I love as a lifelong gamer seeing these historic game designers getting the kind of treatment we give musicians and directors. It’s one of the few mediums that is so young that we can watch the birth and evolution in a generation or two

If you listen closely you can hear joe desperately trying to get in the room

Can we also admire Lex once again for being able to get guests like this and keep them fully engaged for hours on end.

Quake 1 is about as close to religious experience as I've ever encountered. Plot twist - that was mostly about Trent Reznor's soundtrack. Still epic to this day.

Man’s a genius, plain and simple!! There’s not a gamer period, who shouldn’t be thanking John Carmack for his influence and mad programming skills in some way or other such is his influence and genius!!!

John Carmack is such an archetype. A monoemotional, hyper-rational, empathetic and rigourous thinker.. I've never listened to Carmack and thought anything less than he has thought about everything he's said for years and he truly believes it. He found what he was passionate about early, and I almost wonder if every 'nerd' archetype in our modern media was based on his work at Id software.

Carmack is a special person, he consistently reminds me about the joy of programming. I love his comment around the 18 minute mark about learning all the abstractions in a stack. This usually isn't practical (or possible) when it comes to earning a paycheck engineering systems, but when it comes to the joy of the craft he is spot on.

I wrote several mods for quake, quake2, and quake3. I programmed in Quake C, and that was my first programming language. Interesting to hear him speak from the other side of it.

I remember coming home from school and dad had just got a Pentium pc for his work and it was all fired up. I loved doom but he had also got me quake as a surprise and it was already installed! I remember thinking at first that it was almost overwhelming to have such freedom and that it was an absolutely era in gaming. So great to hear the stories behind these classics. Thanks heaps!!

i think its fantastic what John has started in the 90's. Tim Sweeney took the modding further, and built a massive business on it with the unreal engine.

I'm revisiting Quake right now, the enhanced version, and I am loving it still. What a game.

I hope he gets Sandy Peterson on he was lead designer for my favorite game ever Age of Empires 2 which came out in 1999 and is still active to this day (200,000 tournament in a castle in germany in October) and he had a hand in development for doom and quake. The guy is a legend

It’s so nice to hear a professional contemplating its own “mistakes” …. It shows that no one is perfect… and that you only learn by fire 🔥 … bravo 👏 Mr. Carmack

Quake 3 Arena was the real game changer. In terms of map size,movement and online multiplayer interaction,it was mindblowing.

Quake was a monumentally important game - historic in that it had great hit code (tcp/ip calculations) and later Quakeworld brought server directories to the game to find people to play with on the internet - something easily taken for granted today. All at a time when the graphics were at the edge of what was possible with current hardware. This was at the time that 3d graphics cards were becoming more popular as well.

Ill never forget in 5th grade going to a friends house and he showed me this little game called quake and then showed me what "internet multiplayer" was...fast forward a few years my family gets a nice pc that can run most games and then my first job my first paycheck went to buying a Radeon 9800 pro in prep for doom 3 and half life 2 at maximum quality. We have yet to see another graphical jump like we saw with quake then later doom 3 and half life 2...sure games have gradually gotten more impressive visually but nothing like the huge leap we saw in the early 2000

I remember snooping about these random folders on my secondary school’s network in 96 and found a hidden file of the demo! I would go to the library at 8:30 in the morning at school on the 486s and play quake - no one knew about it apart from myself and the person who installed it

“You get into programming not because you care about the syntax of the language but because the language lets you do something you care about” Love it 😁 (because some of my routines are ugly)

I remember my disappointment and sadness running Quake demo on my "new shiny" 486Dx4. Turtle icon showing all the time 🙂(also change from watcom to djgpp that I didn't understood at the time - I used to replace dos4gw with smaller/faster dos extender that was able to utilize DOS low-memory) As lo-fi poor gamer I went from user to overclocker (running 486@50mhz x2 with better dram chips) It was futile effort but still fun. There is bunch of people trying to beat records with 486 class chips.. (someone even overclocked 486like chip to 200Mhz and benchmarked using quake).

John Carmack is such a genius. I love him so much. What a legend.

