David Kushner: Masters of Doom (Random House, 2003)
The definitive account of the "two Johns" (Carmack and Romero) and the story of id Software, from Softdisk to Quake.
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Sources
Sources & references.
Books, encyclopedias and documents to go deeper into John Carmack's life and work.
Wikipedia: John Carmack
A detailed, well-sourced overview. A documented entry point to his games, techniques and companies.
Open link →John Carmack's .plan files
For years, Carmack kept a public development log (.plan files). These community-archived notes document his day-to-day technical thinking.
Lex Fridman Podcast: John Carmack (2022)
A multi-hour conversation on his career, his programming method and his AGI venture.
Open link →Carmack and Marty Stratton on Quake Live (GameSpot, E3 2008)
Carmack explicitly credits himself with the idea behind Quake Live, recounts the rename from Quake Zero after a domain-name dispute, and lays out the advertising-funded gamble. Source for the 2007-2009 stretch of the timeline.
Open link →id Software open-source repositories
The Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake engines, released under the GPL. Primary sources for studying his rendering techniques.
Open link →Wikidata: John Carmack (Q92742)
Structured data: dates, companies, awards and authority identifiers.
Open link →Keen Technologies — keenagi.com
Official site of the artificial-general-intelligence company John Carmack founded in 2022. It presents the "Keen AGI" project (KN.01), with "About" and "Research" sections tracking its work.
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Reference books
Books on Carmack & id Software.
A selection of books to go further. Cover thumbnails are shown for bibliographic identification.
Masters of Doom
The definitive account of the “two Johns” and the story of id Software, from Softdisk to Quake.
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Doom Guy: Life in First Person
John Romero's memoir: his own account of the id Software years, a counterpoint to Masters of Doom.
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Game Engine Black Book: DOOM
A detailed technical study of the Doom engine, from BSP to rendering, illustrated and richly annotated.
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Rocket Jump: Quake and the Golden Age of First-Person Shooters
A history of Quake and the golden age of the first-person shooter.
View ↗Method and editorial framework
1. Purpose. A documentary overview and a set of entry points to the sources. As the subject is living, information is presented factually and neutrally, to be cross-checked against the sources cited.
2. Images. A photograph of John Carmack (2025) is published on Wikimedia Commons under CC0 (public domain): see the original. The home-page portrait is a stylized illustration made for the archive, clearly labeled and non-photographic; it is not derived from that photograph and is not presented as a source. The animated header background is a clip shown through YouTube's embedded player (no video is hosted on this site); an original CSS/SVG scene serves as a fallback. Other photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons (CC BY), with photographer attribution. Box art in the ludography is reproduced at reduced size for documentary identification only; rights remain with the publishers. Headset photographs are freely licensed: the Samsung Gear VR by Maurizio Pesce (CC BY 2.0); the Oculus Quest by Syced (CC0).
3. Trademarks and titles. Game, engine and company names (id Software, Doom, Quake, Oculus, etc.) are trademarks of their respective owners, cited for documentary identification only.
4. Independence. An independent, non-commercial project, with no affiliation to John Carmack or the companies named.