John Carmack Leaves Meta After Working on VR for a Decade - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 18 December 2022 / 2,746 Views
John Carmack, best known as a co-founder of id Software and programmer on Doom, announced he has resigned from Meta where he worked as an executive consultant for virtual reality.
"This is the end of my decade in VR," said Carmack. "I have mixed feelings."
He said the Quest 2 is what he wanted from the beginning with VR headsets and he says it is "a good product. It is successful, and successful products make the world a better place. It all could have happened a bit faster and been going better if different decisions had been made, but we built something pretty close to The Right Thing."
Carmack explained the reasons as to why he is leaving Meta.
"We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort," he said. "There is no way to sugar coat this; I think our organization is operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy. Some may scoff and contend we are doing just fine, but others will laugh and say "Half? Ha! I’m at quarter efficiency!'
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Good luck for him at least he was honest about why he left something we dont see much of.
Damn haha. Not sure I’ve ever heard an upper level employee speak so freely negatively about their employer like this. Definitely interesting to read.
Sony should hire him, build a studio around him and make him head of their VR department.
Hard to hire somebody that talks that kind of shit on their way out the door.
Going back to his company “ID software “ is more realistic. Which is owned by Microsoft.unless he is going to do another project then I wish him best of luck but would like to see his return to gaming as the master of doom .
That would be a pretty sick move! The dude clearly is in love with VR and Sony does seem to be leading the charge of trying to get VR into the mainstream. As awesome as it would be if he went back to id Software, he's honestly not needed anymore. He mainly worked on their infamous id Tech engine, which ruled the gaming world for a good while, but Unreal Engine is by far the biggest one now and id Tech seems to have been reduced to only Doom at this point as even Bethesda's other internal studios are abandoning it for Unreal.
But, it seems Carmack is more interested in his AGI company he recently founded called Keen. Supposedly he'll be focusing on that.
Wasn't he one of the creators of Doom?
Yes, that's him. He has quite the resume.
And Wolfenstein and Quake, to mention some of the franchises that are still known somewhat widely.
(Strictly speaking id Software didn't create Wolfenstein, but I don't think it was nearly as big before id touched it.)
Almost nobody remembers the original Wolfenstein back in the early 80s.
Hopefully he goes back to iD, works on MS VR Headset or goes to the PSVR division.
bad Judgement by Carmack to get in VR this early. His talents were mostly wasted.
VR will only be popular and be convincing in 10-20 years. Getting in on the ground floor means having to work on VR that's uncomfortable, unconvincing, and unpopular.
His Quest 2 is absolutely amazing. Made the cheapest and most advanced VR at the time.
Good luck, John, wherever you go next. :)
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