Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture: Amazon.fr: David Kushner: Livres anglais et �trangers

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Doom, the video game in which you navigate a dungeon in the first person and messily lay waste to everything that crosses your path, represented a milestone in many areas. It was a technical landmark, in that its graphics engine delivered brilliant performance on ordinary PC hardware. It was a social phenomenon, with individuals and companies hooking up networks specifically for Doom tournaments and staying up for days to blast away on them (well before the Internet went big-time). The game's publisher, id Software, used an unusual shareware marketing strategy (give away the first levels, charge for the more advanced ones) that worked very well. On top of it all, the gore-filled game raised serious questions about decency in products meant for use by school-age kids. Masters of Doom explores the Doom phenomenon, as well as the lives and personalities of the two men behind it: John Carmack and John Romero.

This book manages, for the most part, to keep clear of the breathless techno-hagiography style that characterizes many books with similar subjects. He tells the story of Carmack, Romero, and id--which includes far more than Doom and its successors--in novel style, and he's done a good job of keeping the action flowing and the characters' motivations clear. Some of the quoted passages of dialog sound like idealized reconstructions that probably never came from the lips of real people, but this is an entertaining and informative book, of interest to anyone who's let rip with a nail gun. --David Wall

Topics covered: The biographies of John Carmack and John Romero, and of their company, id Software. The development and marketing of all major id games (including Wolfenstein, Doom, Doom II, and Quake) get lavish attention.

From Publishers Weekly

Long before Grand Theft Auto swept the video gaming world, whiz kids John Romero and John Carmack were shaking things up with their influential-and sometimes controversial-video game creations. The two post-adolescents meet at a small Louisiana tech company in the mid-1980s and begin honing their gaming skills. Carmack is the obsessive and antisocial genius with the programming chops; Romero the goofy and idea-inspired gamer. They and their company, id, innovate both technologically and financially, finding ways to give a PC game "side-scrolling," which allows players to feel like action is happening beyond the screen, and deciding to release games as shareware, giving some levels away gratis and enticing gamers to pay for the rest. All-nighters filled with pizza, slavish work and scatological humor eventually add up to a cultural sea change, where the games obsess the players almost as much as they obsess their creators. Fortunately, journalist Kushner glosses over Carmack and Romero's fame, preferring to describe the particulars of video game creation. There are the high-tech improvements-e.g., "diminished lighting" and "texture-mapping"-and pop cultural challenges, as when the two create an update of the Nazi-themed shooter Castle Wolfenstein. The author gives his subjects much leeway on the violence question, and his thoroughness results in some superfluous details. But if the narration is sometimes dry, the story rarely is; readers can almost feel Carmack and Romero's thrill as they create, particularly when they're working on their magnum opus, Doom. After finishing the book, readers may come away feeling like they've just played a round of Doom themselves, as, squinting and light-headed, they attempt to re-enter the world.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Génial 7 janvier 2011

Par M. Nicolas Fauvet

Format:Broch�

J'étais déjà un grand fan de John Carmack (quel programmeur ne l'est pas) avant d'acheter ce livre, et je le suis maintenant encore plus.
Son histoire et celle de John Romero est un vrai road movie, une success story que je ne pouvais imager qu'au cinéma.
Les pizzas, le diet coke, coder des jeux nuit et jour avec les PC "empruntés" au boulot, inventer les technologies du futur, jouer à D&D sur plusieurs années, le pied que �a a du �tre.
La personnalité des "acteurs" est très bien décrite, on a l'impression de bien mieux les cerner, de les conna�tre intimement.
On découvre au passage des épisodes de vie d'autres personnalités du monde du jeu vidéo qu'ils ont croisés sur leur route, le livre ne tourne pas 100% autour des deux John.

Un livre qui se boit, une biographie qui pourrait �tre un roman. Juste génial, et qui montre qu'avec de la passion et beaucoup de détermination et de travail on peut devenir le ma�tre du monde.

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Design VS Technology 18 mai 2012

Par mtarzaim

Format:Format Kindle|Achat authentifi� par Amazon

More than a double biography, it's a journey from the dawn of video games to the advent of 3D gaming.
A little romanced (of course), but still fresh and relevant.

This book is about the rising of FPS, how and why it touched so many people (especially north-americans), and the men behind it. The fact that the author followed the two main protagonists for several years, especially when they finally splitted from each other, is important to the relevance of the whole story. We really have two points of view on the events, even more when the other members get their share of limelight.

It's also about two approaches about game design : the constraints (Camarck) and the possibilities (Romero).
Either you build the technology then try to use it to its best, or you design the best/fun uses then build the technology to implement them. Through the two johns, we see the good and the bad of those opposed philosophies, and how they work the best when reunited.

We are also treated with the inner cycle of game creation, where several no-life guys sit in front of a computer for months day and night, the internal/external complexities of business and, of course, the human factor. Quite frightening, considering it was before the rise of AAA games, at a time games weren't as complex and demanding as they are today.

The only real flaw of the book is its age.
The story told here stops a little after Quake 3 Arena. 2003 is quite old in the video game world, and lots of thing have changed since. While still in the business, Carmack has pursued his new obsession with space travel, winning the X-prize. Romero continue to explore game designing in the mobile market. In that regard, an updated epilogue would have been a nice addition.

On a side note, it's funny to see that, from all the contenders of the 2000 era, only Half Life (the underdog at that time) managed to stay relevant to this day. A game with no multiplayer ("PvP is the most fun you can get from any game" - Romero) and a big emphasis on story ("video games are like porn movies: story is irrelevant" - Carmack) ended up being probably the best example of "design + technology".

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