Joining the Thrillionaires 310
if he could make money by using his programming skills.
The eureka moment came when he ported a popular Nin-
tendo video game to the computer.
Carmack worked long days, and he loved the challenge
to code the best games. The games were so good that after
a concert, the Nine Inch Nails rock star, Trent Reznor,
skipped drugs, beer, and women – he wanted to playDoom
in his tour bus. As the games sold across the world, Car-
mack became a wealthy man. While the newly rich Elon
bought the Jaguar, Carmack bought a cherry-red Ferrari
- But everything didn’t go smooth. In a similar way as
when Elon forced Martin Eberhard to leave Tesla Motors,
Carmack forced one of the co-founders, John Romero, to
leave the company they founded.^122
It was after an interview, where Carmack talked about
his childhood, he rediscovered his interest in rockets. Car-
mack began with amateur rockets. “There are people who
argue that you can just simulate reality, but I think there’s
value in coming out here and dealing with the wind,” he
said. “In the information age, the barriers just aren’t there.
The barriers are self-imposed. If you want to set off and go
develop some grand new thing, you don’t need millions of
dollars of capitalization.”^122
As the weeks passed, Carmack launched larger and
more powerful rockets from abandoned parking lots. With
the Ferrari as a transportation vehicle, Carmack filled his
house with rocket parts. What really interested him was
the programming challenges. In a similar way as when
he challenged himself to always code the best games, he