"The ultimate point of Masters of Doom is that today you no longer need to be as brilliant as John Carmack to achieve success, and John Carmack himself will be the first to tell you that. Where John was sitting in a cubicle by himself in Mesquite, Texas for 80 hours a week painstakingly inventing all this stuff from first principles, on hardware that was barely capable, you have a supercomputer in your pocket, another supercomputer on your desk, and two dozen open source frameworks and libraries that can do 90% of the work for you. You have GitHub, Wikipedia, Stack Overflow, and the whole of the Internet."<p>Which is bad news if your strength is that you are a good programmer, because in this kind of environment games become a commodity, so you have to compete with hundreds of thousands of other game developers who also don't have to be as briliant as Carmack. See the app market; it has a winner take all characteristic, so even if you don't have to be as brilliant as Carmack in programming, you have to be very strong in something or lucky to achieve success.<p>As I remember Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky took venture capital to take off stack overflow. (And also they had a huge following even before starting that venture.)<p>I kind of don't really buy these kind of 'motivational' posts. Achieving success is always possible but always hard.
Lol, How many times does one (me in particular) need to read inspirational stories about hard work, dedication, pizza, and soda pop to actually do something about it?<p>Small anecdote: I was working on software for my site yesterday and thought about Carmack and the Fez guy (Phil Fish) and how they did amazing things on a computer. And then I thought about how tough it was for me to build a software for the web. Yes, its some complex software, but we have more tools now than those before us. There's really no excuse to not get things done (if you really want it done).<p>What I need to realize is that these guys didn't just think their way to success. They built their way to success. They had the idea, and then executed. You have to be moving and building. No one can see inside your mind. So, to show how amazing your idea really is, you'd need to literally "show" them the idea.<p>So yes, hopefully this is my last awe inspiring story. Hopefully (not hopefully, it will be...) the next time I chime in, I'll have something to show instead of an idea baking in my head.<p>In the words of Jobs "Real artists ship"! And I feel like I'm there.
If you haven't read this book, go get it. It's the ultimate start-up story.<p>They start out as the most rag-tag group of developers. They took their computers home on the weekends from their day jobs at SoftDisk to work on their own games. These weren't MacBook Airs, they were full-tower 386 desktops with CRT monitors!<p>They packed into an apartment for their first 'real' offices. The story about them re-creating Super Mario pixel by pixel using a VHS recorder and TV is great.<p>Then these guys spent a small fortune on NeXT workstations to create Doom/Quake! Who doesn't dream about using the most high-end tools you can get your hands on.<p>And in the end, they all end up as famous 'rock star' millionaires driving Ferraris.
I find it ridiculous how IT, the industry with lowest entry barrier that ever existed, is often marked as sexist and elitist. Wanna program? Here is computer and manual, see you in 10 000 hours.
Amazing quote:<p>"The barriers are self-imposed. If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you don’t need millions of dollars of capitalization. You need enough pizza and Diet Coke to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on, and the dedication to go through with it. We slept on floors. We waded across rivers."<p>So inspirational.
> today you no longer need to be as brilliant as John Carmack to achieve success<p>That is a lie. To achieve anything similar to what Quake and Doom were at their time, one must possess raw undiluted talent and no amount of tools, libraries or online resources are going to help.<p>If it was that easy, we'd see masterpieces pop up every few months. But instead the market is flooded with mediocrity. Which really should come as no surprise, because we know that 90% of everything is crap. That includes people: most people (including myself), unfortunately, aren't half as smart and talented as they think they are. Which is why we struggle to create things that could be considered merely "good", and "great" is completely outside of our reach.
As others have mentioned in the past, I believe this is one of the best "business" books I've ever read. Not in the traditional sense, but that only furthers my point. Absolutely phenomenal read.
I strongly recommend the book to anyone who's at all curious in game history, Carmack, or game development. I read it as a teenager, and it really inspired me to become a programmer.
Excellent post. I've heard of the book before but never read it - although I did just order a copy.<p>I liked Carmack's comments on patents. Interesting that all these years later is still such a big issue in the software industry.<p>It was also very interesting to see the comparison between shareware and in-app purchases. Never thought of that before.
And here I am, with good ideas about making a persistent online single infinite world, all the tools, but not actually working on it daily.<p>The weird thing, is that many other companies have the actual skills to do what I want to do, but they don't.<p>Clearly my project is either stupid or I'm very lazy, or nobody is innovating and that's what kill the market.
You do need millions of dollars. Building a Game today is not what it was when Wolf 3d was made. The number of textures the depth of the story, the voice acting, the quality of physics that players expect to day is very different.<p>You can't write a Portal, or a Half Life, or a Quake, or a Halo, in you spare time between classes at school, or even by yourself living in your mom's basement over a year. The speed at which game tech advances is such that a one to 5 man shop can't create a game worth million in the time it takes to be obsolete.<p>Yes, there will be exceptions like Angry Birds. But most people aren't going to be that company that just nails game play at the right time. And most those won't be as much developers as designers.
Just to the point, I am located in Russia where print copy of this book would appear in 6months to year if at all. Technology allowed me purchase this book and read it right away.<p>It is all about focus and determination nowadays, just like it always was. And way back it took some real patience and a highly structured approach to achieve any kind of success. And now you can the cake and eat it too - compared to effort you needed to expend in nineties to create something. Information wasn't just everywhere, tracing compiler bugs could make you go down one or other rabbit hole for days if not week or two.
They don't make programmers like Carmack any more. When he was around, Carmack and his comrades were making the rules and paving new paths doing things that were considered impossible. These days, finding the answers is all too easy thanks to Stack Overflow and Github. I also feel as though the limits of computing in a gaming sense like Quake and Doom were will never happen ever again.
One of the best game i ever play in my childhood and complete it with in 3 days, still remember the stage 3 when i have to touch space bar for open the gate and simultaneous monster came. it was scary for me.
Mainly i like to target the oil drums :). Mine favorite weapon was the machine gun which was available in the middle chamber with a protected suit
Shareware seems more like Kickstarter to me, in terms of sentiment. You get niche, hobbyist communities excited about your product, and pool up money through grassroots efforts. Though perhaps shareware's most direct descendent today is when creators release albums or ebooks and add a tip jar for suggested donations.
Carmack still hasn't managed to let me down after all of these years, and I've probably tried to keep up with his happenings since the Quake days.<p>He's a real inspiration. If you haven't read this book already, it's really worth it.
Carmack's story continues at Oculus. He might be famous among the gaming world (might not), but it won't be long until he's famous throughout the world. VR's coming.
"You know how game companies spent the last 5 years figuring out that free games with 100% in-app purchases are the optimum (and maybe, only) business model for games today? "<p>What!!??
Damnit, after reading that I simply had to buy myself a copy of that book. These two guys were my childhood heros. Although my mom hated them thanks to all the hours I spent playing Keen or Doom and "not doing my homework"
As much as I admire John Carmack's bootstrapped success (and on this axis the guy is just awesome), given how he handled the poor health of his cat, I don't think I'd ever work with or for him. It just doesn't sit right with me.