14 ms·

> "Facebook creeps me out." Whether or not you agree with his decision, having Notch pull away from talks with you creates an instant credibility "situation".

by skore 13y ago

> "Facebook creeps me out." Whether or not you agree with his decision, having Notch pull away from talks with you creates an instant credibility "situation". It's also noteable that Notch had been meeting with the Oculus team just two weeks ago[0], was tweeting about them in rather gushing terms[1] and seemed incredibly inspired to work on VR ideas[2]. He is now the personification of the a near universal feeling of betrayal in the community. Will be interesting to see how this develops. [0] https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/443541395543162880 https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/443541395543162880 [1] https://twitter.com/notch/status/443461570195378177 https://twitter.com/notch/status/443461570195378177 [2] https://twitter.com/notch/status/446312677745254400 https://twitter.com/notch/status/446312677745254400

mrschwabe 13y ago
Indeed, nice to see Notch take a stand and provide some sliver of redemption today for the thousands of nerds (myself included) upset about the Oculus Facebook deal today. I can't imagine the Oculus team ever reaching their fundraising goal if backers knew the founders were going to sellout before ever reaching the vision they shared to get people to back it in the first place. EDIT: Notch seems to have just confirmed the postulation above in his latest blog post: "I did not chip in ten grand to seed a first investment round to build value for a Facebook acquisition." http://notch.net/2014/03/virtual-reality-is-going-to-change-the-world/ http://notch.net/2014/03/virtual-reality-is-going-to-change-...
- lingben 13y ago
  Exactly. But this goes further and lays bare the sheer stupidity inherent in kickstarter or any other crowd-sourcing platform. Just like facebook's Frankensteinian monstrous mish-mash of consumer/content/advertiser/publisher crowd-funding in its current state is a mish-mash that ends up meaning nothing in the end. You are not an equity partner, you really have no say in how decisions are made, you are not a lender, you are and are not a client (depending on whether they actually give you the damn 'thing' or not due to a host of reasons, going bust, running out of money, fraud, etc.)
  - ycaspirant 13y ago
    The terms of funding on Kickstarter are pretty clear and straightforward. You back a project for a certain amount of money in exchange for a promised reward (this reward is never equity). When the time comes you either get your reward or you get your money back. Simple as that.
    - jessaustin 13y ago
      ...or you get your money back. Has this ever happened? I was under the impression that the funds raised through Kickstarter are spent on the kickstarted projects. If after spending the money, the project "fails", how can there be a refund?
  - sillysaurus3 13y ago
    I'm happy Oculus got my money for the original devkit, and I spent several hours enjoying it. As far as kickstarter, it's hard to fault them.
  - TaylorAlexander 13y ago
    "this ... lays bare the sheer stupidity inherent in kickstarter..." I'm sorry, but where is the stupidity? Kickstarter is a specific tool available to founders/innovators/creatives that allows us to reach a community of supporters quickly and efficiently. Like all tools, it has a specific way that it operates, and to keep such a new thing from spinning out of control, it is relatively simple and has few rules. Fortunately, we are all made aware of this going in. Backers generally pledge to receive a product. The creator benefits from early access to cash which allows them to build their product. This is what happened with Oculus, and they have already delivered vouchers to all backers which they could have redeemed for the original developer version from last year, the current developer version coming in July, or the consumer version still definitely coming towards the end of this year. I fail to see how Oculus gaining a parent company somehow "lays bare the sheer stupidity" of the system Kickstarter provides. People pledged for a high quality VR device, and Oculus promised to change the