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Forget about his Ferraris and opulent
lifestyle. John Carmack's revolutionary 3-D engines for
id Software have forged a whole new genre in computer
gaming. The idea of placing the player directly in the
thick of the action, inside the headspace of the
protagonist, would seem a simple enough idea, and it is.  But computer gaming
and id needed someone to realize this concept. Sure
enough, Carmack came through with the Wolfenstein 3D
engine, and the term "first-person shooter" was
born. From then on, Carmack's talent became more refined
as did the genre. Soon thereafter he created an even
stronger 3-D engine that enhanced the realism and the
immersion into the morbid dungeons of id's smash game
Doom. In the following years, just about every other game company had a "Doom-clone" for sale (as the genre would become known). Some of these, such as Duke Nukem 3D, proved to be noteworthy entries into the genre. But they were all put to shame with Quake, and moreover, with the Quake engine. The first game to create a true 3-D experience for the player, Quake allowed a player to aim his or her view up or down, while retaining correct perspective. As the computer gaming world struggled to find a concise and usable name for the genre - first-person shooter, 3-D shooter, and others were bandied about - what eventually stuck was "Quake Killers," which also describes the main objective of these games. And computer
gaming's most influential person of all time is... |
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