Carmack and Romero were like yin and yang for the games iD created, once they went on separate ways Carmack's games became little more than advanced tech demos for his new engines while Romero's games failed because of the missing technical innovations and quality. After the separation iD games lacked that magic that was the product of their collaboration. On a positive note: that separation resulted indirectly the creation of one of the greatest games of all times: Deus Ex
I would strongly disagree with that. Carmack was and is exponentially more talented than Romero. Id have continued to release phenomenal games post their split while Romero has done precisely fuckall except sully his reputation with mindless dreck.
@@thesprawl2361 I think he's getting at the old Steve Jobs/Wozniak partnership where one individual is obviously vastly more talented from a technical perspective (Carmack/Wozniak) whereas the other individual possesses the overall project design/vision. Personally I think you're probably right as Steve Jobs & Romero are overrated in general and their technical counterparts did a fuck-ton more to advance their respective industries but the "face of the company" always gets the credit.
The pairing of Carmack and Romero has always struck me as a great example of left brain and right brain coming together to complement each others strengths. One gives form and function, the other gives color and creativity.
@@jonathanjimmyshearman2500I expected the reply to this comment to be about how left and right brain doesn't actually exist, not .... that. Edit: I'm so glad someone liked this comment so that I could be reminded of this.
@@adamnielson42 Yeah, I looked at that comment and was ..."startled " I guess is the word. But I'm getting old, and many comments I see on the internet just don't make sense to me anymore.
Carmack has said he’s not one to look into the past, but during this interview and especially this segment, the feelings of nostalgia were palpable. He’s also much less harsh with words. I like how much he’s grown.
John Carmack might have been the genius who worked tirelessly to meticulously create and code revolutionary game engines. The engines he created were so advanced, especially when compared to anything else during the '90s, that some of the Quake Engine's DNA still resides in modern engines even after 25 years. However, it was the team around him, the likes of Sandy Peterson, American McGee, and especially John Romero that gave John Carmack a purpose.
yes exactly. A lot of people tend to give way too much credit to autore types like John Carmack and hideyokojima who seem like they do a lot more for a project than they actually do there are dozens or sometimes hundreds of people working at these companies designing programming writing and creating sometimes even more than the kojima's of their team and I think those people deserve a lot more of our respect than the John CarMax and hideo kojimas of the world even though they do still deserve our respect they are merely the face of the group not the entire body.
@@wearecoterminousID Software had around 5 programmers during the development of Doom. John Carmack was like a human coding machine. If it wouldn't have been for him, the games would not be nearly as efficient as they were accessible, which helped alot with briniging the games to the masses. That's the true genius of a great coder. This is why I understand the appeal of giving John Carmack a great amount of credit but at the end of the day, everyone has their place as cogs in a wheel.
@@synthguy7774 it's no denying that carmack is an absolute monster, but everyone else had significant and undeniable contributions without which idSoft just wouldn't have been the same (or as successful imo).
@@mgk-metalgearkelly5054 I wasn't denying that at all. I was just giving an explanation as to to why John Carmack gets so much credit even though everyone else at ID Software played just as much of an important role within the team. I think we are in agreement.
Shortly after Romero left, Carmack posted to Slashdot that "a properly focused Romero is an asset to any team", and it was just hard for him to keep his focus on what needed to be done at Id. So there never really was any bad blood, it was a matter of differences in opinion that made it difficult to work with Romero in the direction Id was going. Carmack is a typical nerd -- he wants to keep all his long-time friends. Kinda like Steve Wozniak who still speaks highly of Jobs, even though Jobs was a jerk to him.
@@bitwize There was definitely bad blood and Carmack did say negative things about him at the time, as Romero did about him. It just wasn't as bad or as bitter or as long lasting as people wanted to make it out to be. It's interesting to hear Carmack admit that he was in the wrong, though. He's expressed vague regret about things in the past, but I don't think I've ever heard him flatout admit to mishandling things before.
Carmack always seems to overlook the creative workload involved in level and art design. There's a reason the first two Doom games and Quake 1 still hold up so well long after the technical prowess behind the engine has been surpassed, there's a tremendous amount of work put into making those games fun to play and that's something Carmack could never capture himself despite his coding brilliance. the first 2 IdTech engines were groundbreaking in terms of technical acheivements but the Id games that showcased them also wrote the book on FPS design.
I enjoyed Doom 3 quite a bit. It's enormously more sophisticated in terms of level and art design than Quake or Doom, even taking into account that it came out much later. Doom and Quake are iconic and have excellent level design, but they were crammed with the tropes of previous games. I'd say they crystalised the general conventions that were floating around at that time in first person shooters and solidified the genre into something tangible, but they didn't do anything revolutionary in terms of level design. For that you'd look at Half Life or maybe Deus Ex. So I think you're downplaying Carmack's talent a little. I've enjoyed almost everything Id have come out with since the split between these two, whereas Romero's work has been uniformly pretty bad.
@@thesprawl2361 Quake and Doom were crammed with tropes of previous games? There were no previous games of that calibre before Doom and Quake. Doom is the standard WAD from which a thousand others sprang (Hexen, Blood, Ion Fury, etc..) And Quake is the grandfather of all 3D fps games, and was the origin of CounterStrike (Action Quake) and Team Fortress and far more. They *are* the trope. That makes Mecha's point more valid, not less.
@@Shamino1 Of course they were crammed with tropes. The fact that you don't remember the games that preceded them and influenced them doesn't make it any less true. Doom and Quake crystalised the disparate elements that already existed in various games that came before into one genre whole. They didn't do anything that revolutionary, what made them iconic is that they simultaneously did a whole bunch of things phenomenally well.
Without Tom Hall, Doom probably would have never happened. That game was his idea originally. He's the one who wrote the "Doom Bible" after all. Of course, the final game was a massive departure from what was laid out in the Doom Bible. The released game is massively different from what was originally envisioned. But the truth still stands: Doom was originally Tom Hall's baby.
@@DeadPixel1105I love Tom Hall but the idea for Doom came from their dnd campaign where they flooded their world with demons, Tom of course added to it but it was a lot of Carmack as well.
@@cr4zyg047 I remember reading in a magazine that had an interview with member(s) of Ion Storm, and it just sounded like they were spending excessively, and I was like WHO is funding this? I mean I remember they had a movie theater built into the office, there were beds for employees to sleep in. They hadn't made a game yet, it seemed like people were just throwing money at them because they had PAST successes with other people. I can't remember if it was in the same magazine, or a later one that had the Daikatana ad, but I just remember feeling sick, like could a guy be any more narcissistic?
When you see Carmack, you see the perfection in code and the perfect optimisation. But if you play "knee deep in the dead" , you know you need romero's Work for the Work of Carmack to shine
That's exactly what happens here - two great men working together despite the fact they had different approach to a work process. It's such a rare situation when two big talents work hand in hand to give us a timeless masterpiece.
I was listening to Romero's autobiography and while he tries to stay as gracious as possible, you can still hear the frustration in his voice when he talks about their falling out. The very same frustration you can hear in Carmack's voice as well. They really are like old exes trying to stay on good terms. The current status quo the two have going on is friendly enough, but I'd be willing to bet if you somehow got them on the same project again, all the old disagreements are going to come right back like it was yesterday.
Both of those gentlemen are hero’s of my childhood! To hear Carmack sitting down with Lex is a treat. Your podcast keeps getting better and better Lex! Cheers!
Carmack is a legendary programmer. I remember when he came out with the 3DFX driver for Quake like overnight. It’s great to see how he owns his mistakes and has grown as a human being. Much love always John! We all still benefit from your genius.
When you're as gifted and hard working as Carmack it's very likely that you feel that everyone around you is definitely not good enough or not putting in the work for not being able to keep up with you. It's probably something that he eventually matured enough to understand. People are not robots at the end of the day.
He is very typical of his archetype. Gifted intellectually but cannot understand people-- for instance he married Anna Kang from id software, the first woman who ever showed him attention in his life. She basically just "took" him, sensing his social weakness.
@@1lapmagic There are accounts of Carmack dating before he met Anna Kang and she only worked at id because he asked her to because he wanted her to move to Dallas. Weird little narrative you've developed in your head, there.
One man engineering a solution and the other creating inspiration and art. Unfortunately neither knew anything about managing people. If only we could all learn from this wisdom in our careers and in family at a young age. There’s always some compromise to be made.
3:57 Thank you for this question!! So important to ask it and to bring up the positiveness of their collaboration. Carmack and Romero are just a wonderful duo that made magic. The Softdisk days are legendary!
ID Software felt somewhat soulless to me after Romero left. Technically they were still great, but they lost a lot of the feel and atmosphere that made ID games so good, something Romero contributed to immensely. On the other side, Romero with Daikatana was too ambitious with game design and didn't have the structure and restraint to release a functional game based on those ambitions. Both are legends for what they've done for PC gaming overall and together, they were pretty much unstoppable.