world. It seems these things will happen. One of the most compelling opportunities provided by virtual reality is not just gaming, but it's capability to put us somewhere else, including in a virtual room with our loved ones. Virtual reality enables an interaction that humans have never before been able to experience - the ability to hang out in a virtual space with another person. Facebook, whose primary goal has generally been to provide a platform for connecting humans to eachother, clearly sees the value in VR's ability to provide this new experience for us. As such, they've used their purchasing power to buy a stake in the VR game and help grow this new technology. Some day, we will be able to hang out with out loved ones, visit the doctor, or join a game with friends all in a shared virtual space. This is a future made possible by the Kickstarter model, which enabled Oculus to get the start they needed to commercialize Virtual Reality. Tell me again how that is stupid? What strikes me as stupid is the huge number of people decrying this move as some kind of perversion of the original Kickstarter promise, or some kind of bait and switch. It seems to be the logical progression of a company creating a ground-breaking new human interface device. Should they stay independent indefinitely just because they were crowd funded? I don't see how that would make any sense, or why such a modification to the Kickstarter model would be any kind of improvement.
- baby 13y ago
  > nice to see Notch take a stand taking a stand against Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and now Oculus ? I know that Notch wants to develop games with passionate people, but he has to understand that this acquisition was the best thing that could happen to both VR and Oculus. Anyway, Notch has been infamously known for his quick rants (see the "youtuber he insulted" issue)
  - bunderbunder 13y ago
    > I know that Notch wants to develop games with passionate people, but he has to understand that this acquisition was the best thing that could happen to both VR and Oculus. The two really don't have anything to do with each other. There's no rule saying that if someone comes out winning in business deal, then everyone comes out winning in that business deal.
  - o0-0o 13y ago
    That's a rather immature argument. Instagram, Facebook, and WhatApp are not really used by the same crowd in general. Also, I'd encourage you to do a bit more scratching on the term infamous. Hitler was infamous. Look, I'm not trying to discount your point, which is that this 'was the best thing', but you really don't have that crystal ball. No one does.
  - blhack 13y ago
    The best thing? There is really no other company you could think of who would be a better partner? Like google? Or Microsoft?
    - baby 13y ago
      Google ? I don't know, they have so many products that they acquire and then shut down. Also, they have so many products that... it wouldn't have been such a big deal to acquire Oculus Microsoft ? They already have a gaming branch so why not, but for the same reason as Google, people wouldn't have noticed it much. But Facebook ? Everybody around me is going to talk about it, even non-gamers. You have no idea how huge this is for VR.
    - 13y ago
res0nat0r 13y ago
I'd rather think of it as an indie developer who got lucky and struck it big making a pixelated block pushing game doesn't like that a VR firm is now part of a social networking company. My thought is good for him for standing up for what he believes in, but he is going to be missing out on some possible awesome to come engineering which previously might have taken years to obtain w/o FB's involvement. It seems to be ignored but the massive pockets, infrastructure, and engineering at FB will allow Occulus to have access to much much more than they could have achieved previously.
sillysaurus3 13y ago
