Masters of Doom, David Kushner - a sentimental story about the gaming culture of the 1990s

In fact, a few years ago I already read Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner. In Russian. But that didn't stop me from rereading the book again, now, thanks to MAL'OPUS, finally in Ukrainian. Because Masters of Doom is not just a cool story of the formation of the modern gaming market, which Kushner also masterfully tells, it is also a very sentimental and touching journey to the times when games were developed for the sake of the fan, and not for the sake of good indicators in quarterly reports.

It so happened that twenty years ago I crossed paths with two of the four main characters in this book – John Romero and Tom Hall. Of course, thanks to the "man who knew everyone", that is, Sasha Ptitsa. At that time, Romero and Hall, who had already reconciled after their "divorce" with id Software, were invited as stars to various gaming conferences. Still quite young people, Romero was 37 at the time, Hall was 40, they were exactly as Kushner describes them. Romero was a real rock diva in a black shirt with tongues of flame and a mane of well-groomed hair, he was domineering and happily fulfilled his role as a star. Hall was completely bald, with a neat beard, in a simple black or gray sweater under his throat, constantly smiling, "throwing out" various strange things and gushing with jokes that, it seems, only Romero understood. A strange couple, but damn, these were the same guys who created Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion, Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM!!! For someone who grew up on their games, they are almost gods. I still regret that we didn't get to chat for real, but it was nice to be on the same jury with them.

And while it seemed like everyone who was even remotely interested in video games knew the story of id Software and their early games, it wasn't until I started reading Kushner's book that I realized how interesting it was, and how universal a story it was. Because what "Lords of Doom" is about happened all over the world in the 1990s. It's an almost universal story of young people who got hooked on video games and wanted to make their own.

Yes, Carmack, Romero and company had a head start, they started all this in the US, where the video game market and general entrepreneurial culture already existed. Domestic developers had a harder time, but they followed the same path, only a few years later, and already orienting themselves and arguing with the authority of id Software.

The same slightly neglected apartments where developers never got out of their computers, only stopping to have a snack (sorry, pizza delivery in Ukraine didn't exist in the mid-1990s), the same obligatory online battles in DOOM or Quake, the same desire to challenge authority and break the rules. This was the general atmosphere of the time, and it was roughly the same when CD Projekt started in Poland in 1994, as Marcin Iwiński told us.

The board in the Action Forms office had the inscription "id - suckers!" on it for a long time. AtmosFear engine developer Oleg Slyusar, like some other Action Forms employees, was fond of chip-tuning cars. Sergey Grigorovich bought himself a daring red Ferrari from the very first big contract. Developers from all over the world wanted to be like their idols and argue with them. This was the spirit of the 1990s, when the gaming industry was transforming, gushing with new ideas, creating new game mechanics and entire genres. It seems that this was the last period when big games were created not to improve financial results, although of course no one canceled the money factor, but in order to satisfy their own needs, solve problems that no one had yet solved, create the game of their dreams, something that no one had yet seen.

Masters of Doom very well conveys the desires and dreams of game developers of the 1990s and the atmosphere of that time. But this book is not only about the heyday of 3D shooters and the formation of id Software. It is also a story about the people of that time, about general trends and tendencies. About the emergence of 3D engines and the creation of age ratings, the heyday of shareware and the penetration of games into popular culture, the influence of the Internet and the next attacks on games, the emergence of eSports and the emergence of user mods for games, the source of toxicity of the modern gaming community, etc. And this book is also about the transformation of the gaming industry into what it has become now. About the arrival of big money and big companies, about planning instead of inspiration, about quarterly reports instead of inappropriate jokes.

id helped create the industry we know today, and it itself fell victim to it. All the founders left id Software one by one, and it itself became part of ZeniMax Media (Bethesda) in 2009, which, in turn, has been owned by Microsoft Gaming since 2021. I won't say that their games have become worse, let's see after the release of Doom: The Dark Ages, which is only two weeks away, but the defiant spirit that the twenty-year-old heroes of "Lords of Doom" exuded seems to be left only in the indie industry now.

In any case, thanks to David Kushner and MAL'OPUS Publishing House for this nostalgic journey into the past. Masters of Doom is worth reading a second time. As for Bogdan Peredry's translation, I bet it won't appeal to fans of the Soviet use of "х/г" at the beginning of foreign words and surnames. In addition, some fans of the old definition of game genres, which dates back to the Russian gaming media of the 1990s, may also be dissatisfied. I myself, of course, am used to the 1990s spelling, which we actually borrowed and slightly modified for the DPK and still use. But I'm not against new definitions either, let's not cling to the legacy of Strana ihor and Game.exe.

And finally, I would like to remind about the publishing house MAL'OPUS, which has already given us Press Reset: Burnout and Recovery in the Video Game Industry, Masters of Doom and is currently working on the translation of Jason Schreier's next book about Blizzard, that the same David Kushner also has a book, Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto (2012), about the creation of GTA. We really hope to see its Ukrainian translation someday.

PS Be careful, this book may make you want to replay all of id Software's games, starting with the classic Wolfenstein 3D and Doom.