Romero hasn't produced anything relevant since, to me it really shows he needs the drive of someone like Carmack to produce good games without it he's a shell
When Romero's Daikatana finally came out, i was shocked. It looked like a piece of s!it. Its a little bit sad, Romero and Carmack could have made amazing games together for a longer time.
A little after 7:00 he mentions that John Romero asked him to collaborate. That would be such an unbelievably huge headline if he agreed. That would be like Paul McCartney and Ringo announcing a new album.
Not really. Neither of these guys have been meaningful to video games for well over 20 years. I feel like your comparison is very boomery and getting stuck in the past of personalities like this is boomery too.
@@M.W.H. comment has nothing to do about whether it's possible and everything to do with whether it'd be some humongous story. Read for comprehension or don't bother typing. Not everyone needs your insipid input.
oh wow never thought I'd see Super genus alien in person suit, time traveling space wizard, actual rocket scientist, experimental artificial intelligence gone rouge, benevolent hyper intelligent architect of the post-singularity simulation we all live in, and sentient galaxy brain meme John Carmack on this show
I’ve listened to Masters of Doom audiobook more than I’d like to admit. I wish there was an update where each person can ammend any inaccuracies to get the record straight. Either way, it’s a fantastic read/listen! They all made mistakes (like Carmack said), being young and on fire. Rockstars. It’s good to see them slowly start to own up to the mistakes over the years and try to see the positives. This was an excellent podcast!
According to Romero every word of the book is truth, so one of them must be lying, but regardless of who it is, its clear the book makes romero look like the victim and carmack like an egomaniac, so take from that what you will.
@@dfghj241nowadays people can easily get TRT prescribed. that's pretty much what this is about entirely. i mean, just look at the actor who played dinesh in silicon valley, dude looks like a bollywood action movie hero nowadays! whereas before he was the typical indian nerd programmer 😂😂😂 can't get face gains without a little bit of extra help. i'm not criticizing them btw, if they don't overdo it it's probably a healthier way to go through life than without.
The FPS Genre would be in a different place if Carmack and Romero never worked their magic together. Their FPS Games not only built the Genre as we know it, but they clearly defined the rules and built it from the ground up. Personally i don't know any Gamer my age (40's) that hasn't played DOOM.
@@demonface2712 The leap from Wolf 3D to Doom was HUGE, so was the leap from Doom to Quake. I mean I can play Doom now and have fun, Wolf 3D just feels boring/samey. I mean I've played Hovertank and Catacomb 3-D too, and I'd rather play those again over Wolf 3D.
It's like Bauhaus. Romero and Carmack are like Murphy and Ash. It took a heart attack to make these two get together, forget and forgive, and even are on tour right now. I saw them live a year ago, they released a new song this year. It would be amazing to see these two legends collaborating on some game in the future.
This is such a specific analogy that only makes sense at the intersection of id nerds and goth kids but if you're in that part of the Venn diagram it's great.
Genius but I can only imagine he was probably very hard to work for. But that is a key ingredient in many great leaders, they expect you to be pushed and give them your best product.
I read Masters of Doom recently, and it definitely highlighted that every new id game's essence was built on what Carmack did - however over time those new engines were coming slower and slower, and everyone was waiting on him sometimes for months, all the while it was difficult to communicate with him, being completely engulfed in his work. So uncertainty was definitely playing a part in the rest of id of where they are going, what are they doing etc. While contradicting their idea of how the company should be run, some better project management would probably have helped them keep going longer.
Yeah, Carmack is a very complicated individual it seems. There are two passages of the book that stuck with me regarding this: One is where he takes his elderly cat to a shelter to be euthanized because the cat was sort of cranky and pissing on stuff, and he is very "don't know, don't care" about it. The other is how he gets very angry that the team was asking him to include secret rooms in moving walls, something that he felt like would make his code "dirty" or something. In all honesty he was probably a hard guy to work with
@@Illusionaire1 That's what it takes to be the best at what you do and alter the landscape of whatever you're trying to acomplish in an unprecedented way. Then again, they were kids
Romero has spoken in multiple interviews about this split, and I believe his version: - Romero and everyone else on the team WANTED to work on games, but Carmack just nerded away at the engine and rewrote it over and over (over 8 times) which meant throwing away all level design work and art over and over again. And game scripts had to be deleted because Carmack kept rewriting the scripting language. - Furthermore, since the engine wasn't done, they had no idea what they really can design or what will be too heavy for the machines, so they had no way to design great levels in case they would run too slowly. - And lastly he mentioned that the level design tools were absolute torture to work with and had very convoluted workflows that involved some kind of slow, backwards modeling. - They wanted to expand the team to speed up engine progress but Carmack refused, believing that a larger company is worse. - All of this contributed to everyone else burning out due to Carmack's years of delays and constant rewrites. - When the engine was finally complete, every art/level creator on the team were completely burned out and didn't even want to make a game anymore. All because of Carmack's torturous rewrites of the engine having broken their inspiration. - Several people left during development. Half the team left after Quake was done. This is why I believe Romero. Carmack was simply a tech guy with perfectionism. He was not a team player. And due to Carmack being on the spectrum, he saw everyone else as "not working" even though they were all held up by him and his constant rewrites. - After the split, we can clearly see what each brought to Id: Carmack's newer games are boring engine tech demos. Romero's newer games are artistic visions with bad engines. Both of them needed each other.
@@MyAmazingUsername On the book, they talk about how Carmack saw things like walls that would open up (for secrets) as being "code-hacks", so we can imagine that he probably had this idea of the "ideal, clean, perfect code" and anything else resonated very badly with him. As someone on the spectrum like myself, I can totally understand it... So Yeah, I can see how the constant rewrites would make people very mad, specially because I would guess most of it wasn't for any practical reason that would affect the final result, only carmack being perfectionist about the code, not the result.
@@Illusionaire1 Well said. It's clear that Carmack enjoyed the process of creating super clean code and perfecting it and making very advanced technology. That's fun stuff to do in your spare time, but he did it on company time while everyone else was waiting on him, and it doesn't seem like he understood that the others can't work if the tools keep breaking/rewriting/changing. I can also understand his feelings that "he's the one with the super big brain, writing super advanced code", which led to him wishing that he didn't even share the company ownership with any of the others. He probably also felt that the artists/designers didn't even understand or appreciate how hard his engine work was. He's somewhat justified in both of those feelings. I can see why both sides began to resent each other. The team torturously waiting on him, and him thinking they're "doing nothing". It's no wonder why half of them quit and one didn't even show up to work at all for the final month before Quake launched. That was "American McGee", and Romero has often said that McGee "snapped" in the end with all the bad working conditions and bad atmosphere. Despite all of the conflicts, Quake's engine really was a masterpiece. High performance rendering even without 3D cards. Great features for its time. It even became the basis for the Half-Life Source engine. And Quake itself was a classic with its gritty artstyle and great level design (they were very memorable levels even though they rushed the design when the engine was finally done). So in the end, they all created something fantastic together. :D As a kid, I had no idea that Id was in so much trouble. All I saw was the masterpiece Quake, which me and my friends played and modded for years, and it was a staple at our LAN parties for 10 years after its release! I remember creating Quake texture WADs, to get better visibility for lootable items in multiplayer. One of the greatest games of all time.
The original id software team was like the Dream Team of gaming development. They had such a passion and excitment. For me, Wolf3d, Doom 1 & 2 and Quake are still the best games ever made. I remember the antecipation for Quake...every magazine or website only talked about this game. It was a truly magical moment in the game industry. I bought a video card only to play this game. It was really tragic when Romero left id. Everyone lost. Id was never the same again, Romero lost big time, the public never got to play an incredible id game again. It was a tragedy for the whole gaming community. BTW Lets not forget the other id team members. Even though Romero and John Carmack were great, the other guys were equally amazing. Adrian Carmack and Kevin Cloud did a TON of awesome art for those games. Tom Hall did A LOT of work for Wolf3d and Doom 1. Sandy Petersen and American Mcgee did A LOT of awesome levels for Doom and Quake. AND the amazing sound design and music made by Bob Prince (wolf3d, Doom 1 & 2)and Trent Reznor (Quake) for those games.
You can draw a direct line for almost any good FPS back to iD and Romero/Carmack. From Valorant to Half Life, and not to mention Romero giving Warren Spector a shot and giving life to Deus Ex.
I've come to bring unspoken truths. Daikatana is better than Quake 2... now. At launch not at all. But after the patches and specially after modding the companions - the one that makes them act like Mass Effect companions, where they follow your character very closely and simply teleport behind you if they get stuck in the geometry of the level is a god send... also, if they die, they revive after the surrounding enemies are dead. But design-wise it's a great game. It was just a little too ambitious for it's time, the tech for the AI companions was just not there yet.
