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Masters Of Doom: How two guys created an empire and transformed pop culture Paperback – 27 May 2004

by David Kushner (Author)

4.7 3,361 ratings

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Masters of Doom is the true inside story of the Lennon and McCartney of the video game industry: John Carmack and John Romero. Together they created an empire, ruled a multibillion-dollar industry, and provoked a national controversy. They lived a unique American dream, escaping their broken homes to co-create the most innovative and notoriously successful video games in history - Doom and Quake - until the games they made tore them apart.

David Kushner has been covering the video game industry for ten years and knows all the angles. Even those with no interest in video games will be fascinated by this vastly entertaining tale of friendship, betrayal and the genesis of a multibillion-dollar popular art form.

Review

Masters of Doom is an impressive and adroit social history. ― New York Times Book Review

Hot book! The Behind the Music - like story of video gaming's Nineties bad boys...a tale of guts, geeks and their 140mpd-clocking Ferraris - as well as the backlash against gaming after Columbine. ― Rolling Stone

Book Description

Masters of Doom' is the true inside story of John Carmack and John Romero, co-creators of the most innovative and notoriously successful video games in history - Doom and Quake.

About the Author

David Kushner has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times, Wired, Rolling Stone (where he writes a digital music column) and Spin (where he is a contributing editor). He has also worked as a senior producer for the music website SonicNet.

Print length

352 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Piatkus
Publication date

27 May 2004
Dimensions

12.8 x 3.2 x 19.6 cm
ISBN-10

0749924896
ISBN-13

978-0749924898
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Piatkus (27 May 2004)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0749924896
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0749924898
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.8 x 3.2 x 19.6 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 30,221 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 16 in Games Programming
- 37 in Computer Scientist Biographies

Customer reviews:
4.7 3,361 ratings

About the author

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David Kushner

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David Kushner is an award-winning journalist and author. His books include Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture, Jonny Magic and the Card Shark Kids: How a Gang of Geeks Beat the Odds, Stormed Las Vegas, Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in America’s Legendary Suburb, Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto, Alligator Candy: A Memoir, and The Players Ball: A Genius, a Con Man, and the Secret History of the Internet's Rise.

Kushner is also author of the graphic novel Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D&D, illustrated by Koren Shadmi, and the ebook, The Bones of Marianna: A Reform School, a Terrible Secret, and a Hundred-Year Fight for Justice. Two collections of his magazine stories are available as audiobooks, The World’s Most Dangerous Geek: And More True Hacking Stories and Prepare to Meet Thy Doom: And More True Gaming Stories.

A contributing editor of Rolling Stone, Kushner has written for publications including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Wired, New York Times Magazine, New York, and GQ, and has been an essayist for National Public Radio. His work is featured in several “best of” anthologies: The Best American Crime Reporting, The Columbia Journalism Review’s Best Business Writing, The Best Music Writing, and The Best American Travel Writing. He is the winner of the New York Press Club award for Best Feature Reporting. His ebook The Bones of Marianna was selected by Amazon as a Best Digital Single of 2013. NPR named his memoir Alligator Candy one of the best books of 2016. He has taught as a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University, and an adjunct professor of journalism at New York University.

For articles and info, visit his website www.davidkushner.com.

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Dennis T

Seems legit 😁😁 easy read too

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 July 2023

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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.

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Rikki

Fantastic story telling of the dawn of 3D and PC gaming

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 May 2012

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It was 1992 and I was using a 2400 baud modem in my fathers office to log on to BBSs around the country when wolf3d first appeared for download. I gave in to temptation and spent the download credit and call charge time to snag a copy and when completed and unzipped I don't think anything could prepare me for what was a about to happen n screen! From that moment on I was hooked on pretty much everything id software would release. Doom and Quake took that forward and each time I thought "surely this is as good as it gets". This book gives a fantastic understanding and insight into how these landmark releases in gaming history came to be and what became of these coding and designing gods. My only tiny criticism of the book is that the second half doesn't have as much about the actual tech discoveries (like the scrolling EGA trick of Commander Keen or texture mapping n Wolf) and is more about the nit picking and hate between the Johns. That said up to the 80% mark on my Kindle I was hooked and the last 20% was very good. If you were hooked on Keen, Wolfenstien, Doom or Quake then you owe it to yourself to read the history and learn how two geeks took the games industry by storm and caught the attention of Bill Gates along the way.

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Daniel

Enjoyable, intense and fascinating tale of two gamers who programmed their way to being millionaires...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 August 2015

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I don’t usually read biographies. I find them to be a bit dull and intrusive. But I broke my own rule this time and read “Masters of Doom” by David Kushner. The reason? Well, I am a gamer by heart and loved the computer game “Doom”. It was a game of my youth, a first person shooter full of demons and violence. A match made in heaven…or hell if you like.

