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Sheesh, didn't expect to be so severely down voted. I guess I chose my words poorly. I'm fully aware of Carmack's key accomplishments. He's an incredibly talent

Sheesh, didn't expect to be so severely down voted. I guess I chose my words poorly. I'm fully aware of Carmack's key accomplishments. He's an incredibly talented and influential guy. I didn't mean to imply that their are many people with a career much like his. What I meant to say was that there are many great engineers who are quietly developing fun and technically impressive games. Also, I had some deja vu and Googled up a comment I wrote a while back. It is about why I feel that Carmack has missed the mark on several major game technology trends: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=419606 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=419606

palish 16y ago
I understand what you're trying to say. I'm even close friends with someone whose skill level I'd call Carmack-like (an assessment I made, as a professional graphics programmer, over the course of two years). Your point is a good one, but not one that anyone wants to hear. I'd say just let Carmack have his moment; doing that on an iPhone is nothing short of breathtaking.
- cubicle67 16y ago
  Sure, there's others with a very high degree of skill like Carmack, but it's his consistent ability to come up with amazing stuff over the last two and a bit decades that gives him legend status. It's not just ability and skill, it's also impact on the industry (which, obviously, requires a degree of luck and circumstance). It sounds pretty hash, but it's kinds hard to be considered a legend/god/whatever if no one's heard of you. But you raise an interesting point. For those people how do make an impact, to what degree is it due to circumstance, and to what degree their own skill? There's loads of very highly skilled people in any given field, and yet only a very small number of them will ever make much of an impact on that field. Why is this, and what differentiates the ones who do from the ones who don't?
- derefr 16y ago
  > Your point is a good one, but not one that anyone wants to hear. That's why I left Reddit—the tyranny of the majority. I guess it's here now, too. Where to next?
  - kevinh 16y ago
    Let me let you in on a little secret: karma doesn't matter. Most people won't look at the number next to your post. In fact, some might read your post solely because it has a low rating. It's hardly tyranny of the majority when your opinion can be seen just like anyone else's.
    - derefr 16y ago
      I know that, and you know that, but... achievement-oriented game mechanics pull in the kind of people who enjoy them, and a gathering of Achievers encourages a culture of competitive sport, rather than socialization/rational discourse. Here's a parable: imagine that you and your friends are all playing a pen-and-paper RPG with a focus on storytelling, getting along, quite happy to collectively have interesting things happen to all the characters. Then, imagine that a new guy joins, and he's a munchkin—he plays the game to win, getting all the other players angry. He doesn't like his character to "get screwed" to tell a good story, and so on. The other players realize this, but they put up with it, hoping, for a while, that he'll eventually adapt. But he doesn't. So, eventually, the other players begin to leave—and new players join that play in much the same way the munchkin does. Eventually, the group is no longer story-focused, but is rather completely focused on collecting imaginary points and tokens. See what I mean? Although karma doesn't matter objectively, if it's important within the "shared delusion" of the majority, it can still do damage. That something was voted high or low wasn't the basis for my statement—it was that it seems, lately, that the majority shares the delusion; that this place is a munchkin group.
      - forgottenpaswrd 16y ago
        "that the majority shares the delusion; that this place is a munchkin group" witch brings us to the point: You are right and the majority is wrong. But without good explanation, you still deeply care about what other people think about you("it still can do damage"). When I played pen-and-paper RPG, the storyteller used to favor her friends-interest over anyone else(the majority), so maybe that is the real objective: Impose your way of thinking over the majority, If not, you don't play.
gamble 16y ago
Carmack is a lot like Steve Wozniak. There's no question that he's an incredible hacker, but (as I've heard second-hand) he isn't crazy about managing large teams. Carmack was his most influential in the late '90s, when a small group of developers could still make AAA titles. That isn't really true anymore, now that high-end games routinely involve a hundred or more developers.
- wtallis 16y ago
  Carmack's team is still large enough to develop a top-notch engine that can be used in AAA titles put together by some other shop. The idTech engines have not been slacking in innovation, and the biggest thing limiting their use outside of id recently (lack of scalability down to low-end hardware) is clearly not a problem anymore.
  - gamble 16y ago
    They're clearly making more of an effort with Rage than they did with previous engines. They were spoiled to a degree by how eagerly 3rd-parties licensed the Doom, Quake, and Quake II engines. Id developed a nasty reputation for dumping code on licensees with little support. In fact, one of the main ways Epic stole the licensed engine market from them was by providing much more aggressive marketing and support. Id's attitude was always "if we build it, they will come".
- angrycoder 16y ago
  Even high end games only involve a few dozen developers. You would get nothing done with a hundred developers trying to do anything on a single project. The credit roll at the end of high-end games is filled with level designers, artists, qa, management, designers, etc. The actually developer section is relatively small.
  - gamble 16y ago
    That's why I used the word 'developers'. Even twenty to thirty programmers is still a lot to manage, particularly if you have ambitions to do any of the programming yourself.