I'm curious how Daikatana would have been if those terrain-meshes were available - that's now relatively old tech, but much better than the previous node-based layout where ai ran in the exact middle of the hall, because that's where they were allowed to run)
Romero was always the creatively gifted one, his visions for games were just too ambitious for the time. Carmack on the other hand has always been pushing gaming technology forward, with the caveat of his ambition being that everything else is secondary.
What, did you carry a handful of floppy disks with you everywhere you went? Or is it that your Christian parents LEARNED of you playing Doom, and that was a paddlin'? :P
I'm surprised that Carmack still hasn't come to terms with the fact that design requires a lot of thinking and not necessarily typing. Designers can look like they are just goofing around and not doing actual productive work but they really aren't because they are just approaching the problem from a designers perspective - which is to create the fun
as much of a genius as he is he's kind of a dirtbag he may have gotten better with age but at his core he's only seeing how far he can push a toy in his own way.
7:35 - LOVE how Carmack shines up when talking about the Dungeons'n'dragons days. They all used to play long nightly sessions at the Shreveport Lakehouse, back in the early 90s!
That’s cool. He bought up one big point that many overlook; These dudes were on top of the technological and gaming world in their mid 20s. I personally wouldn’t have known what to do with all that at that age. It’s nice that both of them can look back and see with more wisdom that each had their weaknesses and strengths. I’ll always tip my hat to the original Doom team and may they continue to do great things.
People somehow give Carmack so much shit for Quake 2 and 3, but I love those games. They might be relatively simple, but to call them tech demos is so disrespectful to the spirit of those games and the work that went into them. They were fast, brutal combat simulators. There's a magic there that people refuse to acknowledge.
Rage is the one that people unfairly criticize. Like honestly, I couldn't care less that it's not fallout. I love the way its a lot simpler and more linear than something like that The gsmrplay was rock solid and it was a cool world. Plus it looked incredible for a ps3 360 game
Carmack is really good at what he does. I think Romero's strength was identifying talent and giving them the chance to work. Without Romero, Deus Ex would never have existed
@@m0rvidusm0rvidus18 if those people otherwise wouldn't get the chance to Make what they want, is it exploitation? Warren Spector was about to sign his life over to EA, which even then had a rep for shuttering great studios. How would that be better? Romero offering Warren his own studio and a chance to make the game of his dreams, while fighting to keep the publishers off Warren's back, seems pretty far from exploration to me.
I think you're putting a little too much onus on Romero there. Spector was already well known by the time he got to Ion Storm. He was editor-in-chief at Steve Jackson Games during the 80s, then went to TSR and had a hand in the 2nd edition AD&D ruleset and Spelljammer, was at Origin for four years during their peak, consulted and managed the Looking Glass crew during the development of Ultima Underworld, System Shock, and Thief 1 before leaving and eventually choosing to join Romero instead of EA. Romero's big contribution was his promise of unlimited freedom for Spector to make the game he wanted with the team he wanted without pressure from clueless corporate suits and bankrolled it to make it a reality.
Carmack and Romero were like left and right lobes of the brain... Carmack was the left lobe... doing logic, maths and all that Romero was the right lobe... doing creativity, imagination and design There are two things I want to happen. Them collaborating again for a game, maybe work fully together with id Software once more for a Quake sequel and Raven Software using an idTech again for another masterpiece and to be freed from CoD mines.
When you are as brilliant and hard working as Carmack, everybody else probably seem either stupid or lazy. To me id software was never the same after Romero left. It was sort of metal and cool in the Doom and Quake 1 years. Idk, it's hard to nail what made those games so special, but Q2 was the first game I thought: "It's really good, but it doesn't feel like an id game no more. It has completely different vibe to it. Blockbuster vibe, Playstation vibe, very professional, but kinda a bit in the same vain what everyone else is doing".
One of the things I love about present-day Id is they're really trying to bring the metal back, at least for Doom. Their Doom Eternal team lead cut a promo for Doom Eternal at a con that called back to their pitch for "The Fight for Justice".
At that age I needed a "framework" and lots of patience from all the people around me and I had friends whom I wore out. I think I can relate to Romero in that way.
Also if there is one member in a team doing all the dirty work taking most of the time - programming, new technologies - it doesn't mean other members who don't work that much are less valuable. There will be always that one guy who is overperforming and knows more than the others in crucial area of the business.
I always find it amazing when i look back at the team that made Doom and Doom 2. Because alot of individuals either did or had a hand in making something alot of gamers know them for. Johns for Doom, American McGee for Alice, i think of the other guys in the team went to work with the crew that made Gears, theres alot that i cant remember right now, but that fucking team man... when you work with a team that makes something that legendary and then the crew split and proceed to make legendary games or gave a hand in them, youve got a special team of people there man. And for me, Doom is always gonna be my absolute favorite game of all time. For 1 reason. It blends 2 of my absolute favorite thing in life. Heavy Metal and Video Games. Not just any heavy metal. THRASH METAL! CLASSICAL! GROOVE!!! You hear Pantera, you hear Black Sabbath, Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, these crazy bastards managed to perflectly blend 80's/90's metal with a 90's video game and make it feel like youre experiencing the best of both worlds. Thats why ill always say Doom 93 to me is the greatest game ever. YTMND.
I wish they'd work together on a small project. I know it's unrealistic but it's like the beatles breaking up. They had great solo careers but it sucks that we never got a reunion. Would certainly be a better use of Carmack's time than making zucks metaverse nightmare come true.
Carmack and Romero are famously the gaming equivalent of Lennon and McCartney. Both partnerships fell apart, but it's good to know that now Carmack and Romero can be mature about it and even recognize some regrets. That's far better than the jabs that Lennon and McCartney were making at each other through released songs on their albums.
Man... sorry he still didn't learn to be more gracious at his age... every good comment he had for romero, he had to balance it out with a negative one, almost like he has judgement ocd...
Imagine the framework of a first person shooter without idsoftware. While there were certainly first person perspective games before hoovertank 3d, catacomb 3d, wolfenstein 3d, etc, Wolfenstein 3D from id truly set the early standard and guidelines for how a first person shooter title should feel. I fear without ID fps games all might feel closer to slow paced shooters, or something like system shock.
We already had 3D maze like games. They were slow, focused on exploration and were more popular as RPG games with stats and menus like the D&D games. Problem was RPG games were super niche back then and often seen as too nerdy for most people. ID's action games were completely different. Fast, visceral, loud, eerie and those great memorable soundtracks. No wonder they blew everyone away.
John + John and because the times have changed and developed, one more thing is needed, a story that surpasses other games must also be added. Beyond FPS
John Carmack needed John Romero for Quake 2, there's no way that the latter John would've let those muzzle flashes go missing. The chaingun's 200 bullets in 5 seconds was super cool, and it didn't even have Romero's polish.
Carmack is fascinating to listen to, he seems 100% genuine. He's brilliant, intense, the way he talks about his accomplishments can come off as arrogant but he's more than earned a little pridefulness. For a genius, he's remarkably grounded
And this is why you should never judge the contribution of others, or it will drive you mad. Know your limits and accept the imperfection of others. Take as much as necessary and as little as possible. Give everything but don't give up yourself.
i developed a searing dislike for romero when i once told him i didnt like doom 3 and how they redesigned everything, that all the demons should be faithful updates and he gaslit me then blocked me. Then years later they go and do what I wanted them to do. Needless to say I'll never purchase their games ever again.
He probably thought you were trolling because Romero had absolutely nothing to do with Doom 3. Did you ever see the photos of someone asking Romero to sign his copy of Doom 3?
For Doom, I see carmack/romero as follows, Carmack created the canvas (Doom engine) and Romero the paint (crazy fun gameplay, level designs, a lots of tools), one wouldn't exist without the other
Great interview.......Carmack is a smart, smart guy and did incredible things with and without Romero. For a while there, they were the "Lennon & McCartney" of gaming. And to his credit, he admits what he got right and what he got wrong - and despite falling out with Romero he's not afraid to credit him for his accomplishments and what he learnt from him, and what they did together. Kudos to you John Carmack.
I always thought Romero got a raw deal. I mean, he did _fine_ after Id, but I still think he got screwed. Romero's point was that they had made all the money, already, they didn't _need_ to be in permanent crunch mode all the time and they could afford to work at a more comfortable pace. Carmack is an all-in or all-out kind guy, though and he didn't have the experience in the industry that the others did. Romero was probably leaning too much in the opposite direction, too, but, I mean, he _was_ working on things. It sounds like Carmack regrets the way it was handled, too. It's hard to hate on any of them, it's just kind of frustrating in hind sight.
