Book Details
| Title: | Masters of Doom | |
| Author: | David Kushner | |
| Times Read: | 1 | |
| Last Read: | 08.18.12 |
Other Books Read By This Author (1)
- Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto
| Date Read | Note |
| 08.18.12 | The inside story of id Software's heyday. It's really interesting to go back and read this stuff that I was so close to and embedded in from halfway through highschool through college. All the names referenced were familiar to me and I still remember all the various .plan updates and eagerly awaiting qtest1 by refreshing id's website waiting for American to update it, but I never knew all the gossipy details of how id worked and what created the frequent turnaround in there. These people were kind of like rock stars to the quake community but then they were out and working for some other company. Now I have a pretty decent idea why. Maybe the most interesting thing about reading this book for me is that I was always pretty anti-romero. I think Doom 2's levels are superiour to Doom 1's, I didn't enjoy Daikatana at all (although I must say there were a few good elements there, like being able to upgrade the daikatana), and found his facetious showboating to be pretty annoying. I always sided with Carmack whenever anyone brought up sides. After reading the book though I'm much more sympathetic towards Romero than I am toward Carmack. I also find it interesting that my personal enjoyment of id games seems to have coincided with the rise of internal strife inside the company. I loved the shit out of Quake for its network play, its lava, the excitement surrounding the mod community, and because i was pretty damn good at it. When I look back at youtube vidoes of gameplay it looks like absolute shit. When I think about the level designs and the enemies they are a huge step backward from the polish and detail of Doom 2. And Quake 2 didn't even ship with multiplayer. Anyway, I very much enjoyed this book. Probably because it was aimed right at me and frankly I'm surprised I put off reading it for as long as I have. |
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