Sales show Doom 3 was "not bad" - Willits

Doom III designer Tim Willits has said he understands why some people found the first-person shooter disappointing, although he maintains he's very proud of it.

Id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead ripped into people retrospectively criticising Doom III earlier this year, declaring "they get no credibility", and Willits echoed elements of that. "Games that sell over three-and-a-half million copies are not bad games," he told Eurogamer.

But he was gentler for the most part. "If you are any self-respecting videogame player, you love Doom, but everyone's vision of Doom and memories they had of playing Doom, and what they thought Doom should be - everyone had a different idea," he explained.

"When you're that popular, you will have different opinions. It was very successful for us, and I love playing it even to this day, and there are few games that look better, still, and that game came out a long time ago."

Hollenshead has previously described Doom III as "the most successful game in id's history", and the game, which came out in 2004 on PC (and later on Xbox 1), received big scores at the time, despite concerns about repetition and monsters jumping out of cupboards.

A quick tour of the QuakeCon LAN party floor last week suggests Willits isn't alone in his fondness for it either - with the game blaring away on a number of screens late into the night while others played free beta versions of Quake Live.