Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture

I'm a big fan of games and I grew up in the 1990's, so obviously id Software's games were a big part of my teenage years. I knew all about the guys who made it and followed their careers closely. Still this book provided a really fun, detailed, and fast-moving story about them. It goes into detail about "The Two Johns", Carmack and Romero, about their life history and how they developed their skills. It captures the dynamic between the extraverted Romero and the introverted Carmack and how their skills clicked - not unlike the story of "The Two Steves", Jobs and Wozniak (who are referenced in this book). It also goes into detail about the other people, many of whom ended up shaping the video game industry in the late 1990's. It's a lot of fun to read these names and, in hindsight, think about where they ended up. For example, Tom Hall ended up making the underrated PC RPG Anachronox, and the goofy humor that Kushner attributes to him is all over that game.I also feel like Romero gets a fair deal here. Unfortunately, Romero gets a very bad rap nowadays, in large part due to an unfortunate advertisement Eidos ran for his eventual dud of an FPS, Daikatana. I often feel like his contributions to id's games are almost entirely written off in favor of Carmack's. This book shows that this is, unequivocally, 100%, not the case. Romero was just as important in those days as Carmack - that's the whole point. It's how the company worked.It's a lot of fun to read this story about early PC gaming - all too often, game history skips over that late-80's/early-90's period in PC gaming, opting to focus on the story of Nintendo and Sega at that time. But it's not just a history - you really get to know these guys and how their work changed the industry. This is well worth reading.

Overall, the content of the book is very entertaining and interesting, but the writing suffers from poor readability and a lack of flow. Sentences are short and stilted, which made me feel at times that I was reading something written by a high school student. This book would have benefited from better editing to make it easier to read.Those compositional problems notwithstanding, the story was great. It was really interesting to learn how Doom was born. I was a big fan of games like Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D when I was very young - it was a big surprise to me that those games were developed by the same core team that went on to develop Doom. I still play Doom to this day, and it was very revelatory for me to learn how Romero and Carmack perfected the formula for its addictive game play.If you are a fan of Doom, or early PC games in general, I would recommend reading this book.

Kushner’s writing is so vivid and fluid, you are immersed in the rise and fall of the Two Johns. It feels and paced like a good Netflix series, and this was written before Netflix.

Bottom line: This is one of the best researched and written business stories I have ever read. I polished off this 302-pager in one day. Okay, I missed a flight and was stuck in a hotel airport, but I still stayed up past 2:00 a.m. to finish it."Masters of Doom" benefits from its colorful cast of characters. We meet not only the cold, distant programming genius of John Carmack and the maniacal enthusiasm of John Romero, but secondary players like Stevie Case, a gaming grrl and Quake champion who became a developer and Playboy model, and one fellow who took up game programming after he abandoned a shot at the ministry and become an exotic male dancer who went by the stage name "Preacher Boy". You can't make this stuff up.Kushner obviously did his homework. He conducted hundreds of interviews and had access to material such as Romero's hoard of childhood memorabalia such as old drawings and comics. The book has in-depth footnotes, and while I wondered about the origin of certain quotes, Kushner says he did his best to reconstruct conversations and events based on multiple sourcing. The story is driven by the polar-opposite personalities of the Two Johns, and Kushner does a great job of being impartial, almost always presenting multiple accounts of the same event. I disagree with the reviewers who seem to think he went light on Romero or failed to give Carmack enough credit for driving id. Kushner dishes out both credit and criticism where it is due, and does so in details that really humanize his subjects. We see Carmack stun his friends by announcing he had taken his cat, a longtime pet, to the pound because it was interfering with his work. Yet later, we see examples of his philanthropy, such as when he studies the statistics-based method of card counting to win $20,000 at a blackjack table and then gives the money away. Similarly, we see Romero neck-deep in office politicking and grasping for rock star status, but when he finally chops his butt-length locks, he donates the hair to a charity that makes wigs for children undergoing cancer treatment. These kind of details bring the story home.The only minus is the lack of photos. The book really would have benefited from a solid picture section, though I'm not willing to deduct any stars from my rating over it!Fortunately, Kushner's writing is also excellent. He skillfully sets the stage for each technological or business breakthrough, yet the narrative doesn't seem contrived. He frequently accomplishes nice turns of phrase, such as one scene in which Romero and crew are on the floor rolling in laughter and giddiness at the Wolfenstein 3-D design breakthrough that let them show what would become their trademark gore. The passage ends: "On the screen, the little Nazi bled."Finally, this is just an excellent account of the development of a partnership, a business, and an industry. The book's appeal should widen well beyond just gamers, to anyone who wants insight into what makes the entrepreneurial personality tick, what the start-up life is like, and how unlikely business models (in this case, shareware) emerge. In fact, I plan on passing this along to my (decidely non-gaming) mother and father.

