By Karl Parakenings
Author: David Kushner
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812972155
Year: 2003
$15.78 (Kindle, copy purchased)
$15.95 (Print)
“We do illusions and none of it is true… You’re beginning to believe the illusions we’re spinning here, you’re beginning to think that the tube is real and your own lives are unreal! […] It’s mass madness, you maniacs! You people are the real thing, we’re the illusion!” – Network
One aspect of “gamer culture” that I have always found equally infuriating and confusing is the tendency towards ahistoricism: the fact that, for example, a mob of internet nerds in 2012 conflate statements made by Jennifer Hepler six years earlier with the development of a game that she had no part in and, in some cases, with ideas she never actually said. Perhaps this is a “deep thought” on the modern human condition, where we tweet and Facebook our lives in the moment and never take the time to examine our past, but I suspect it’s mostly just people wanting to believe in a comfortable narrative. Consequently, it’s always exciting to see good writing and journalism about games leading by example, and David Kushner’s Masters of Doom is a strong attempt at presenting and examining the history of game development and fandom.
On its face, the book is an admirable exercise in preserving the history of a culture; it succeeds at its goal of preservation and historicization while also being entertaining. Kushner follows John Carmack, genius programmer and engineer, and John Romero, visionary game designer and hypeman, telling their stories from childhoods characterized by alienation and rejection, through to their founding of id software, eventual 2003-era material success and widespread fame. Kushner accomplishes this task by synthesizing and narrativizing hundreds of interviews with “the two Johns,” their colleagues, friends and family with an impressive amount of archival research. Kushner himself–who was only present for a handful of scenes in the book–pieces together the rest from secondhand accounts and published material. In the book’s first half, this approach sometimes comes across as stilted as he converts his research into a novelistic story. The large amount of interiority granted to the teenage characters of Romero and Carmack gives the whole story a very Horatio Alger, fabulist tone as both misunderstood teens find their purpose in computer software and follow it, despite a troubling second act, to success. I have to admit, the “legendary” aspect of their story reminded me powerfully of the camp classic movie Hackers , starring hilariously outdated technology, a rebel hacker named “Zero Cool,” and Angelina Jolie’s cleavage.
Indeed, the “hacker ethic” of independence, self-education and anti-corporatism dominates most of the book. Kushner mythologizes Carmack’s systematic insight into technology, giving him the same drive to self-educate, experiment, and optimize in every area of his life (to sometimes unpleasant results). He makes a similar move with Romero’s infamous tendency towards braggadocio and showmanship, attributing his equally rocky romantic and professional life to a playful personality that often crosses into manic hedonism. While these characterizations ring true with the public image of the two iconoclasts, the pleasure of biography and history is often in discovering the human side to historical figures, turning the larger-than-life into someone you might pass on the street. Masters of Doom misses many opportunities to expose the human side of the two legends, choosing instead to preserve their legends.
I wonder how much of this is Kushner’s doing, though; given his choice to rely on the two Johns to drive his narrative and to provide his source material–effusively thanking Carmack for his openness and generosity and Romero for the use of his archives and couch–the book comes across as presenting an idealistic past, a story that fails to trouble everyone’s natural tendency to assume that they are the protagonists, and everyone else is relegated to supporting character status. Again: how many people remember exactly what they were thinking at critical moments in their lives? Carmack admits in the text, in a quoted .plan file (an early prototype of a blog), that he remembers personal learning breakthroughs more than releases of id’s games or other conventional dramatic beats which are the main focus of the book. This essential subjectivity is perhaps unavoidable, but the degree to which this book unconsciously engages in mythologizing two messy lives results in main characters who are at turns cartoonishly flat and painfully human.
Indeed, I found that, if anything, the two Johns are over-explored. I often wanted more detail for the many developers and friends that drift in and out of the book: Stevie “Killcreek” Case, in particular, is introduced mainly in terms of her sexuality and gender, and ends without ever being portrayed as anything more than “a quote that shows how much she is a girl who plays games and an exception” and one of Romero’s many girlfriends. It’s especially disappointing in cases like Warren Spector or Tom Hall, who are excellent designers and historical figures in their own right, but who are given precious little time in the spotlight. While extensive attention is inevitably given to the fallout of Columbine and Joseph Lieberman’s crusade against games of the late 90s and early aughts, I found myself wishing less time was devoted to these well-worn topics and more was spent providing insight into the day-to-day lives of any of the less central figures.
Kushner succeeds despite these problems, many of which are features of the genre–how can anyone accurately turn one life into a book, let alone two? Given the aura of controversy and innovation which has surrounded Carmack and Romero since the release of Wolfenstein 3D , he does a more-than-competent job in tying together these disparate and often melodramatic narratives into a cohesive and interesting whole. Like Tom Bissell’s chapters about Epic Games in the otherwise excellent Extra Lives , Kushner has difficulty separating his fan status and respect for the two developers’ achievements from his role as biographer and journalist. Masters of Doom also resembles Bissell’s work in that, while the adoring tone can be grating, the book itself is still very engaging, interesting, and revealing.
An unexpectedly tragic moment is related to the infamous “John Romero is going to make you his bitch” advertisement for Daikatana ; the untold story is that he objected to the slogan, and that the game’s development and following critical and commercial failure were incredibly difficult for both him and his family. Similarly, the registration of a trademark for the phrase “Suck it down,” formerly a favourite harmless bit of trash talk, here hallmarks the end of an era–the corporatization of a business which has its roots in recreational projects by teams of geeky friends. In retrospect, it’s startling to realize how much I came to empathize with the Romero of the book: an awkward boy in a grown man’s body, looking for acceptance, the support he never had, and the ability to make the coolest, most exciting games he could.
Overall, Masters of Doom is a fun read. While its missteps can sometimes wear on the reader, it still manages to be a cold lungful of fresh air in a nostalgia-centric genre, a welcome bit of history that attempts to tell an equally accurate and evocative version of the troubled yet exciting game development scene of the 90s and early aughts. Its faults are generally outweighed by Kushner’s dedication to accuracy, and how often he succeeds at invoking the feeling of a generation of creators on the outer borders of creative expression, in the first blush of commercial success and legitimacy. Even though I feel no closer to Romero and Carmack after reading Masters of Doom , Kushner has provided insight and context that I both wanted and needed into people who are often the subject of unconditional worship and disdain. In doing so, Kushner and his book help to give modern game fans an important and necessary perspective and lived history. It’s only through reflexivity and reflection that games can develop the kind of self-awareness that marks good art and which builds a shared cultural history, with room for both human beings and legends.
