id Software’s Rage has been in development for years. Babies have been born and grown up into kids, those kids have learned to read and have been potty trained in the time it has taken id to develop the game. Trouble is - can you wait that much longer? I guess we’ll have to…

Recently during the Rage presentation at QuakeCon in Dallas, Tim Willits (id Software’s creative director) confirmed the release date for Rage. The date to mark on your calendars is September 13th, 2011 for the US, and September 15th, 2011 in Europe.

Tim shed some light on Rage during the “Building Blockbusters” panel I attended, stating that the idea for Rage really came from them sitting around with a dry erase board, throwing out tons of ideas. Of the thousands of horrible and retarded ideas that came out, a few good ones stuck.

He mentioned that the basis for Rage all started when Jon Carmack delivered NASA ground elevation data to the team. This raw data is taken from scans of the earth, recording changes in the landscape, what the ground looks like, and elevation changes. “We could use this!” Carmack stated, and the team was off to set a game in that “world”.

The idea for Rage stemmed from their love of bad-ass cars, big fucking guns, and a post-apocalyptic setting. Big fucking guns to put on cars? Check. Modifiable post-apocalyptic racers? Check. Great desert setting? Check.

We’ll see and hear more of Rage in the coming months leading up to the release date, but it’s good to know there is actually something to look forward to instead of just, “Maybe next year……”