
New John Carmack Interview - shawndumas
http://e3.gamespot.com/story/6318725/e3-2011-john-carmack-talks-wii-u-playstation-vita-and-next-gen-rage
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michaeldhopkins
I would like to see 37signals put this in their next Exit Interview roundup:

"GS: When id was bought by ZeniMax in 2009, you basically said that it felt
like id was becoming its own publisher. Now that you're about to ship Rage, do
you guys still feel that way?

JC: It's been better than I could have expected. On a personal level, I don't
have to pretend to be an executive anymore. I don't have to go to board of
directors meetings or talk about board strategy things. So, I've actually
gotten to program more in the last year and a half than I did the year and a
half before that.

So, it's been personally good there. And one of the things that was really
unexpectedly pleasant is being part of a larger family. In December, we have
this big get-together where everybody shows the games in the theaters and
talks about everything. And there was this sort of unexpectedly pleasant sense
that this is really nice to be part of a larger family and to be able to cheer
for somebody else's effort. It's awesome being a sister to [The Elder Scrolls
V] Skyrim on there. So, I don't have a negative thing at all to say about how
it's gone. I couldn't be happier."

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evanwalsh
Whenever I read stuff from him (especially his tweets), I feel like he's on a
whole different level than the programmers I usually see.

Incredible.

~~~
partisan
He is definitely on a different level. He is like a superstar athlete at the
top of his game. I expect Rage to be a hit because of the passion that John
Carmack is investing in it.

~~~
ShardPhoenix
Maybe, but good programming is not the same thing as good gameplay design.

~~~
nvarsj
Case in point: Doom 3 vs Half Life 2.

~~~
Dramatize
Doom 3 was one of the last games I finished. Loved it.

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shawndumas
"GS: [D]id you get a chance to look at the PlayStation Vita at all?

JC: No, but I think that Sony learned a lot from the PS3, and they've gone out
of their way to make sure that the development is as easy as possible on
there. However, I wouldn't want to be the executive making the decision to
launch a new portable gaming machine in the post-smartphone world. I think
that they've picked as eminently a suitable hardware spec as they could for
that. They're going to have you program for it like a console, so it's going
to seem twice as powerful as a smartphone with the exact same chips in there.

But of course, by the time they actually ship, there may be smartphones or
these tablets with twice as much power as what they're shipping with on there.
And a year or two after that, it's going to look pretty pokey."

~~~
Hawramani
Couldn't Sony do something like the iPhone? The device could get a refresh
every year or every six months, while all of the games would keep working on
it.

~~~
daeken
The huge perk to console development is having a fixed set of hardware for a
long period of time. You can build up technology, learn the ins and outs of
optimizing on it, and build the best software possible. That's how people did
crazy things with the PSX by the end of its lifecycle, same with the PS2,
Xbox, etc. The longer you've been working on something, the better you're
going to be with it. Switching to a short console lifecycle -- even if it's
forwards-compatible -- nullifies almost the entire set of benefits to console
development.

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jhamburger
It amazes me that the guy who created the PC games of my childhood is only 10
years older than me.

------
programminggeek
John Carmack is equally brilliant and lucky in the same way that Michael
Jordan is/was. Both found their life's work at a very young age and pursued it
relentlessly. Because they found what they love so young and had such
incredible work ethics, they achieved incredible things that put most mere
mortals to shame.

Natural talent was obviously a factor, but so was the hard work and practice
that they got at ages much younger than most of their peers. Both JC and MJ
spent their teens practicing when others were playing. It wasn't forced, it
was what they wanted to do.

I learned to code pretty much the same way. I'm no John Carmack, but when my
peers entered college and were just starting to learn Java, I had been
building games and weird little projects in C++ and Java for like 6 years. I
naturally had an edge after that.

Finding what you love to do early in life and practicing that like crazy is a
rare and wonderful thing.

Bill Gates, Tiger Woods, John Carmack, Michael Jordan, Eminem, Metallica,
Warren Buffet, Mark Zuckerburg, Steve Wozniak, all seem to have this kind of
thing in common.

~~~
InnocentB
This is basically Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, distilled to five
paragraphs. Very nice.

~~~
jasonwatkinspdx
Which perhaps says something about the book.

~~~
statictype
The ride is often more enjoyable than the destination. I'm not talking
specifically about Outliers but in general, I think the essence of any good
book could probably be distilled down to a paragraph.

~~~
yid
The essence perhaps, but rarely the entire template.

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kenjackson
_But, the data certainly isn't showing AAA doing well on iOS._

That was an interesting statement I thought.

~~~
ido
You have to remember what the meaning of "doing well" there is:

    
    
        They want the AAA titles that are going to go out 
        in many, many millions of units. And I'm like, 
        "Hey, we made a half a million dollars here, a 
        half a million dollars there, it pays everybody's
        salaries"
    

His "not doing well" would be my huge success!

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baby
Pardon me if I'm wrong but, they limited the game (number of monsters on
screen) to be able to run 60fps on console. So they do make compromise for PC
gaming just because they have to work about the console version also.

I guess the good news in that is that they will work for doom4 to run in30fps
on console.

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jacques_chester
It seems that even John "my hobby is rocket science" Carmack is beginning to
fail at scale. He mentions that he can't say "let's rewrite this from scratch"
any more.

Also interesting is the contrast with 3DRealms. Whereas Broussard simply ran
out of money, Carmack saw the writing on the wall and sold id before Rage sunk
them.

~~~
georgemcbay
It isn't so much that he fails at scale as it is that at this point, the
majority of effort that goes into any big game is in the content/art and not
in the code.

The reason he can't say "let's rewrite this from scratch" anymore is partly
because of the size/complexity of the code, but a lot more because he can't
make any sudden changes that will cause the artists to have to restructure
their existing work significantly... that's where the scale failure occurs.

~~~
jacques_chester
That's not what I got from it, but it does make sense. Coordination costs
suck.