I was luck enough to jump into PCs in the late 90s when i was 13 y/o, discovering the large amount of quality games that where a rarity on console. My first PC was a Pentium iii 733 with 64MB and chipset graphics. It was good enough that played Quake iii, Half Life, and early CS at 480p. My 17" monitor could do 1280x1024 @70Hz, so i had some work to do. Stared with sFSB and found the RAM to be limiting, added 256MB (320MB total). But then went back to the CPU and got it to around 900MHz with the help of Artic Silver thermal paste 🥰 THEN i finally had enough money for a GPU, a GeForce2 MX400 PCI card. First time I every played games either at 60FPS or in near HD. Over time i pushed the little Gateway PC to it's max, got the CPU clocked at just over 1GHz, 768MB ram, and maxed out the PCI slot with a Geforce FX 5500 256MB. The GPU didn't need to be overclocked much as it hit a wall, even with also overclocking the PCI bandwidth. So then i built my first PC with money from cutting lawn and other work in 2003, it was an Athlon 64 system.

A guy I worked with introduced me to Quake in '98 or '99 and I still play it to this day.

I remember the middle school day in 2007/08 playing Quake multi-player in local server at the computer room after finishing class projects or during lunch and sneaking in during other classes and playing with other students which was always a blast. Thanks to my computer teacher this got me interest in the Quake online scene during HighSchool

He also made Commander Keen, thank you so much for that!

The Quake franchise is criminally underrated and unknown to pretty much all of the newest generations of gamers who have no idea how much of an impact doom/quake and id Software had in the development of what gaming and esports are today. To be fair Doom had quite a nice revival thanks to the amazing game in 2016 but the same can't be said about Quake unfortunately. Hopefuly Quake gets its revival some time in the near future as well. That IP deserves a place in the gaming world today somehow.

Still playing Action Quake 2 to this day... we have a small community in Australia that play most nights a week. Great your work John =]

QuakeC was my first introduction to programming - simple things at first like making the shotgun fire more rounds, and then more advanced things like entire new monsters and weapons. To this day, I still put QC on my resume under the languages section.

Carmack is an inspiring programmer. Makes me want to go code right now

Carmack is an outstanding piece of guy, i have a deep admiration for him. I play Doom or Quake all the time, i mean, i am this kind of retrogamer. But, with all due respect for him, Metaverse is a real shit !!! Leave that John, Metaverse don't deserve you.

I remember that I got a demo of Quake on a magazine cover. I was extremely excited about it. The things that struck me the most, were that when you moved side to side, the whole screen tilted. And I remembered the atmosphere of the game. The feeling of it was fairly "dark". The sound effects and ambient sounds were nice too. Also you could run the game but have a music CD in the CD tray, and listen to any music that you wanted; and I always listened to The Great Southern Trend kill, by Pantera. Frag bombs and Floods. Honestly though, Doom was the game that blew my mind. I felt Quake was more about creating technology that would be used in the near future, rather than the game being the main focus. Having actual 3D models in a 3D world, was great though. Astounding at the time - had never been done before. What the technology has been used for, and what it's lead to, has surpassed my expectations. One of the many impressive things about John Carmack, is that he understood how the electrical components worked in the computing systems, and he knew which areas of hardware and software that needed to change, to accomplish certain things. He would discuss what was needed, with the technology companies that produced graphics cards. John is SO to thank for all 3D gaming, and network gaming, it's ridiculous. (I love the true story that he and a friend made thermite to burn a hole in the glass in a school window, so that could steal a computer to program on 🤣 they only got caught because his friend was too fat and he got stuck in the window. The police said that Carmack showed no remorse or any kind of human emotions whatsoever 😂🤣🤣👍)

Quake 2 has the best physics for a shooter to this day! People still play it. The jumping system is what makes it truly special. I wish they stuck to Q2 physics but they moved on for some reason.

I remember when I got my 4MB 3dfx card and could play Quake with OpenGL, the upgrade to graphics were mind blowing haha.

