The Questions for this interview were submitted on 12.05.05 and received a little over 1 week ago.

Hello, please introduce yourself and share a little bit with us about your background.

My name is Eric Biessman and I was the project lead at Raven Software for QUAKE 4. I’ve been with Raven for eleven and a half years and have worked on projects dating all the way back to the original Heretic.

What were some of the hardest decisions you had to make while designing QUAKE 4?

When you work on a game you end up putting pieces of yourself into it. After working on QUAKE 4 for so long, you end up getting so close to the project that nearly every decision becomes a hard decision. All games are like this. I don’t think that there was any single decision (or even a handful of decisions) that I could point out.

Did you consult with any players when designing QUAKE 4?

The best part about working on QUAKE 4 was that there is such a strong background of work that we could base the game around. We were very lucky as the majority of the team that made QUAKE 4 have played (and played and played and still play) the previous QUAKE games. On top of that, we had access to message boards and forums to see what people liked and disliked and we talked to people whenever we could.

How did you beta test QUAKE 4?

Activision (the distributor for QUAKE 4) has a large Quality Assurance division and they beat the heck out of the game. We also had countless hours of our own time playing and playing the game and looking for issues (both balance and bug issues as well as a good “fun” pass.) Lastly, we had a (very) small private beta for the multiplayer side of things to check out how the game would run for the average user at home.

How do you go about finding the bugs in QUAKE 4 that need to be patched?

We have several means at our disposal to track down any issues that may have slipped past. First and foremost we have a very good Customer Support division that keeps track of all issues as they are reported. On top of that, we get feedback from people on-line quite a bit. We also tend to surf and look through the myriad posts on forums and message boards for any issues that seem to be occurring for multiple players. We try to be very proactive when it comes to issues that might have shipped with the game.

Are there any plans to add bots?

There are currently no plans to add bots to QUAKE 4.

Many players are upset that they can only get a maximum of 60 frames per second. Can you address this issue and explain if anything can or will be changed?

This is a fundamental part of how the engine works and there are no plans for changing this at the moment.

With new PC games coming out weekly, how do you market a game like QUAKE 4 that makes the average man's computer nearly outdated once a big game comes out? Is that taken into consideration when developing a game?

We tried to make QUAKE 4 highly scalable so that people with less powerful machines are still able to play the game and have fun with it. While the visual quality of the game isn’t the same on lower end machines, the gameplay remained untouched. You always want to keep as wide of an audience as possible when creating a game and we always keep our minimum spec machine in mind as we get into the game creation. More people have older machines than cutting edge machines and you want as big of a user base as possible when you release a game.

In your opinion, what is unique about QUAKE 4 that it won't be considered "another FPS”?

I think that there are several key components that help QUAKE 4 to stand on its own. First and foremost, we tried to keep the gameplay fresh. From the beginning of the game to the end we keep the game play fluid and changing so players don’t get bored – buddy marines, vehicles, enemies with individual responses and attacks, bosses – they are all added to keep the game fresh. The epic scale of the game is another important component. You’re not all on your own throughout the game. You’re one marine in the middle of a giant war. Lastly, we’ve put a lot of emphasis on the look of the game. We have this awesome cutting edge technology to start with (the DOOM tech) and we ran with it.

How does it feel to make the fourth version of a very successful game?

It’s a great feeling. It was a hard game to make but it was worth it. I am proud to be a part of this incredible franchise and being a fan of the originals only makes it that much better. I hope that people enjoy the game as much as I do.

How does it feel to know the game you worked on will be used in the Summer CPL tournament with $200,000 in prize money?

This was great news when we heard. It’s awesome to think that QUAKE 4 will be used for some serious grudge matches!

What is your relationship with the CPL and how do you plan to provide support for them should they need it?

I don’t have any specifics but we want to see QUAKE 4 continued to be used by the CPL. If any support issues crop up we’ll see what we can do!

Do you know what the next project you will be working on is?

Ha…nothing that I’m really allowed to talk about just yet.

Are there any plans to add a spectator tool so players have the ability to watch matches, a Q4TV, perhaps?

At this time there are no plans to add this.