Carmack grew up playing with computers in a suburb of Kansas City (he was sent to a juvenile home at 14 after breaking into a school to steal an Apple II) and quit college early to becomea game programmer.
When he found it, he quickly hacked into its corporate servers, sent a note to its CEO's unlisted e-mail address (both announcing the security breach and asking for a job) and then moved to New York to become its lead programmer.
As development budgets for games have risen, says Aubrey Hesselgren, a games-industry programmer, big publishers such as Electronic Arts and Activision have become risk-averse.