Carmack is pushing back against the notion that success comes from having the right idea or the perfect plan up front. Instead, he’s saying it comes from sustained, disciplined effort—showing up, staying focused, and making steady progress. This aligns with his well-documented work ethic; he has spoken publicly about maintaining roughly 60-hour work weeks throughout his career, emphasizing long stretches of uninterrupted focus.
The last line—“do it both ways and see which works better”—is particularly characteristic of Carmack’s engineering mindset. Rather than spending time debating the theoretically correct approach, he advocates for just building both options and letting the results speak for themselves. This is a practical, empirical approach: don’t get stuck deliberating when you could be testing.
In short, the quote is Carmack distilling his philosophy into a few sentences: grand visions matter less than consistent effort, and when in doubt, experiment rather than theorize. It’s advice rooted in decades of building things that actually shipped.
Re: Definitions of terms (Primary source)
A Slashdot comment by John Carmack arguing that coming up with a game concept is the easy part—the real value in game design comes from the hands-on process of building and testing.
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