Hun-Speak

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September 18, 2004

Review: Masters of Doom

Upon The Master's recommendation, I recently read David Kushner's Masters of Doom. I had been playing id's games all the way back to the Wolfenstein 3D days, so I was interested in getting a peek behind the scenes at my favorite game developer. The book was interesting and certainly gave me a lot of insight into the company, but ultimately I was left with an empty feeling inside.

The book follows the "Two Johns," Linnell and Flansburgh. Oh sorry, that's They Might Be Giants. The Two Johns in this case are of course Carmack and Romero. The book starts by discussing both men's childhoods. At this point in the book, I was concerned that the author was going to make them out to be some kind of martyrs or that he wrote the book simply to glorify them. Their early lives may not have been easy, but join the club. Thankfully, this book is not about glorification. The author obviously admires the Two Johns, but he still tells it like it is, warts and all.

It all starts back in the pre-id days at Softdisk where the major players first met. Their first game, Commander Keen, came from an attempt to port Nintendo's mega-popular Super Mario Brothers to the PC. I wondered if DOOM every would have been made if Nintendo had taken them up on their offer to officially port Mario.

The book details the good times, like right around DOOM's release when the team could do no wrong. Literally millions of dollars were flowing into the company and the Two Johns were treated like rock stars or gaming royalty. Almost immediately thereafter, however, things began to fall apart. The things that made them so successful, their vision, their work ethic, and ultimately their egos, are what led to their split.

Naturally, no book on DOOM would be complete without a mention of the Columbine tragedy. Senators Lieberman and Kohl among others went on the warpath looking for someone to blame. They found their scapegoat in DOOM. I'm sure the fact that these two students used drugs and had such outstanding parents that one of them could keep a sawed-off shotgun in his underwear drawer had nothing to do with it. Yep, DOOM was too blame. That's it. It's also interesting to hear how people who were supposedly against violent games threatened real-life violence against id, to the point that they hired security guards for a while.

Perhaps the most interesting to me is the behind-the-scenes look at the rise (did it ever really rise?) and fall of ION Storm. This sad episode showed the absolute worst in Romero: having a grand vision that was probably too grand for his own good and the lack of management skills that turned ION Storm in general and Diakatana in particular into a train wreck.

One interesting bit player in all of this is Mike Wilson. He was originally id's business guy, who was good a twisting a deal for his own advantage. He was given to hyperbole. After he joined Romero at ION Storm, he was the brain cell behind the "John Romero's about make you his bitch" ad. That one has to go down in history as the worst marketing idea ever. He pulled the same stunts when he founded the Gathering of Developers where he became known for throwing lavish parties, but not shipping games that anyone was remotely interested in.

In the meantime, id had pretty much become Carmack's company. It was his decision to make Quake III Arena multiplayer only. It was primarily his decision to make DOOM3. History quite often has proven him to be correct, but that has come at the cost of the rest of the team. While Romero was too extroverted for his own good, Carmack was too introverted. They had trouble communicating with anyone who was not exactly like them.

It seems like both Johns would have been better off if they could have stuck together. Carmack could bring Romero back to earth. Romero could bring Carmack out of his shell and "translate" his brilliant ideas so that others could understand. Sadly, egos got in the way, and we will never truly know what might have been.

While this was an interesting book in general, ultimately it left me depressed. I guess that as a gamer and a fan, I want to hold id up on a pedestal. The reality is that the company is run by human beings who are subject to the same foibles and failures that the rest of us are. The book humanized the Two Johns, but maybe more than I really wanted it to. This would be an excellent book for anyone who is considering making games for a living. It isn't all coding and deathmatch. It is a business. Perhaps this is the dose of reality many could use.