John Carmack Departs id Software to Focus Fully on Duties at Oculus VR

[natr0n]

Id Software co-founder and technical director John Carmack has resigned from the company to dedicate his time serving as chief technical officer at Oculus VR, id announced today in a statement.

“John Carmack, who has become interested in focusing on things other than game development at id, has resigned from the studio,” id Software studio director Tim Willits said in the statement, “John’s work on id Tech 5 and the technology for the current development work at id is complete, and his departure will not affect any current projects. We are fortunate to have a brilliant group of programmers at id who worked with John and will carry on id’s tradition of making great games with cutting-edge technology. As colleagues of John for many years, we wish him well.”

“I wanted to remain a technical advisor for Id, but it just didn’t work out,” Carmack wrote on Twitter. “Probably for the best, as the divided focus was challenging.”

Carmack stepped up as CTO at Oculus VR in August, though remained at id Software to aid in the development ofDoom 4 and the id Tech 5 engine. Carmack co-founded id Software in 1991 and contributed to the development of several Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein titles, as well as 2011’s Rage.


http://www.egmnow.com/articles/news/john-carmack-departs-id-software-to-focus-fully-on-oculus-vr/

 

[JC316]

I think this is a good thing. Carmack has been living off his own name for far too long. Doom 3, Quake 4, and Rage were all mediocre at best and Quake wars was god awful. Return to Castle Wolfenstien was the last great game that he worked on and he was just the technical director. I loved the games from his glory days, Doom, Hexen, Quake, but the guy is washed up.

 

[remixedcat]

Yah Quake wars was teh suckage. me and my lil bro would make fun of that game for hours. LOL. but Q4 was allright tho.

 

[JC316]

Yah Quake wars was teh suckage. me and my lil bro would make fun of that game for hours. LOL. but Q4 was allright tho.

Thats been the issue, the games have just been "alright". Doom 3, Quake 4, and Rage were alright. Decent for what they are, but played too safe. Nothing really extraordinary about them. Not like Doom was, not like Hexen was, not like RTCW was.

 

[remixedcat]

Allright games marketed very very very well.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

John's a brilliant guy and the industry owes him respect for his contributions, but honestly, I feel he's not really been true to gaming since he signed on with Bethesda. His Megatextures concept only makes development quicker while offering nothing but unacceptable tradeoffs to the end user.

This is probably a better fit for him, he's a tech guy at heart, and actually lacks the proper leadership and communication skills to be lead tech on a game dev team anyway. He sounded to be admitting as much in his 3 hr keynote speech where he spent a lot of time apologizing for Rage.

 

[newconroer]

I think this is a good thing. Carmack has been living off his own name for far too long. Doom 3, Quake 4, and Rage were all mediocre at best and Quake wars was god awful. Return to Castle Wolfenstien was the last great game that he worked on and he was just the technical director. I loved the games from his glory days, Doom, Hexen, Quake, but the guy is washed up.

And yet somehow manages to walk right into another office building with a massive title and paycheck.
Gotta love the bullshit world of business.

 

[xenocide]

I actually loved Doom 3, I understand a lot of people hated it but it was probably my favorite "horror" game with Resident Evil 2 as a close second. Everyone I know who's played Rage hated it, and everyone I know that played Quake Wars from the beginning loved it, so who knows. I think him leaving is good for him but may be a bit of a loss for id software. The guy is definitely brilliant, and contributed unfathomable amounts, but I feel like he lost touch. Quake 3 and Doom 3 are two of my favorite titles, but since then id software as a whole has been lackluster and dragging their feet on releasing new games. Rage was in development for what, like 7 years? Definitely didn't help its case...

 

[Mindweaver]

[quote="Frag Maniac, post: 3022948, member: 89815"]he's a tech guy at heart[/quote]

I agree with that, and everyone that knows that he builds rockets on the side should too. I think this will be a good fit for him and who else better to build some in house VR engine.

 

[WhiteNoise]

Rage kicked ass. I maybe in the minority but god damn I enjoyed that game. Everything else he's done (other than the original DOOM's) was shit.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

I think this is a good thing. Carmack has been living off his own name for far too long. Doom 3, Quake 4, and Rage were all mediocre at best and Quake wars was god awful. Return to Castle Wolfenstien was the last great game that he worked on and he was just the technical director. I loved the games from his glory days, Doom, Hexen, Quake, but the guy is washed up.

Carmack's focus was engine development, not gameplay/creative direction. Even though the mentioned games get boring, they're technically very good (e.g. the massive sky texture for RAGE).

 

[Frag_Maniac]

...they're technically very good (e.g. the massive sky texture for RAGE).

The problem with RAGE from a technical standpoint is the Megatextures not only resulted in a lot of blurred object textures, that sky you speak of was one big static mesh, with no ability to add any dynamics such as moving clouds, weather effects, etc. Whenever you place one huge texture you give up way more than you benefit, and the only real benefit as I said was quicker production time on their end. Frame rates have always been good on Id games, but with RAGE you then had a HUGE game file on top of the tradeoffs I mentioned.

The only textures that were really that impressive in RAGE were some distant landscape vistas, and that's about it. One of the biggest examples of how misleading RAGE's advertising was is the before and after shots of the view of the entrance of Dead City, where it was clear they tried to make it look way better than it actually did.

 

[Frick]

Never got into Doom, or FPSs in general. I know I was promised (by me) a Jedi Knight in the Doom 3 engine and Raven never got around to do it.

Anyway I'm seriously thinking about getting Masters of Doom. It sounds interesting, and Carmack is an interesting person.