I wrote a little piece about Carmack a few years ago...

                         The Game Changer 

Every once in a while, somebody comes along and changes everything. John D. Carmack is such a person. Born August 20, 1970, he singlehandedly changed the course of the computer [and console] gaming industry while inadvertently becoming a multimillionaire in the process. Carmack is what most people would call a geek. He would not dispute this. Growing up, like most other kids, he just wanted to have fun. But to young John, fun meant writing software. To put a finer point on it, Carmack wanted to write fun software. By the time he was twenty he had already written several computer games. But his roller-coaster ride to fame and fortune began in earnest when, at the age of 23, he unleashed DOOM. DOOM was a revolutionary computer game. It changed the world. The idea of walking through a virtual world that could be designed to the heart’s content with fluid like motion was revolutionary in and of itself at the time. Carmack took that idea several steps further with later productions such as the Quake series. He wrote code in 1995 that offered the player 360° of motion. In other words, the player could look around their virtual world in any direction, not just left and right, but up and down as well. Cumbow 2  The man’s most resounding virtue is not that he’s a brilliant programmer, or the fact that he’s influenced the lives of millions, but that his main goal is and has always been enjoying living his life. This guy just wants to have fun! During an interview, when asked why people liked one of his games so much (Quake 3), Carmack was once quoted, “There has to be something that you wanna just go out and do. People don't play softball because they want to beat the game of softball; it has to be an action that's fun by itself” (Colayco). This philosophy has served Carmack and id Software quite well. Carmack is in his forties now. In June 2009, he sold id software to ZeniMax Media. He had received offers from Electronic Arts and Activision also, but felt the fundamental characteristics of the company he had raised since its infancy may be lost if incorporated into either of these software giants. The decision was anything but easy, as Carmack’s passion in life is writing code not for his own financial gain, or to make a name for himself, but for the elation he feels seeing other people play his games. He is still involved in game development with ZeniMax, just not in the same capacity. He’s more like a supervisor now, rather than a chief programmer. Much of the global gaming community was shocked to learn that the legendary John Carmack had sold id Software. The notion of this pillar of the gaming industry selling out was unfathomable to most. When confronted about the betrayal of his loyal fan base, Carmack had this to say, “I would say I am a remarkably unsympathetic Cumbow 3 person. I am a forward looking optimist. I never reminisce about the good old days because the good old days are right now” (Takahashi). Others have written similar code more recently that does what Carmack’s did more efficiently – but Carmack did it first. Without him, the video gaming industry would be at least a few years behind where it is today. In summary, anyone that has played a first person shooter in the last fifteen years has only one person to thank – John Carmack, the game changer.