Creator of Doom and Quake John Carmack left the game’s industry to join Meta’s Oculus, now Reality Labs. After a healthy dose of controversy and lawsuits, the iconic game developer led VR development at the Facebook-owned company. Now, after nine years of his role as consulting CTO, Carmack is leaving.
Carmack’s tenure at Meta has been long and arduous. The industry icon joined years before Meta’s recent foray into “The Metaverse”, an action that has derailed a large portion of VR development. Nevertheless, Carmack was instrumental in the development of the Oculus Quest platform as well as other projects at the company.
In the past, Carmack has butted heads with Meta over the development of The Metaverse. Last year, the VR expert revealed that he’s been arguing against every Metaverse decision the company made.
“I have been pretty actively arguing against every single metaverse effort that we have tried to spin up internally in the company from even pre-acquisition time,” he said. “I have pretty good reasons to believe that setting out to build the metaverse is not actually the best way to wind up with the metaverse.”
In a public post on his Facebook page, John Carmack revealed that he has mixed feelings on his tenure at the company. While he notes some positives, namely the Oculus Quest 2, he expressed disappointment over the company’s move towards The Metaverse.
“It has been a struggle for me,” Carmack said. “I have a voice at the highest levels here so I should be able to move things, but I’m evidently not persuasive enough. A good fraction of things I complain about eventually turn my way after evidence piles up, but I have never been able to kill stupid things before they cause damage, or set a direction and have a team actually stick to it.”
On Twitter, Carmack released a serperate statement, explaining his differences with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. While Zuckerberg has reportedly surrounded himself with sycophants egging on his Metaverse pet project, Carmack’s criticisms of the future platform have not been heard.
“As anyone who listens to my unscripted Connect talks knows, I have always been pretty frustrated with how things get done at FB/Meta. Everything necessary for spectacular success is right there, but it doesn't get put together effectively,” he said. “There is a notable gap between Mark Zuckerberg and I on various strategic issues, so I knew it would be extra frustrating to keep pushing my viewpoint internally.“
After resigning from Meta, John Carmack will be working on creating artificial general intelligence at Keen Technologies, his new startup.