Masters of Doom

The full subtitle is How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture. David Kushner, a journalist, built the book from extensive interviews with the people involved, and it has become a cult favorite among programmers and gamers.

What it’s about

It follows John Carmack, a quiet, technically brilliant programmer, and John Romero, a charismatic game designer, from their early days working on games to the founding of id Software and the creation of Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake. Kushner is good at the human story: the late nights, the friendship that made the company work, and the tension that eventually broke the partnership apart.

The software story is just as important. Doom pushed what home computers could draw, and id distributed the first part of the game for free as shareware while selling the rest, a model that spread it far beyond what a normal release could reach. The game’s design also encouraged players to modify it, which helped start the modding culture that became part of PC gaming.

Why it belongs on coldboot

Games were one of the strongest forces driving personal-computer hardware and software in the 1990s, and Doom is among the most influential programs of the decade. This is the most readable account of how it was made.

Keep in mind

It is a narrative history based on interviews, with scenes reconstructed from the memories of people who sometimes recall events differently. Treat the dialogue and the portraits as the story as the participants told it, not as a verified transcript.

Edition linked: Random House Trade Paperbacks (2004).