Opinion: Can Quake really be done properly on a mobile phone?

A couple of years ago at E3, Pocket Gamer met John Carmack. Which was a surprise, because until I walked into the room I was expecting a briefing with the head honcho at EA Mobile. He was there too, mind, but since the publisher was announcing the Carmack-developed Orcs & Elves, so was John.

So, I threw away my EA questions and asked him about his plans for mobile, why he was interested in mobile gaming, and what he thought about the technical restrictions that lay in store (you can read the results here and here).

Besides being a very friendly and talkative interviewee, Carmack also showed a strong awareness of the specific challenges of mobile development, as well as a real enthusiasm for getting to grips with those restrictions to create innovative games. In short, he wasn't in this just to shove Quake onto mobile phones.

So forgive my raised eyebrow when I heard yesterday's news, that id Software has set up a mobile division, id Mobile, with heavy involvement from Carmack and his wife and business partner, Katherine Anna Kang. (She was in that interview, too, by the way, since she headed up Fountainhead Entertainment, which worked on Orcs & Elves and Doom RPG.)

Anyway, id Mobile plans to work on a sequel to Doom RPG, as well as all-new mobile versions of Wolfenstein and – did you see this coming a few paragraphs away? – Quake. And for all the excitement of a big-name developer throwing its hat into the mobile ring, I can't help but wonder if the time will ever be right for mobile Quake.

Here's the reasons why not. Quake surely defies the transition to mobile phones in a way that Doom didn't (but in the same way that, say, Halo would). It's hard to explain, but I can't imagine playing true Quake on a mobile keypad, and revamping it as a turn-based game à la Doom RPG would feel… well, it would feel more wrong than it did for Doom.

What's more, I wonder who would play mobile Quake. Surely the real Quake nuts would scoff at the thought, or have such high expectations that they couldn't help but be disappointed? Meanwhile, less hardcore mobile gamers may well be intimidated by an accurate Quake conversion.

Sure, as a gaming brand Quake is still one of the biggest, and it would be guaranteed high-profile placement on the operator portals on that basis alone – especially if EA Mobile was the publisher, which has been rumoured following its previous work with Carmack. But is that enough?

There's an opposite argument, of course. Mobile phones have come a hell of a long way in the last two years, and high-end models are more than capable of delivering a decent version of Quake in terms of graphics. Indeed, there's already a Pocket PC version of Quake available, which has won awards.

More importantly, Carmack and Kang have shown their ability to think laterally when it comes to mobile conversions, and their willingness to engage with the quirks and strengths of mobile as a gaming platform. If anyone can make Quake work on phones, it's them. (And is anyone else wondering if Nokia is about to throw a big sack of cash in their direction to make a supercharged version for N-Gage?)

Maybe touchscreen interfaces are the answer to making Quake work well on phones. Maybe there's a way of making keypad controls intuitive and mapping rocket jumps to the '*' button to help newbies out. Maybe it could even become a one-thumb game, with the same willingness to experiment that saw Konami's mobile studio invent a one-button mode for Pro Evolution Soccer recently.

Maybe.

I'm intrigued to see what approach id Mobile takes with Quake, and indeed Wolfenstein. Only a fool would write either game off this early, but there's so much scope for shattered expectations. Of course, I'd be delighted to be proved wrong, though, so here's hoping id Mobile gets it right.