The missing context is that he was quote-tweeting a thread by Sandy Petersen titled "How Quake ruined id software":
replyhttps://x.com/SandyofCthulhu/status/2069592209645785294
> How Quake ruined id Software.
> There has been a lot of praise of Quake of late, with its 30th anniversary, and it's deserved. Quake is an amazing feat of art, programming, and design. I worked on it, and everything came together almost perfectly from all of us. We ended up with a free-wheeling, frenetic action game with enough of a visible world to grip the imagination.
> ... [thread continues] ...
Still not quite exactly following Carmack's suggestion here... is he saying on that last point that the problems with designers/artists were due to Sandy's mistakes (i.e. not a genuine apologetic "sorry" but a "sorry you're wrong" type response)?
replyHe is acknowledging that it was a problem and apologizing for it happening, but is not personally taking the blame for causing said problem
reply> ... [thread continues] ...
replyThat's the interesting part that Twitter no longer lets us see without logging in...