Heh, from Carmack's twitter 1m ago: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/448629403740692481 https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/448629403740692481 For the record, I am coding right now, just like I was last week. I expect the FB deal will avoid several embarrassing scaling crisis for VR. Glad to see Carmack is still being Carmack. EDIT: By the way, if anyone is wondering why people are having a negative reaction to this Facebook deal, I think one way to understand it is to watch this video fullscreen and try to imagine any way that Facebook could add to the experience, or at least not detract from it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DGZc0Dd9Hc#t=5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DGZc0Dd9Hc#t=5s It's hard to.
- ekianjo 13y ago
  > scaling crisis for VR. That's supposing Facebook knows how to scale production of electronic items... apart from the cash, they have no relevant experience about that. If it had been Google or Microsoft there would already be people who know how to make it scale to mass production.
  - TaylorAlexander 13y ago
    Facebook has the buying power to put together a solid hardware production team. I don't think Google has much internal hardware production knowledge right now, aside from the knowledge they bought when they acquired Motorola. Before that, they mostly made things through hardware partners like HTC, Samsung, and LG. I think they produce the Chromecast internally, but it's not much fancier than a USB stick. I'm sure they are quickly learning, but Facebook is also already buying up hardware companies and they have been building their own custom servers for internal use for years.
    - ekianjo 13y ago
      > Facebook has the buying power to put together a solid hardware production team. Well I have worked in companies making physical goods (shipping millions every year), and you just don't buy a team from one day to another. It's not just about production, it's about supply chain, it's about quality management and quality assurance, regulations for sale in different countries/states, market research, product qualification to improve the design, actual customer support, vendors, distribution, etc... It's a whole new area of skills/functions you don't have, and that does not mix very well with a software-only company mentality. I think it's going to be very tough for them to make something solid with Facebook. EDIT: They would have been better prepared for scaling with a company like Apple (whose main business is already making hardware), Microsoft or Google for that matter. Many people say Valve could have been a good choice, but Valve has said several times they don't want to go into the hardware business (and won't make Steam boxes themselves).
melling 13y ago
Nah, it's irrelevant and will be a non-issue in a couple of years. Now that there are two strong VR players, things should progress much quicker. Consumers win. Hopefully, Notch will change his mind and embrace both platforms. Let's keep both companies in the game so the innovation doesn't stop.
XorNot 13y ago
It feels like Notch is being given too much credibility here. At the end of the day he's a billionaire because he had a viral hit and was ready with a monetization strategy (and had amazingly cheap running costs). None of this really speaks to his business or technical acumen, and he hasn't exactly done very much lately.
- netcan 13y ago
  Nonsense. He has credibility because he's proven to be effectual, innovative and principled. This is not the case of a guy getting lucky in the viral lottery and then running his mouth.
  - dclowd9901 13y ago
    If he does one other thing to completion, I'll buy that.
    - jsheard 13y ago
      Even calling Minecraft finished is dubious, the official mod/plugin API has been in the works since 2010 and still isn't available. A game that's so dependent on mods for long term appeal and server management shouldn't have to rely on decompiling the .jar and patching classes by hand.
      - bitJericho 13y ago
        Didn't realize continually updating a game these days is considered "never finished". Minecraft is more of a game than anything on Facebook.
        jsheard 13y ago
        It's been a few years since I played Minecraft seriously, but when I did they were mostly chasing low hanging fruit rather than working on hard or boring problems like modding, anti-cheat, RAM consumption, renderer efficiency or server administration. Full disclosure: A year of dealing with a small-population server regularly getting OOM-killed on a 512MB VPS might have made me slightly bitter.

