An easy listening fun book that provides a lot of context into how the Virtual Reality revolution was re-triggered in the early 2010s with the founding of Oculus. As someone who works in the industry, I still learnt a whole lot and was surprised by how many different key players were involved in its founding. The first half of the book is an exciting and motivating startup story that I couldnât stop listening to, while the second half was ridden with large company politics and bureaucracy which, unfortunately, cannot be avoided when an organization exceeds a certain size.
Palmer Lucky - Prior to reading the book, I thought of Palmer Lucky as the mastermind behind Oculus and all of its operations. I had seen him in some keynotes, but did not extensively listen to his interviews. After reading the book, my respect for him has ten folded! He is a very sterotipycal âkid geniusâ, with a low ego, who is simply interested in doing fun, interesting work and does not care for reputation, politics, beurocarcy, money, etc⊠Living in a trailer, he never cared for fine things before he was rich, and that didnât seem to change even after Oculusâ acquisition. He was part of a bunch of online communicates, and is a hacker at heart. This really helped me resonate with his character. He was home-schooled, never went to college, but doesnât make a big deal out of it. Being a self-learner is a lot more admirable and difficult that going down the âtraditionalâ path. It goes along with Paul Grahamaâs âBus Ticket Theoryâ, where Palmer was motivated and driven by an intrinsic interest to make VR happen moreso than becoming successful.
John Carmack - Alongside Palmer Lucky and the other founders, John Carmack is in the limelight of the book. As an amazing programmer, known for Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein and now Oculus, he is a legend in the gaming Community. He is blunt, proactive, curious, and is someone I very much look up to. Even as the CTO of Oculus, he still spent a good portion of his time writing code, which is extremely uncommon for people with that level of seniority. In between his blockbuster successes, he does investigative projects (i.e. space travel) which often fail, but it is admirable that he is willing to put the time and money into it. Interestingly, he was a core inspiration for both the author of Ready Player One and Palmer (the creator of the Oculus DK1 prototype), which were being developed around the exact same time. He is the epidimy of someone who says things like they are, does not let success go to his head, and truly follows his passion.
John + Palmer - Though John Carmack was already a prominent figure prior to the story of Oculus, Palmer was not. However, their initial online encounter and collaboration feels very fun and innocent. Palmer simply shipped the first Oculus prototype to John, John ported Doom 3 BFG to work on it, added a couple sensors and demoed it an CES. The low price and great field of view was so good that Sony had immediately offered a job for $70K. When Palmer rejected, they upped the compensation to $140K. As we know now, even the counteroffer was a ridiculously large lowball. There were many legal implications between Zenimax and Facebook after the fact, but itâs inspiring to see things got started.
VR history - The book does a good job and setting some context into the history of VR, but I would not have been opposed to more :). VR headsets have been around since the 1950s, when they were so heavy they had to be hung from the ceiling. Shortly before Oculus, the military was paying 10s or 100s of thousands of dollars for VR headsets for training. People like Mark Bolas (who helped Palmer get started) have been researching and pushing for this field for many decades, so itâs exciting to live during a time when this technology is on the precipice of becoming mainstream.
Brendan Iribe and Michael Antonov - I didnât know much about Brenda and Michael prior to the book, but am impressed by their background. Though the didnât ignite the sparks to bring up Oculus, they were the very first twigs necessary for something to catch on fire. Later on, Facebook provided the logs to keep the fire burning. Scaleform was a hugely successful company, supporting iconic games like Civilization, Crysis, Fable, so they had obviously played (no pun intended) a larger role in my childhood without me even knowing. After being acquired by Autodesk and having financial freedom, they were key in convincing lucky to go down the startup route. If it werenât for them, Oculus may have stalled at the âhardware prototypeâ phase.
Ooya - I was following the Ooya console very closely in its early kickstarter days and as the company died out. Itâs unfortunate how things turned out, but I believe it goes to show how important the resources, support and longevity huge corporations (i.e. Facebook) can provide for innovative products. Even though Oculus hasnât penetrated the mainstream yet, I believe it would be doing much more poorly if it hadnât been for Facebookâs acquisition. I honestly believe itâs the right move if you have the industryâs interest at heart.
Nimble America Debacle - Everything surrounding Luckyâs donation to Nimble America really frustrated me⊠It shows how the Bay Area has come to push forward for diversity of backgrounds and opinions, but ONLY if it is the right one. Lucky stood up and supported for what he believed in, did so in a very respectful way, tried to be honest, frank and transparent with everyone he spoke to, but it still all backfired. This part of the book was longer than I had hoped, and it seems like there were some behind the scene politics not covered, but I canât say I enjoyed it very much⊠Ultimately, Iâm really upset and how Facebookâs management chain chose to handle and attempt to âfixâ the situation.
Valve - Prior to reading the book, I knew that Valve had a flat company structure, but did not know much more. Itâs fascinating how a company with no plans or management manages to get things done. It seems like there always needs to be some individual who can âromanceâ others into helping/supporting them into whatever project theyâre working on, so it makes sense why things worked out the way they did. However, whoâs passionate about fixing bugs? The book mentions how Michael Abrash had originally rejected Lucky for a job, prior to John Carmackâs introduction, since he didnât have a proven track record.
Mark Zuckerberg - Congress and many âprivacy advocatesâ see Mark Zuckerberg as a bad actor, and even the book sometimes portrays him as someone who is unwilling to compromise. However, itâs very important to remember what a difficult position he is in every day. Given the number of people his decisions and statements affect, and the amount of wealth he has accumulated, every action he takes will both hurt/benefit anger/excite many. Moments such as ordering pizza during the M&A talks in his backyard, or bringing Macdonalds takeout when he visited the Oculus office make him seem like just another guy. With that said, forcing others to publicly post opinions that differ from their own crosses the line. It is very difficult to be in his position, and he will never be able to please everyoneâŠ
Random facts
Facebook considered buying Unity early on!
In order to bypass Facebookâs store policy, Palmer came up with the idea of side loading apps by allowing installations from untrusted developers. So simple, yet also so effective!
To date, HTCâs Gear VR is still Oculusâ biggest competitor. It is interesting how the CEO of HTC specifically went on an around-the-world trip to determine what technology to invest in next.
5ms latency is what you need to avoid motion sickness
Paul Bettner, the founder of Words with Friends, supposedly managed to raise the acquisition of his company from $20MM to $180MM while negotiating with Zynga. Crazy!
Masahiro Sakurai, a prolific game designer at Nintendo, is supposedly very interested in VR, but does not take on a project unless he knows that the potential audience is large enough.