Playboy's 20Q: John Carmack

He invented Doom 3. He paid cash for a Ferrari. Now the video game genius is headed for space

1

[Q] Playboy: Back home in Kansas, you and two friends were arrested for stealing an Apple IIe computer. How does a smart 14-year-old get caught doing something so dumb?

[A] Carmack: We crawled in through a hole in the window, but one of the guys in our trio was too big. He opened the window to get inside and set off a silent alarm. The cops came while we were carrying computers across the yard. The funny thing is I couldn't have used them, because I couldn't have explained it to my parents if I had brought one home.

2

[Q] Playboy: It was your first offense and a minor crime. You were interviewed by a shrink--and you blew it again. What did you say that landed you in a correctional facility rather than on probation?

[A] Carmack: The psychologist asked if I would ever do it again. I said if I hadn't been caught I probably would have. It was the honest answer. After I was sentenced he told me it wasn't smart to tell someone I was going to do it again. But that was not what I said. The home was not a good arrangement. I stuck out like a sore thumb. Everyone else was a five- or six-time offender, all for drug-related crimes. I can't think of one positive thing I learned there, but I had a lot more exposure to the drug culture than I otherwise would have.

3

[Q] Playboy: Since its first release, in 1993, the Doom franchise has earned more than $200 million, about the same as a blockbuster movie. Is playing Doom 3 a better experience than watching a film?

[A] Carmack: It's really quite different. A computer game that tries to stack up to a movie experience isn't going to be a good game, because the two are fundamentally different. A movie is all about carefully crafted perfection. The director is in control of everything that happens with the characters, the lighting and the sound. In a game, the player is in control most of the time. It's not going to be as tight. Doom 3 is much longer than anything we'd done before. A lot of people will probably spend 40 hours going through it. Even if an editor or a director took those 40 hours and clipped out two of the coolest, watching them would probably be interesting only for the person who actually played the game.

4

[Q] Playboy: Mesquite, Texas tried to ban video games and took the case all the way to the Supreme Court before it failed. Shortly thereafter you moved your company to that city. Were you trying to rub it in their face?

[A] Carmack: No, I didn't know about that when we decided to make the move. That must have been back when people associated video games with smoky pool halls and arcades. I admit that in years past we derived pleasure from rubbing our games in the face of the fundamentalist crowd. Satanic themes get a lot of people irate. We enjoyed offending the easily offended.

5

[Q] Playboy: What is the best video game of all time?

[A] Carmack: The quintessential game that has influenced a lot of my game design is Sonic the Hedgehog on Sega Genesis. It's a really simple game: Go fast and be really cool. You don't need 20 little gadgets and gizmos.

6

[Q] Playboy: Music, books and movies can live for generations, but video games quickly become obsolete. Does it sting to know that your creations may be forgotten next year?

[A] Carmack: I'm comfortable with it. I understand that I can read a 50-year-old book and know that somebody created something 50 years ago that is still relevant. For the most part, video games aren't like that, especially the 3D games that have tried to push the technology. They're going to look much cruder much sooner. We put ourselves in a particularly bad place. Important games live on in people's memories, but they're not something your kids will play later on.

7

[Q] Playboy: You once won $20,000 in Las Vegas after teaching yourself to count cards. What's the secret?

[A] Carmack: Card counting is a lot easier than people think. It's a system to help keep track of the ratio of 10s to low cards. When low cards come out, it's good because it means more 10s and face cards are still in the deck, so you're more likely to blackjack and the dealer is more likely to bust. You're not memorizing which cards come out. You're memorizing only the ratio of cards. You still play the same basic blackjack strategy, but you change your betting. Of course, the casinos watch for that to see who's counting. The pros have strategies for slowly ramping up their bets. I didn't play like that, and they eventually kicked me out.

8

[Q] Playboy: Your company, Id Software, is worth $500 million, yet you employ only about 20 people. You've resisted growing into a much bigger company, claiming that money is not a major motivator. So what is?

[A] Carmack: The nice thing about being successful and making enough money to be financially secure is that it removes almost all the levers that people use to manipulate other people. Everything is built around the idea that you can be manipulated into doing something for more money. Of course, lots of people never have enough money, and they are the ones who can always be led around (continued on page 150)John Carmack(continued from page 119) by the nose. I wouldn't do something for more money unless it was already something I wanted to do.

9

[Q] Playboy: You dropped out of the University of Missouri after one year. Does college have any benefit for an aspiring game programmer?

[A] Carmack: I tell people who are looking to get into the industry that the best thing they can do is demonstrate their ability. Do a game model in which you show what you can do. That means so much more to me than a diploma. A diploma is not even going to register. An MIT or a Caltech alum might get at least a raised eyebrow, but in general you're much better off being the team leader of the most popular game mod on the Net.

10

[Q] Playboy: You own Armadillo Aerospace, a rocket-research company that is competing for the Ansari X Prize, a $10 million contest for the first team to launch a three-man crew out of the atmosphere and then do it again within two weeks. How close are you to liftoff?

[A] Carmack: We have two vehicles right now, a subscale model and a full-size model. We've done hover tests under a crane with the full-size model, and we just revamped the propulsion system. We're starting to fly the smaller one in untethered free flights. I had hoped we'd be further along than this, but we ran into a problem and spent the better part of last year developing a new propellant combination.

