In no uncertain terms we owe just about everything about PC gaming to this guy. John Carmack and id completely changed video games with Doom and then did it again with Quake. If it wasn’t for Carmack’s early support of 3d processor technology in the Quake engine we probably would never have seen the rapid adoption of 3d processors that happened in the early to mid 1990s.
Say what you will about id’s games since Quake 3 Arena, but in the 90’s id ruled the roost in the FPS genre. Just a few days ago we celebrated the 15th anniversary of Half-Life’s release date. If it wasn’t for the technical success of Carmack’s Quake engine and the netcode he used to revolutionize early internet gaming we’d likely have played a much different version of Half-Life and it’s doubtful that the video game industry as a whole would be the way it is today.
We owe it all to John Carmack. Hopefully in 15 years we’ll be discussing how he revolutionized video games again with the Oculus Rift.
Thanks for all the fun John.
