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Friday, 10 December 1999 - Hoony
The Tournament Idea
Both Q3A and UT construct a fantastic world where you can play a "traditional computer game". The single player version of both games is constructed as a fantasy world that you can pretend to take part in.
In the case of id, it is done using the resources available in a tiny design house - the result is somewhat thin in places. In the case of Epic, presumably because there are a lot more resources available there, the result has a lot more thought and work put into it. But fundamentally it is the same idea.
The "plot" goes a little like this - you have been chosen to fight in a deathmatch tournament against a range of awesome opponents. In Q3A, you are plucked from the mortal world and are given immortality to fight in the arenas. You can die, but you get resurrected again, because the "arena masters" enjoy the spectacle of you fighting for their entertainment.
In UT, your frequent resurrection is never explained. Instead, the game is set in the future and a mega-corporation is going to make billions out of you, just like some pro baseball or soccer player.
These ideas mine sources that we are all familiar with. You've seen them before in "The Running Man", where Arnie battles his way to the top against a pile of progressively more evil and bizarre opponents. The mega-corporation idea probably comes from there as well.
The whole idea of "the tournament" is of course ancient and primal, with perhaps the most famous example being the gladiators of ancient Rome. No wonder id Software and Epic could not resist it.
The problem is, once this design idea takes hold, it leads the games progressively away from the real world of multiplayer gaming and into the fantasy zone. Despite all the hoopla about Q3A being "multiplayer only", it is overwhelmingly dominated by ideas and design decisions that only make sense in the context of the single-player fantasy tournament game.
This actually conflicts with the real-life multiplayer gaming activities of the legions of Quake fans I know. It leads to a series of contradictions.
Contradictions in Q3A - Next page please