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.
This was an interesting read on John Carmack and John Romero, focusing on their time at ID software. It give a lot of background on the development of Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake. Highly recommended if you're a gamer or programmer who wants to know more about the design and making of early PC games.
