John Carmack was revolutionary at id Software – without him, the first-person shooter genre might have never come to life.

Carmack was a guest of Joe Rogan‘s podcast, and he talked about the long working hours, something that has been part of the gaming industry’s culture: „You look at the game industry; it doesn’t pay as well, there is less job security, and they work you a lot harder. There is the problem of the fact that when you have an industry–and this has been the way for artists forever–where if you’ve got something that people are passionate about and want to be involved in, supply and demand works its way and you wind up in a situation where they don’t have to be paid as much. The long working hours can lead to phenomenal results. The other side of that is it allows products that otherwise couldn’t exist to exist by people working at that level in a way that maybe couldn’t be sustained in other industries. Probably many of the greatest things that were ever made in gaming were only possible by people throwing themselves at that level at it,” Carmack said.

He also discusses the idea of a gaming workers’ union: „There is some serious debate about it. Some people despise that about the industry, that nobody should work that hard. Some people think there literally should be laws that should prevent people from working that hard. I always have to argue against that. There is a power to obsession where being able to absolutely obsess over something … Instead of work/life balance, it’s your life’s work. Everybody will point back [to me] and say, ‘Well that worked great for you; you’re the founder of a company; you were in a position where you got to make your own decisions.’ But is that OK to say for the 19-year-old out of a game dev program that’s being overworked? I have to always be aware that my view into the industry is obviously very colored by my experiences. I never actually worked inside of one of the big Electronic Arts or Activision studios.

They may have some valid criticisms, but I still come down on–I think it’s great when people throw themselves at [their work] beyond what other people think is reasonable. They have free will; they’ve chosen to do that. If that’s what they think is going to help them get close to their goals, I’m not going to try to make that impossible for them. I’m not involved in the HR departments of all of these companies, but the ones that I have been familiar with or that I’ve known people doing that, largely they come back and say, ‘These people are choosing to do this.’ The rejoinder is, ‘Oh it’s a toxic culture that makes people want to choose to do that,’ but I don’t buy into that sort of social engineering level of things. If they’re doing it, they’ve agreed that they’ll wave the flag and say I’m doing this because I care so much about this. I don’t think that’s a problem,” Carmack added.

Carmack and co-worked a lot on Quake, sometimes going past midnight, but Michael Abrash, a programmer with a family then, wasn’t getting flak for it, as his work was appreciated (as he was working hard, too). Even today, John Carmack works 13 hours a day as Oculus’ chief technical officer, and he doesn’t go more because it’s not worth it in his work’s results. He added that he needs 8 hours a day of sleep, though…

Three working hours are not much…

Source: GameSpot