It seems like not so long ago I used to get carried away in computer clubs, where you had to move a few squares across the screen from point A to point B, and then there was a masterpiece in the form of the game Karateka. These days you look at a game that’s, say, five years old — ten, heaven forbid — and you already think: ugh, how could we even play that? And yet 35 years ago it was those very squares on the screen that seemed to us like a miracle of miracles.
And that’s why it’s so fascinating now to read the biographies of people who are, essentially, already legends, who rapidly changed both the video game industry itself and society’s attitude toward it. The story of id Software is just such an example.
David Kushner’s book is titled Masters of Doom, making it clear which game is considered the most famous, which name can attract potential readers. Modern players are more likely to know Doom (2016) and its sequel Doom Eternal, and are unlikely to have ever played those very first games.
For me, though, the acquaintance with the company’s games began much earlier — although back then I paid no attention to who actually made them. I remember playing Commander Keen in the school computer lab. And later, when Wolfenstein 3D appeared, it became not only a breakthrough and the progenitor of all shooter games. It was also the first game my father ever played on a computer — and at that time he was about as far from technology as one could be. So, you could say I’ve walked almost the entire path alongside this company — only as a player.
But when I say that the book tells the story of id Software, that’s not quite true. It’s not so much the story of a company as it is the story of its two founders — “the two Johns,” as the author constantly calls them: John Romero and John Carmack, two guys who “created an empire and transformed pop culture.”
They were the ones who created all of the company’s breakthrough masterpieces, though originally id Software had more founding fathers. Both Johns began their careers as game creators even before fate brought them together. Each made his own little games and even managed to earn some money from them. But only after they met were they able to combine their best qualities and start pushing beyond the boundaries of what was considered standard at the time. What’s more, they began their work when the entire industry itself was still very young (though some companies, like Sierra, Atari, and Nintendo, had already made a name and a decent fortune).
The first edition of the book came out in 2004, almost 20 years ago, so the author ends his story not long before that date (he’s not a fortune teller, after all).
John Romero started making video games professionally in the early 1980s, and John Carmack a bit later. But by around 1990, both had ended up at a company called Softdisk, where they worked on games in a kind of assembly-line fashion, producing titles for the company’s monthly and bimonthly game collections. However, they soon realized that the limits of those assignments were far too tight for them, and that their programming skills complemented each other perfectly. And already in 1990, together with Tom Hall and Adrian Carmack (no relation to John), they secretly founded id Software behind Softdisk’s back and released the company’s first game — Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons (it’s worth mentioning that although they developed it in their free time, they did so on Softdisk’s computers, which they sometimes took home for the weekend or overnight without even asking anyone).
And although both Johns originally worked as programmers, it quickly became clear within their duo that Carmack was the hardened tech guy — far more interested in developing technology and inventing new “engines” than in the games themselves. Romero, on the other hand, was a true visionary who could instantly recognize the brilliance of Carmack’s new ideas and see how to turn them into an exceptional game. Of course, other team members made huge contributions as well — for instance, Tom Hall was the game designer of the company’s first titles, and Adrian Carmack not only created most of the artwork but also introduced the “bloody” style that would go on to become the company’s signature trademark.
But the book’s author, David Kushner, prefers to keep the spotlight on the two Johns — because it was around their “chemistry” that all the early megahits were built. Wolfenstein 3D became the first first-person shooter (FPS) where you wandered through castle corridors blasting Nazis. Doom took that idea further, adding uneven walls, verticality, and a punchy, hardcore soundtrack. Quake went even further still, becoming the first fully 3D shooter.
All of these games turned into massive bestsellers, thanks in part to the successful shareware model — where you got the base game for free, but had to pay for most of the extra levels. The company, made up of just a handful of people, began earning enormous profits — at one point, each employee’s daily income was counted in tens of thousands of dollars!
And that was the classic trial by fame and fortune — one that not everyone managed to withstand.
At first, the guys could spend days and nights working together in the same little house, racing to release their next masterpiece as fast as possible. But once fame arrived, the two Johns began to drift apart. Carmack wanted to keep focusing purely on programming — that was his whole life — and all he really needed for it was a desk and a computer. Sure, he didn’t mind spending money on expensive “toys” like Ferraris, but his main passion remained creating the technological foundations for future games — almost without sleep or days off.
Romero, on the other hand, began to bask in the spotlight. He spent more and more time playing online matches with other gamers, traveling to conferences and expos, where at first he called himself a king — and later, outright, a god. He spent money left and right, built himself a Tudor-style mansion, and bought outrageously expensive cars. But he kept postponing work on the actual game. And he was the visionary, after all. The team was left without one of its captains. As a result, only six levels of Doom II were made by Romero himself; the rest were created by other talented designers. Things went even worse with Quake.
Eventually, Romero was fired from his own company — but went on to found a new one, Ion Storm. And I’d say that from that point on, the future of both Johns didn’t look particularly bright.
Romero decided to go all in on “design above all,” believing that a top-tier office and a huge team of cool employees — many of whom had never made games before — were the key to success. In the end, he spent over three years and more than 30 million dollars developing Daikatana, which crashed and burned spectacularly (selling just over 40,000 copies), and the following twenty years brought no real breakthroughs either.
