I just finished reading "Masters of Doom" last night. The book is about id software, the company that made Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake and that pioneered 3D gaming. The book primarily follows John Carmack and John Romero, two of the founders of id. Carmack was responsible for developing almost all of the 3D engine code.
After finishing Quake, (what I believe to be) the first fully 3D PC game, Carmack wanted to work on a 3D virtual world inspired by the Metaverse from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. The book at least makes it sound like Carmack believed that a 3D virtual world was the next big thing. Despite Carmack's wishes, the rest of id decided to stick with making first person shooters and other video games.
Carmack is now the CTO of Oculus VR. Keeping in mind Carmack's virtual reality ambitions and Zuckerberg's mission to "connect the world", this acquisition makes a lot more sense than it does thinking of Oculus VR as purely a gaming company.
> Despite Carmack's wishes, the rest of id decided to stick with making first person shooters and other video games.
Really? I actually just finished MoD, coincidentally, and it seemed to me that the rest of the team wanted to do things other than the repeated Quake/Doom re-hashing, and Carmack basically refused. He wanted to work on his engine.
This was more a recent development and not covered in MoD and is the reason he left id. He wanted id to focus on VR but he couldn't get bethesada to buy in to the idea.
I'm currently reading MoD, and I agree with this analysis. I'm not thrilled about the purchase, but it does make sense given the ambitions of the players involved.
Very interesting theory. Anybody have a link to an actual source for Carmack's interest in virtual "worlds" instead of just games? Everything I've found from searching is talking about Oculus' Palmer Luckey, not Carmack, wanting to do that, and it specifically name-checks the Metaverse. (e.g. http://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electronics/gaming/oculus-...). There's a lot of Google hits for "Carmack Metaverse" but they're pretty much all “I am thrilled to work with John on building the Metaverse", which is Luckey talking in Oculus' announcement of hiring Carmack. (http://www.oculusvr.com/press/john-carmack-joins-oculus-vr-a...)
This still makes sense as to why Oculus would want to get in bed with Facebook, but it sounds like the motivation is coming from Luckey and not Carmack.
One other important take away from MoD, Carmack gives zero fucks about what he says publicly. I'm excited to hear his take on this whole deal, especially since I imagine it comes as a bit of a shock to most of the Oculus team.
Interestingly, John Cash, another Quake programmer, went on to lead the development of World of Warcraft, something much closer to a shared VR universe.
After finishing Quake, (what I believe to be) the first fully 3D PC game, Carmack wanted to work on a 3D virtual world inspired by the Metaverse from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. The book at least makes it sound like Carmack believed that a 3D virtual world was the next big thing. Despite Carmack's wishes, the rest of id decided to stick with making first person shooters and other video games.
Carmack is now the CTO of Oculus VR. Keeping in mind Carmack's virtual reality ambitions and Zuckerberg's mission to "connect the world", this acquisition makes a lot more sense than it does thinking of Oculus VR as purely a gaming company.