Masters of Doom 484
| Masters of Doom | |
| author | David Kushner |
| pages | 352 |
| publisher | Random House |
| rating | Excellent! |
| reviewer | Kevin Bentley |
| ISBN | 0375505245 |
| summary | How two guys created an empire and transformed pop culture. |
Virtual reality was the craze of the time, and Doom offered a glimpse into what it was all about. But this innovative game did not come from any of the "big" video game developers of the time, and it was not the built by a large team with huge resources. Although it was the product of many people's efforts, it was primarily the creative genius of two people, both named John.
John Carmack and John Romero are names that every self-respecting Slashdot reader knows. Carmack even posts here occasionally (hi John!). Until I read this book, I knew very little about the personal life of Carmack, and I thought I probably knew too much about Romero. Like many, I have been intrigued by their successes (and failures), and was interested in learning more about what makes them tick.
Masters of Doom starts off with a chapter for each John, telling stories from their childhood that made me realize they were just typical American kids, with the same kind of problems that many of us probably had. These are important chapters, and the author repeatedly references these stories throughout the book. Although the book chronologically covers the entire lives of the two Johns, most of the book details their working years, from their time at Softdisk until now.
This is where the book was most interesting to me. The details of the camaraderie that existed among the team made me feel like I was there. The author got a lot of his information from personal interviews with people, and it really shows in his writing style. First-person accounts are woven together so you get to know what each person was thinking while the story plays out. For instance when the id team met with Sierra On-Line in 1992, you get first-person impressions from both sides of the meeting, giving the reader a lot of insight that you would ordinarily never get.
For me, the book's climax was during the initial releases of Doom, when huge checks were pouring in. Things were going really well for the team at this point, and the book describes things like John C. and John R. dropping off a check for five million dollars at the bank's drive-through, while riding in one of their Ferraris. Although things were looking great for the team at this time, the future really held turmoil and disappointment.
The only negative comment I have about this book is not really a criticism of the book itself, or even the author. I believe the story was accurate, and while it didn't have any shocking new information, it left me feeling sad to see such a powerful combination of talent break apart because of personality conflict, and sad at the thought that Carmack seemed to be losing interest in id Software. The book does mention Carmack's current interests in rocketry (which are even more exciting to me than his games), and Romero seems to have settled into a life he is enjoying, but the mood of the book seemed very depressing to me in the end.
Anyone who is a gamer or a self-taught programmer like Carmack and Romero would enjoy this book. The book does not require the reader to know much about games or computer programming, but I suspect it might be uninteresting to people who aren't either gamers or interested in computers. To the average Slashdot reader though, I would definitely recommend this book.
You can purchase Masters of Doom from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Negative part of the book (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:One of the things I find annoying... (Score:5, Insightful)
When I am describing a game and relate it to another game as oppose to a genre, I actually mean it. If I say a game is Unreal Tournament style, I mean it is cartoonish in graphics, more focused on gameplay than reality (wild and crazy), etc. If something is GTA like (oh don't anyone dare call this a regular FPS) I mean it's open-world'd, fun just do to random things in, etc.
Bad spelling is not an indication of bad thought, it's just not wanting to take the time to post into a word processor.
Re:One of the things I find annoying... (Score:3, Insightful)
Game vision personal enough to be universal .... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think that it is surprising that beloved games like DOOM are the product of the vision of a small group of people.
Games that really do engage us, do so at a very primal level. There is something about the game that has to click, and release your anandamides ... This syncronization of what you feel when you play the game and what the developer wanted you to feel is more pure, like it is in art, when this vicarious "anandamide" is personal ... so personal that it becomes universal ....
Corporations with big departments will create a lot of good games, but I believe the purity of the intensely personal experience can come only when the vision is personal, and concentrated in a few people rather than diffused ...
It's all id's fault (Score:3, Insightful)
But I hold id software personally accountable for the current state of "release early, release often" game development. Their unending succession of Point Releases justified other game developers doing the same: releasing a buggy product and fixing it after the fact (oftentimes LONG after) with updates and patches.
Certainly I recognize the need for continuous quality improvement, and I respect companies that provide support for their products. But it seems to me that ever since Quake (or, perhaps more fairly, Quake II) the initial release of most games have been plagued with faults, and we the consumers have been lulled into accepting this as somehow "okay" or "the norm"! After all, a Point Release is just around the corner...
Oldies checklist (Score:3, Insightful)
Check. Check. And check again.
Let's push this a bit further back, shall we?
- Prince of Persia
- Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards
- Alley Cat
By now we fell off the PC's time of existence, and if I wanted to go on I would have to mention Apple II games like Karateka, Conan, or Swashbuckler. But I won't.
Doom was verboten (Score:2, Insightful)
Back in 1993/1994 Doom was forbidden in the student's computer lab of my university, because it troubled the Netware III network bigtime. Had something to do with broadcasting for connections in multiplayer mode.
The admins actively hunted down some of the players. Of course, this didn't hinder most of the players, some of them were the admins themselves.
Doom and Descent(?) recall some remembrances of my old university days. I'm not a FPS player myself. I played Wold3d once and got sick after half an hour, so I played never again a FPS. It caused a certain kind of nausea to me, I simply couldn't follow the movements with my eyes after a longer time.
But I was an avid player of internet chess for some time. This was great!
Re:Not the first, not the second... (Score:3, Insightful)
BattleZone '98 was a kick-ass RTS/FPS hybrid (avoid the sequel, it lost the charm). It had a wonderful premise (secret cold-war combat on the moon in the '70s) and excellent gameplay. Very inventive, very fun. Still, classic Bzone players wouldn't like it as its much more modern-FPS style of play.
Re:Oldies checklist (Score:3, Insightful)
I also remember walking to my neighbor's house to play the *Quest games on his IBM PC-XT (?) 286. Werd.
Feeling much much too old for my age, but, given the current crowd...
Amiga (Score:3, Insightful)
Emulating the CPU alone is easy. But even an older system, when employing a lot of coprocessing, can be quite a task to emulate by a strictly serial processor.
Re:New improved ending for slashbots! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Pffft .... Commander Keen (Score:3, Insightful)
If I recall correctly, Commander Keen was amazing breakthrough because of the smoothness of the graphics. I remember its frame rate was very high for the time (40 per second?) making the game very responsive and smooth for a PC game. It was a technical breakthrough not necessarily a great triumph of gameplay design.
Re:Yeah, who didn't play... (Score:3, Insightful)
... amazing and IMPORTANT (!?!?!) (Score:2, Insightful)
- Cancer research is important.
- Curtailing nuclear proliferation is important.
- Feeding the hungry is important.
- Equality is important.
- Halting global warming, pollution, and abuse of our resources is important.
Games are just games. Entertainment. A way to spend a few minutes (or hours or days for those with no life or responsibilities). Games provide jobs for a few folks, but they are hardly the cornerstone of western civilization (well, 'cept for Sid Meier's stuff [firaxis.com]). Now you can quote how FPSers are the training grounds for future pilots, but not everyone who blasts a virtual opponent joins the Navy, and not all fighter jocks are former sofa-dwelling thumb wrasslers. A game is no more than an interactive fantasy. The inflatable love doll of GenX+. Nobody every saved the world by playing Pacman.