4 ms·
Their net worth isn't really comparable though. Spike Lee makes polarizing movies that appeal to niche audiences. Carmack made a couple of the best and most pop
by phaus 8y ago
Their net worth isn't really comparable though. Spike Lee makes polarizing movies that appeal to niche audiences. Carmack made a couple of the best and most popular games of all time. He also achieved revolutionary technological advances that pushed gaming beyond what people thought was possible on the hardware that existed 3 generations in a row. Arguably 4.
Given that the game industry is so large, his net worth should be comparable to lucas, Cameron, or Spielberg.
When it comes to excelling in a field, I don't even think Spielberg, Lucas and Cameron compare to Carmack. I can think of some actors that might, such as Daniel-Day Lewis, but not a director.
- Impossible 8y agoCarmack is a hero for a certain generation of programmers, but id's most successful titles in it's heyday would be considered mid-tier indie successes by today's standards. Games derived from idtech (most Call of Duty games, most Valve titles) have seen orders of magnitude more success than anything released by id. I imagine at this point that most of Carmack's networth comes from the sale of id to Zenimax followed by Facebook stock granted for joining Oculus, not from game royalties. Doom and Quake are more niche than many movies Spike Lee has directed if you are outside of a tech/gamer bubble. According to wikipedia Doom as a series has sold 10 million units (by comparison a single Call of Duty game sells 30 million+) and Quake sold 1.1 million units life time (Gone Home sold 700K units). I agree that Carmack's impact and influence on the industry isn't captured in his networth (although really he's still ridiculously rich...)