“Recently someone posted about their experience in determining the file structure of the Doom WAD file. How did you feel when people were discovering how to modify Doom, from building new levels, to changing the executable itself (dhacked) originally without any information from id? In your opinion, is the modding community a valuable place for creating future game developers?”
John Carmack Answers:
“The hacking that went on in Wolfenstein was unexpected, but based on that, DOOM was designed from the beginning to be modified by the user community.
[…]
I still remember the first time I saw the original Star Wars DOOM mod. Seeing how someone had put the death star into our game felt so amazingly cool. I was so proud of what had been made possible, and I was completely sure that making games that could serve as a canvas for other people to work on was a valid direction.”
“Recently someone posted about their experience in determining the file structure of the Doom WAD file. How did you feel when people were discovering how to modify Doom, from building new levels, to changing the executable itself (dhacked) originally without any information from id? In your opinion, is the modding community a valuable place for creating future game developers?”
John Carmack Answers:
“The hacking that went on in Wolfenstein was unexpected, but based on that, DOOM was designed from the beginning to be modified by the user community.
[…]
I still remember the first time I saw the original Star Wars DOOM mod. Seeing how someone had put the death star into our game felt so amazingly cool. I was so proud of what had been made possible, and I was completely sure that making games that could serve as a canvas for other people to work on was a valid direction.”
https://m.slashdot.org/story/7828