Carmack leaves id

[Gilberreke]

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/doom-c ... 0-6416346/

Yeah... not sure what to think about this?

[DaveYanakov]

Surprise that the company still exists and carries enough weight for this to be newsworthy?

[Nabetsu122]

Holy crap... (Personal Snip) Doing some more research, Polygon wrote this:

Reached for comment, a spokesperson for Oculus VR had no comment other than to confirm that Carmack was working full-time at the company.

Looks like he is going from split Co-Founder/Head programmer(id)/CTO(Oculus) to full time Programmer/CTO with Oculus. Not sure how I feel about this.

Source: http://www.polygon.com/2013/11/22/5134500/id-software-founder-john-carmack-resigns

[Katalliaan]

I thought he left id back when he took the job as CTO for Oculus.

[FlowerChild]

I think it's been a long time coming. Even around a decade ago I remember him making statements about how he was more interested in working in space exploration than making games.

People move on from the game industry all the time. It's particularly demanding, and as your life develops in other areas it's harder and harder to justify the time that it requires. People like me that really choose to devote their lives to it in the long term are very few and far between.

It's basically a young person's game. When you look around your average game studio, people over thirty are almost "old timers", are definitely the exception, and are found mostly in management, art, and design. Having a front line game programmer of his age is almost unheard of.

There's only so much Mountain Dew you can drink in one lifetime :)

And yeah, really Dave is right in that Id has steadily been losing significance for a rather long time now (ever since Doom 3 I'd say, maybe even starting around Quake 3). I think this has largely corresponded to Carmack's own waning interest, as in many ways, he was that company. Most of their success revolved around developing kick-ass engines that allowed them to do cool things before anyone else, rather than games, and that was almost all down to him. I can't say this news really means much to gaming as a result, even if it is interesting for its historical significance in terms of it really marking the end of an era (or more the period on an era that really ended a long time ago in any meaningful way).

Anyways, I'll certainly pour one on the curb for him, as he was one of the most significant influences in the game industry for probably a good decade, and at a time when I used to idolize him as a young game developer.

[Gilberreke]

As usual, Flower summarizes my feelings well :). Here's to hoping that Id will come out of it stronger by hearing some new young talent.

Super excited about Oculus now though. Cool company, insanely cool product, but they were missing some credibility for me. Seems like they now have that in spades.