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Comment by gnoupi | Hacker News Reader

Probably because he worked on things which were entertaining, and not "tools" to people, simply. You can find plenty of famous people in the video game industry, recognized for their work. But you can be a wonderful tool programmer, make wonderful databases, webservers, and else... Ultimately, those are only tools. And people don't have especially respect or excitement for tools, they just use them.

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That's definitely a factor, but he's still remembered. It would have been easy for the programming to have been ignored and Carmack to have been overshadowed by Romero, but that didn't happen.

Amongst game programmers, we certainly pay more attention to who writes the code, not just who designs the game or draws the art. Most gamers are more likely to know of Cliff Bleszinski than Tim Sweeney, but programmers are more likely to know of Sweeney.

Actually, nowadays, you know game designers, more than actual programmers, at least for the big industry. You know the programmers for most indie games, though (but there they are often designers themselves).

Besides, true that you don't really know the "big shot programmer" in games anymore, mostly because there is not anymore one programmer, you see a full team creating an engine. so they blend in the product.

About Carmack and Romero, I guess it also helped that Romero made a fool of himself after the "breakup".

Like any budding game programmer who cut their teeth on the object-oriented, endlessly flexible game creation system "ZZT", I will always see Tim Sweeney as a personal hero.

Perhaps a little off-topic, but if you're interested in a slice of history, have a look at what Sweeney made before the Unreal engine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZZT

I think we are getting to (what I think is) the point: You will be recognized only if your work excites your users so much.

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