This book is the account of how Doom came into existence, created by a group of pioneering computer programmers in the 90’s. The book’s main protagonists are the “two Johns”; John Romero and John Carmack. Romero is the crazy, wild designer of the pair, mirrored by Carmacks calm, collected hardcore programmer. There are other ‘characters’ that appear in the book, such as Adrian Carmack, Tom Hall etc. But the two Johns are the focal points of the novel.

The book starts with the childhoods of the Johns and describes how they finally meet and how, from humble beginnings, they jump from strength to strength and end up creating a multi million dollar business. Very much the American dream. From reading this book I can only define Carmack and Romero as Geniuses. Programming is hard. I’ve tried it. It’s full of hard maths, syntax problems and logic arguments. Its like trying to measure the moon, with your eyes closed. With your hands tied behind your back. And yet the Johns (and many other bit players of the industry who make an appearance in this book) seem to just “get it”. The book doesn’t show the hard graft that I’m sure went into learning the programming languages, but by the age of 14 they were already coding. You have to be extremely intelligent to be able to pick it up that easy and with this intelligence and hard work they made themselves millionaires.

The two Johns’ careers started with creating small simple games in high school on early Apple computers. They then got small jobs with developers such as Origin and Softdisk. Ultimately, with their eagerness and entrepreneurial spirit, they finally branched out on their own. Their beginnings were questionably legal, with them borrowing work equipment and moonlighting. However the whole era just oozed rebellion and breaking loose the shackles of big business so this ambiguity of law just increases the spirit of self actualisation. Where young, passionate, hardworking and not forgetting extremely clever individuals made their fortune in their own way. This book makes it look so easy to make millions from computers. If only it was that easy.

Games created by the team include Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake 1, 2 and 3, all synonymous with the video game revolution of the 90’s and both the birth of first person shoot ‘em ups and the prevalence of PC gaming. Its touched on briefly in the novel that the Johns were not the only people capitalising on the rise of the video games industry, but the majority of the book does read like they were.

In the end the duo run into the humanity side of all business’. Arguing, jealousy and contempt all led to their eventual split. Following the split, they each run their own companies in their own different styles. With successes and failures, the book tapers out and brings us up to the books publication date.

The positives of the book are many if you are fan of the games and the gaming industry. The book goes into some what detail of the creation of the games and gives insights into how the minds of the creators processed. Even if your not a gamer, the book is still a good tale of the underdogs making it big. The tension during the crunch days, when deadlines were looming, is brought to life by Kushner and each characters personality is shown to the reader. For a book written some 10 years after the majority of the facts, it goes into quite intricate details. This is proof of the amount of research carried out by the author. The epilogue at the back tells us he interviewed all parties in depth, as well as spent months sifting through mountains of old computer magazines to gather dates and locations.

Theres not much to be negative about the book, its hard to criticise real life. Some of the dialogue felt pushed, but then it would have been transcribed from interviews which would have been dragged out of half-forgotten memories. In my opinion, there wasn’t enough detail on the actual design of the main games, Doom and Quake. It seemed like the design and code was glanced over for tension and drama. More prose than fact but drama sells and too much code detail in the book would have slowed it down and turned it into more of a text book.

In all a good book however its audience is automatically narrowed by its genre and topic. Not everyone will find it interesting however I found it enjoyable, intense and fascinating. I could almost see myself writing the next best selling video game and making my millions! Or maybe not…

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Ultravidec

Great book for the early PC games generation

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 March 2022

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As someone that worked for a computer game shop and then 10 years selling PCs this book took me back to the first days of proper gaming on the PC. Telling the stories of Doom, Quake and filling in backstory of the big hitters in this era... before you needed to spend £1000 on a graphics card!
Reminded me of all the fun I had playing these games (I still do, and still enjoy them now). Pull up a chair and read the story of the shoot-em-up. And the guys that made them.

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Amazon Customer

A must read for any gamer

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 May 2022

Verified Purchase

David Kushner has done a fenomenal job capturing the era of late 80s and early to mid 90s game development. The book will take you on a journey of friendship, innovation and business organisation, while detailing the evolution of video games.
Masters of Doom will show you the early and yet monumental steps of the gaming industry that were made by John Romero and John Carmack. Recommend this to anyone who is driven by technolical changes, likes video games and/or wants to learn about the history of great companies.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 July 2022

Verified Purchase

Superb insight into the behind the scenes happenings that were taking place whilst I was simply enthusing over Doom and Quake. This book is a wonderful, nostalgic trip. It's well-written and insightful. If you were into gaming before and after the original Doom released, get this book!

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