Writing in response to Peter Berkman of Anamanaguchi, industry legend John Carmack stated that VR tech was ”too obviously powerful” to be built from the ground up as Valve did with Steam, and that rapid interest from huge companies was ”inevitable”.
”VR won’t be like that, he said,” referring to Valve and Steam, “The experience is too obviously powerful, and it makes converts on contact. The fairly rapid involvement of the Titans is inevitable, and the real questions were how deeply to partner, and with who.”
”Honestly, I wasn’t expecting Facebook (or this soon),” finished Carmack, ”I have zero personal background with them, and I could think of other companies that would have more obvious synergies. However, I do have reasons to believe that they get the Big Picture as I see it, and will be a powerful force towards making it happen. You don’t make a commitment like they just did on a whim.”
His post kicked off some interesting discussion on the blog that also covered the general unease over Facebook’s privacy policies, something which Carmack is apparently not concerned with. ”I’m not a “privacy is gone, get over it” sort of person, and I fully support people that want remain unobserved,” he posted, ”but that means disengaging from many opportunities. The idea that companies are supposed to interact with you and not pay attention has never seemed sane to me.”
“Being data driven is a GOOD thing for most companies to be. Everyone cheers the novel creative insight and bold leadership that leads to some successes, and tut tuts about companies ending up poorly by blindly following data, but cold analysis of the data is incredibly important, and I tend to think the world will be improved with more and better data analysis.”
Carmack’s support is perhaps unsurprising considering his involvement with Oculus as Chief Technological Officer, but it will be welcome by both Facebook and the VR company after the rather unhappy general response to their acquisition.
