Do something so extraordinary that the entire world will remember you.

The prerequisites of course being in the right place at the right time, with the right people and a little luck on your side as well.

So many people are remembered just because there were first at something by like a week, and the dozen others who also thought of it elsewhere but were a bit late or didn't publicize as well are forgotten forever.

I was going to make a joke about being born in the right place but he's from Kansas.

Still aeons ahead from being born in a slum in India.

id wasn't first in a lot of things. They were essentially porting existing graphics technology to the PC. They succeeded because other programmers turned their noses up at the "underpowered" PC in favour of systems with "better" hardware. Carmack certainly did a lot of work and devised some ingenious ways of getting the most out of PCs but he was adapting things more than pioneering them.

In his case it is also having the right ideas and taking the initiative. But being in a good environment is a huge factor for sure.

Very rarely being first counts imo. If you are building something novel in parallel there is a good chance you will have enough of difference.

Examples: other search engines, social networks, 3d games still exist. For many folks a different graphic on your homepage can be differentiator enough. (If you ever wonder why A/B, SEO, copywriting, design/ux is important)

Always find the solidifying legacy as incentive weird because after you die assuming you can’t see what happens, nothing matters. Maybe so are all incentives, so whatever works for you

What did he do that was extraordinary? Was it implementing various graphical programming concepts from several papers that came out of SGI and academics? Was it cribbing another neat trick from those same people to do fast inverse square root? Was it firing Romero and releasing pretty mediocre games for 16 years as the rest of the industry made leaps of innovation in video game design that he basically ignored? Was it moving on to VR and revolutionizing that industry by.... selling an okay headset with massive subsidies and only releasing a few mediocre games that are comparable at best to garbage mobile games?

Carmack is a good coder, and has pretty good math chops. He was also cocky enough to think he could make a 486 do some of the 3D math required if they were careful and added some limitations. I don't know why anyone ascribes anything more to him. Your average data scientist produces more actual innovation than he did.

When advances in technology creates new opportunities, the first one to conquer the market is remembered. Everyone had the idea for a 3D shooter back in the day, but Carmack is the one that is remembered.

If anyone was truly as "equally talented" as John Carmack, they wouldn't remain unknown for very long. Plus, you can be extremely successful without having to be a celebrity, and John was always going to be successful.

Sure they would. They may be known but known to a niche group of people which may limit their success. Carmack is a self proclaimed hermit but he's been in the public eye for decades (through conventions, speeches, etc) and willingly pushes back against corporate bureaucracies (against Jobs, Zuckerberg, Gates, etc). That type of public persona adds a lot of clout and opens many more doors, genius or not. A genius hermit who doesn't rock the boat or is fine with the status quo might have a different path.

Well, the OP asked "what’s the trick to becoming a celebrity", so the candidate would be someone as talented as Carmack that WANTED to get noticed. It wouldn't take a lot.

Location. They will be ignored in backwater towns, but easily noticed in tech hubs

Like Shreveport, LA?

Industries tend to coalesce into a few centralized locations. New York and LA are known for fashion. Detroit, TN, and TX are known for automobile manufacturering. LA and Nashville are known for music. Tech isn’t any different.

Isn’t Shreveport more known for natural resource extraction ie oil and gas?

That’s where Carmack and Romero started

It’s an outlier and an anomaly. My point stands for the reasons above.

In Carmack's case it was "lock yourself in a room for 14 hours a day coding" and get yourself a hype man (and artist/programmer) like Romero. More seriously, find a software niche that hasn't been widely marketed yet. You don't need to invent anything, just find something that's being done but hasn't been done good enough to reach a wide audience. Network with people that have a similar interest and form a company once you've got an idea worth pursuing.

It’s been like that since humanity. It’s a lot of luck as every person has many constraints that prevents them from surfacing