Gaming
esports
With Champions, Quake Re-enters the Arena
Gone but never forgotten, can Quake make a comeback as a competitive shooter?
Quake: Champions is bringing an old franchise back
© Quake: Champions reveal trailer
Most games have to tease and entice their potential audience like carnival barkers, promising fresh new delights just behind the curtain to deeply skeptical, jaded players. For some lucky games, armed with a pedigree and beloved by their audience, it's enough just to show up. Games like Quake, whose E3 reveal was more like a touchdown celebration in the endzone than a sales pitch.
While Quake: Champions contains a lot of the hallmarks of the classic franchise (fragging, big guns and a gritty art style), there were also some new twists, specifically the eponymous Champions and their special abilities. With two decades of history behind it, Quake has a long history as a competitive game. The E3 presentation leaned on that legacy, promising fast-paced, close-matched action with an accessible skill floor but a high skill ceiling.
Welcome to the arena
Every studio banks on their name and history, but id Software has a unique heritage that they’re able to draw on. Quake was arguably the start of eSports, launching in 1996. (Starcraft, one of the other early pioneers of eSports, released in 1998).
The game was handicapped by its era — players were stuck using dial-up internet and there were no sick "MLG No Scope" dubstep montages to inspire competitors. It hardly mattered. Id was responsible for some of the '90s best classics, Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, and players flocked to Quake. The competitive aspect made Quake arguably more timeless than the other classics in id’s catalog. In its day, it was played, explored, modded for accessibility and playability, and celebrated. The Quake engine was used for countless other titles, and QuakeWorld, a post-release mod that improved internet play, only boosted multiplayer’s popularity.
While it's easy to credit the early development of eSports to Blizzard, id Software was there first and they inspired much of the early North American infrastructure for eSports. Blizzard may have eclipsed their total eSports fanbase, but many of these successes were overseas in Korea, while Quake seemed far more local. To this day, there’s a thriving North American culture built around Quake: Quakecon, the convention for all things Quake and id, is held in Dallas, Texas.
Quake: Champions promises competitive action
© Quake: Champions reveal trailer
The birth of eSports legends
The name "Thresh" is often associated with the chain-wielding warden from League these days, but one man made history with that name before the first line of League’s code was even written: Dennis "Thresh" Fong broke history as the first widely recognized professional gamer. To this day, the fact that his skills won him John Carmack's Ferrari remains a treasured piece of eSports history.
Quake's embrace of competitive gaming culminated in Quake III: Arena, a game that rejected the single-player campaign entirely in exchange for bots and a sleek multiplayer interface. It was a game that was racing to meet the future, coinciding with the rise of LAN centers and high-speed internet that made fast-paced online gaming a real possibility.
Quake III was a legendary game that helped lay the foundations for a proper eSports infrastructure. It motivated players to join clans and teams, motivated teams to train and travel to competitions and inspired many of eSports' earliest highlight reels. While Quake eventually faded away, that infrastructure didn't, and many modern gaming communities like League and Overwatch owe a debt to the work Quake did to create the competitive gaming community.
Some good ol' fashioned Quake action
© Quake 2
Reinventing the wheel
No king rules forever, and Quake 4’s release in 2005 didn’t have the same impact as its predecessors. Id Software were not the people behind this title; it had been outsourced to Raven Software. Critics were generally kind, and the title wasn’t a bomb, but audiences had moved on from Quake. The franchise was considered part of our history to be fondly remembered.
The E3 announcement has revitalized interest. Part of it is the long break from Quake, but a large part of it is id Software’s massive success at revitalizing old franchises that were considered long gone. The new Wolfenstein, despite some early skepticism, was a massive success that was hailed as a fantastic translation of an old game into a new era. The new DOOM has been called a modern classic, a perfect translation of the original’s sensibilities into a 2016 title. Quake: Champions may just live up to the same bar.
Consider, briefly, that the '90s were crazy for shooters. Now, eSports has moved on — League of Legends and Dota 2 are the games that draw the biggest numbers that and boast the biggest prize pools. That doesn’t mean you can count shooters out, though. Thanks to the rise of eSports and games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Quake: Champions is primed to ride that wave of interest.
So far, there are only four cast members to Champions that we know about: Scalebearer, Visor, Ranger and Nyx. Each one is grounded in the Quake universe, reflecting their predecessors' aesthetics reading clearly: Scalebearer is a mountain, Visor has a helm that originated from the previous Quake games, and Ranger’s special ability is the Dire Orb from Quake I, allowing him to teleport.
Two of Quake's Champions face off in the arena
© Quake: Champions reveal trailer
The obvious comparison
Quake: Champions is going to immediately draw comparisons to Overwatch due to the nature of the titles. But if you watch the Overwatch reveal cinematic and the Quake: Champions reveal trailer, you’ll see that each game is radically different on the surface level of presentation, and there’s room for each game to stand apart. Overwatch has likely broken ground that Quake will cover — the Blizzard title recently enjoyed a series of successes, including a 300k prize pool and Team SoloMid picking up a roster. Overwatch fans are likely to become Quake: Champions fans, and this holds especially true if id Software can improve on Overwatch's offerings to spectators.
Overwatch has been criticized for lacking features that would help it as an eSport: clearly readable stats, a spectator mode that shows the action, and map design issues. If Quake: Champions can move in and provide a similar gameplay experience with dramatically improved competitive features, it could allow Quake a coup over Overwatch as part of its plan to become the new competitive shooter of choice.
Based on what we know about Quake: Champions so far, there’s a lot to be excited about. id Software is primed to enter a second golden age, and DOOM and Wolfenstein have both proven that id and Bethesda know what they’re doing when it comes to bringing old classics into 2016. If they can capture the original excitement and fun that the original three games managed, Quake: Champions should be another massive success for the studio, and another landmark in competitive shooters.
