The Zenimax/Bethesda buyout of legendary development house id Software rocked the gaming world earlier this week, and the industry was eager to pick the minds behind this latest merger. In an interview with Gamasutra, id Software's John Carmack explained that his studio was first approached by Zenimax over a year ago. Carmack admitted he had not even heard of Zenimax at the time, and it was largely their ownership of esteemed developer Bethesda Softworks which roused him to take further notice. Doing the math, both he and id Software would begin to see the merits of joining hands with Zenimax and Bethesda. Nevertheless, their internal announcement of the merger would take employees from both Bethesda and id Software by surprise.

"It's nice when somebody comes to you and offers a big dollar figure for your company or something, but if you plan on continuing to work there, you have to balance things that you enjoy about your job with other things that might happen later post-acquisition: How much is your work going to matter in the future? Are you going to like the people you work with? Are your ideas going to be shot down? Are the directions that you think are important for growth, and the technology you've developed going to be supported?

"You don't immediately know the answers to these things. But Zenimax turned out to be almost uniquely interesting for us."

Carmack explained that while Zenimax didn't enjoy "massive bulk" that far more likely suitors like Electronic Arts and Activision possess, the company still offered a degree of security and distribution muscle. But most important of all was having Bethesda under their wing, and the developer's handling of the Fallout franchise with Fallout 3 for multiple gaming platforms:

"...one of the most compelling things was that all of the rollout success of Fallout 3 was happening as we were talking to them. We looked at this and thought, if they can take this old niche IP like Fallout and turn it into this huge, successful phenomenon, then I think they are incredibly capable of taking Doom 4 and changing the world with it."

That said, it doesn't hurt that Bethesda's interests do not necessarily overlap id Software's in what they do. This helped ease concerns over the increasing reality of publishers creating a conflict of interest between its own internal studios when support must be evaluated. At the same time, the two studios become complementary, allowing both to diversify their talent. id Software's own projects will remain on track, though Carmack expresses optimism in the potential sharing of technologies between id and Bethesda. That said, he's not expecting a large-scale collaboration between the two studios on major projects in the immediate future.