Yeh, turned out Carmack was right. Romero was wrong, you can't work at a casual pace, because that leads to something like Duke Nukem Forever, "when its done" ... a huge lull in productivity causes the technology to outpace your game making it redundant and dated fast. To keep up with the changing technology, you have to get your game out while the tech is still relevant. Carmack was smart enough to understand this it seems, but not Romero.
It's a shame the band can't get back together for something. The game development landscape has changed too much. Too corporatized/too monetized. Romero and Adrian Carmack made a little video about starting a project like 5 or so years ago, and nothing ever came of it. Just no funding out there.
It's clear they should have reached a compromise. Carmack should have allowed the company to grow a little bit in number of employees. Romero should have tried to reign in his rock star image and stay a little bit more focused.
Quake was supposed to be more of a melee combat ( lighting magic, and a magic hammer ) ,with the main character being named QUAKE , after took Carmack and a team over to get the engine ready , the reason it became an FPS is because the team was burned out after a year of development on tech that wasn’t ready , again Carmack got over a to get the engine ready but after it was ready he let a burn out team to pick the FPS route because it was easier , John C has done a lot technically but tech with no design sense it (Romero) because just a tech demon alas Doom 3 , and design without a Tech supervisor it becomes Daikatana.
hell, he even SOUNDS like a total NERD! dude was/is a complete genius. I thank iD for bringing us such epic titles. One cant help but wonder what would have become of a proper Romero + Carmack team-up (co-op). Who knows what awesome benchmark they would have set for games, if they had found a way to work together longer
I think the best example is: Romero + Carmark = the classic, perfect games we know and love. Doom, Quake, etc etc Romero = Daikatana. Pretty much nuff said. They both need each other to create something exceptional
Carmark has done a lot of games after Romero. But Romero peaked with Doom and now gives speeches for beer money. So, he turned to be least important person in the company.
Carmack hasn’t yet understood that pushing his very peculiar and extreme work ethic on others, thinking of hat everyone else is a lazy bum, isn’t really fair. He is an incredible person and a genius but seems very hard to work with even in his more mature years…
I'm pretty confident that the industry at whole benefited from Romero getting ousted, I doubt iD Software would've made Deus Ex or Thief (if not as big tech advancements they were arguably even bigger contributions to 3D game design than Doom or Quake were). like Carmack said he wanted to keep the company small
The problem was that one guy got in Carmack's head and had him push everyone out over time because that one guy (can't remember his name but he just RECENTLY left ID software after so many decades, and he was well known as a snake who only wanted more fame and power and control, and he had Carmack's ear more than Romero). Carmack definitely knows he f'd up by making things more corporate and listening to that snake and overall ruining the company. It is kind of like an amazing band that does a few spectacular Albums that people talk about for decades, but they can't stand each other and break up when they are in their prime. Only for them to realize what a mistake it was later in life and everyone regrets the decisions they made because it just led to a bunch of other dudes taking over the band, calling themselves the same name, but not making the same quality music. I would love to see all these guys get back together like The Beatles and play music again as a team. It would be amazing to see what they could come up with if they all worked together.
Thr only thing I heard in this segment of this interview is sincere admiration from John Carmack towards John Romero. Kudos to both of these gentlemen, gaming world would be so much different without them.
I like how humble carmack is Usually people with his kinda history just say shit like "oh it just didn't work out" or "things could've been better" but carmack owns up and says "I was an idiot and it bit me in the ass"
I look up to older games like doom, mega man x, to what they did with limited technology to make simple but satisfying gameplay. How the gameplay is well thought out and levels are designed to complement that gameplay. How all areas try to be unique, how encounters are fairly balanced throuought the game. Programming likely takes much more effort than designing, but good design is what makes a game timeless and not another tripple A spectacle.
I wonder if Tom Hall's VR game has many empty rooms without purpose 😅 Sorry, just a stupid Doom joke I had to put here, of course kudos to whole ID Software team for changing game industry forever for better!
People talk about Hawking, Einstein, Jung and Sagan, but John Carmack is one of the smartest people on the planet and should pass into legendary status with those heroes of intellect.
Yeah, but since Carmack is a literal future-tech alien built overclocked quantum brain placed into a moore's law shattering vat grown synthetic hybrid clone body... it's kind of cheating to include him in the list.....
John Carmack programmed the Doom engine when he was just 21. One of the most legendary programmers ever. Yes John Romero and Carmack needed each other but no one doubts that Carmack was one of the greatest programmers ever
John Romero was good for the work he did on Id, having said this, he was not a good designer in my view. His levels were terrible when considering modern designer practices. I understand fps games were very new at the time, but the levels were really bad. You may say, go easy on him, it was a long time ago, but take a game like super Mario bros, game design there is still as brilliant as ever, a master class.
1:22 You definitely weren't mature about it. Yes, you worked harder but some people just can't work at the pace that you do. I feel like John felt like he was the only one working hard while everyone slacked. 3:31 You didn't love them because you pushed your friend/friends out. :-/ But yeah, that's part of growing up.
Carmack and Romero should work on one more collaboration. Their egos have shrunk enough, no need to give up their independent projects but…why not? Everyone would buy it. And it would be good. Come on guys
Carmack and Romero were like yin and yang for the games iD created, once they went on separate ways Carmack's games became little more than advanced tech demos for his new engines while Romero's games failed because of the missing technical innovations and quality. After the separation iD games lacked that magic that was the product of their collaboration. On a positive note: that separation resulted indirectly the creation of one of the greatest games of all times: Deus Ex
To bad Deus Ex was a flash in the pan, and nothing good game after it.
@@ValdVincent What a shame.
Well... I liked daikatana too, when it came out... it was a trip lol
I would strongly disagree with that. Carmack was and is exponentially more talented than Romero. Id have continued to release phenomenal games post their split while Romero has done precisely fuckall except sully his reputation with mindless dreck.
@@thesprawl2361 I think he's getting at the old Steve Jobs/Wozniak partnership where one individual is obviously vastly more talented from a technical perspective (Carmack/Wozniak) whereas the other individual possesses the overall project design/vision. Personally I think you're probably right as Steve Jobs & Romero are overrated in general and their technical counterparts did a fuck-ton more to advance their respective industries but the "face of the company" always gets the credit.
The pairing of Carmack and Romero has always struck me as a great example of left brain and right brain coming together to complement each others strengths. One gives form and function, the other gives color and creativity.
LOOOOOOOOOOL!!! SKADOOBY!....that was a bloopdooby on Carmack, LOOOOOOOOOOOOL!
@@jonathanjimmyshearman2500I expected the reply to this comment to be about how left and right brain doesn't actually exist, not .... that.
Edit: I'm so glad someone liked this comment so that I could be reminded of this.
Nicely put, andrew.
@@adamnielson42 Yeah, I looked at that comment and was ..."startled " I guess is the word. But I'm getting old, and many comments I see on the internet just don't make sense to me anymore.
Right Brain: "I LIKE OEROS & PUSSY... And I cried for at least an hour after watching Toy Story 3!"
Carmack has said he’s not one to look into the past, but during this interview and especially this segment, the feelings of nostalgia were palpable. He’s also much less harsh with words. I like how much he’s grown.
John Carmack might have been the genius who worked tirelessly to meticulously create and code revolutionary game engines. The engines he created were so advanced, especially when compared to anything else during the '90s, that some of the Quake Engine's DNA still resides in modern engines even after 25 years. However, it was the team around him, the likes of Sandy Peterson, American McGee, and especially John Romero that gave John Carmack a purpose.
yes exactly. A lot of people tend to give way too much credit to autore types like John Carmack and hideyokojima who seem like they do a lot more for a project than they actually do there are dozens or sometimes hundreds of people working at these companies designing programming writing and creating sometimes even more than the kojima's of their team and I think those people deserve a lot more of our respect than the John CarMax and hideo kojimas of the world even though they do still deserve our respect they are merely the face of the group not the entire body.
@@wearecoterminousID Software had around 5 programmers during the development of Doom. John Carmack was like a human coding machine. If it wouldn't have been for him, the games would not be nearly as efficient as they were accessible, which helped alot with briniging the games to the masses. That's the true genius of a great coder. This is why I understand the appeal of giving John Carmack a great amount of credit but at the end of the day, everyone has their place as cogs in a wheel.
i love sandy i watch his cool cthulu videos
@@synthguy7774 it's no denying that carmack is an absolute monster, but everyone else had significant and undeniable contributions without which idSoft just wouldn't have been the same (or as successful imo).
@@mgk-metalgearkelly5054 I wasn't denying that at all. I was just giving an explanation as to to why John Carmack gets so much credit even though everyone else at ID Software played just as much of an important role within the team. I think we are in agreement.
I love to see Lex pull the positives out of people. I never thought I’d hear Carmack singing Romero’s praises.
So fantastic.
And Tom Hall too 😊
@@KaiElan I was actually gonna edit that into my comment! So true! Makes me really happy.
