Video Gaming Books

[Bumhead]

The Romero/Carmack dynamic is so fascinating. It’s such a classic case of differing skills and personalities working to deliver something so utterly groundbreaking, but inevitably leading to a messy breakup later. Maybe slightly reductive, but it’s probably gaming’s closest situation to Lennon & McCartney.

Masters of Doom sounds really good and I’m certainly going to pick it up.

@Rock8man

At the end of the book in 2002, Carmack was working on Doom 3, with the rest of id software still miserable at having to go back to that well one more time, doing the same thing again because Carmack insisted. i have to admit, with id software ascendant again with Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal, I had kind of forgotten about the phase of post-Romero id software just repeating themselves over and over. Quake 2, then Quake 3, then Doom 3, and being internally miserable. Looking it up, it looks like Doom 3 finally came out in 2004, and it wasn’t Carmack’s last game, since he stayed on and worked on Rage after that. I guess Rage was the bridge between miserable id software and the more creatively happy id software that emerged with Doom 2016 without Carmack.

Does the book go into much (or any?) detail about modern id? I wonder how many people still there go back as far as Doom 3 (or earlier).

I have increasingly mixed feelings on nuDoom, but I do find it interesting that id remain such a tech powerhouse beyond Romero and Carmack. That legacy hasn’t ever really gone away, or even if it faded a bit, it’s back now even without them. id Tech is a marvel and in the context of modern shooters, I still think 2016 and Eternal top the pile.