Just as Lex, I have never experienced anything near like when I saw Quake running on my cousins PC. I was14. I remember the awe I felt playing it and going back home saying to myself "I have to get a copy of this game asap" And when my parents bought me one and I spent hours in it I was like "man, we've reached the technical limit in a videogame". Truly I have never experienced again that level of "right now I'm 10 years ahead of my time" feeling in a videogame. The game engine, fully in 3D combined with that enviromental sounds, lovecraftian aesthetics... hardly ever going to have a similar feeling ever again. Fond memories.

I cant stress enough how much i love this interview and how it cements JC as a very cool and inteligent guy in my eyes.

Bruh, the first time playing quake on lan at a cybercafe changed my life. Shit was unlike any experience before it

Those were the days! We LAN'd Doom, Doom2, Quake, Quake2, WarCraft II Tides of War, Diablo, what a time!! Quake 2 was my absolute favorite!

Quake esp. Quake 3 changed my life in college. I spent 6 to 8 hours playing multiplayer and it seemed like 5 minutes. Joined a clan and got too addicted. Had to stop lol. Cool to know I could have played Joe Rogan, assuming he played on public servers. Shout out to 2FU clan - Strider

I am just thankful that Quake did not come out until after I graduated college. I remember running QTest on a computer at my first job since my home comp was so lousy. Playing online multiplayer during those early days was such an exciting time. Even following the .plan files of the teams was a lot of fun. Such relatively simpler times, amazing how fast technology has evolved. JC is a legend.

Quake 2 as a kid was something that now is the norm. But at the time it was a revolution that the mainstream didn't even notice.

I wanted to say that Quake essentially requiring a Pentium in a time when the Pentium was yet to be commonplace meant that it lived a long life. It was played into the early 2000s by many, and continued being modded through that whole time. This, I think, was a direct result of it being so advanced for its time that most people couldn't even play it on launch without an upgrade. Game companies have since dialed it back - how far their game will push hardware requirements that is, because there's so much competition now unlike the "good old days". Crysis is one example of a game that had gnarly hardware requirements 10 years after Quake that also reverberated for nearly a decade after. Granted, Crysis was basically just poorly optimized - it was not designed to properly take advantage of newer hardware that would come out only a few years after its release. They used a forward rendering approach (like Doom3) where multiple expensive passes were required to fully render a frame. Modern engines are able to achieve the same result with much fewer but more complex passes, performing the work of multiple passes in one, but when Crysis was released there weren't GPUs that could handle combining passes in a more optimal way. Quake pushed the envelope and enjoyed a long life because of it.

@23:03 - John Carmack embodies a rap quote from Black Thought on his Funk Flex Freestyle: -- I don't fake it till I make it, I take it to the limit, then I break it.

My understanding is that it was when JC grew to realize that all of the known viewing perspectives already stored as fixed data in the BSP tree could be utilized to pre-calculate which polygons would be visible from any known point on the tree - rather than grinding that info out using computation mid game (hence slowing to a snail pace in complex areas) - this was the main technological wall that had to be broken through. And, as if by magic - panning around a complex area filled with polygons produced no visible lag anymore. But also JC's endless tech ideas for a more efficient rasterizer (drawing only what's needed with no overdraw) - this was also Key to the technology. The architecture in quake is so beautiful and arty, I can roam around if only to gawp at the 3D internal layouts. DOOM was a truly amazing game - but it was Quake's railgun that eventually blasted a hole through a technological steel door that no one had ever looked behind - with a new metaverse waiting beyond.

Jesus. John Carmack is working on AGI? I see he's also secured 20 million in funding. This guy helped get VR where is today, was a rocket scientist as a hobby, and also made Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, and Quake. Very curious where his AGI work goes. AGI for those that don't know is Artificial General Intelligence. Most programs are known as narrow AI. AI to drive, AI to translate words, AI to search the web, or AI in video games. AGI is an AI that can teach itself just like how humans learned to drive, speak, and play games. It's the holy grail of Artificial intelligence. Nobody has been able to crack it. Any robot you see in sci-fi movies needs AGI. Once you make a an AGI that can improve itself then everything changes. The world changes. It is fascinating and scary.

the mix of his rational personality mixed up with his empathy is very rare. im impressed