It was so good to hear Carmack talk about Romero.
Shortly after Romero left, Carmack posted to Slashdot that "a properly focused Romero is an asset to any team", and it was just hard for him to keep his focus on what needed to be done at Id. So there never really was any bad blood, it was a matter of differences in opinion that made it difficult to work with Romero in the direction Id was going.
Carmack is a typical nerd -- he wants to keep all his long-time friends. Kinda like Steve Wozniak who still speaks highly of Jobs, even though Jobs was a jerk to him.
@@bitwize There was definitely bad blood and Carmack did say negative things about him at the time, as Romero did about him. It just wasn't as bad or as bitter or as long lasting as people wanted to make it out to be. It's interesting to hear Carmack admit that he was in the wrong, though. He's expressed vague regret about things in the past, but I don't think I've ever heard him flatout admit to mishandling things before.
Carmack always seems to overlook the creative workload involved in level and art design. There's a reason the first two Doom games and Quake 1 still hold up so well long after the technical prowess behind the engine has been surpassed, there's a tremendous amount of work put into making those games fun to play and that's something Carmack could never capture himself despite his coding brilliance.
the first 2 IdTech engines were groundbreaking in terms of technical acheivements but the Id games that showcased them also wrote the book on FPS design.
I enjoyed Doom 3 quite a bit. It's enormously more sophisticated in terms of level and art design than Quake or Doom, even taking into account that it came out much later.
Doom and Quake are iconic and have excellent level design, but they were crammed with the tropes of previous games. I'd say they crystalised the general conventions that were floating around at that time in first person shooters and solidified the genre into something tangible, but they didn't do anything revolutionary in terms of level design. For that you'd look at Half Life or maybe Deus Ex.
So I think you're downplaying Carmack's talent a little. I've enjoyed almost everything Id have come out with since the split between these two, whereas Romero's work has been uniformly pretty bad.
@@thesprawl2361 Quake and Doom were crammed with tropes of previous games? There were no previous games of that calibre before Doom and Quake. Doom is the standard WAD from which a thousand others sprang (Hexen, Blood, Ion Fury, etc..) And Quake is the grandfather of all 3D fps games, and was the origin of CounterStrike (Action Quake) and Team Fortress and far more. They *are* the trope. That makes Mecha's point more valid, not less.
@@Shamino1 Of course they were crammed with tropes. The fact that you don't remember the games that preceded them and influenced them doesn't make it any less true. Doom and Quake crystalised the disparate elements that already existed in various games that came before into one genre whole. They didn't do anything that revolutionary, what made them iconic is that they simultaneously did a whole bunch of things phenomenally well.
@@thesprawl2361 Go ahead and list me 3 FPS games before Doom that had its tropes directly imported into Doom. I'll wait.
@@thesprawl2361 Name some... You keep talking of these 'tropes' yet name none...
One person who really doesn't get enough credit is Tom Hall. He proposed for things like teleporters and secrets, which defined classic fps framework
Stuff like that's still core in some of my fave games of all time
Without Tom Hall, Doom probably would have never happened. That game was his idea originally. He's the one who wrote the "Doom Bible" after all. Of course, the final game was a massive departure from what was laid out in the Doom Bible. The released game is massively different from what was originally envisioned. But the truth still stands: Doom was originally Tom Hall's baby.
@@DeadPixel1105I love Tom Hall but the idea for Doom came from their dnd campaign where they flooded their world with demons, Tom of course added to it but it was a lot of Carmack as well.
The whole Doom team outside of the 2 Johns don't get enough credit.
Eidos produced one of the best PC games ever made. Unfortunately for John Romero, it most definitely was not Daikatana, lol
True, if Carmack hadn't kicked him, we never would have gotten DX
Turns out, John Romero didn't make *anyone* his bitch with Daikatana
@@cr4zyg047 I remember reading in a magazine that had an interview with member(s) of Ion Storm, and it just sounded like they were spending excessively, and I was like WHO is funding this? I mean I remember they had a movie theater built into the office, there were beds for employees to sleep in. They hadn't made a game yet, it seemed like people were just throwing money at them because they had PAST successes with other people. I can't remember if it was in the same magazine, or a later one that had the Daikatana ad, but I just remember feeling sick, like could a guy be any more narcissistic?
he kinda indirectly made deus ex happen, so it was all worth it really
Daikatana is a hidden gem. It’s exhausting towards the end but it’s so diverse and fun to play through
When you see Carmack, you see the perfection in code and the perfect optimisation.
But if you play "knee deep in the dead" , you know you need romero's Work for the Work of Carmack to shine
Maybe one day they'll get back together and make once last game.
If that were true, there wouldn't be such a HUGE pool of A++ 3rd party stuff for the game though.
That's exactly what happens here - two great men working together despite the fact they had different approach to a work process. It's such a rare situation when two big talents work hand in hand to give us a timeless masterpiece.
@@hih1457 bro... that would be so fucking epic. no i mean, it would be so fucking id.
I was listening to Romero's autobiography and while he tries to stay as gracious as possible, you can still hear the frustration in his voice when he talks about their falling out. The very same frustration you can hear in Carmack's voice as well. They really are like old exes trying to stay on good terms. The current status quo the two have going on is friendly enough, but I'd be willing to bet if you somehow got them on the same project again, all the old disagreements are going to come right back like it was yesterday.
Disagreements make good content.
You can see he has had so much growth thanks to these experiences with Romero. Sometimes people need space and time to heal.
Ron De'Santis is the best fucking thing to have happened to the sorry excuse of a nation called USA since Ronald Reagan.
Both of those gentlemen are hero’s of my childhood!
To hear Carmack sitting down with Lex is a treat.
Your podcast keeps getting better and better Lex!
Cheers!
Carmack is a legendary programmer. I remember when he came out with the 3DFX driver for Quake like overnight. It’s great to see how he owns his mistakes and has grown as a human being. Much love always John! We all still benefit from your genius.
Sort of owns. He never really owns it
When you're as gifted and hard working as Carmack it's very likely that you feel that everyone around you is definitely not good enough or not putting in the work for not being able to keep up with you. It's probably something that he eventually matured enough to understand. People are not robots at the end of the day.
He is very typical of his archetype. Gifted intellectually but cannot understand people-- for instance he married Anna Kang from id software, the first woman who ever showed him attention in his life. She basically just "took" him, sensing his social weakness.
@@1lapmagic There are accounts of Carmack dating before he met Anna Kang and she only worked at id because he asked her to because he wanted her to move to Dallas. Weird little narrative you've developed in your head, there.
@@Allen.Christian An empowered rich man marrying an ugly, nasty woman who offers nothing is a story of domination
@@1lapmagic I think I sense he’s understanding people under his intellect more and more from these interviews
@@demonface2712 As someone who has personally interacted with John as well as various other gifted nerds...he doesn't. Let me be plain about that.
One man engineering a solution and the other creating inspiration and art. Unfortunately neither knew anything about managing people. If only we could all learn from this wisdom in our careers and in family at a young age. There’s always some compromise to be made.
3:57 Thank you for this question!! So important to ask it and to bring up the positiveness of their collaboration. Carmack and Romero are just a wonderful duo that made magic. The Softdisk days are legendary!
ID Software felt somewhat soulless to me after Romero left. Technically they were still great, but they lost a lot of the feel and atmosphere that made ID games so good, something Romero contributed to immensely.
On the other side, Romero with Daikatana was too ambitious with game design and didn't have the structure and restraint to release a functional game based on those ambitions.
Both are legends for what they've done for PC gaming overall and together, they were pretty much unstoppable.
The gameplay definitely suffered. You can really tell how important John Romero was for that aspect.
Romero hasn't produced anything relevant since, to me it really shows he needs the drive of someone like Carmack to produce good games without it he's a shell
I can see where you're coming from, but I still believe that Quake 2, Doom 3, and Rage had unique atmospheres to them that feel uniquely "them."
When Romero's Daikatana finally came out, i was shocked. It looked like a piece of s!it. Its a little bit sad, Romero and Carmack could have made amazing games together for a longer time.
Doom 2016 and eternal are modern fps masterpieces
Jon Carmack might be the brains behind games like doom....but Jon Romero is the heart and soul of those games
John*
😂
A little after 7:00 he mentions that John Romero asked him to collaborate.
That would be such an unbelievably huge headline if he agreed. That would be like Paul McCartney and Ringo announcing a new album.
Not really. Neither of these guys have been meaningful to video games for well over 20 years. I feel like your comparison is very boomery and getting stuck in the past of personalities like this is boomery too.
Not dinging on Ringo, a much better comparison would be Lennon-McCartney, given the rep.
@@1lapmagic it's still possible.
@@Shad0wN1ck I was thinking more in terms of being alive, but I see what you're saying.
