ingau's blog

Masters of Doom, by David Kushner, tells the story of the two Johns - John Romero and John Carmack; and how they created Doom and Quake - which revolutionised computer games, giving rise to the gaming culture as it exists today.

I’m not a gamer. What, or who caught my interest was John Carmack - a legend in the field of technology and programming. Also, I love to read on how makers make. The book did not disappoint me in both fronts.

We get a glimpse of the Silicon Valley gaming industry, culture and tech landscape of the 90s, which I found fascinating.

A major theme is the difference in personalities of Carmack and Romero, and how they complimented each other.

Romero was enthusiastic and artistic while Carmack was stoic and technical. They worked in tandem. Carmack would come up with technological breakthroughs and Romero would design the game around it.

Another important difference was that Romero was a gamer first, programmer second and Carmack was the opposite - which eventually led to their split.

Key takeaways:

• Work hard. Even Carmack, who is a genius, worked 80-100 hours a week to make a breakthrough.
• The importance of shared passion and enthusiasm in creating something great. Both Carmack and Romero lived and breathed games. The two had a falling out when Romero lost his passion for games and started to focus on the business side of things.
• Work with people better than you. Carmack decided to leave his freelance work and join Romero because he was impressed by Romero’s expertise.
• Stay lean. id software was a small, focused, independent company. They were able to make quick decisions and iterate fast. Contrast this with Ion Storm - Romero’s next venture, which was a disaster because of its size, over-ambition and lack of focus.
• Innovators disrupt. id software, a small company, was able to make a dent in the gaming industry because of their technological innovations. They were the first to use 3D graphics and multiplayer in games.
• Carmack never rested on his laurels. He was always iterating and improving. He found fulfilment in the process of learning and building, not the end product.

In the information age, the barriers just aren’t there,” he said. “The barriers are self-imposed. If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you don’t need millions of dollars of capitalisation. You need enough pizza and Diet Coke to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on, and the dedication to go through with it. We slept on floors. We waded across rivers.

The writing is fluid and fast paced, which feels natural for the subject. It becomes repetitive at times though ( yes, we get that the gamers survived on coke and pizza ). The programmer in me wished that the book went into more technical details.

I would recommend this book to anyone even remotely interested in gaming, technology or startups.