QuakeCon 2011 - John Carmack Keynote

As tradition goes, id's co-founder and technical director, John Carmack, kicks things off with his keynote address.

[@jerksto]

Carmack has a great way of explaining basic technical jargon and gradually going deeper and deeper into more advanced topics, but bringing it back right before it becomes incomprehensible to 99.9% of the audience. And he's never bragging or trying to impress; he's a humble, honest person who takes pride in his work.

[@gregorzonta]

This guy did so much for this industry, I can't even imagine the worth of his work.

[@WalkOnNick]

This guy has an infectious positivity, I love listening to his thoughts even though not everything he says means that much to me

[@bulletlottery]

Carmack is god TBH alot of gamer should be thankful how doom and quake gave birth to other games and other engines like h-l1/source etc.

[@tensevo]

Is it me or does this guy get it? he seems to articulate so well what gaming is all about.

[@markototev]

This man... may he live another 200 years at least.

[@justin.little]

A man fuelled by passion. Constantly raising the bar. Insightful video, especially the latter half.

[@LeMoertel]

Thank you id and who ever helped making and posting this video, especially since last year didn't work out :) (and only ~24h delay!)

[@GordonAitchJay]

It's always fantastic to hear John talk. I really enjoy this, and it seemed like he enjoyed talking, too.

[@dave_s_vids]

Fantastic talk. It's so nice hearing someone just laying it all out on the table for those that care to learn or want to know!

[@turbomonkey138]

I could listen to this guy talk for years :)

[@Schizm1]

I could listen to him for houres. He's such an awesome legend!

[@TubeofDestiny]

Steve Jobs is the salesman, it's Steve Wozniak who did all the early Apple designs (and never got as much credits as he deserved).

[@MordecaiWalfish]

How could anyone have clicked "dislike" to this video? It just boggles the mind... There is no one programmer in the games industry who has continually innovated and grown the industry through his works as Mr Carmack has. He is straight forward and honest about the realities of what his company is doing ,as well as their goals, and above all else takes the time through his works to show appreciation for the not only the product his company is making, but all gamers & programmers w/ open source

[@SilkyMuggs]

I love how Carmack's muscles form into the Quake symbol. Now THATS dedication.

[@DanielleSexyBabe]

I could listen to John all day.

[@Perjoss]

for better or for worse, John Carmack made me the man I am today, mainly because of how many hours I spent playing Quake 2 and Quake 3, which can i just say were A LOT! good, good times!

[@BendSpeirs]

Awesome keynote. I loved watching the whole thing. People working with Carmack are very fortunate.

[@nestersan]

I have never heard someone be this honest about his own code/project. When I listen to this dude, i realise how little I know, but at the same time I still understand enough to realize how brilliant he is.

[@SteelSkin667]

Re-watching this in 2020, it strikes me that the direction that upcoming consoles are taking with their hardware design is pretty much exactly what John yearned for when making Rage. File size limits from the manufacturers have been pretty much lifted with 100GB+ games becoming the norm, and both consoles will come with fast SSDs and hardware decompression that allow to fetch data with minimal latency, decompress it on the fly and plonk it directly in VRAM. Hell, Mark Cerny even described in his PS5 hardware keynote a use case that is basically what Carmack was doing with virtual texturing in Rage. Fascinating stuff.

[@XFX40]

he is the best speaker I have ever seen he never stop talking amazing

[@thedark1owns]

This was a great way to spend an hour and a half. I didn't understand many of the things he said, but it was clear that he was knowledgeable and important to the game industry.

[@AlamarianJ]

I gain some kind of strange pleasure from listening to John Carmack talk about things I don't understand.

[@doggysty]

"I have fond memories of the old days, but what I've told the reporters over and over is that I'm really a remarkable unsentimental person. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about the good old days. I say this a lot, the good old days is right now."

[@DutchmanDavid]

Gaben and Carmack both belong in the pantheon of gaming gods, obviously. Gaben as the god of storytelling (?) and Carmack as the god of game-tech.

[@V12carlover]

This video really drives home the sobering fact that I have absolutely no idea whatsoever how videogames are built. I'm really glad there are people like John Carmack out there to do all that complicated stuff for me and i'm more than happy that we fill his pockets with enough money to buy twin turbo Ferrari F50's and rocket ships.

