Facebook was at the center stage this week when it was subjected to both criticism and appreciation. The reason behind it was its announcement of the Metaverse, an all incorporating concept that made the tech giant change its name from Facebook to Meta. But the decision might not have come as a piece of welcome news for everybody at the organization; it has drawn irk from some of the corporation’s top VR developers.
For one, the programmer of games like “Doom” and “Quake” John Carmack, who worked with Oculus VR before its acquisition by Facebook, was a prominent name who was not very happy with the announcement.
“I have been pretty actively arguing against every single metaverse effort that we have tried to spin up internally in the company from even pre-acquisition times,” said Carmack, whose title is now consulting CTO, during the address. “I have pretty good reasons to believe that setting out to build the metaverse is not actually the best way to wind up with the metaverse.”
Citing his reservations, he further added,
“The most obvious path to the metaverse is that you have one single universal app, something like ‘Roblox,’” he said. “I just don’t believe that one player — one company — winds up making all the right decisions for this.”
Now, this is breathing fire down your employer. The timing, to say the least, has been impeccable or maybe the worst, criticizing your firm right after it has announced what some say is the biggest decision taken by Facebook as of now. The confidence to give such statements may come from the fact that he is not alone in his criticism.
“But here we are,” Carmack continued. “Mark Zuckerberg has decided that now is the time to build the metaverse, so enormous wheels are turning, and resources are flowing, and the effort is definitely going to be made.”
If that sounds a little catty, you’re not alone. But it does sound as though Carmack intends to throw himself into the new vision. In fact, he took the opportunity to lay out a challenge to the company: to hold next year’s Facebook Connect conference — the same one he was speaking at when he delivered the critical remarks — in the Metaverse.
Sounds a bit dodgy, doesn’t it? Well, you are not alone in that assumption, as in the very same conference, he criticized Metaverse. He said that next year’s conference should be held in the Metaverse. In or out, good idea or bad, you can have your say, but one thing is for sure that everyone wants to get on board.
“I’ll be really disappointed if I’m sitting here next year in front of a video crew and a camera in physical reality doing this talk,” he said. “I want to be walking around the halls or walking around the stage as my avatar in front of thousands of people, getting the feed across multiple platforms.”