I often wonder if Jason Jones [0] (of Mac 3D shooters "Pathways Into Darkness" [1] & "Marathon" [2]) was at the time at about an equal level as John Carmack. I believe the release dates of PiD and Marathon weren't much different from Wolfenstein and Doom, so they've must have been developed at more or less the same time.

Personally I feel PiD was a much better game than Wolfenstein, partly because of the adventure/RPG elements, partly because of the horror atmosphere. The UI was less immersive however. But the game certainly had very interesting elements. For example there was a level that was randomly generated every time. Some monsters could only be killed when frozen (using a special "blue crystal") otherwise they'd be invisible and be impossible to kill. It was possible to talk with dead human corpses using a "yellow crystal", etc… There was a special room that would drain the oxygen and only by speeding up the time somehow (perhaps using another crystal?) one could survive the room.

And some things Marathon certainly did better than Doom. For example it was possible to look up and down, the lightning effects were more impressive, there were some physics, etc ...

Of course the guy that wrote the Build engine (of Duke Nukem 3D fame) was probably at a more-or-less equal skill level as well.

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[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Jones_(programmer)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathways_into_Darkness

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_(video_game)