN party.