Dissatisfied Virtual Reality Pioneer Left Facebook’s Parent Company
Virtual Reality Pioneer has left Facebook’s parent company: After becoming disillusioned with Facebook’s corporate parent, a notable video game creator who helped spearhead the company’s growth in virtual reality has left.
John Carmack resigned as an executive consultant in virtual reality on Friday after sending a resignation letter to Meta Platforms, a holding company founded by Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg the year before.
Carmack said on Facebook: “There is no way to sugar coat this; I think our organization is operating at half the efficiency that would satisfy me.” There will always be those who look at us and say, “Half?” while others will look at us and say: “We are doing well!” Ha! I hit my quarterly productivity goal!
The Associated Press contacted Meta on Saturday about Carmack’s resignation and comments, and the company referred them to a tweet from Andrew Bosworth, CTO and head of Meta’s reality labs. Bosworth thanked Carmack on Twitter, writing: “It’s impossible to overstate the impact you’ve had on our work and the industry at large.”
Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg is fighting the perception that he is wasting billions of dollars to establish the Menlo Park, Calif., company in the “metaverse” — an artificial world filled with avatars of real people — and Carmack’s departure comes at a time when this perception is at its peak.
I revisited my first Oculus VR demo from ten years ago, and my interview with Oculus CEO at the time @brendaniribeto try to contextualize what it means @ID_AA_Carmack to end his work in VR after a decade. https://t.co/kWctgL4ytr
— Ian Hamilton (@hmltn) December 19, 2022
As the company’s losses mounted in the metaverse, advertising revenue, the primary source of revenue for Facebook and its subsidiary services such as Instagram, began to decline. Recession worries, more competition from services like TikTok and stricter privacy measures on Apple’s iPhone have all contributed to the service’s demise, making it more challenging to track users’ interests and thus harder to sell advertising.
Because of these problems, Meta’s stock has lost more than $575 billion in value this year, or nearly two-thirds of its value. Carmack only worked part-time at Meta. Still, his expressed disappointment seems likely to reinforce doubts about Zuckerberg’s efforts to make virtual reality as dominant as social networking has been for the nearly 20 years since Zuckerberg started the service while still a Harvard student. .
‘Legendary game developer (thanks Meta’s) consulting CTO for VR (says this) works at “half the efficiency that would make me happy” (&) despite having a “voice at the highest levels” he was ” apparently not convincing enough” to change his culture.’ https://t.co/okrVHc2Z1t
— Amber Mac (@ambermac) December 19, 2022
With Facebook’s $2 billion acquisition of VR headset company Oculus in 2014, Zuckerberg dove head first into the virtual reality space. After the deal was finalized, Carmack, then the CEO of Oculus, moved to Facebook. Carmack’s biggest claim to fame was his work on the groundbreaking video game Doom.
Authorities at the federal level are currently working to limit Zuckerberg’s influence in VR by blocking his plan to acquire Within Unlimited, the developer of a fitness program optimized for the metaverse.
Meta is faced with the test of his lifetime
But in an internal memo, Meta’s CEO says a “perfect storm of skepticism” won’t deter Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse plans. https://t.co/VxpvJnZPhG
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) December 19, 2022
In a hearing this week between the FTC and Meta over the fate of the merger, Carmack testified on behalf of the FTC. The trial, which will resume Monday in San Jose, California, could include testimony from Zuckerberg.
In his departure letter, Carmack expressed his satisfaction with Meta’s most recent virtual reality headset, the Quest 2. The headset is “pretty much exactly what I wanted to see from the beginning,” he said of his time at Oculus.
Blending the physical and virtual worlds is not as simple as it seems. We built Meta Reality, a new system that brings together walkthrough, scene and depth perception to bring mixed reality to Meta Quest Pro. Learn more about Meta Reality in our blog. https://t.co/PlHPZFlzLv
— Meta Quest (@MetaQuestVR) December 19, 2022
It’s successful, and successful goods make the world a better place,” said Carmack of Quest 2. “If different choices had been made, things might have moved on faster and gone better, but we built something close to The Right Thing. “
But Carmack concluded his letter with this plea: “Perhaps it is conceivable to get there by simply plowing through with existing processes, but there is plenty of room for improvement.” Increase the quality of your judgments and fill your stuff with “Give a damn!”
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