I really enjoyed this book. I played a fair amount of Doom, Quake, Unreal, Wolfenstein, Dark Forces, and other FPS games with friends back in the 90's, but it's not a genre I'm crazy about. That said, I 100% recognize what these games have done for the gaming industry and for computing in general. Diving in behind the scenes of these iconic games has been quite a trip. The book is very well written and thoroughly researched, doesn't play favorites, is super entertaining to read, and if you're interested in the audiobook version, Wil Wheaton is the perfect reader for it. Highly recommended, though the book should come with a Content Warning "CW: gamedev trauma" for anyone who has worked in that industry.

This book is phenomenal! This is an awesome book. So awesome I'm writing a second review to say so. It is fast paced, entertaining, amusing at times, shocking at others. I grew up in the 90s, and these games were foundational. Their controversy drove them even further into the light, making more people play them. These were foundational to my youth. These were my escape from the harshness that was my miserable youth. I loved them.This book is a pretty quick read. It has plenty of places to pause without leaving you confused when you come back to it. A lot of books have enormous chapters covering one grandiose idea, but this book has little sections all throughout each short chapter, so you can read for just a few minutes and come back to it. In my busy life, this is great. I've been taking longer, 1 hour lunch breaks on the farm to read this. I didn't take breaks before. I would just work 8hrs in a row. Then go home. But this book is so good, I can't stop taking breaks to read it. I'm often tired after work, so reading at that point isn't easy.This book is not about violent games influence. It is briefly mentioned, but the focus is on the development of the people and the games they made and the role they played in society and the impact they have left. Controversy is discussed later in the book, but only briefly. ... And no, games do not make you a ... shooter. No games do not encourage violence. Some have suggested Doom influenced certain kids to hurt other kids. I think they would have done it anyway. Bad people do bad things. Power Rangers didn't inspire me to violence, it inspired me to take Karate, where I learned that peace perseverance and hard work lets us reach our goals, not violence. I grew up loving violent TV and games. But I grew into an introspective middle aged man, not a monster. Why didn't games affect me in a bad way? Because I knew they were just games. Same with TV shows. Just like I knew Power Rangers was just a TV show, even when I was a kid. Doom was just a cool game. I fiction. A simulated fiction.

Um livro muito bem escrito. Apesar do tema do livro ser bem focado na questão dos jogos e desenvolvimento no geral, ele também aborda num nível super interessante o aspecto mais corporativo do desenvolvimento.No geral dá pra tirar muita coisa desse livro. Eu pessoalmente só queria entender melhor o contexto da época em que esses classicos estouraram e as nerdices por trás de tudo isso, e não tenho do que reclamar.

Imperdibile per tutti i fan di un'epoca gloriosa, fatta da persone fuori dal comune!

Good to learn more about most influential crowd in early gaming industry. Played all those games ar the time, brings back memories. Very interesting read, and not just for Doom fans. Have to admit - Carmack is proper genius :) watch his interview with Lex Fridman for more.

Escrita en una prosa sencilla y comprensible y narrando los acontecimientos y la creación de Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D y Doom, este libro es un must-have para todo amante de los videojuegos que esté deseoso de comprender como los FPS actuales llegaron a donde están por causa de dos mentes maestras conocidas como John Romero y John Carmack, que aún después de tanto tiempo siguen influyendo en la industria actual. Empezando desde los principios de los 80 en los que Romero se gastaba su dinero en las maquinitas y terminando con su estrepitosa caida con Daikatana, lo interesante de esta historia es el ascenso y caida de ID Software por las disputas, enemistades y nimiedades que separaron al mejor equipo de todos los tiempos, pero que nos dejaron un legado demasiado importante como para no conocerlo.