Science Quote by John Carmack

Carmack’s line lands because it’s blunt in the way engineers are blunt: it swaps polite debate about “games as art” for a crude comparison that instantly communicates priorities. The joke is doing real rhetorical work. Porn, in the analogy, is a medium where the audience arrives for a specific kind of engagement; plot exists mostly as an entry ramp. By yoking games to that expectation, Carmack is defending a vision of the medium where mechanics, responsiveness, and technical performance are the main event, and narrative is optional scaffolding.

The context matters. Carmack came up building foundational first-person shooters in the 1990s, when storage limits, production pipelines, and the novelty of 3D made “feel” and speed the frontier. His work helped define a design culture where story was often delivered as minimal framing, because the cutting edge was the engine, not the screenplay. The quote also functions as a preemptive strike against a certain kind of prestige anxiety: the idea that games need literary narrative to be legitimate. Carmack is saying legitimacy can come from systems.

The subtext is both pragmatic and a little polemical: players don’t primarily want to be told; they want to do. It’s a provocation aimed at creators and critics who treat narrative as the crown jewel. Of course, the barb also exposes what it risks missing: plenty of games derive their power from story precisely because interactivity can make narrative consequence felt, not merely observed. The line is less a universal truth than a declaration of allegiance.