[@hannody00]

it's just because ur grate Mr Carmack, thank u so much.

[@nakikioDic]

listening to carmack is like listening the inventor of the computer graphics.... he knows his work pretty damn well!!!!

[@zurditen]

10:28 "We have a report of a bug in the microphone system" John "Legend" Carmack

[@jessicaNya]

He makes a good point with static analysis. This has saved me hours or work tracking down obscure issues gcc didn't throw a single warning about with all warnings turned on.

[@RamssesPharaoh]

Genius... thank you, for sharing your wisdom and knowledge. We can only hope other developers are inspired by your determination to improve in every way. Thank you.

[@flowless899]

He's a very brilliant guy and what a legacy he will leave behind for us..

[@tbonet101]

john carmack is awesome he is seriously always ahead of his time

[@Tsukasa009]

This guy is a god to be able to speak for so long and stay so consistently interesting

[@darthdonkulous1810]

John Cormach has become one of my all time favourite personalities somehow! I just love the way he looks simultaneously very awkward and very comfortable.

[@Rottensteam]

I just watched all of it... damn...

[@sal4]

Thanks for uploading!

[@CyberDeadly]

terrific video, I love how he doesn't shy away from any of the details. Also how he doesn't fail to bring up the "short-comings" he encountered. I'd like to see Todd Howard do the same..

[@jacderida]

I'm not really gamer but I am a programmer (not in games though), and I absolutely loved hearing him ranting away here. Was nice to get a little insight into their development practices and the stuff about the static analysis was interesting. Also, that build server with 192GB of RAM - WOW! I can't believe he was able to talk about all that without the aid of any notes or anything too - guy is a true genius. Much respect!

[@alpha.gamma.dingdong]

Carmack doesn't have a filter. He never dumbs anything down, because he doesn't realize it needs to be... that's what makes him so awesome.

[@ometopi]

One of the superstars of the gaming industry, impressive!

[@ThomasColliers]

Amazing.

[@rh_BOSS]

A living legend.

[@Moue666]

I love how he explains to us how the consoles work in depth. And how they are so limited.

[@Cnew11]

Im nerding ouuuutttt!!!! Love him

[@yxkpro]

I love this dude.

[@mrbitbot]

This man never stops talking, and I can't stop listening

[@Jahooba]

I'm not a programmer, but the way he talks is incredible. It gives you a glimpse into the way he thinks, which is categorical and organized. I'm a 3D artist (and amateur writer) and very interested in how I think and how I can make my self think better, and how that affects my art. It's very inspirational to listen to someone that is so self-criticizing and makes abstract concepts seem like simple mental hurdles. He reminds me of other great thinkers such as the Dalai Lama and Steven King.

[@xXDissolvedGirlXx]

Woo I've been waiting for this since yesterday :)

[@robotface74]

hey, hes just a guy who loves what he does and it shows when he talks about the games. i envy that with a passion!

[@morethanben]

Great Keynote!

[@ripper3225]

I worshiped this guy as a kid. An orphan kid off the rails turned founder of an entire industry. I still remember people criticizing him when he claimed he was going to do true 3D texture mapping on a Pentium. 6 months later quake was born.

[@plugpulled]

This is the very first time i have that transcribe audio works perfect with John Carmack's voice.

[@Bradamante3D]

Thank you very much for this. Much better than last year, where we didn't get a recording. When is the recording of the Q&A part coming? And what about Rage for the Mac?

[@SynapseCyberpunk]

He's a legend.

[@Tybstra]

this guy is my hero...

[@RedCameliaX]

The longest video on youtube I have ever watched, but I surprisingly wasn't bored. Carmack spoke about some really interesting problems that industry having right now: like a 10x horse power of the GPUs on PC and how its going for a waste, lack of unification. And of course the release of the Doom 3 source code. What I liked the most that he spoked about the things that developers don't usually speaking of: the drivers, the directx problem.

[@Thomas_Claro]

wooh watched all of it!

[@Luvenn]

@SuperHappyCow I see, i really can't wait to try out rage, i wonder what they've accomplished after spending all these years working on it, should be interesting. I'm now really excited to see how beautiful rage looks.

