Masters of Doom

How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture

by David Kushner

Paperback, 368 pages

English language

Published May 11, 2004 by Random House Trade Paperbacks.

ISBN:: 978-0-8129-7215-3

(96 reviews)

"To my taste, the greatest American myth of cosmogenesis features the maladjusted, antisocial, genius teenage boy who, in the insular laboratory of his own bedroom, invents the universe from scratch. Masters of Doom is a particularly inspired rendition. Dave Kushner chronicles the saga of video game virtuosi Carmack and Romero with terrific brio. This is a page-turning, mythopoeic cyber-soap opera about two glamorous geek geniuses--and it should be read while scarfing down pepperoni pizza and swilling Diet Coke, with Queens of the Stone Age cranked up all the way." --Mark Leyner, author of I Smell Esther WilliamsMasters 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. They transformed popular culture. And they provoked a national controversy. More than anything, they lived a unique and rollicking American Dream, escaping the broken homes of their youth to co-create the most notoriously successful game franchises in history--Doom and Quake--until the games they made tore them apart.Americans spend more money on video games than on movie tickets. Masters of Doom is the first book to chronicle this industry's greatest story, written by one of the medium's leading observers. David Kushner takes readers inside the rags-to-riches adventure of two rebellious entrepreneurs who came of age to shape a generation. The vivid portrait reveals why their games are so violent and why their immersion in their brilliantly designed fantasy worlds offered them solace. And it shows how they channeled their fury and imagination into products that are a formative influence on our culture, from MTV to the Internet to Columbine. 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. From the Hardcover edition.

7 editions

Martin reviewed Masters of Doom by David Kushner

None

5 stars

This was fantastic and quite inspiring.

nicknicknicknick reviewed Masters of Doom by David Kushner

Review of 'Masters of Doom' on Goodreads

3 stars

1) ''Romero's eyes widened. The Daikatana was a mighty sword, one of the most powerful weapons in the game. Despite the pleas of the others, he told Carmack he wanted to give the demon the book. It didn't take long to find out the consequences. As the rules of the game dictated, Carmack rolled the die to randomly determine the strength of the demon's response. The demon was using the book to conjure more demons, he told the group. A battle of epic proportions ensued until Carmack declared the outcome. 'The material plane is overrun with demons,' he said, flatly. 'Everyone is dead. That's it. We're done. Mmm.'
No one spoke. The guys couldn't believe it. After all those games, all the late nights around the table in Shreveport, the adventures here that cured all the cold nights of Madison, it was over. A sadness filled the room. Romero finally said to Carmack, 'Shit, that's fun playing that game. Now it's ruined? Is there any way to get that back?' But he knew the answer. Carmack was always true to himself and to his game. 'No,' he said, 'it's over.' There was a lesson to be learned: Romero had gone too far.''

2) ''Romero wandered back through the maze of cubicles and sat down at his desk, where he would remain long after the sun came down on the glass tower. Everything is bullshit! he thought. Why did I hire these people? It shouldn't have been this big. This was too many people, too much money. It should have been just me and Tom and a small team of people with a common goal. It should have been like the way it was when we weren't biz guys. We were just gamers.''

3) '''In the information age, the barriers just aren't there,' [Carmack] said. 'The barriers are self-imposed. If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you don't need millions of dollars of capitalization. You need enough pizza and Diet Coke to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on, and the dedication to go through with it. We slept on floors. We waded across rivers.'''