Carmack, meanwhile, went to the opposite extreme. He put technology at the forefront, always believing that it was the only true driving force behind games, while story and everything else were just surface decoration. Moreover, he demanded the same level of dedication from everyone else that he gave himself. Eleven-hour workdays were, in his view, for slackers. He introduced tyrannical rules — strict time tracking, no democracy in decision-making. The company became a reflection of Carmack himself. Yes, for a time, his technology alone could turn new games into masterpieces, but the lack of a strong visionary and designer soon shifted id Software from being a leader to merely trying to catch up. Eventually, he too left the company — moving on to building rockets and other side projects.
Today, the company still releases new games under its name set in the same Doom and Wolfenstein worlds. They’re great — though often made by other studios. But to me, it feels more like resting on the laurels of past glories, because you can no longer really call the company a trendsetter.
And in his book, David Kushner managed to capture those brief ten years (in fact, even less) during which the guys rocketed to the very Olympus of game development — and then, in different ways, managed to screw much of it up. At the same time, the author strives not only to lay out the chronology of events but also to show all the main characters through the lens of their inner worlds and emotions — what they lived for, how they created, and why they made the choices they did.
At first, the book seemed a bit dull to me, but about a quarter of the way in, I could hardly put it down. It read like a soap opera — because so much of it seemed exaggerated, unreal, almost grotesque. And yet you knew that, for the most part, that’s exactly how it really happened (since the story was told by many of the participants, who largely agreed in their accounts).
For myself, I noted a few key takeaways.
The whole story of the company is, in essence, like the legends from the Age of Discovery. The world was still unexplored — Terra Incognita almost everywhere — and wherever you dug, you’d find something new. Not everyone could do it, of course, but still, those years were, in my view, the era of golden discoveries in video game development. The industry was still finding its footing, getting a taste of personal computers and the limits of what was acceptable (Doom was an extremely violent game — it was even accused of promoting violence). Today, technology keeps moving forward too, but those truly groundbreaking ideas are long gone.
Besides, even the way they ran the business was a bit “childish.” You can see it in how, when even minor disagreements arose — not even real conflicts, just differences in approach — they would simply vote someone out, without a shred of sentiment or concern for royalties. First, they fired Tom Hall, declaring that he no longer had any rights to royalties from the company’s games, even though he’d played a major role in creating them. Then John Romero was dismissed in much the same way — he received a couple of million dollars in compensation but no share of royalties from the Wolfenstein, Doom, or Quake franchises, which had, in large part, been born and made successful thanks to him. He could have been living comfortably to this day on just those “percentages.” On the other hand, that was the team’s philosophy — nobody owed anyone anything. Even before they started “cutting out” their own founding fathers, they hadn’t hesitated to do the same to their employers and partners. So integrity was never really part of the equation.
The relationships within the company — and their approach to product development — now seem both archaic (well, it was a long time ago) and unprofessional. Both Romero and Carmack, through their management styles, were steering their companies toward collapse. It’s easy to criticize others, you might say — “let’s see you become a millionaire at twenty first.” Fair enough. And yet, the Johns made mistakes that today would be listed as basic examples in any textbook on team management. Their intentions, however, were generally good.
At the same time, it’s impossible not to acknowledge how much id Software gave to the industry beyond just their own games and the new genres they created:
- Although the book focuses mainly on the two Johns, it also pays attention to other key “players.” For example, one of the talented level designers who worked on Doom II and later Quake was American McGee — the very same who would go on to gain fame with his own game, American McGee’s Alice.
- John Romero’s company, Ion Storm, though it failed spectacularly with its own “flagship” — Daikatana — still managed to open a branch in Austin, headed by Warren Spector, who created the first Deus Ex there.
- id Software itself has now existed for almost 30 years, and many of its employees have stayed for decades — like Tim Willits, for instance (who, by the way, is portrayed somewhat oddly in the book — a bit one-dimensional and with a slight negative tone — even though he went on to lead the studio for many years).
- It was the success of Doom that inspired Microsoft to create DirectX — in an effort to promote the new Windows 95 as a gaming platform where developers wouldn’t have to worry about hardware specifics. Doom was among the very first games (if not the first) to be ported to DirectX. Thanks to that, Windows went on to become the #1 platform for gaming on personal computers.
- Doom (and later titles) also introduced the concepts of multiplayer and deathmatch — a special network mode where players gleefully destroyed each other — effectively marking the birth of esports.
- Thanks to the company and to Romero’s push for licensing the engine, we soon got Heretic, Hexen, and Duke Nukem 3D. The genre then became one of the most popular of all time — and without those wild pioneers, we might never have known Call of Duty, Half-Life, or Battlefield.
That’s why the book is both fascinating and insightful — especially if you’re not only interested in games but actually work in the industry, like I do.
And an excellent epigraph here would be a quote from Paul Steed:
“Romero is chaos and Carmack is order,” he said. “Together they made the ultimate mix. But when you take them away from each other, what’s left?”
My rating: 4/5
