John Carmack facts for kids

Quick facts for kids John Carmack
Carmack in 2025
Born	(1970-08-21) August 21, 1970 (age 54) Shawnee Mission, Kansas, U.S.
Occupation	Computer programmer video game developer engineer
Years active	1989–present
Employer	Keen Technologies (2023–present) Oculus VR (2013–2022)
Known for	Co-founding id Software Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, Rage
Title	Consulting CTO, Oculus VR Founder, Armadillo Aerospace
Political party	Libertarian
Spouse(s)	Katherine Anna Kang ​ ​ (m. 2000; div. 2021)​
Partner(s)	Trista DeLeon (2022–present)
Children	2
Signature

John D. Carmack II (born August 21, 1970) is an American computer programmer and video game developer. He helped start the video game company id Software. He was the main programmer for many famous games in the 1990s, like Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake. Carmack created new ways to make 3D computer graphics, such as his special method for showing shadows.

In 2013, he left id Software to work full-time at Oculus VR as their Chief Technology Officer (CTO). In 2019, he took on a smaller role as Consulting CTO. This allowed him to spend more time working on artificial general intelligence (AGI), which is about making computers think like humans. In 2022, he left Oculus to start his own AGI company, Keen Technologies.

Biography

Early Life and Interests

John Carmack was born in Shawnee Mission, Kansas. His father was a local TV news reporter. John grew up in the Kansas City metropolitan area and became interested in computers when he was very young. He went to Shawnee Mission East High School and Raytown South High School.

Carmack first discovered video games with Space Invaders in arcades during a summer vacation. The 1980 arcade game Pac-Man also made a big impression on him. He has said that Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto is the game developer he admired the most.

When Carmack was 14, he and some friends tried to get into a school to look at Apple II computers. Carmack made a special mixture to melt through a window. However, an alarm went off, and the police arrived. Carmack was arrested and later spent a year in a juvenile home. After this, he attended the University of Missouri–Kansas City for two semesters. He then left college to work as a freelance programmer.

Building a Career in Gaming

Softdisk, a computer company in Shreveport, Louisiana, hired Carmack. There, he met John Romero and other people who would later help start id Software. Softdisk put this team in charge of a new game subscription product called Gamer's Edge. In 1990, while still at Softdisk, Carmack, Romero, and others created the first Commander Keen games. These games were sold by Apogee Software using a method called shareware. Soon after, Carmack left Softdisk to help create id Software.

Carmack has been a leader in computer graphics. He developed many important techniques. These include "adaptive tile refresh" for Commander Keen and ray casting for games like Wolfenstein 3D. He also invented binary space partitioning for Doom and surface caching for Quake. His "Carmack's Reverse" method was used for shadows in Doom 3. He also created MegaTexture technology, first seen in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. The game Quake 3 also helped make the fast inverse square root algorithm popular.

Other famous games have used Carmack's game engines. These include Half-Life, Call of Duty, and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. In 2007, while on vacation, Carmack played some mobile games. He then decided he wanted to make a "good" mobile game himself.

Carmack giving a speech after receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award during the 10th annual Game Developers Choice Awards ceremony on March 11, 2010

On August 7, 2013, Carmack joined Oculus VR as their Chief Technology Officer (CTO). He left id Software completely on November 22, 2013, to work full-time at Oculus VR. Carmack wanted to work on virtual reality, but id's parent company, ZeniMax Media, did not want to support Oculus Rift.

In November 2019, Carmack changed his role at Oculus. He became a "Consulting CTO" to spend more time on artificial general intelligence (AGI). On August 19, 2022, Carmack announced he had raised $20 million for Keen Technologies, his new AGI company. He left Oculus in December 2022 to focus on Keen. In September 2023, John started working with computer scientist Richard S. Sutton to help with AI research.

Carmack's Work Style

Carmack has often said he works about sixty hours a week. This means working 10 hours a day, six days a week, throughout his career. He believes that long hours of focused work help him make faster progress. It also helps him stay in a focused mindset over time. Even with this demanding schedule, he has never felt burned out.

Carmack is also known for taking week-long programming retreats. During these retreats, he goes away by himself to a quiet place, often a hotel in a different city. The goal is to focus completely on a difficult problem or learn a new skill. Being alone helps him concentrate deeply.

Carmack has talked about his frustrations with slow processes at Meta (Oculus's parent company). He felt there were too many people and resources, but they often wasted effort. He wished he could stop bad ideas before they caused problems.

Carmack believes that taking small, steady steps is the fastest way to create new and important things. He compares this to how small steps, using local information, can lead to the best results. He says this idea has been proven by his own experience and by many smart people he knows.

Armadillo Aerospace

Carmack during the 2005 X PRIZE Cup in Las Cruces and Alamogordo, New Mexico

Around the year 2000, Carmack became interested in rocketry again, which was a hobby from his childhood. He decided to use some of his own money to support a few amateur engineers. He funded a company called Armadillo Aerospace, spending over a million dollars a year. This company worked towards building vehicles for suborbital space flight and eventually orbital vehicles.

In October 2008, Armadillo Aerospace won first place in the Level 1 competition of the NASA Lunar Lander Challenge. They won $350,000. In September 2009, they completed Level 2 and won $500,000. The company stopped active work in 2013. Carmack has said that working in the aerospace industry is "simple" compared to making video games.

Open-Source Software

Carmack supports open-source software. This means software whose code is available for anyone to see and change. He has often spoken against software patents, saying they are like stealing ideas. He has also helped open-source projects. For example, he helped bring the X Window System to Mac OS X Server.

Carmack released the source code for Wolfenstein 3D in 1995 and Doom in 1997. This allowed other programmers to see how the games were made and even improve them. When the source code for Quake was leaked in 1997, a programmer used it to make Quake work on Linux. Instead of taking legal action, id Software used these improvements to create an official Linux version of the game.

id Software has since released the source code for Quake (1999), Quake 2 (2001), Quake 3 (2005), and Doom 3 (2011). Carmack has since said he wishes he had used a more open license for these releases.

Carmack also gives money to charities and gaming communities. He has supported his old high school, groups that promote open-source software, and people who are against software patents.

Personal Life

John Carmack was very successful at id Software. By 1994, he owned two Ferraris. In 1997, he gave one of his Ferraris as a prize to Dennis Fong, who won the Quake tournament "Red Annihilation".

He met his former wife, Katherine Anna Kang, at a gaming event called QuakeCon in 1997. They got married on January 1, 2000. Carmack and Kang had a son, Christopher Ryan, in August 2004. Their second son was born in November 2009.

Carmack divorced in 2021. In May 2022, he shared that he met his current partner, Trista, through playing the VR game Beat Saber.

As a game developer, Carmack used to say that games would be released "when it's done." This meant he wouldn't set a firm release date until the game was completely ready. However, his views have changed over time. He has said that for Rage, which took six years to develop, they should have released it two years earlier. He also felt that the development of Quake was "traumatic" and could have been split into two parts to be released sooner.

Carmack has a blog where he used to post updates. He also sometimes shares comments on Slashdot, a technology news website.

Carmack has trained in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Judo as a hobby. During his time at id Software, a medium pepperoni pizza from Domino's Pizza was delivered to him almost every day. He was such a regular customer that they continued to charge him 1995 prices for over 15 years.

He has praised other talented programmers, like Ken Silverman, who created the Build engine, and Tim Sweeney of Epic Games, who created the Unreal Engine.

Recognition

Games John Carmack Worked On

See also

In Spanish: John Carmack para niños