@@M.W.H. comment has nothing to do about whether it's possible and everything to do with whether it'd be some humongous story. Read for comprehension or don't bother typing. Not everyone needs your insipid input.
oh wow never thought I'd see Super genus alien in person suit, time traveling space wizard, actual rocket scientist, experimental artificial intelligence gone rouge, benevolent hyper intelligent architect of the post-singularity simulation we all live in, and sentient galaxy brain meme John Carmack on this show
yo civvie chill
That was quite the string of adjectives. One day I hope people refer to me that way. Space Wizard sounds neato.
Civvie 11 is that you???
I’ve listened to Masters of Doom audiobook more than I’d like to admit. I wish there was an update where each person can ammend any inaccuracies to get the record straight. Either way, it’s a fantastic read/listen!
They all made mistakes (like Carmack said), being young and on fire. Rockstars. It’s good to see them slowly start to own up to the mistakes over the years and try to see the positives. This was an excellent podcast!
Romero, to this day, says every word of Masters Of Doom is true
The amount of work and detail that went into this book is unbelievable
Check out "Prepare to Meet Thy Doom and More True Gaming Stories" - which is sort of a follow up.
According to Romero every word of the book is truth, so one of them must be lying, but regardless of who it is, its clear the book makes romero look like the victim and carmack like an egomaniac, so take from that what you will.
Every chapter ends with "EDIT: Hi Sandy, hope you're doing well"
This happens to a lot of us men, but holy shit what a powerful example Carmack is of someone “growing into their looks”
Taking good care of yourself helps a lot too!
@@bradley3549 money helps alot too!
@@dfghj241it wont help if your sleep schedule is bad.
@@dfghj241nowadays people can easily get TRT prescribed. that's pretty much what this is about entirely.
i mean, just look at the actor who played dinesh in silicon valley, dude looks like a bollywood action movie hero nowadays!
whereas before he was the typical indian nerd programmer 😂😂😂
can't get face gains without a little bit of extra help. i'm not criticizing them btw, if they don't overdo it it's probably a healthier way to go through life than without.
The FPS Genre would be in a different place if Carmack and Romero never worked their magic together.
Their FPS Games not only built the Genre as we know it, but they clearly defined the rules and built it from the ground up.
Personally i don't know any Gamer my age (40's) that hasn't played DOOM.
And the younger folks that dont olay games much or havent played doom, they love it. They feel its super intuitive and easy to read
Yeah have a friend who lets his 9 year old play Classic Doom Co-op with him and he says he’s getting pretty good
@@demonface2712 The leap from Wolf 3D to Doom was HUGE, so was the leap from Doom to Quake. I mean I can play Doom now and have fun, Wolf 3D just feels boring/samey. I mean I've played Hovertank and Catacomb 3-D too, and I'd rather play those again over Wolf 3D.
It's like Bauhaus. Romero and Carmack are like Murphy and Ash. It took a heart attack to make these two get together, forget and forgive, and even are on tour right now. I saw them live a year ago, they released a new song this year. It would be amazing to see these two legends collaborating on some game in the future.
This is such a specific analogy that only makes sense at the intersection of id nerds and goth kids but if you're in that part of the Venn diagram it's great.
@@princessmaly I can only talk for myself.
Carmack and Romero = Legends
you forgot sandy
and Adrian...
7:05 Wow, knowing that John Carmack and John Romero are speaking makes me so happy. I've waited almost 15 years for this to happen!!
Genius but I can only imagine he was probably very hard to work for. But that is a key ingredient in many great leaders, they expect you to be pushed and give them your best product.
I read Masters of Doom recently, and it definitely highlighted that every new id game's essence was built on what Carmack did - however over time those new engines were coming slower and slower, and everyone was waiting on him sometimes for months, all the while it was difficult to communicate with him, being completely engulfed in his work. So uncertainty was definitely playing a part in the rest of id of where they are going, what are they doing etc. While contradicting their idea of how the company should be run, some better project management would probably have helped them keep going longer.
Yeah, Carmack is a very complicated individual it seems. There are two passages of the book that stuck with me regarding this: One is where he takes his elderly cat to a shelter to be euthanized because the cat was sort of cranky and pissing on stuff, and he is very "don't know, don't care" about it. The other is how he gets very angry that the team was asking him to include secret rooms in moving walls, something that he felt like would make his code "dirty" or something.
In all honesty he was probably a hard guy to work with
@@Illusionaire1 That's what it takes to be the best at what you do and alter the landscape of whatever you're trying to acomplish in an unprecedented way. Then again, they were kids
Romero has spoken in multiple interviews about this split, and I believe his version:
- Romero and everyone else on the team WANTED to work on games, but Carmack just nerded away at the engine and rewrote it over and over (over 8 times) which meant throwing away all level design work and art over and over again. And game scripts had to be deleted because Carmack kept rewriting the scripting language.
- Furthermore, since the engine wasn't done, they had no idea what they really can design or what will be too heavy for the machines, so they had no way to design great levels in case they would run too slowly.
- And lastly he mentioned that the level design tools were absolute torture to work with and had very convoluted workflows that involved some kind of slow, backwards modeling.
- They wanted to expand the team to speed up engine progress but Carmack refused, believing that a larger company is worse.
- All of this contributed to everyone else burning out due to Carmack's years of delays and constant rewrites.
- When the engine was finally complete, every art/level creator on the team were completely burned out and didn't even want to make a game anymore. All because of Carmack's torturous rewrites of the engine having broken their inspiration.
- Several people left during development. Half the team left after Quake was done. This is why I believe Romero. Carmack was simply a tech guy with perfectionism. He was not a team player. And due to Carmack being on the spectrum, he saw everyone else as "not working" even though they were all held up by him and his constant rewrites.
- After the split, we can clearly see what each brought to Id: Carmack's newer games are boring engine tech demos. Romero's newer games are artistic visions with bad engines. Both of them needed each other.
@@MyAmazingUsername On the book, they talk about how Carmack saw things like walls that would open up (for secrets) as being "code-hacks", so we can imagine that he probably had this idea of the "ideal, clean, perfect code" and anything else resonated very badly with him. As someone on the spectrum like myself, I can totally understand it... So Yeah, I can see how the constant rewrites would make people very mad, specially because I would guess most of it wasn't for any practical reason that would affect the final result, only carmack being perfectionist about the code, not the result.
@@Illusionaire1 Well said. It's clear that Carmack enjoyed the process of creating super clean code and perfecting it and making very advanced technology. That's fun stuff to do in your spare time, but he did it on company time while everyone else was waiting on him, and it doesn't seem like he understood that the others can't work if the tools keep breaking/rewriting/changing.
I can also understand his feelings that "he's the one with the super big brain, writing super advanced code", which led to him wishing that he didn't even share the company ownership with any of the others. He probably also felt that the artists/designers didn't even understand or appreciate how hard his engine work was.
He's somewhat justified in both of those feelings. I can see why both sides began to resent each other. The team torturously waiting on him, and him thinking they're "doing nothing". It's no wonder why half of them quit and one didn't even show up to work at all for the final month before Quake launched. That was "American McGee", and Romero has often said that McGee "snapped" in the end with all the bad working conditions and bad atmosphere.
Despite all of the conflicts, Quake's engine really was a masterpiece. High performance rendering even without 3D cards. Great features for its time. It even became the basis for the Half-Life Source engine. And Quake itself was a classic with its gritty artstyle and great level design (they were very memorable levels even though they rushed the design when the engine was finally done). So in the end, they all created something fantastic together. :D As a kid, I had no idea that Id was in so much trouble. All I saw was the masterpiece Quake, which me and my friends played and modded for years, and it was a staple at our LAN parties for 10 years after its release! I remember creating Quake texture WADs, to get better visibility for lootable items in multiplayer. One of the greatest games of all time.
I love how you're bringing out the positives and putting them into the world, here.
It's healing.
Well done.
Just like pizza is stroyent, 😀 tickles.
The original id software team was like the Dream Team of gaming development. They had such a passion and excitment. For me, Wolf3d, Doom 1 & 2 and Quake are still the best games ever made. I remember the antecipation for Quake...every magazine or website only talked about this game. It was a truly magical moment in the game industry. I bought a video card only to play this game. It was really tragic when Romero left id. Everyone lost. Id was never the same again, Romero lost big time, the public never got to play an incredible id game again. It was a tragedy for the whole gaming community.
BTW Lets not forget the other id team members. Even though Romero and John Carmack were great, the other guys were equally amazing. Adrian Carmack and Kevin Cloud did a TON of awesome art for those games. Tom Hall did A LOT of work for Wolf3d and Doom 1. Sandy Petersen and American Mcgee did A LOT of awesome levels for Doom and Quake. AND the amazing sound design and music made by Bob Prince (wolf3d, Doom 1 & 2)and Trent Reznor (Quake) for those games.
