intexpress

Agree but I think it is more like 8/10 or 9/10 of Googlers who would view Sundar as, to say the least, uninspiring.

The problem is that the good internal candidates to succeed Sundar have mostly already left Google, or don’t seem interested in taking over.

If Sundar left today, it could be that Ruth or TK would end up running Google for a while. That would be much, much worse.

Starnix is clearly the focus now esp. if you focus on the platform goals and ignore the devex goals. Check out the previous roadmaps where Starnix was only mentioned once or not at all.

Aside: the 2024 roadmap also has way more devex goals than previous roadmaps, so it looks like devex in general is also a focus now

https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/contribute/roadmap

Most of the roadmap is about Starnix. Starnix started serious development around late 2022 and is a way for Fuchsia to pretend to be Linux and run Linux programs without recompilation or modification. It is a pivot for the Fuchsia project, essentially giving up on the idea that most programs would be (re)written for Fuchsia

See https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/contribute/governance/rfcs/0...

Google leadership has been doing a thorough job at ruining the relationships between leadership and the rank-and-file

Deus Ex wouldn’t exist if Romero hadn’t created Ion Storm and given creative freedom to Warren Spector to make his dream game

Daikatana had some interesting design ideas but had problems with technology, esp. with AI programming. It was too ambitious for a new team which lacked someone like Carmack to do the heavy technical lifting

Quake 2 and 3 were reviewed less favourably than earlier titles, and they also sold less copies. They were good but not great - basically boring but very pretty to look at.

> Meanwhile, id under Carmack kept cranking out hit after hit for years, essentially shrugging off Romero's firing like nothing happened.

I don't think that is accurate...

The output of id Software after Romero left (post Quake 1) was a clear step down. The technology was fantastic but the games were boring and uninspired, at best "good" but never "great". It took a full 20 years for them to make something interesting again (Doom in 2016).

After Romero left, id Software's biggest success was really as a technology licensing house, but not as a games developer. Powering games like Half Life, Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, ...

Meanwhile Romero's new company (Ion Storm) eventually failed, but at least the creative freedom there led to some interesting games, like Deus Ex and Anachronox. And even Daikatana is a more interesting game than something like Quake 2 or Quake III.

I was also at the ACMI interview with Warren but I remember it pretty differently. My main takeaway is that he was obsessed with player choice and freedom.

FWIW, Deus Ex was made during the unlimited time/unlimited budget years of ION Storm. The later games had various problems (often due to constraints of making them work on consoles) but the first Deus Ex is almost perfect

The ACMI interview is here for anyone curious: https://youtu.be/U2VEY5o6VQc

It could be that what you lacked was financial compensation. Sometimes people will put up with crazy stress levels if their compensation is high.