11

[Q] Playboy: Why private space flight? What's the matter with NASA?

[A] Carmack: NASA has evolved itself into a corner and doesn't have the opportunity to go back and do the necessary wide-ranging experimental work. Once these rockets were worked out, they were scaled as big and as fast as possible. The launcher, the satellite and the payload now cost more than a billion dollars. You don't experiment with billion-dollar payloads. If you go back and read NASA technical reports from the 1960s and early 1970s, they are wonderful. Technical reports from NASA today read like a survey of management practices.

12

[Q] Playboy: Your team recently purchased a Russian space suit on eBay. Are you going to use it? Aren't you afraid it will be a case of getting what you pay for?

[A] Carmack: A lot of stuff is available, but I wouldn't want to be in the position of depending on something that I didn't know I could get in quantity. The space suit was an exception, because at $5,000 it was really cheap. We bought some adapters and fittings so we could pressurize it with our air system. As we were pressurizing it, one of the zippers blew out, which is really scary when you're looking for leaks and trying to patch things up. It just exploded. The zipper had clearly been stitched on by hand. It's amazing, because American space suits cost millions of dollars. The U.S. had this huge research program to develop pressure-sealing space suit zippers that would hold pressure on the inside and the outside. It is incredible technology. Russian space suits have a rubberized internal layer separate from the outside. You climb in, and--no kidding--you wrap it up, tie a rubber band around it and pull the zipper over that. That's the Russian procedure, and it works just fine.

13

[Q] Playboy: In the late 1990s you were notoriously critical of Microsoft's graphics software. Now you're competing for the Ansari X Prize against Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen. Do you ever do anything that doesn't include some battle with Microsoft?

[A] Carmack: I've had legitimate differences with Microsoft over graphics technology, and that's been an issue for a long time. But in general, especially in hard-core geek circles, I find myself defending Microsoft. Its development environment totally kicks ass. The company has brutal business tactics, but if you look at it objectively, it does good stuff.

14

[Q] Playboy: Seriously, which is better, Xbox or PlayStation2?

[A] Carmack: Xbox. Without a doubt.

15

[Q] Playboy: How has online file swapping affected the game industry?

[A] Carmack: Although I'm an intellectual-property owner, I come down sympathetically on these issues. The games I played when I was 14 were pirated. I did save up my money to buy a few games, but I had a shoebox full of copied ones. So it would be hypocritical of me to denounce that now. A lot of people love our games and pay for them, and maybe an equal number of people who haven't paid are also playing our games. Sure, it would be nice if they paid, but I wouldn't want to imagine a world that had the technical securities in place that would make it impossible for them even to play.

16

[Q] Playboy: Why hasn't the game industry reacted as litigiously to file swapping as the music industry?

[A] Carmack: Probably because most game companies still love games. When you listen to people from the recording industry, it's hard not to get the impression that their business is about the bottom line and that they have no sympathy for anyone who would ever steal from them.

17

[Q] Playboy: When you were 23 years old, you paid cash for your first Ferrari with the money you made from Wolfenstein 3D. Did the salesman think you were joking?

[A] Carmack: This was back before my wife cleaned me up, so I was wearing jeans with holes in them. I pulled up in my Miata, walked into the dealership and said, "Sell me a Ferrari." They took it pretty much in stride. I bought a Ferrari 328 for $68,000 and six months later had it turbocharged.

18

[Q] Playboy: What is the one Ferrari model every guy should drive in his lifetime?

[A] Carmack: The F40 is fun because it's like a super go-cart. It doesn't have door handles; it has a pull cord on the inside. We were at a restaurant, and when the valet came to pull it around we could tell it was going to be the highlight of his week. He got in, closed the door and couldn't figure out how to start it because it uses a starter button instead of a key. Then he couldn't get out because it had no door handles. We had to teach him how to step out of the car.

19

[Q] Playboy: Can you talk yourself out of a speeding ticket?

[A] Carmack: I got one speeding ticket when I was in one of my Ferraris. That's it. Another time I was let off of a speeding ticket I really deserved to get. The F40 had been in the shop for a long time. I had just picked it up after work, it was about two A.M., and I was on this deserted road. I decided to see what the latest modifications could do. I tore over a hill at about 140 miles an hour, and just as I was upshifting into fifth, I passed a cop in the median. He instantly popped his lights on, and I just pulled over. I had my license and registration out, and I told him, "I deserve this 110 percent." He ran my license, came back and said, "Thanks for not making me try to chase you. Why don't you find some other place to do that?"

20

[Q] Playboy: You're a notorious workaholic. What's the key to surviving an 80-hour workweek?

[A] Carmack: It's a problem only when you have conflicts. Most people run into problems with their wife or girlfriend when they work too much. If the work is what you want to do, it naturally follows that you're focused. So you sit there and get it done. That has always been one of my strengths: picking goals and doing what I have to do to get there. I was finished with my work on Doom 3 while the rest of the team was in crunch mode. Everybody was working insane hours, and I'd feel bad leaving at 10 P.M. to put in a couple of hours on the rocket.