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I admire and respect John Carmack for his role in the history of computing (and his ongoing contributions), but I don't see how making 3D video games was really

I admire and respect John Carmack for his role in the history of computing (and his ongoing contributions), but I don't see how making 3D video games was really helping humanity more than this. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

sillysaurusx 5y ago
Carmack made multiple fundamental breakthroughs in 3D graphics. Not only that, but he consistently positioned himself to commercialize those, which is not easy. His Quake 3 engine was the bread and butter of Id Software, generating billions in revenue. In recent times, he's done coronavirus simulations (I don't know anything else about that), and is doing AGI research. He's also a true hacker through and through. Simply having an example like his, as a model to follow, is helping humanity. I happen to be human, and I distinctly remember his .plan files influencing my decisions in a positive way since I was 13 or so. (The line about getting a hotel and accomplishing as much as possible in 2 days of focused effort was particularly impactful.)
- quakeguy 5y ago
  He also helped to create a generation of people which modded and created forks of the engines he wrote to use in their own projects, providing the basis for tools to modify assets and whatnot. I owe him so much and I thank him for what he enabled everyday.
  - xtracto 5y ago
    I think a lot of people miss this. I grew up half a generation after him, so I got into computers by tinkering with Commodore Log, GWBasic and later C++/Allegro. But the next generation after that was of a huge amount of kids doing mods for Quake, Doom and the like. It opened the doors in an accessible way to computing for a lot of people.
- stagger87 5y ago
  > generating billions in revenue. Source?
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    I was going to point out another HN'er that said this, but then I looked at the username and it turned out to be me in 2014. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7509095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7509095 Well, at least my ideas are consistent. As for the root source, I suppose I could just ask him now. But the idea came from a slashdot post. Carmack personally responded to some criticisms of Q3 code quality, and said that he was proud of it, and that it had generated a lot of revenue for the company. Billions may have been off by a couple orders of magnitude though. I'm no longer sure. Maybe not too far off, though. The revenue of Q3 Arena alone was $11M. Far more valuable is Id Tech 3, the engine that was licensed by many studios over many years. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find revenue numbers on that. I wonder if it's public.
    - stagger87 5y ago
      I found this, https://web.archive.org/web/20100312100358/http://www.idsoftware.com/business/technology/printdoc.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100312100358/http://www.idsoft... 5% royalties on games sold.

sillysaurusx 5y ago

Carmack made multiple fundamental breakthroughs in 3D graphics. Not only that, but he consistently positioned himself to commercialize those, which is not easy. His Quake 3 engine was the bread and butter of Id Software, generating billions in revenue. In recent times, he's done coronavirus simulations (I don't know anything else about that), and is doing AGI research. He's also a true hacker through and through. Simply having an example like his, as a model to follow, is helping humanity. I happen to be human, and I distinctly remember his .plan files influencing my decisions in a positive way since I was 13 or so. (The line about getting a hotel and accomplishing as much as possible in 2 days of focused effort was particularly impactful.)

quakeguy 5y ago
He also helped to create a generation of people which modded and created forks of the engines he wrote to use in their own projects, providing the basis for tools to modify assets and whatnot. I owe him so much and I thank him for what he enabled everyday.
- xtracto 5y ago
  I think a lot of people miss this. I grew up half a generation after him, so I got into computers by tinkering with Commodore Log, GWBasic and later C++/Allegro. But the next generation after that was of a huge amount of kids doing mods for Quake, Doom and the like. It opened the doors in an accessible way to computing for a lot of people.
stagger87 5y ago
> generating billions in revenue. Source?
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  I was going to point out another HN'er that said this, but then I looked at the username and it turned out to be me in 2014. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7509095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7509095 Well, at least my ideas are consistent. As for the root source, I suppose I could just ask him now. But the idea came from a slashdot post. Carmack personally responded to some criticisms of Q3 code quality, and said that he was proud of it, and that it had generated a lot of revenue for the company. Billions may have been off by a couple orders of magnitude though. I'm no longer sure. Maybe not too far off, though. The revenue of Q3 Arena alone was $11M. Far more valuable is Id Tech 3, the engine that was licensed by many studios over many years. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find revenue numbers on that. I wonder if it's public.
  - stagger87 5y ago
    I found this, https://web.archive.org/web/20100312100358/http://www.idsoftware.com/business/technology/printdoc.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100312100358/http://www.idsoft... 5% royalties on games sold.