John Carmack explains why he left id Software

When id Software founder and Doom programmer, John Carmack, originally left his former studio late last year to work on the Oculus Rift, the studio's parent company, Zenimax, merely said that Carmack was interested in “focusing on things other than game development at id.”, but it turns out that there's a little more to it than that.

John Carmack is a fan of virtual reality, its a personal interest of his and he believed in the Oculus Rift to a point where he promised that Doom 4 would support the technology but it seems Zenimax wasn't so keen. The company didn't want to allocate the resources to develop for the virtual reality headset and unfortunately, that was a deal breaker for John:

“They couldn't come together on that which made me really sad. It was just unfortunate,” Carmack told USA Today. “When it became clear that I wasn't going to have the opportunity to do any work on VR while at id software, I decided to not renew my contract.”

During the interview he did express that had Zenimax agreed to let him incorporate VR in to future games, he probably would have stayed at the studio he founded: “I would have been content probably staying there working with the people and technology that I know and the work we were doing,”

KitGuru Says: I've imagined playing in virtual reality since I was a kid, I think most gamers have at some point and clearly Carmack has thought about it a great deal. I'm sure he's hard at work to bring virtual reality to the forefront of gaming. If you've ever wondered what it's like to play with an Oculus Rift, KG's very own Jon Martindale has posted up a few of his experiences with the headset recently. Are you guys excited for Virtual Reality?

Source: USA Today

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