Stuart Hacking

Masters of Doom

Masters of Doom [Amazon] follows the story of John Romero and John Carmack: Two of the most influential people in gaming history. The book begins in the 70s. Romero is a scrawny kid with a passion for gaming. He would soon extend this love into developing games for old microcomputers such as the Apple II. Carmack was born to parents with a strong scientific background. He would inherit this talent for scientific thought as well as a passion for role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons.

The book chronicles the events of Romero and Carmack meeting in a company called Softdisk and immediately recognising the other’s potential. Both, now gifted programmers, they worked in a team called Gamer’s Edge producing games for magazines and porting existing games to new platforms.  Eventually Romero and Carmack would leave Softdisk to establish Id Software along with fellow team mates Tom Hall and Adrian Carmack.

We learn during the course of events at id software that Carmack is dedicated to pushing his knowledge of technology and developing an engine that taxes the machines’ capabilities. This is more important even than the games. Romero is passionate about design and wants to produce the most fun games, demanding more power from Carmack’s work. It’s the perfect collaboration, but eventually as the industry changed it would tear the company apart.

The latter part of the book covers the departure of Romero from id; the backlash of the Columbine massacre and it’s effect on the games industry; the birth of many new companies using the id technology and developing their own. At each stage, we not only read about the activities going on, but also have the opportunity to learn about each person’s motivation, personality and ambitions.

The ending is bittersweet- We now live in a world which is becoming dominated by technology such that, although more people can gain access to computers and enjoy the legacy provided by pioneers of digital entertainment, Hacker culture is becoming overshadowed by enterprise and I.T.

For me, the joy of reading this book was gaining an insight into the history of the industry I work in (which is software development). I turned each page with a ravenous hunger for more information. The book filled me with excitement as I envisioned the programming culture: All night coding sessions; gaming; working with friends- These are things I probably won’t experience in my own career. I highly recommend the book to anyone with an interest in video games or programming.

Reviews book, games, review