This was awesome! It's great to hear this more mature reflection on those times at id. Those guys had some times indeed.
You can draw a direct line for almost any good FPS back to iD and Romero/Carmack. From Valorant to Half Life, and not to mention Romero giving Warren Spector a shot and giving life to Deus Ex.
I love his maturity and ability to take ownership for his side of things and not throw Romero under the bus for any of it.
It's weird how I've played doom/wolfenstein 3d since I was a teen and this is probably the first time I've heard Carmack speak.
I've come to bring unspoken truths.
Daikatana is better than Quake 2... now. At launch not at all. But after the patches and specially after modding the companions - the one that makes them act like Mass Effect companions, where they follow your character very closely and simply teleport behind you if they get stuck in the geometry of the level is a god send... also, if they die, they revive after the surrounding enemies are dead.
But design-wise it's a great game. It was just a little too ambitious for it's time, the tech for the AI companions was just not there yet.
I'm curious how Daikatana would have been if those terrain-meshes were available - that's now relatively old tech, but much better than the previous node-based layout where ai ran in the exact middle of the hall, because that's where they were allowed to run)
Romero was always the creatively gifted one, his visions for games were just too ambitious for the time. Carmack on the other hand has always been pushing gaming technology forward, with the caveat of his ambition being that everything else is secondary.
I used to get in trouble for playing Doom on everybody's computer whenever I slept over a friends houses as a child. LMAO, still rippin and tearing.
Downloading Doom in everyone's PC 🤣
What, did you carry a handful of floppy disks with you everywhere you went? Or is it that your Christian parents LEARNED of you playing Doom, and that was a paddlin'? :P
@@phattjohnson the old school games still hold up today so I could imagine people going crazy when it first came out
@@phattjohnson lol. No, My family was one of the poorer ones in town and did have a computer till I was 15 (1995). I played it any chance I got.
I'm surprised that Carmack still hasn't come to terms with the fact that design requires a lot of thinking and not necessarily typing. Designers can look like they are just goofing around and not doing actual productive work but they really aren't because they are just approaching the problem from a designers perspective - which is to create the fun
as much of a genius as he is he's kind of a dirtbag he may have gotten better with age but at his core he's only seeing how far he can push a toy in his own way.
Read and loved Masters of Doom. Would recommend Doom fans to read/listen to it.
7:35 - LOVE how Carmack shines up when talking about the Dungeons'n'dragons days. They all used to play long nightly sessions at the Shreveport Lakehouse, back in the early 90s!
_"Maybe expecting CRUNCH from everyone wasn't the best idea"_
That’s cool. He bought up one big point that many overlook; These dudes were on top of the technological and gaming world in their mid 20s. I personally wouldn’t have known what to do with all that at that age. It’s nice that both of them can look back and see with more wisdom that each had their weaknesses and strengths. I’ll always tip my hat to the original Doom team and may they continue to do great things.
People somehow give Carmack so much shit for Quake 2 and 3, but I love those games. They might be relatively simple, but to call them tech demos is so disrespectful to the spirit of those games and the work that went into them. They were fast, brutal combat simulators. There's a magic there that people refuse to acknowledge.
Rage is the one that people unfairly criticize. Like honestly, I couldn't care less that it's not fallout. I love the way its a lot simpler and more linear than something like that
The gsmrplay was rock solid and it was a cool world. Plus it looked incredible for a ps3 360 game
Carmack is really good at what he does. I think Romero's strength was identifying talent and giving them the chance to work.
Without Romero, Deus Ex would never have existed
YES!
That's not a talent, that's exploiting other people's talent.
@@m0rvidusm0rvidus18 if those people otherwise wouldn't get the chance to Make what they want, is it exploitation?
Warren Spector was about to sign his life over to EA, which even then had a rep for shuttering great studios. How would that be better? Romero offering Warren his own studio and a chance to make the game of his dreams, while fighting to keep the publishers off Warren's back, seems pretty far from exploration to me.
Withouth Romero, Id software neither... Carmack was a freelancer. Romero did found Id catching all the team.
I think you're putting a little too much onus on Romero there. Spector was already well known by the time he got to Ion Storm. He was editor-in-chief at Steve Jackson Games during the 80s, then went to TSR and had a hand in the 2nd edition AD&D ruleset and Spelljammer, was at Origin for four years during their peak, consulted and managed the Looking Glass crew during the development of Ultima Underworld, System Shock, and Thief 1 before leaving and eventually choosing to join Romero instead of EA. Romero's big contribution was his promise of unlimited freedom for Spector to make the game he wanted with the team he wanted without pressure from clueless corporate suits and bankrolled it to make it a reality.
Carmack and Romero were like left and right lobes of the brain...
Carmack was the left lobe... doing logic, maths and all that
Romero was the right lobe... doing creativity, imagination and design
There are two things I want to happen. Them collaborating again for a game, maybe work fully together with id Software once more for a Quake sequel
and Raven Software using an idTech again for another masterpiece and to be freed from CoD mines.
Romero's magnum opus NBA live 98 would never have been possible without Carmack kicking him out. Im grateful.
When you are as brilliant and hard working as Carmack, everybody else probably seem either stupid or lazy. To me id software was never the same after Romero left. It was sort of metal and cool in the Doom and Quake 1 years. Idk, it's hard to nail what made those games so special, but Q2 was the first game I thought: "It's really good, but it doesn't feel like an id game no more. It has completely different vibe to it. Blockbuster vibe, Playstation vibe, very professional, but kinda a bit in the same vain what everyone else is doing".
One of the things I love about present-day Id is they're really trying to bring the metal back, at least for Doom. Their Doom Eternal team lead cut a promo for Doom Eternal at a con that called back to their pitch for "The Fight for Justice".
@@bitwize yeah ID are still doin themselves proud. Keep it up!
Quake II is where the games id put out became focused on being tech demos first and video games second.
Carmie made the game possible, Romero made the game legendary.
Pity they split since Doom was a mix of advanced technology for its time and one of the best shooters; even to this day.
At that age I needed a "framework" and lots of patience from all the people around me and I had friends whom I wore out. I think I can relate to Romero in that way.
Also if there is one member in a team doing all the dirty work taking most of the time - programming, new technologies - it doesn't mean other members who don't work that much are less valuable. There will be always that one guy who is overperforming and knows more than the others in crucial area of the business.
it was great to se them together again for dooms 30th anniversary and the release of sigil 2.
i really liked how they show respect for each other
Great interviewer! thanks for sharing!
Fascinating to hear from a giant in video game development talk about his experience in the early days of ID.
I always find it amazing when i look back at the team that made Doom and Doom 2. Because alot of individuals either did or had a hand in making something alot of gamers know them for. Johns for Doom, American McGee for Alice, i think of the other guys in the team went to work with the crew that made Gears, theres alot that i cant remember right now, but that fucking team man... when you work with a team that makes something that legendary and then the crew split and proceed to make legendary games or gave a hand in them, youve got a special team of people there man. And for me, Doom is always gonna be my absolute favorite game of all time. For 1 reason. It blends 2 of my absolute favorite thing in life. Heavy Metal and Video Games. Not just any heavy metal. THRASH METAL! CLASSICAL! GROOVE!!! You hear Pantera, you hear Black Sabbath, Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, these crazy bastards managed to perflectly blend 80's/90's metal with a 90's video game and make it feel like youre experiencing the best of both worlds. Thats why ill always say Doom 93 to me is the greatest game ever. YTMND.
I wish they'd work together on a small project. I know it's unrealistic but it's like the beatles breaking up. They had great solo careers but it sucks that we never got a reunion. Would certainly be a better use of Carmack's time than making zucks metaverse nightmare come true.
Carmack and Romero are famously the gaming equivalent of Lennon and McCartney. Both partnerships fell apart, but it's good to know that now Carmack and Romero can be mature about it and even recognize some regrets. That's far better than the jabs that Lennon and McCartney were making at each other through released songs on their albums.
Man... sorry he still didn't learn to be more gracious at his age... every good comment he had for romero, he had to balance it out with a negative one, almost like he has judgement ocd...
John Carmack is a legend and he is my childhood hero. I wish he would return to Id and make amazing game engines again.
TO WIN THE GAME YOU MUST KILL ME, JOHN ROMERO!
I would still love to see John and John get together and change the industry one more time
Imagine the framework of a first person shooter without idsoftware. While there were certainly first person perspective games before hoovertank 3d, catacomb 3d, wolfenstein 3d, etc, Wolfenstein 3D from id truly set the early standard and guidelines for how a first person shooter title should feel.
I fear without ID fps games all might feel closer to slow paced shooters, or something like system shock.
