John Carmack: “Minecraft and Fortnite are closer to the metaverse than anything Facebook has built”

id Software co-founder and Oculus consulting CTO John Carmack has shared his thoughts on the metaverse. He thinks that Facebook is far from realizing the idea behind it, citing Fortnite and Minecraft as better examples.

John Carmack

Masters of Doom author David Kushner published an interview with Carmack in his latest newsletter.

The developer expressed skepticism about Mark Zuckerberg’s goal to turn Facebook from a social media company into a “metaverse company.” He said that he has been fighting to “forestall any attempts to be doing metaverses” his entire time at Oculus.

“Minecraft and Fortnite are closer to the metaverse than anything Facebook has built, or frankly, is likely to build, unless we wind up getting really lucky,” Carmack said.

These games, he thinks, became successful because their developers started from creating an entertainment experience first, not the architecture. And it is a key difference between them and Facebook, which doesn’t fully realize the goal of the metaverse.