Id Software, publishers of the Quake series spoke with Charles Onyett from IGN regarding their newest title.  But…instead of a flashy new FPS or even an all new revamped version of the Quake series, they’re going with the future of gaming approach: Free to play.

Id is going out on a limb, and releasing Quake Live, a revamped version of the classic Quake III Arena.  The ‘new yet old’ title will receive slightly upgraded graphics and will be launched from a web browser and feature in game advertising.

“The title represents a departure and risk for the company” said id co-founder John Carmack.

“When we had made the decision at id Software to start growing into a multi-team company whereas historically we had always been one project at a time, one of my other thoughts on this project was that we’d be able to take a small team and start this less demanding project rather than start off with immediately another triple-A title that needs 50 to 80 people or whatever. A small team could be used on this and grow a kernel that if necessary we could build a larger team around and what happens with that is going to depend a lot on the commercial success of this. If Quake Live is a good success then it’s going to be one of those service model businesses where an active team stays on it forever as long as it’s generating any revenue. If it turns out that we called it wrong and there is no business case here then we’ll have a tested team that we can add more people around to do a more conventional project. We do have high hopes that this can turn out to be a good business model for us.”

As an industry veteran, Carmack knows that associated risks of developing a game like this.  “There certainly is the worry about the old tale about the pioneers, the one with all the arrows in his back and the people that come afterward and see all the pitfalls to avoid. We do think that it’s at least plausible, there are a lot of online services obviously that are doing well with whatever media types that they’re presenting. There are a lot of free games that are doing quite well and some very impressive numbers in the casual gaming market. [Quake Live] is obviously not a Flash game or a Java game, it was a state of the art game previously and it has the full features of the development house behind it, but it’s an interesting question and we’ll find out hopefully within six months or so the verdict will be in from the jury about whether this is something that works out or not, but I can’t say that we’ve got a lot of things to look at. In fact I would assume a whole lot of people would be looking at what we’re doing.”

There are no immediate plans for micro transactions to be build into the game, but rather funded by in game advertisements.  However, id software did speak to the topic of a ‘Quake Live Premium Service’.  “It may even just be the type of thing where for a few bucks you’re just in a different group that can select into sets of games that people who aren’t premium players don’t come into”.