We already had 3D maze like games. They were slow, focused on exploration and were more popular as RPG games with stats and menus like the D&D games. Problem was RPG games were super niche back then and often seen as too nerdy for most people. ID's action games were completely different. Fast, visceral, loud, eerie and those great memorable soundtracks. No wonder they blew everyone away.
John + John and because the times have changed and developed, one more thing is needed, a story that surpasses other games must also be added. Beyond FPS
This is class. What a lad, man. Was cool to see him and ROmero on a stream togetrher the other ay
Kind of a middle finger to the internet warriors saying there's still beef between them. Comment sections are the best form of comedy these days.
That stream was awesome, was really great to see them together.
Carmack's neck looks like a tech demo for the next skin and muscle feature in id tech 7.
John Carmack needed John Romero for Quake 2, there's no way that the latter John would've let those muzzle flashes go missing.
The chaingun's 200 bullets in 5 seconds was super cool, and it didn't even have Romero's polish.
Carmack is fascinating to listen to, he seems 100% genuine. He's brilliant, intense, the way he talks about his accomplishments can come off as arrogant but he's more than earned a little pridefulness. For a genius, he's remarkably grounded
And this is why you should never judge the contribution of others, or it will drive you mad. Know your limits and accept the imperfection of others. Take as much as necessary and as little as possible. Give everything but don't give up yourself.
Thank you for this Lex!
i developed a searing dislike for romero when i once told him i didnt like doom 3 and how they redesigned everything, that all the demons should be faithful updates and he gaslit me then blocked me. Then years later they go and do what I wanted them to do.
Needless to say I'll never purchase their games ever again.
He probably thought you were trolling because Romero had absolutely nothing to do with Doom 3. Did you ever see the photos of someone asking Romero to sign his copy of Doom 3?
For Doom, I see carmack/romero as follows, Carmack created the canvas (Doom engine) and Romero the paint (crazy fun gameplay, level designs, a lots of tools), one wouldn't exist without the other
Great interview.......Carmack is a smart, smart guy and did incredible things with and without Romero. For a while there, they were the "Lennon & McCartney" of gaming. And to his credit, he admits what he got right and what he got wrong - and despite falling out with Romero he's not afraid to credit him for his accomplishments and what he learnt from him, and what they did together. Kudos to you John Carmack.
I always thought Romero got a raw deal. I mean, he did _fine_ after Id, but I still think he got screwed. Romero's point was that they had made all the money, already, they didn't _need_ to be in permanent crunch mode all the time and they could afford to work at a more comfortable pace. Carmack is an all-in or all-out kind guy, though and he didn't have the experience in the industry that the others did. Romero was probably leaning too much in the opposite direction, too, but, I mean, he _was_ working on things. It sounds like Carmack regrets the way it was handled, too. It's hard to hate on any of them, it's just kind of frustrating in hind sight.
Yeh, turned out Carmack was right. Romero was wrong, you can't work at a casual pace, because that leads to something like Duke Nukem Forever, "when its done" ... a huge lull in productivity causes the technology to outpace your game making it redundant and dated fast. To keep up with the changing technology, you have to get your game out while the tech is still relevant. Carmack was smart enough to understand this it seems, but not Romero.
@@Blake4014he was wrong about where game engines were heading and lost the gamble on Rage
It's a shame the band can't get back together for something. The game development landscape has changed too much. Too corporatized/too monetized. Romero and Adrian Carmack made a little video about starting a project like 5 or so years ago, and nothing ever came of it. Just no funding out there.
It's clear they should have reached a compromise. Carmack should have allowed the company to grow a little bit in number of employees. Romero should have tried to reign in his rock star image and stay a little bit more focused.
Quake was supposed to be more of a melee combat ( lighting magic, and a magic hammer ) ,with the main character being named QUAKE , after took Carmack and a team over to get the engine ready , the reason it became an FPS is because the team was burned out after a year of development on tech that wasn’t ready , again Carmack got over a to get the engine ready but after it was ready he let a burn out team to pick the FPS route because it was easier , John C has done a lot technically but tech with no design sense it (Romero) because just a tech demon alas Doom 3 , and design without a Tech supervisor it becomes Daikatana.
It's really astounding how young John looks
Now interview Romero!
hell, he even SOUNDS like a total NERD!
dude was/is a complete genius.
I thank iD for bringing us such epic titles.
One cant help but wonder what would have become of a proper Romero + Carmack team-up (co-op).
Who knows what awesome benchmark they would have set for games, if they had found a way to work together longer
Carmack is such a nerd, I think it's one of his most endearing qualities. Lol. I love how he has genuine passion for the work that he does.
Will they cast Jesse Eisenberg as John Carmack in the inevitable biopic?
I think the best example is:
Romero + Carmark = the classic, perfect games we know and love. Doom, Quake, etc etc
Romero = Daikatana.
Pretty much nuff said.
They both need each other to create something exceptional
Carmark has done a lot of games after Romero. But Romero peaked with Doom and now gives speeches for beer money. So, he turned to be least important person in the company.
No one is at the same level of focus as you, John. NO ONE!
Carmack hasn’t yet understood that pushing his very peculiar and extreme work ethic on others, thinking of hat everyone else is a lazy bum, isn’t really fair.
He is an incredible person and a genius but seems very hard to work with even in his more mature years…
I'm pretty confident that the industry at whole benefited from Romero getting ousted, I doubt iD Software would've made Deus Ex or Thief (if not as big tech advancements they were arguably even bigger contributions to 3D game design than Doom or Quake were). like Carmack said he wanted to keep the company small
The problem was that one guy got in Carmack's head and had him push everyone out over time because that one guy (can't remember his name but he just RECENTLY left ID software after so many decades, and he was well known as a snake who only wanted more fame and power and control, and he had Carmack's ear more than Romero).
Carmack definitely knows he f'd up by making things more corporate and listening to that snake and overall ruining the company. It is kind of like an amazing band that does a few spectacular Albums that people talk about for decades, but they can't stand each other and break up when they are in their prime. Only for them to realize what a mistake it was later in life and everyone regrets the decisions they made because it just led to a bunch of other dudes taking over the band, calling themselves the same name, but not making the same quality music.
I would love to see all these guys get back together like The Beatles and play music again as a team. It would be amazing to see what they could come up with if they all worked together.
Thr only thing I heard in this segment of this interview is sincere admiration from John Carmack towards John Romero. Kudos to both of these gentlemen, gaming world would be so much different without them.
I like how humble carmack is
Usually people with his kinda history just say shit like "oh it just didn't work out" or "things could've been better" but carmack owns up and says "I was an idiot and it bit me in the ass"
It's great to hear that Tom Hall is still making games
It'd be cool to see a Social Network esque movies about them
I look up to older games like doom, mega man x, to what they did with limited technology to make simple but satisfying gameplay. How the gameplay is well thought out and levels are designed to complement that gameplay. How all areas try to be unique, how encounters are fairly balanced throuought the game. Programming likely takes much more effort than designing, but good design is what makes a game timeless and not another tripple A spectacle.
I wonder if Tom Hall's VR game has many empty rooms without purpose 😅
Sorry, just a stupid Doom joke I had to put here, of course kudos to whole ID Software team for changing game industry forever for better!
Carmack was the brain, Romero was the soul.
People talk about Hawking, Einstein, Jung and Sagan, but John Carmack is one of the smartest people on the planet and should pass into legendary status with those heroes of intellect.
Yeah, but since Carmack is a literal future-tech alien built overclocked quantum brain placed into a moore's law shattering vat grown synthetic hybrid clone body...
it's kind of cheating to include him in the list.....
John Carmack programmed the Doom engine when he was just 21. One of the most legendary programmers ever. Yes John Romero and Carmack needed each other but no one doubts that Carmack was one of the greatest programmers ever
The man, the myth, the legend, one and only John Carmack. He is my childhood hero, i love this man so much!
John Romero was good for the work he did on Id, having said this, he was not a good designer in my view. His levels were terrible when considering modern designer practices. I understand fps games were very new at the time, but the levels were really bad. You may say, go easy on him, it was a long time ago, but take a game like super Mario bros, game design there is still as brilliant as ever, a master class.
Sandy Petersen and American McGee had to finish most of the levels of Doom 2 that Romero started.
1:22 You definitely weren't mature about it. Yes, you worked harder but some people just can't work at the pace that you do. I feel like John felt like he was the only one working hard while everyone slacked.
3:31 You didn't love them because you pushed your friend/friends out. :-/
But yeah, that's part of growing up.
John Carmack and John Romero just like water and oil, one of them must quit and it was Romero, then we saw Quake released and the rest are histories
Carmack and Romero should work on one more collaboration. Their egos have shrunk enough, no need to give up their independent projects but…why not? Everyone would buy it. And it would be good. Come on guys
Carmack doesn't care about making games anymore.
Legends, all of 'em.
What kind of dnd must John Carmack have ran
I would have loved to play dnd 1e with him.