— This is impressive research! John Carmack defends Microsoft’s AI Quake

The legendary co-creator of the Doom and Quake games for id Software, came out swinging on Monday in support of AI game tools, citing how the industry has developed from the early days of hand coding hex digits.

The heart of the issue is the release of Microsoft’s Copilot Labs’ release of an AI powered, fully playable tech demo of new Quake II maps this weekend.

It wasn’t made by hand or by coding, but rather built as an ai world you could navigate freely, and the frames are rendered on the fly — at 10 frames per second with a a resolution of 640 x 360.

Lots of nervousness in the industry
This made a lot of people nervous about the future of game development, an industry which has already seen layoffs and where fears of AI tools are already running high, writes Ars Technica.

Thus came this reaction post from Quake Dad, echoing the sentiments of many coders:

This is absolutely fucking disgusting and spits on the work of every developer everywhere. https://t.co/QXmHBDhjfT

— Quake Dad (@rubyrangerr) April 6, 2025

Which led Carmack to respond with;

— What? This is impressive research work!

Then, when Quake Dad replied with a post on how this will make it harder for developers to get jobs in the industry, Carmack came back with a lengthier reply, reminiscing about how long the industry has come:

Hard assembling machine code
— My first games involved hand assembling machine code and turning graph paper characters into hex digits. Software progress has made that work as irrelevant as chariot wheel maintenance.

Adding, that — Game engines have radically expanded the range of people involved in game dev, even as they deemphasized the importance of much of my beloved system engineering.

And tying this AI research and upcoming tools, Carmack sees opportunity, not loss:

— AI tools will allow the best to reach even greater heights, while enabling smaller teams to accomplish more, and bring in some completely new creator demographics..

— The world will be vastly wealthier in terms of the content available at any given cost, he continues.

Then the question is whether the developer will go the way of the Dodo, or the farmer, as Carmack puts it. He says it’s too soon to tell, and it might as well go the way of social media:

— …it could be like social media, where creative entrepreneurship has flourished at many different scales.

Time Sweeney enters he chat
Not ten minutes later, there was supporting reply from Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games, makers of Fortnite and Unreal Game Engine, itself a revolutionary developing tool at launch. Sweeney say AI will increase opportunities for everyone, and become a common tool in the future:

AI will ultimately be a powerful tool in the toolbox of every programmer, artist, and designer, just as high level languages, paint programs, and visual scripting were in previous eras. The opportunities available to everyone should ultimately increase as a result. https://t.co/xphjFCv2F1

— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) April 7, 2025

Ai as a net positive
So, yes, while there is a great debate going on about the future with AI in a whole host of occupations, and game devs are already in the thick of it — the top industry players are firmly on the side of AI as a net positive.

And, no, the Quake II demo from Microsoft is not intended as anything other than that, with the researchers themselves saying:

— We do not intend for this to fully replicate the actual experience of playing the original Quake II game, Copilot Labs say in their blog post, — This is intended to be a research exploration of what we are able to build using current ML approaches. Think of this as playing the model as opposed to playing the game.

See also: Copilot labs show off new, playable Quake II levels

Read more: The Twitter thread, Ars Technica, Gamespot, and r/singularity.