[Read by Wil Wheaton]
The extraordinary true story of John Carmack and John Romero, two of the most influential figures in video game history. Masters of Doom is the amazing true story of the Lennon and McCartney of video games: John Carmack and John Romero. Together they ruled big business, transformed popular culture, and provoked a national controversy. But more than anything, they lived a unique and rollicking American dream, escaping the broken homes of their youth to produce the most notoriously successful game franchises in history -- Doom and Quake -- until the games they made tore them apart. This is a story of friendship and betrayal, commerce and artistry -- a powerful and compassionate account of what it's like to be young, driven, and wildly creative.
Doom, the video game in which you navigate a dungeon in the first person and messily lay waste to everything that crosses your path, represented a milestone in many areas. It was a technical landmark, in that its graphics engine delivered brilliant performance on ordinary PC hardware. It was a social phenomenon, with individuals and companies hooking up networks specifically for Doom tournaments and staying up for days to blast away on them (well before the Internet went big-time). The game's publisher, id Software, used an unusual shareware marketing strategy (give away the first levels, charge for the more advanced ones) that worked very well. On top of it all, the gore-filled game raised serious questions about decency in products meant for use by school-age kids. Masters of Doom explores the Doom phenomenon, as well as the lives and personalities of the two men behind it: John Carmack and John Romero.
This book manages, for the most part, to keep clear of the breathless techno-hagiography style that characterizes many books with similar subjects. He tells the story of Carmack, Romero, and id--which includes far more than Doom and its successors--in novel style, and he's done a good job of keeping the action flowing and the characters' motivations clear. Some of the quoted passages of dialog sound like idealized reconstructions that probably never came from the lips of real people, but this is an entertaining and informative book, of interest to anyone who's let rip with a nail gun. --David Wall
Topics covered: The biographies of John Carmack and John Romero, and of their company, id Software. The development and marketing of all major id games (including Wolfenstein, Doom, Doom II, and Quake) get lavish attention. .
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