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John Carmack Leaves id Software
jones_supa writes "John Carmack has left id Software completely. 'John Carmack, who has become interested in focusing on things other than game development at id, has resigned from the studio,' id's studio director Tim Willits told IGN, and continues: '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.' Carmack, a co-founder of id, recently joined Oculus VR as Chief Technology Officer, and at the time remained at id Software in some capacity. Earlier this year, id president Todd Hollenshead departed id as well."
He's the CTO for Oculus, developers of the Oculus Rift VR HMD. He already has his plate full, and the writing has been on the wall since August when he joined Oculus. Gaming has much more to gain from him now that he's no longer tied to the past and can put all of his effort into VR gaming.
Grid that axe all you want, just not with revisionist BS like that. Duke3D took 2.5 years to launch after DOOM. And then only 5 months after Duke3D landed Quake dropped. Build was fun, but as a technical competition it was no match for what Carmack was doing.
As for hardware, the first useful consumer 3D hardware didn't land for months *after* Quake shipped, when the Verite boards appeared in stores. And Quake supported them very early. And Carmack was also the primary independent champion of Voodoo, and those were the products that grew that market. So if you want to say he failed by missing the PC 3D hardware revolution, then you're arguing that 1) he missed the revolution he was key in making happen, and 2) he doesn't deserve credit for the revolution he did so much to popularize. More bull.
And Unreal always had its own renderer. Why would anyone expect them to drop their homegrown tech and adopt a competitor's? Not every designer jumps engines every 4 months. (Is that you, George?)
Lay blame wherever you want to for iD's modern malaise, but denying their groundbreaking early achievements is just absurd.
Tastes Like Chicken
Oh for crap's sake. I know i'm answering to a troll here, but if you don't understand how pivotal was Quake with its "out-of-date" software rendered back in the day then you clearly didn't live the 90s, where the only widespread GPU product out there was the S3 ViRGE. It single-handedly revolutionized the game industry and started a trend to use 3D, without GPUs... which didn't really become popular until Quake 2 showcased what could be achieved with them. 3DFX owes them pretty much all of their business, as everyone else then followed suit, including Romero which had to (yet again) rewrite his glorious Daikatana.
Give credit where due. "Humiliates himself"? This guy was the major driving force for the FPS genre and the adoption of GPUs, and was coding state of the art game engines while you were still picking your nose. Doze off. Maybe 5 years for now you'll be raving about how good his VR headsets are.