[@Raven1180]

Man I remember making a Quake 3 map. Such memories

[@dissforlife]

John Carmack is my hero, just awesome.

[@Merth667]

@Daracus I meant that you will only be able to run it through Steam. It's like buying the game in a brick and mortar store but you still need to register the game to your steam account, and you can only play with steam.

[@hornylink]

it's surreal, awesome, and super arousing.

[@KOMUTANATAMAN]

Impressive talk!

[@MUZA1875]

yes and we love him for it.one of the smartest guys alive

[@LGR]

@mrbitbot Absolutely. Just let Carmack ramble, it's all golden.

[@FPRobber]

I don't think there could have been a better video to convince me to get Rage. Carmack is a legend!

[@MarketingMovies1337]

He's the man!!

[@DeathMetalPizza]

I don't understand how this video can be disliked.

[@vk08]

How it all flows..wish I had a clear mind like that.

[@stegbo]

The MAN.

[@CharlieTango91]

Listened to all of it. Understood 1/4 of it.

[@RobotTed]

Great speech! The part at 50.00+ is brillant. And 6 years to make a game and he was almost spot on with the tech it seems. He needs to be on the dev board for the next xbox. Triangles. Triangles everywhere.

[@omfgstfuandgtfo]

thank you, for fucks sake this took forever to upload...god damn...

[@ThatAdelaideGuy]

I LOVE JOHN CARMACK

[@Talkarbob]

Carmack is a god amongst programmers. There are some things i disagree with him on, but he does know what he is doing, and i can't wait to see more from him and his team!

[@CFlow375]

First of all, John Carmack invented graphics ;3 Second of all, goddamn I want that RED cap at 0:59:09

[@Nyocurio]

1:23:56 Been waiting sooo long to hear these sacred words :DDD

[@14skillz]

nice lecture

[@PoulWrist]

@TadejVig trying to post a link, but it just says "error" when i do, but a google image search for "carmack long hair" gives you an image of him sitting in a book festival tshirt with a pony tail.

[@MuzzafuzzaGaming]

AWWW YEAH, QUAKECON.

[@mrrectumgrinder]

Master!

[@paparapuu]

thx for uploading this its usually alittle annoying to find ;p

[@supralex1]

I didn't understand anything he said but I still watched the whole thing because I was hypnotized

[@MichaelPohoreski]

@42:44 when we build our virtual textures for the dynamic stuff, it is this process that @42: 49 at one point it just took hours. I rewrote it to be such a way that it used huge amounts of memory mapped files and it got down much much faster @42:59 but it really started swapping on any system that we had. @43:02 So we said "Well let's find out what the actual limitations here are." @43:07 So we took one of our servers and we put 192 gigabytes of ram in it

[@grievousgamers]

and boy there isn't anything quite so awesome is there.

[@mrdeathamore]

Carmack is a genius. I'm pretty sure he is the most talented programmer in the whole world. Respect to this man.

[@leileilol]

@Vnix actually there'd still be drivers involved he's thinking of the whole idea of taking advantage of their unification (i.e. less memory transfers)

[@imalwayswatchingu00]

@warwize I agree. I can tell, but only looked at it once you pointed it out. Do you often look at clothes? I would've seen it eventually... watching this thing for over an hour.

[@ColumboJedi]

I saw this 4 times.

[@zephyrox2]

Keynote 2012 please! Need to watch it again :)

[@Ificationer]

He is a genius...PERIOD!

[@Rambowjo2]

Great talk, Carmack rules.

[@FourtySixx]

i lov him and he lov's saying "i"

[@TOX1Ngamer]

Yes master.

[@SilkyMuggs]

John Carmack = The reason I enjoy being alive.

[@musicalbacon2]

listening to john carmack talk is like listening to a computer talk about its day.

[@morph611]

The man is a legend. The kids wouldnt be playing their halo, gears or cod without him. Trust me, "the programming techniques that only programmers care about" will affect our future gaming experience dramatically.

[@ChickenC3]

John Carmack is my hero

[@chrisvarns]

@Prometheus4096 Oh right, misunderstood. There are some mailing lists you can subscribe to that are basically journals for new algorithms/data structures/ whatever in research or development in game engines. Worth checking out!