This guy looks like 20 and 60 at the same time

Is schools, in library, we all used to play Quake 3 or 4 (cannot remember which one) but it was a favourite multiplayer game for everyone

Carmack's voice sounds like that of a scientist from Half Life.... Professor Carmack - pretty badass! Lol! Thanks Mr. Carmack & Co., Quake II shaped my life unlike anything else, truly. Visiting my dad's at 7 years old, playing Quake II on his cream-coloured desktop of the era. Learning that we can respond to an alien invasion, by invading the alien's planet right back, and that the soundtrack to that would absolutely be metal! The initial mixture of fear for what's around the next corner, but not caring and blasting through anyway because the design, the music, the GFX, the gameplay and the lore, were just so aggressive for it's time, and for my age lol! Quake II was the catalyst responsible for my love of the Sci-Fi genre, horror Sci-Fi in particular, as well as my somewhat niche appreciation for heavier soundtracks in arena shooters, and my love for metal, guitar and music composition. Of course multiple influences across many different popular media shaped these for me too over the years, but it would not have happened without you and your team, and it's incredibly sentimental to me. THANKS!

Get John on please blessed to have spoken with both these men in the past they are so genuine with the fans its heartwarming

I've played Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Doom II, Quake and Quake 2 (and multiplayer on Quakeworld), Doom 3, Quake Live, Doom (2016), Quake Champions (somewhat un-Quake and frustrating) gave up that and now happily back to Quake Live which is my favorite multiplayer version of the Quake series. I recently bought Quake remastered and reliving the original experience with better graphics. Miss my Quakeworld clan days and team deathmatch in The Abandoned Base and Necropolis. Fun times!

My first pc was able to handle q2 so after I end it I started q1 and beside of graphic it was way better!

QuakeLive when it was in the browser is my Nostalgic favorite.

John actually went to the same high school as me. Shawnee Mission East. Dude is the GOAT of PC graphics tech for sure.

Dueling in quake is really pretty amazing. Lately I've been thinking that Id software would make a fucking badass naruto game if it was in the style of quake. The champions special are alot like a jutsu and then combined with the speed of the game.

Quake and Turok 2 were childhood favorites

Quake and Quakeworld more specifically is the mother of all online fps games.

Carmack is such a delightully nerdy genius. I understand only a fraction of what he's saying but I just love listening to him. He really should go into teaching.

This feels like a genuine engineering lecture. John has a good delivery and excellent articulation.

I remember having either a 486 or pentium and trying to run Quake, I would have to shrink my already small CRT monitor to a window at a minute size to have it run at > 20fps. But I remember all of that was part of the fun, it was a catalyst for me wanting a faster computer, and I have such fond memories of Quake. As of today I still play a derivative of it - Quake Champions. It revolutionised first person shooters. I see Call of Duty and just cannot connect because I was spoiled with the sleek movement of Quake.

John is my hero. Whenever I need to feel smarter, need more motivation and enthusiasm I just put on one his talks and charge up.

Sooo long ago.... I'm sooo old...

The original Quake had more impact on my life than any other video game. It was the first time I ever played multiplayer online and I was hooked. Spent an entire summer during high school playing it. I then used my senior year to take Cisco classes and learn computer networking. High school teachers then knew very little about computers and my classmates would hide copies of Quake on the school server. Once we got done with our Cisco work, we would boot up quake and compete until class time was over. First time I actually enjoyed learning at school.

I'd never forget the first time that I've played it...fire.!! still I play Quake III Arena.

This was really interesting, thanks for this.

There is something about that never reached even into nowadays games. I was smiled to the cry when I played this game with my friends.

Carmack is so under rated. Our species owes him a huge debt of gratitude.

Its kinda crazy. I heard name John Carmack when I was 8 I believe, in Czech Republic, 3 years after fallnof communism. My nerdy computer friend was drawing him in his notebook in school because he was his idol. I am 37 today.

Quake change the world for PC Gaming and wrote the rules. I remember getting Quake, Tomb Raider and Duke Nukem 3D for Christmas 1996. I have installed Quake and Quake II every few years since. The remaster has also brought me back to level design.

Quake will always be my favorite PC game, I still play it often, either the 2021 remake or EZquake.

