Many announcements were made at QuakeCon 2007 including Rage, a post-apocalyptic style FPS/racing game QuakeZero, the online free version of Quake 3, and the Return to Castle Wolfenstein movie. What many missed though was a small, informal announcement of the next game in the ever-popular Quake series.

Id Software's Executive Producer Marty Stratton sits down with Gameriot.com's Rod "Slasher" Breslau about the new Quake game as well as QuakeZero, and how QuakeZero's development process will effect the next Quake game. Did I mention that the next Quake game will be an Arena game a true follow-up to Quake 3? Well, I did now. Marty discusses many details about the upcoming new Arena title and how id Software will be making leaps and bounds in matchmaking, balancing, testing and the use of professional Quake players in their aid. Also discussed is the current view on professional gaming, professional Quake players, and how the focus on the next Arena game will be in terms of a sport.

Breslau: So the next Quake game will be multiplayer focused?

Marty Stratton: It will be multiplayer focused from a gameplay perspective. We want to make sure that individual players can receive that 'multiplayer' experience, though. Both QuakeZero and the new Arena game will have bots. We actually have an unbelievable bot programmer John Dean who almost single-handedly did all the bot work for ET:QW along with Jan Paul. The response from the bots for ET:QW has been great and that's for an extremely complicated game where bots have to figure out many different things at once. I'm really excited on having them work on the new Quake Arena bots. They'll be able to do some cool stuff and John Paul is the guy that originally did the Quake 3 Arena bots. We have those guys in house, and I think there's some really cool stuff we can do with bots.

Breslau: When id says that it's looking at its next game as a sport, are we talking about what most people in the competitive gaming industry call eSports?

Marty Stratton: Yeah, I think so; there are just so many factors that play into it. We're thinking about the game in every way as a sport. As an example, every time we're at tournaments we see players crank the graphics down to a flat-shaded mess. So I think as we develop, we can consider, guys playing competitively, that they want some contrast between the player and the back wall. It's not great to have in a competitive environment, a totally rusted wall and an orange player when you're trying to spot him across the map. Players like that contrast and that's just one thing that we're taking into consideration. We're really taking spectators into consideration and want to put features in the game that will enhance people's ability of watching Quake. Minimaps, different and more camera angles, new in-game TV features and much more are just some of the things we're discussing. We want to build an environment, build an experience that feels like a sport. Whether you call that eSports or not is up to people's preference, but that's what it is.

To check out the whole interview, head to GameRiot.com

Source: Gameriot.com