John Carmack Joins Oculus Rift As CTO, Role At id Software Unaffected

The legendary programmer and the man behind Doom, Wolfenstein, Quake and Rage Johm Carmack has joined Oculus Rift as the Chief Technical Officer.

On this event, John Carmack said: “I have fond memories of the development work that led to a lot of great things in modern gaming – the intensity of the first person experience, LAN and internet play, game mods, and so on. Duct taping a strap and hot gluing sensors onto Palmer’s early prototype Rift and writing the code to drive it ranks right up there. Now is a special time.

I believe that VR will have a huge impact in the coming years, but everyone working today is a pioneer. The paradigms that everyone will take for granted in the future are being figured out today; probably by people reading this message. It’s certainly not there yet. There is a lot more work to do, and there are problems we don’t even know about that will need to be solved, but I am eager to work on them. It’s going to be awesome!”

This news was kind of expected since he was one the first developers who expressed his love for Oculus Rift. However, this move will not affect his role at id Software.

Bethesda released a statement which confirms that he will continue to lead the team at id Software.

“John has long been interested in the work at Oculus VR and wishes to spend time on that project. The technical leadership he provides for games in development at id Software is unaffected.”

What do you make of Carmack’s latest move?