by skore 13y ago

mrschwabe 13y ago

Indeed, nice to see Notch take a stand and provide some sliver of redemption today for the thousands of nerds (myself included) upset about the Oculus Facebook deal today. I can't imagine the Oculus team ever reaching their fundraising goal if backers knew the founders were going to sellout before ever reaching the vision they shared to get people to back it in the first place. EDIT: Notch seems to have just confirmed the postulation above in his latest blog post: "I did not chip in ten grand to seed a first investment round to build value for a Facebook acquisition." http://notch.net/2014/03/virtual-reality-is-going-to-change-the-world/ http://notch.net/2014/03/virtual-reality-is-going-to-change-...

lingben 13y ago
Exactly. But this goes further and lays bare the sheer stupidity inherent in kickstarter or any other crowd-sourcing platform. Just like facebook's Frankensteinian monstrous mish-mash of consumer/content/advertiser/publisher crowd-funding in its current state is a mish-mash that ends up meaning nothing in the end. You are not an equity partner, you really have no say in how decisions are made, you are not a lender, you are and are not a client (depending on whether they actually give you the damn 'thing' or not due to a host of reasons, going bust, running out of money, fraud, etc.)
- ycaspirant 13y ago
  The terms of funding on Kickstarter are pretty clear and straightforward. You back a project for a certain amount of money in exchange for a promised reward (this reward is never equity). When the time comes you either get your reward or you get your money back. Simple as that.
  - jessaustin 13y ago
    ...or you get your money back. Has this ever happened? I was under the impression that the funds raised through Kickstarter are spent on the kickstarted projects. If after spending the money, the project "fails", how can there be a refund?
- sillysaurus3 13y ago
  I'm happy Oculus got my money for the original devkit, and I spent several hours enjoying it. As far as kickstarter, it's hard to fault them.
- TaylorAlexander 13y ago
  "this ... lays bare the sheer stupidity inherent in kickstarter..." I'm sorry, but where is the stupidity? Kickstarter is a specific tool available to founders/innovators/creatives that allows us to reach a community of supporters quickly and efficiently. Like all tools, it has a specific way that it operates, and to keep such a new thing from spinning out of control, it is relatively simple and has few rules. Fortunately, we are all made aware of this going in. Backers generally pledge to receive a product. The creator benefits from early access to cash which allows them to build their product. This is what happened with Oculus, and they have already delivered vouchers to all backers which they could have redeemed for the original developer version from last year, the current developer version coming in July, or the consumer version still definitely coming towards the end of this year. I fail to see how Oculus gaining a parent company somehow "lays bare the sheer stupidity" of the system Kickstarter provides. People pledged for a high quality VR device, and Oculus promised to change the world. It seems these things will happen. One of the most compelling opportunities provided by virtual reality is not just gaming, but it's capability to put us somewhere else, including in a virtual room with our loved ones. Virtual reality enables an interaction that humans have never before been able to experience - the ability to hang out in a virtual space with another person. Facebook, whose primary goal has generally been to provide a platform for connecting humans to eachother, clearly sees the value in VR's ability to provide this new experience for us. As such, they've used their purchasing power to buy a stake in the VR game and help grow this new technology. Some day, we will be able to hang out with out loved ones, visit the doctor, or join a game with friends all in a shared virtual space. This is a future made possible by the Kickstarter model, which enabled Oculus to get the start they needed to commercialize Virtual Reality. Tell me again how that is stupid? What strikes me as stupid is the huge number of people decrying this move as some kind of perversion of the original Kickstarter promise, or some kind of bait and switch. It seems to be the logical progression of a company creating a ground-breaking new human interface device. Should they stay independent indefinitely just because they were crowd funded? I don't see how that would make any sense, or why such a modification to the Kickstarter model would be any kind of improvement.
baby 13y ago
> nice to see Notch take a stand taking a stand against Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and now Oculus ? I know that Notch wants to develop games with passionate people, but he has to understand that this acquisition was the best thing that could happen to both VR and Oculus. Anyway, Notch has been infamously known for his quick rants (see the "youtuber he insulted" issue)
- bunderbunder 13y ago
  > I know that Notch wants to develop games with passionate people, but he has to understand that this acquisition was the best thing that could happen to both VR and Oculus. The two really don't have anything to do with each other. There's no rule saying that if someone comes out winning in business deal, then everyone comes out winning in that business deal.
- o0-0o 13y ago
  That's a rather immature argument. Instagram, Facebook, and WhatApp are not really used by the same crowd in general. Also, I'd encourage you to do a bit more scratching on the term infamous. Hitler was infamous. Look, I'm not trying to discount your point, which is that this 'was the best thing', but you really don't have that crystal ball. No one does.
- blhack 13y ago
  The best thing? There is really no other company you could think of who would be a better partner? Like google? Or Microsoft?
  - baby 13y ago
    Google ? I don't know, they have so many products that they acquire and then shut down. Also, they have so many products that... it wouldn't have been such a big deal to acquire Oculus Microsoft ? They already have a gaming branch so why not, but for the same reason as Google, people wouldn't have noticed it much. But Facebook ? Everybody around me is going to talk about it, even non-gamers. You have no idea how huge this is for VR.
  - 13y ago

res0nat0r 13y ago

I'd rather think of it as an indie developer who got lucky and struck it big making a pixelated block pushing game doesn't like that a VR firm is now part of a social networking company. My thought is good for him for standing up for what he believes in, but he is going to be missing out on some possible awesome to come engineering which previously might have taken years to obtain w/o FB's involvement. It seems to be ignored but the massive pockets, infrastructure, and engineering at FB will allow Occulus to have access to much much more than they could have achieved previously.

