> There's something essentially wrong with Meta and Google where they can do tech but not products anymore.

I'm listening to "Masters of Doom" on Audible. It's about the creation of Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, etc. Great book.

Something that's interesting about it, is that Id Software seemed to largely reject the idea of having a game where the players 'connected' to the characters or the story. They were laser focused on:

* Carmack creating a game engine that was the best in the world

* Romero and crew making the gameplay as fun as possible

But it sounded like they had folks on the team who wanted to make a story where the players could 'connect' with the protagonist. He was fired.

Some dude named "Tom."

Facebook, weirdly enough, seems to have the issue. Which is particularly odd considering that's their product!

I haven't played games in ages, but when I saw "Half Life" for the first time, it felt nearly as "revolutionary" to me as Wolfenstein 3D was.