Early Work
I had one thought forming while reading this piece, then read to Carmack&#x27;s quote in the footnote which encapsulated it.  I learned how to program modding games as a teenager, and as an adult now looking back on it, I realize how rough and ready the game engines were in 1996-1998, and how that rough and ready state, combined with my teenager&#x27;s imbalance between time and money, led to a bunch of what Graham is calling early work where my bad 3d modeling skills, terrible art sense, and ability to sling values around in text files and use tools that other community members made, allowed me to make an entire faction for Total Annihilation that was clearly lower quality than the originals, but really not that much worse.  Contrast that to about 2017 when I looked into what it would take to make a very small mod for XCOM, and boy oh boy, so much more work.  What advantages I gained from being in that place at that time...