sillysaurus3 13y ago

Heh, from Carmack's twitter 1m ago: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/448629403740692481 https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/448629403740692481 For the record, I am coding right now, just like I was last week. I expect the FB deal will avoid several embarrassing scaling crisis for VR. Glad to see Carmack is still being Carmack. EDIT: By the way, if anyone is wondering why people are having a negative reaction to this Facebook deal, I think one way to understand it is to watch this video fullscreen and try to imagine any way that Facebook could add to the experience, or at least not detract from it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DGZc0Dd9Hc#t=5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DGZc0Dd9Hc#t=5s It's hard to.

ekianjo 13y ago
> scaling crisis for VR. That's supposing Facebook knows how to scale production of electronic items... apart from the cash, they have no relevant experience about that. If it had been Google or Microsoft there would already be people who know how to make it scale to mass production.
- TaylorAlexander 13y ago
  Facebook has the buying power to put together a solid hardware production team. I don't think Google has much internal hardware production knowledge right now, aside from the knowledge they bought when they acquired Motorola. Before that, they mostly made things through hardware partners like HTC, Samsung, and LG. I think they produce the Chromecast internally, but it's not much fancier than a USB stick. I'm sure they are quickly learning, but Facebook is also already buying up hardware companies and they have been building their own custom servers for internal use for years.
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    > Facebook has the buying power to put together a solid hardware production team. Well I have worked in companies making physical goods (shipping millions every year), and you just don't buy a team from one day to another. It's not just about production, it's about supply chain, it's about quality management and quality assurance, regulations for sale in different countries/states, market research, product qualification to improve the design, actual customer support, vendors, distribution, etc... It's a whole new area of skills/functions you don't have, and that does not mix very well with a software-only company mentality. I think it's going to be very tough for them to make something solid with Facebook. EDIT: They would have been better prepared for scaling with a company like Apple (whose main business is already making hardware), Microsoft or Google for that matter. Many people say Valve could have been a good choice, but Valve has said several times they don't want to go into the hardware business (and won't make Steam boxes themselves).

melling 13y ago

Nah, it's irrelevant and will be a non-issue in a couple of years. Now that there are two strong VR players, things should progress much quicker. Consumers win. Hopefully, Notch will change his mind and embrace both platforms. Let's keep both companies in the game so the innovation doesn't stop.

XorNot 13y ago

It feels like Notch is being given too much credibility here. At the end of the day he's a billionaire because he had a viral hit and was ready with a monetization strategy (and had amazingly cheap running costs). None of this really speaks to his business or technical acumen, and he hasn't exactly done very much lately.

netcan 13y ago
Nonsense. He has credibility because he's proven to be effectual, innovative and principled. This is not the case of a guy getting lucky in the viral lottery and then running his mouth.
- dclowd9901 13y ago
  If he does one other thing to completion, I'll buy that.
  - jsheard 13y ago
    Even calling Minecraft finished is dubious, the official mod/plugin API has been in the works since 2010 and still isn't available. A game that's so dependent on mods for long term appeal and server management shouldn't have to rely on decompiling the .jar and patching classes by hand.
    - bitJericho 13y ago
      Didn't realize continually updating a game these days is considered "never finished". Minecraft is more of a game than anything on Facebook.
      - jsheard 13y ago
        It's been a few years since I played Minecraft seriously, but when I did they were mostly chasing low hanging fruit rather than working on hard or boring problems like modding, anti-cheat, RAM consumption, renderer efficiency or server administration. Full disclosure: A year of dealing with a small-population server regularly getting OOM-killed on a 512MB VPS might have made me slightly bitter.