Gamespy and the grappling hook.

I could listen to Carmack talk about Q1 for ages. One of the most perfect games ever, just thinking about it makes me want to strafe while running. Also, thank you Q1 for giving us half life

John, it was worth the wait (the more complete version of Quake). In those days, I bought computers just to run your games. Quake came out, and I bought a faster machine just to run it. I'm probably not the only one.

I first played Quake around 1996. It was the only game that actually scared me.

Good, they're talking about Quake. Hopefully Quake Remastered gets more updates as a result.

I did a lot worse than I probably should have done at college because of Quake.. what a game. Carmack and the id guys will forever be legends for an entire generation of gamers.

I freaking LOVE Quake 1!

I f w the NIN Trent Reznor Quake soundtrack

carmack is the entire reason there was a modding scene for so many games: they were all id tech 1-3 engine games.

Fuck i loved this whole talk Lex, thank you for getting John in. Hes THE BOSS.......

I listened to all 5 hours of this. It flew by

If he had split it like that, I dont think it would have had the same splash. The fact it was fast textured 3D with fluid movement was huge. Had they split it, we may be talking about descent remasters now and not quake remasters.

Quake 1 is masterpiece, Q2 & 3 were wonderful in their own right but very different. I also have a soft spot for 4 but Champions - nah, it's a husk.

I had a 486 when Quake came out... It was as John said, "not a great experience". So I sort of missed out on Quake.

good old days when state of the art games were made by enthusiasts rather than design committees appointed by corporate soul- and wallet vampires

You have to know what your final product will run like with all the resource allocations WOW

Lex what form of social media, if any, do you interact with? Asking for one of my other personalities

Quake was the reason I wanted a 586 in the first place. my 486 66DX didn't cut it. Plus, no floating point! The number of sidewalks I shoveled and lawns I mowed over the course of a year paid off when I bought a Pentium 90 (holy shit!) and could finally play this game! And it was so worth it. Quake changed everything. It invented the genre that Doom only hinted at. The original TF2 was the best (ride or die 2fort4) and I might sound like an old man at this point but The kids these days don't know how good theyve got it. They dont know what we of the older generation went through to play games that look pixelated and dated today. Games back then were fresh and original and above all fun. Everything (for the most part) that comes out these days is derivative if not totally vapid, built on pointless storytelling and offering nothing new or exciting to the genre, the hardware, or basic elements like fun.

I lovely quake, my true love of what I am calling origin of it all castle woldenstein 3d, I loved that game

"...the 7-11s or Quicktrips." Like the convenient store in Grosse Pointe Blank? The one with the Doom 2 cabinet?

You’re both legends, thanks!

Can we all just take a moment to apprecaite and thank the genius of this man, Gaming God, upon the highest pantheon, thank you for the real making of FPS games......Thank you....Thank you so much for Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake.

Didn't realise Lex was a gamer! And an old school one at that! Great stuff :)

What did he think when he saw Unreal back in the days? I know the interview is over, but this would be interesting! (or maybe interview whoever coded the Unreal engine back in the days).

I wish somebody would make a mod that made the game what quake was originally going to be (hammer fighting, slamming through walls, rolling down hills, ect)

On my 486 DX. "Floating point processor not found"

Quake was really John Carmack's masterpiece. But still it was maybe a little bit too agressive.. I would keep the full 3D of the world but: - QuakeC should have been done later and better (interpreter costs performance). Maybe some DLL like stuff was possible even with DOS ? - use sprites for the players weapon, as gamers were used to them anyway. - Vertex lighting and lower quality texture rendering, to make it playable on high end 486

This makes my Soul Happy lol I am Quake II like seriously, thank you John for it all ♥️

Still playing Team Fortress. On the darkplaces engine though. Have a channel with replays if you wanna take a look. German though: Der magische Kanal. We're always looking for people around Europe to join in. We aren't pro gamers. We don't even do the constant hopping.

It’s crazy to think that Carmack is a modern-day Hawking of our time-but in a different obscure area that isn’t yet seen.

The Godfather of all modern gaming right there.

that era of gaming and computing was far more interesting and less spooky than it is now