John Carmack

We were happy with funding 'Rage' on our own nickel for years. We intended to do the same with 'Doom 4'. We had offers early on for 'Rage'. People offered us X million dollars. But we carried the risk, and when we finally signed a deal, it was X plus $10 million.

It is true that the gameplay for 'Orcs&Elves' was designed around the limitations of mobile phones, and that if we were starting completely from scratch for the DS, we would probably do things a bit differently, but the bottom line is that when we sit a random DS player down with the game, they have a lot of fun.

And I think that still is true of this business - which is basically research and development - that you probably spend more time in planning and training and designing for things to go wrong, and how you cope with them, than you do for things to go right.

What I look for when I see a piece of art for the first time is some kind of emotional, intellectual experience, that's a combination of both of those things and is informed by my knowledge and something new that I see the artist doing.