John Carmack Left id Software Because He Couldn't Do VR Work There 146
An anonymous reader writes John Carmack left id Software last year, more than 20 years after he founded the company. There was a lot of speculation as to why, and now an interview at USA Today provides an explanation. Carmack had become Chief Technical Officer for Oculus VR a few months prior, and he was excited about bringing virtual reality gaming into the mainstream. Unfortunately, he couldn't get id Software's parent company, Zenimax, onboard. He'd hoped they would 'allow games he worked on to appear on the Oculus Rift headset. Had the deal been consummated, Wolfenstein: The New Order — an upcoming sequel to Wolfenstein 3D, an early id release — could have been part of the Oculus' tech demonstration that earned raves and awards at the recent Consumer Electronic Show.' Carmack said, 'But they couldn't come together on that which made me really sad. It was just unfortunate. When it became clear that I wasn't going to have the opportunity to do any work on VR while at id software, I decided to not renew my contract.'"
Re:Best of luck, John (Score:5, Interesting)
John Carmack + Gabe Newell + Oculus Rift = HL3
Re:This was a good thing for gamers. (Score:5, Interesting)
Zenimax doesn't need Carmack. Zenimax probably doesn't want Carmack. Zenimax is about pumping out products. Look at the poor state Fallout 3/New Vegas were released in, as well as Skyrim. These are some of their premier products and the released them so buggy as to be near unplayable (Fallout 3 was the best of the lot, New Vegas on the 360 would routinely hang after 15 minutes). Carmack is too much of a perfectionist to fit into such a culture. He's fine delaying a product for years if it's not ready (at least technically, let's face it, he's not about the content/design/story).
Both parties, Zenimax and Carmack, are probably inwardly happier for the separation.
I like Zenimax games, the stories, but they've been lacking quality of engineering. I had hoped that with the acquisition of id that the quality of engineering might have rubbed off, and with Carmack's departure, I'm disheartened about it.
Re:Thing is (Score:5, Interesting)
Their tech really didn't push boundaries that much, at least not usefully, in recent years.
The distinction to make is that it was poorly applied. That doesn't mean it wasn't there. id tech 4 and 5 were examples of id taking Carmack's latest idea and running with it full stop, even if the tech wasn't ready.
Other developers eschewed these technologies in favor of older ones, because they had the focus to pick tech they could apply immediately and successfully to fulfill their vision. id didn't have this focus, and the games clearly suffered as they made the games to suit the technology. The so-called "tech-demo" syndrome that everybody uses to describe the latest id games.
Eventually those technologies made it into other games. Per-pixel shading is all over the place now, but still alongside lightmaps. Megatexturing is so compelling that support for it is built into the latest graphics standards, so that games can use it properly and without putting in the monumental effort that Carmack did.
You can't say that he wasn't pushing boundaries. Come on. It's all right there. The games were failures, and other engines look better in many aspects, but the tech was there and it was ahead of its time.
Re: Best of luck, John (Score:5, Interesting)
My impression of Doom is more that the protagonist (aka "the player") was psychologically impaired and gradually losing touch with reality, while everybody he met and was "out to get him" was in fact people trying to save him or to protect the base from his destruction. As the player meets more exotic creatures, it is more proof he is just losing touch with reality and getting doped up even more from some experimental treatment gone bad.
At least that is a way to think about it. A sort of disturbing view as you could say the protagonist is actually killing his fellow marines and is the real enemy, but a different way to view the game.