palish 16y ago

I understand what you're trying to say. I'm even close friends with someone whose skill level I'd call Carmack-like (an assessment I made, as a professional graphics programmer, over the course of two years). Your point is a good one, but not one that anyone wants to hear. I'd say just let Carmack have his moment; doing that on an iPhone is nothing short of breathtaking.

cubicle67 16y ago
Sure, there's others with a very high degree of skill like Carmack, but it's his consistent ability to come up with amazing stuff over the last two and a bit decades that gives him legend status. It's not just ability and skill, it's also impact on the industry (which, obviously, requires a degree of luck and circumstance). It sounds pretty hash, but it's kinds hard to be considered a legend/god/whatever if no one's heard of you. But you raise an interesting point. For those people how do make an impact, to what degree is it due to circumstance, and to what degree their own skill? There's loads of very highly skilled people in any given field, and yet only a very small number of them will ever make much of an impact on that field. Why is this, and what differentiates the ones who do from the ones who don't?
derefr 16y ago
> Your point is a good one, but not one that anyone wants to hear. That's why I left Reddit—the tyranny of the majority. I guess it's here now, too. Where to next?
- kevinh 16y ago
  Let me let you in on a little secret: karma doesn't matter. Most people won't look at the number next to your post. In fact, some might read your post solely because it has a low rating. It's hardly tyranny of the majority when your opinion can be seen just like anyone else's.
  - derefr 16y ago
    I know that, and you know that, but... achievement-oriented game mechanics pull in the kind of people who enjoy them, and a gathering of Achievers encourages a culture of competitive sport, rather than socialization/rational discourse. Here's a parable: imagine that you and your friends are all playing a pen-and-paper RPG with a focus on storytelling, getting along, quite happy to collectively have interesting things happen to all the characters. Then, imagine that a new guy joins, and he's a munchkin—he plays the game to win, getting all the other players angry. He doesn't like his character to "get screwed" to tell a good story, and so on. The other players realize this, but they put up with it, hoping, for a while, that he'll eventually adapt. But he doesn't. So, eventually, the other players begin to leave—and new players join that play in much the same way the munchkin does. Eventually, the group is no longer story-focused, but is rather completely focused on collecting imaginary points and tokens. See what I mean? Although karma doesn't matter objectively, if it's important within the "shared delusion" of the majority, it can still do damage. That something was voted high or low wasn't the basis for my statement—it was that it seems, lately, that the majority shares the delusion; that this place is a munchkin group.
    - forgottenpaswrd 16y ago
      "that the majority shares the delusion; that this place is a munchkin group" witch brings us to the point: You are right and the majority is wrong. But without good explanation, you still deeply care about what other people think about you("it still can do damage"). When I played pen-and-paper RPG, the storyteller used to favor her friends-interest over anyone else(the majority), so maybe that is the real objective: Impose your way of thinking over the majority, If not, you don't play.

gamble 16y ago

Carmack is a lot like Steve Wozniak. There's no question that he's an incredible hacker, but (as I've heard second-hand) he isn't crazy about managing large teams. Carmack was his most influential in the late '90s, when a small group of developers could still make AAA titles. That isn't really true anymore, now that high-end games routinely involve a hundred or more developers.

wtallis 16y ago
Carmack's team is still large enough to develop a top-notch engine that can be used in AAA titles put together by some other shop. The idTech engines have not been slacking in innovation, and the biggest thing limiting their use outside of id recently (lack of scalability down to low-end hardware) is clearly not a problem anymore.
- gamble 16y ago
  They're clearly making more of an effort with Rage than they did with previous engines. They were spoiled to a degree by how eagerly 3rd-parties licensed the Doom, Quake, and Quake II engines. Id developed a nasty reputation for dumping code on licensees with little support. In fact, one of the main ways Epic stole the licensed engine market from them was by providing much more aggressive marketing and support. Id's attitude was always "if we build it, they will come".
angrycoder 16y ago
Even high end games only involve a few dozen developers. You would get nothing done with a hundred developers trying to do anything on a single project. The credit roll at the end of high-end games is filled with level designers, artists, qa, management, designers, etc. The actually developer section is relatively small.
- gamble 16y ago
  That's why I used the word 'developers'. Even twenty to thirty programmers is still a lot to manage, particularly if you have ambitions to do any of the programming yourself.