339 pages
English language
Published April 27, 2004
Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture is a 2003 book by David Kushner about id Software and its influence on popular culture, focusing chiefly on the video-game company's co-founders John Carmack and John Romero. Upon release, Masters of Doom received positive reviews from critics and has been placed on numerous "best of" lists for video game books. The book would later influence Palmer Luckey to establish the technology company Oculus VR, and Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman to found reddit. In 2019, it was announced that the USA Network had greenlit a pilot episode of a potential series based on the book.
As someone that (back in the day) breathlessly waited for the shareware release of Doom to download on his 2400 bps modem, this was a very nostalgic, but also fun and interesting read.
Great book on the history of id Software and related companies (e.g. Ion Storm). Well worth reading if you're interested in video games, although as it was published in 2004 it misses out more recent titles such as Doom 3 (mentioned towards the end) and the eventual end of id as an independent company.
An amazing account of the two Johns. I was obviously more bent towards Carmack, him being a programmer, but this book beautifully highlights the ups and lows of the journey. It leaves you waiting for more, and I wish to hear more of this story. Even though it focuses mainly on the two Johns, this book is not a biography. Rather it is an account of the Silicon Valley Gaming & Startup Scene in the 80-90s. I would go so far ahead to label this as a "startup-book", with two entrepreneurs making it big time.
The book doesn't end on much of a high note, ending with the launch of Quake III Team Arena and Carmack firing his rockets. It would be awesome if the author came up with a DLC for the book with more chapters covering what both of them have done in the past 13 years.
