Name: Masters of Doom
ISBN: 9780812972153

Masters of Doom

"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.

What Hacker News says

ramgineOct 2026

The Masters of Doom book was pretty good if you want a bit of drama. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Doom

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normie3000Jun 2026

I read this and Masters of Doom back-to-back. Both very enjoyable, and great contrast between the two.

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evilturnipJun 2026

Masters of Doom is a great book on the history of id software, which includes the origins of the development of smooth scrolling by Carmack and Romero, which was groundbreaking at the time on PC.

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hbnJun 2026

It should be noted that John Romero released his own book, Doom Guy, a few years ago which contradicts some of the accounts in Masters of Doom. MoD is probably the more thrilling read and I enjoyed both books, but some of the stories need to be taken with a grain of salt.

I also think Doom Guy is worth a read because it gives a lot more insight into what happened at Ion Storm and how the Daikatana project fell apart. And some important context about the infamous "John Romero's about to make you his bitch" ad (mainly that he really didn't want to publish it at all). But I digress.

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memsomJun 2026

I would recommend the audiobook - John Romero actually reads it so it seems a lot more personal.

I did feel that Romero skipped a load of stuff, at least int he audio version. There was no real mention of Stevie Case, just one passing name check. That was really odd. I was expecting him to at least mention her.

I've also both read and listened to Masters of Doom (read by Wil Wheaton no less) and it is a great book too. The audio version is really good.

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tombertJun 2026

One of my favorite non-fiction books is Masters of Doom. I have no idea how accurate it is, but I did leave with the impression that John Carmack is an amazingly smart guy, who also has the potential to be a colossal asshole.

I was only five when Quake came out, so obviously I couldn't really have worked on it, but I'm pretty sure that (if Masters of Doom is to be believed) I would have probably told Carmack to go fuck himself about midway through the project. Quake is my favorite FPS from that era, and my favorite id game in general, but it sounded like a pain in the ass to work on.

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