John Carmack to get this year's BAFTA Fellowship award [Eurogamer.net]

[DP ServBot]

http://forum.digitpress.com//images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles/1/8/2/0/2/3/6/-1458816142610.jpg/EG11/resize/300x-1/format/jpg/1820236.jpgLegendary and maybe part-machine programmer John Carmack will receive this year's BAFTA Fellowship award, joining the likes of Gabe Newell, Shigeru Miyamoto, Will Wright and many others (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAFTA_Fellowship). He'll receive the award at the BAFTA Games Awards 7th April in London - an event happening alongside EGX Rezzed (https://www.egx.net/rezzed).
Carmack co-founded id Software and was instrumental in the creation of Doom and Quake and Wolfenstein - games that defined an industry - and was the architect of the engines that powered them. It was the Quake 2 engine, with its out-of-the-box hardware-accelerated graphics support, that really kickstarted the whole graphics card arms race. Anyone own a Voodoo2?
Carmack was also instrumental in the rise of virtual reality. He struck up a relationship with some bloke called Palmer Lucky that led to that E3 2012 VR demonstration of Doom 3 BFG Edition (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-06-07-john-carmack-and-the-virtual-reality-dream) running on a prototype headset that turned out to be an early Oculus Rift. The rest is history.
Read more… (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-03-24-john-carmack-to-get-this-years-bafta-fellowship-award)

[calthaer]

On the recommendation of other DPers in that thread where we talked about our favorite game books, I picked up "Masters of Doom" from the library (the digital version had just been acquired in Overdrive and I saw it & jumped on it). It was a fantastic book that really depicted the rise and fall of id Software.

Carmack might be a great programmer, but it sounds like he's far from a great leader - or even a great gamer. It seems like he really knows very little about what makes a good game, and is interested only in technical challenges. Miyamoto and Wright at least have that special genius that can create compelling experiences. Carmack made 3D gaming possible. For that I suppose we should be grateful...but there was a time during the past 20 years when 2D games couldn't get made / attention.

I see less of a role for Carmack in the sunset years of his career, simply because he doesn't seem to know games. He opened up new tech for games, but that's done and over. Without Romero at his side, I can't imagine him creating impactful, re-defining tech for games.